Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1778: The Storm Before the Calm

Episode Date: December 1, 2021

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley discuss the onslaught of transaction activity leading up to the expiration of the CBA, touching on why they and others misread how fast the market would move, why players and teams have done deals so quickly and how the burst of spending could affect labor talks, the group of non-playoff […]

But I can't really see how You could not understand All the ones I begin to see All the ones I can see All I have is the real me All I want is to see the truth Hello and welcome to episode 1778 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Meg Raleigh of Fangraphs. by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer joined by

Meg Raleigh of Fangraphs. Hello, Meg. Hello. I rarely remember my dreams, which is good, I think, because I can't bore people by describing my dreams. But since we last spoke, I had two dreams about the podcast that I remembered. In one, I got fired for recording the podcast while on the job. I was still an intern for the Yankees for some reason, and I was trying to record a podcast during the middle of the day. And I commandeered an office and I closed all the windows and tried to soundproof it. But somehow I was found out and I was fired afterward for podcasting on the job. And in the second dream, I dreamed specifically about

this episode and what we would talk about. And my fear was that we would have nothing to talk about. And I was trying to brainstorm in my sleep. I was like, we could talk about the fact that they changed the bases. They use bigger bases in the minors this year, and they changed the step-off rule and pick-off rules, and boy, that really changed stolen base rates. I don't know why that specifically was my solution, but I guess even almost after 1,800 episodes, I still have podcast anxiety dreams, I suppose. Podcast hosts, they're just like us, but that is not a concern. I don't think we will have any trouble finding things to talk about today. If anything, we will struggle to record something that isn't like a 20-hour long episode.

Yeah, I was joking with a friend yesterday because he wished me luck with our forthcoming epic podcast about all the transactions that have happened. And I said, maybe we'll just split it up into like 10 parts and we'll just save it. We'll just squirrel them away for later in the winter when there's no news at all. It'll be like an advent calendar. We will just put it out in tiny little pieces. And on December 21st, our listeners will check their apps and they'll find that we talked about the Rangers getting John Gray or something that day. But we'll see.

We will pay the price for all of the news happening in just a few days. But that's a problem for later Ben and later Meg. For today, we have too much to talk about. We got some emails from listeners expressing concern for my well-being because of how much news there is. But I've come around to the following idea that while the number of transactions that we have had over the last couple of days meant that my mom had to pretend to not be annoyed by the volume of transaction activity and this work that I was doing while ostensibly on Thanksgiving break, this way we have an easier February, right? We were sort of set up to just be busy every single day with multiple signings whenever we come back from the lockout that seems inevitable at this point. And now, you know, we'll have that many fewer

transactions to have to write up and it'll be a much more manageable month of work. So it's really, it's really fine. Although I do love that all of these teams are behaving like beat writers on deadline or to use your advent calendar analogy my uh my dad got my niece's playmobil advent calendars and you know you're supposed to open a little thing every day except sometimes you're three and that's really hard so you end up with the whole scene open before it's even december 1st so uh yeah um maybe it is an advent calendar it just uh is being governed by the whims of small children without impulse control right it's like the cookie test or the marshmallow test right can you wait and get multiple marshmallows or do you just have to have that marshmallow now? I guess it's the advent calendar test. We gave our dog an advent calendar last year, but the treats were not tasty

enough for her. And so she gave up on it. She just wasn't interested after a while. But enough about advent calendars. Let's talk about some transactions. So what happened here? What is still happening here as we record on tuesday afternoon and who knows how many more moves there will have been by the time people hear this but it has been a frantic few days max scherzer cory seager marcus semien robbie ray kevin gossman javier baez starling marty john gray abyssal garcia the byron Buxton extension, many more moves, something like a billion and a half dollars in contracts committed to free agents. I think 21 of MLB Trade Rumor's top 50 free agents are already off the board, including a bunch of the biggest names. So it's

basically like an off-season's worth of activity, half an off off season's worth of activity half an off season's worth of activity taking place in just a few days and there have been winter meetings in years past maybe with a similar level of activity but this was wild and relative to recent off seasons when things have started so slowly and relative to expectations for this offseason, when I think we mostly expected that things would be quiet for a while, I can't think of any offseason sequence like this, which makes sense, I suppose, because it was precipitated by the likelihood of a lockout. But this was something of a surprise. I think we can say we misread the market here. I think maybe everyone did. I don't know if I missed many media members

who were predicting that all the deals would get done before the lockout, but I think for the most part, it was the opposite, that there would not be November being nuts. It would be no nuts November. It would be, there was a consensus that things would be slow, right? I rarely have a high degree of confidence in predicting how the market will move, least of all during a winter with a likely lockout, but I did not see this coming. No, I think that all of us are sort of racing to scrub the internet of our prediction that we would have. I think that our stance on Effectively Wild was

that there would be some activity, but that it would be, you know, activity that mostly concerns sort of the mid-tier of free agents that the, you know, the starters that weren't in anyone's top 50 might move and relievers might go, but that by and large, the top of the market would wait it out. And we still have some of that happening, right? Like we haven't seen Carlos Correa sign and Freddie Freeman remains unsigned and Chris Bryant remains unsigned. But the idea that we were going to get deals concerning the top of the market that were sort of commensurate with what we thought those folks ought to receive given their production, we were just very wrong. Also, Ben, I'm getting killed on my contract over-unders. Oh, yeah. It's been a rough few days for you. I think Simeon just

blew me out of the water. I don't think there's any recovering from that. So yeah, we were wrong. I also think it's interesting, for the most part, that in years past, I think when folks have sort of misgaged the market, it seems to be a directional bet that has gone wrong, right? Contracts either exceed on average in general what folks were expecting or they they underperform relative to expectation and we've actually seen some of both so i think we just really didn't appreciate how compelling the imposition of an artificial deadline would be on both teams and players and i think that you know once players started to see that deals were out there to be had that were good deals, good contracts, there's really not any reason to wait. If you're Corey Seeger and you think 10 and 325 is what you

can live with and deserve, 10 and 325, if you can live with it, if you can just tolerate 325 million, there's no reason that you have to wait until, you know, things have potentially degraded even further from a labor perspective. So, and, you know, sometimes, sometimes what happens is that Steve Cohen just gets mad about stuff and then decides that the way he'll punish the market is just by signing everyone for a lot of money. So, you know, it's, it's, I think there are some idiosyncratic factors at play in this particular market beyond the broader labor environment. But yeah, I don't know. It ended up being a pretty good day for a lot of folks. So that's good. Yeah. So we have to talk about the Mets. We have

to talk about the Rangers. We have to talk about a bunch of other moves. But yeah, big picture wondering why this has happened. I certainly understand why players would prefer to have their situation sorted before a lockout. I mean, they want to know where they'll live and their families want to know where they'll live. And if they have kids in school, then they have to get kids in school. I mean, there are a lot of reasons why you would not want to wait until the last minute to find out where you're going to play. And I do understand to some extent why it's advantageous to teams to have some certainty, too, even from a promotion standpoint. How do you sell season tickets if you don't know who the cover model on the media guide is? sell tickets to 2022 a lot easier when you can promote Marcus Semyon and Corey Seeger and John Gray and Cole Calhoun, obviously, moving lots of tickets. But them instead of Adoles Garcia or

whoever your best option, your biggest seat seller would have been. So I get that. And I get even why front offices would just want to have some of their work done and not have to cram it all into just, you know, who knows, weeks or months, depending on how long the likely lockout lasts. But how do you think this affects things at the bargaining table, if at all? I mean, mostly today we can just talk about the moves and pretend that things are great and we'll save the lockout for next time. And we'll ignore that there's a looming doom on the horizon here. But the looming doom is why this has happened. So we can't ignore it entirely. The owners and players are talking to each other constantly day to day now.

And I wonder how it affects things, if at all, that for a few days free agency suddenly seemed healthy again. And obviously it's like artificial and it's something of a mirage and it was caused by these strange circumstances. But last year I think we discussed the idea of having some off-season deadline for transaction activity. Some people had proposed that just because things had gotten so slow. Some people had proposed that just because things had gotten so slow. And I think people looked at the NFL and NBA free agency timelines and thought, oh, this is so exciting and MLB should do this. And so they should impose a deadline. It seemed like most people believed that that would only further work against the players to be bound to sign by a certain time. Yet it definitely doesn't seem as if we're seeing some discount here.

I mean, we should have taken more overs than unders in our free agent contracts draft based on what has happened so far. So if you're at the bargaining table, if you're the owners, generally they are trying to maintain that they're in dire financial straits and they're out of money. Hard to do if you just spent a billion and a half on free agents. And if you're the players, I guess you could convince yourself that, hey, maybe free agency isn't broken after all. Like I've seen some people suggest that maybe the owners are trying to like buy off the

players, right, by signing some veterans right before the lockout deadline. Like, hey, Max Scherzer, you are a senior member in the Players Association. Let's give you the highest average annual value ever. And then you will think, hey, it's boom times. Things are great. Let's just sign on the dotted line. I don't think that's going to happen. I think the union is smarter than that and would not be swayed by a subset of players signing big deals. But I do wonder whether this is just entirely unrelated. It's just, hey, we have this deadline here and teams and owners,

even if on the one hand they're trying to maintain a unified front, they're also really rich and they do want to win to some extent, at least some of them. And so they might sort of stray from what would benefit them in the short term. Or it's possible that like, look, they both have access to the books, more access than we do. And so this is all sort of superficial and isn't affecting the long-term trends and won't meaningfully change that conversation. I am skeptical that it will end up mattering really at all at the bargaining table. I mean, I guess that ownership could make the argument if they want to that like, hey, free agency isn't broken. But I don't think that anything that we have seen apart from maybe the AAV on Scherzer's deal is all that out of sync with the way that the market has trended in the last couple of off seasons, which is that the top of the market remains very lucrative, you know,

for that top, top tier of player for your Seegers and your Bettses and, and what have you, those guys tend to get paid and get paid well. And, you know, I guess Betts wasn't technically a free agent. That was an extension, but you know, those guys that sort of the top of the market, Garrett Cole, that's a better example, are being compensated pretty richly. It's the middle tier that remains squeezed and increasingly squeezed over the years. And then you still have this issue of when players reach free agency and how they're compensated in the early years of their career. So I guess that ownership could try to make the argument that, hey, don't worry about this stuff. Free agency is working just fine. We don't need to change the structure of when players reach the free market and when they can negotiate contracts.

But I suspect that the union is pretty clear-eyed about what the issues are at play. And I would imagine that ownership has pretty well-calibrated expectations about how likely that argument is to be persuasive if they do make it. So I think that the artificial deadline created an incentive to get a deal done for some of the reasons that you cited, right? Where if you want to have that certainty as a player and there is a deal to be had that you can feel satisfied with, why not sign it? And if you're a team and your expectation is that you will play most of a 2022 season, even if it is slightly delayed and you lose some games,

you know, you want to construct your roster. And so if you have your sights set on Corey Seager and Corey Seager is amenable to signing, sign him. There's no real reason to wait. I wonder if we wanted to be optimists, I wonder if this is a positive signal that the expectation of both parties to the CBA negotiations is that we are likely to play most of a season, even if we do have delays, even if we do have a late start, even if we do sacrifice some games. So I think that it's tempting to view these things as being in concert with one another. And obviously, this free agent market is being governed by many of the market forces that have shaped the free agent market for the last several years.

But I don't think that the sort of 2021 specific issue of the CBA is necessarily playing out in anything more than the timing. Yeah. I was trying to read the tea leaves here since clearly we were so great at reading the tea leaves on how the market would move. Does this mean anything? Does it signal anything about the likelihood of the lockout being resolved in a timely fashion? And I don't know. You could argue either way, I guess. You could say teams are worried that it's going to last a while and it'll take us right up until opening day and then they won't have time to make moves. Or you could say that maybe it's the opposite.

Maybe there is optimism. Maybe there's a sense that the CPA won't be a sea change, that it won't dramatically alter the economic environment, which might be bad or good depending on your perspective, but would probably mean that there will be a quicker resolution than if one side were really holding the line on significant changes. But that could be one reason, than if one side were really holding the line on significant changes but that could be one reason like if you don't think that the market is going to look dramatically different after the cpa than before then that would be a reason not to wait so it's hard to say like yeah i guess it means that maybe there's some optimism that the season just won't be canceled although players wouldn't be paid i, they wouldn't be getting these dollars of these deals that they're signing from the

owners if the season is stopped. So I don't know that that has a direct bearing on it. So I'd like to think that it's a positive sign. Maybe it's complete panic and it's a negative sign. I don't know. But I guess I would lean a little more Toward the former side And there generally seems to be some amount Of optimism that there won't be

Missed games that there will almost certainly Be a lockout that'll last for a while but Not long enough to impact The 2022 season But that is a topic for next time We shall see so for today I guess the only maybe Difference from recent Off seasons apart from pace, which is obviously super sped up, I guess there have been a few more deals for players who were past 30.

Yeah. That sort of reluctance that we have seen to give multi-year long-term contracts to 30-somethings, which has kind of brought the market to a halt and contributed to the stagnation in salaries in recent seasons, that has maybe been backed off a little bit thus far. And I guess one of the other encouraging signs about all of this activity is that it's not the traditional biggest spenders who are driving this so far. It's not the traditional biggest spenders who are driving this so far. It's not the Yankees. The Yankees have done next to nothing, essentially. It's not the Dodgers. The Dodgers have signed Daniel Hudson. I mean, they haven't been busy. It's not the Red Sox. They signed Michael Wacca, I guess. But all of these big deals are for teams that did not make the playoffs last year and are trying to get good. And that's sort of exciting. And some of the teams that are really investing heavily here are almost surprising candidates to contend, you kind of have to be happy about that.

And some of the teams that we have talked about recently that seemed like they were kind of on the cusp and potentially ready to turn the corner, like the Mariners, like the Tigers, like the Marlins, they have been some of the teams that are leading the spending. And then you also have the Rangers and the Mets. But the teams that seem like, hey, they have incentive to spend, like they are ready now. They are coming out of a rebuild. They should be trying to get good now. They are for the most part. So that's been nice to see.

Yeah, I think that having teams like, and maybe this can be our segue to talking about some of these specific signings, but you look at a team like Texas, and even with the moves that they have made you know completely remaking their infield i joked on twitter i was like i think that the rangers are going to rank more highly on the infield positional power rankings next year than they did in 2021 but even with the addition of semien and seager and gray they aren't quite there yet but i think that they are anticipating being there relatively soon

and are doing something that we sort of saw San Diego do when they added Machado, which is anticipating the opening of their next competitive window, realizing that these guys can both help them in the short term as they try to progress toward being real contenders and certainly help them once they've arrived and knowing this is when we can sign these guys, right? So I really like it when teams say either,

like you said, we've done our rebuild, we're ready to add the pieces that really don't just open the door but push us through it or are saying, we're like a year or two away but these guys are really going to help us once we're there and so let's sign them now and you know it gives fans something to root for in the interim it gets them excited about what the next good insert team name here team is going to be and it sets them up to take advantage of it if you know they end up getting the upside performance from some of their

younger guys who weren't expected to contribute this year, but maybe turn in a really good season. And then you look around and you're like, wow, we got an unexpected six-win season out of that guy. And so isn't it nice that we had Corey Seager and Marcus Simeon here to take advantage of that? I think that that part's really great. It's cool to look around and say, we're not just going to assume that Houston will be good forever. Like we can make some moves in this division and try to assert ourselves and we can give our young prospects some veteran presence to, you know,

help them through and to, you know, make our team good. If some of those guys don't perform, which ends up happening with prospects a fair amount of the time. So I think that it's really exciting. I did notice, and this might be because I follow a disproportionate number of Mariners fans, but I think that we saw this with Yankee fans also who didn't end up doing anything.

Seattle obviously did with signing Ray, but what do you make of teams not having netted a free agent in this period? Does it fill you with trepidation? Because I'm sort of of two minds on it. There's the part of me that is like, this is an artificial deadline. And there are still plenty of good players in the marketplace that could end up helping a team quite a bit, obviously, as we're recording this, like Carlos Correa has not signed, for instance.

So on the one hand, I think that that consternation is understandable, but kind of misplaced. But on the other hand, the market did adjust in a way that we were not expecting, right? It performed in a way that we didn't expect it to. So with that understanding, I can perhaps see some merit to the idea that you really are missing out on something if you didn't make a big move this week. What is your impression of that? Yeah, I think if you're in the middle of a run on short stops or a run on starting pitchers, then sometimes it can be smart to wait until the dust settles and see where things stand. Obviously, it's frustrating for fans if you're

on the outside looking in and everyone else is unwrapping their presents a month before christmas and you have nothing under the tree a lot of christmas gift analogies for me today but i think that it obviously is a team by team thing like there are some teams that just weren't in the market for as many players and didn't have as many holes and maybe have done some of their bigger investments in recent off seasons like i don't know the white socks or the padres i mean these are teams that kind of already made their big moves which is not to say that they couldn't make more i think if you're a yankees fan you're wondering yeah what the heck is happening here you're a Yankees fan, you're wondering, yeah, what the heck is happening here?

We're the Yankees. Why are we not doing anything? This is not what I'm used to. And the pressure is on them. Of course, the pressure is always on them to do something, but certainly I think more eyes are on them and thinking, okay, if they don't end up with Carlos Correa here, then this is going to be a big disappointment of an offseason. There's potential for bargains, probably. Like, if you are willing to play the game of chicken and wait it out and see how the CPA talks go and whether they resolve on the eve of spring training or the eve of opening day when players are in a rush to sign, it's possible then that you might get some discounts. I think, historically speaking, that has been the case that players who sign later in the offseason

tends to be better for teams on a dollar per war basis because teams can wait it out. Players can't really. They have to play somewhere. Teams will have the games go on even if they don't have great players, but players, they have to be employed in order to play in games. So I think in some cases it's understandable. And in other cases, like, yeah, you're probably sweating a little. Like if you're the Dodgers right now and Seager has left and Scherzer has left and it seems like there's a pretty active chris taylor market and you're probably starting to wonder like are we gonna get our guy and you know not that they're in a huge amount of trouble given the depth that they're working with but yeah i think there are probably some nerves building up because at this point like the starting pitcher market is pretty tapped out. I mean, we talked just weeks ago about how deep it was, but if you

haven't gotten your guy yet, yeah, Kershaw is theoretically on the market, although it's still just Becker's belief that he might go somewhere other than the Dodgers. Marcus Stroman is still out there, who I guess is really sort of the lone, dependable difference maker who might be signed to a long term deal and more of a two or three than an ace type i mean you missed the boat basically if you wanted the ultra elite starting pitcher so i can see why you would be starting to sweat if you are the twins for instance we can talk about them a little later but as of right now they got no pitching i mean no starting pitching at least if you go to the rangers starting pitcher depth charts the twins are dead last in projected war from their starting pitchers i mean i like joe ryan too but

there's just not a whole lot there and you've watched brio sign long term with the blue jays and you've seen other potential targets leave. And now it's like, well, you better get Strowman or someone, or are they actually going to be in the picture? And I guess you could lump in with the Rangers, who even with John Gray at the top of their rotation now, are 29th in projected starting pitcher war. So I guess, should we just go to the Rangers since you brought them up there? pitcher war so i guess should we just go to the rangers since you brought them up there i think that's been the biggest headline perhaps the biggest surprise it was telegraphed because the rangers made it known that they were going to be big spenders this offseason and i think some people were sort of surprised because they felt like well they're not quite there yet they're

a bit behind those other teams that we talked about that are on the other side of a rebuild and are ready to make that leap. The Rangers are seemingly not quite there. If you had asked me a week ago who the Rangers' best player was, I guess you would have had to default to Adeliz Garcia. And he's a productive player and a nice surprise and fun to watch. But as many people have pointed out, he's 28 and he had a 286 on base percentage. He's not necessarily a franchise cornerstone. There were just so many holes and such a lack of elite talent on that roster. And now you have Corey Seager and you have Marcus Emmeon and you have John Gray and maybe they're not done yet. But going from Isaiah Kiner-Falefa, who is a fun player and would be probably useful in a utility role if he ends up there, but going from Kiner-Falefa and Nick Solak as your keystone combo to Corey Seeger and Marcus Semyon, it's hard to imagine a bigger upgrade than that yeah I mean

it's it's a it's a remarkable upgrade and I'm not just saying that because of where we had I say it kind of left a rank on our positional power rankings too soon who could say yeah I mean it's it's unless and I don't want to get ahead of ourselves and talk about detroit but like unless detroit signs carlos crete in addition to javier baez like i i can't imagine making a bigger upgrade to your middle infield than they just did no it's a pretty remarkable shift i think that it gives them a lot of flexibility long term right i don't think that semien is going to be able to necessarily shift back to shortstop but when cory seager gets to the point where his defense won't support him

there he can slide over to third and be a great thumping third baseman which seems likely and and this and this way rangers fans get to enjoy a seager playing third hitting for their team rather than against them and just tormenting them for years and years. So there's that nice little bit of psychological pickup in the future for them too. But yeah, it's tremendous. I think that it doesn't necessarily change

where I think they will finish on either side of the playoff team or not playoff team line, but they got dramatically better in a single, you know, 48 hour span, um, between the two of them and gray. And that's pretty remarkable because that puts you in good position to get that much better in the future. So I don't know. I love that for them. I think it's great. I, I, I'm quite surprised by how many years Marcus Simeon was able to extract from Texas, um, just because of the age related concern that you raised, but it isn't as if he's not capable at second base. You know, he's, he played there sort of out of necessity

because of what the Blue Jays had going last year and was quite good. So yeah. Is he a better shortstop than Corey Seager? He might be. I think that that's a good question to ask, right? I think that's a completely fair question. It's sort of amazing how precipitously Seager's defensive ratings have tapered off. I think there are pretty big error bars on all of the public-facing metrics when it comes to that stuff, but I don't think that he he will not finish out that 10-year deal at short like you know depending on on some of their other stuff

like he might end up at third a third of the way through right but yeah is marcus how good a second baseman could cory seeger? Right. Yeah, it's tough because I'm not going to question or criticize a team getting good players and spending money that otherwise would just be sitting in the owner's bank account doing nothing for fans. I mean, for Rangers fans, it's been a while since they watched a good team, and it's been a while since they watched an entertaining team, too. I mean, they weren't just bad, but they were pretty boring i think in 2021 we just didn't talk a whole lot about them they didn't give us that many reasons to talk about them and so going from a 60 win team to uh something better than 60 win team and at the very least giving some superstars to watch on a daily basis that's nice i think some of the questions come from was the timing right which is predicated on the idea that these moves could

potentially be an impediment to making other moves later which we don't know it still seems like they have some payroll room to work with like if you wanted to be a pessimist, you could say like, oh, this is not the Padres signing Manny Machado. This is the Padres like going all in for 2015, right, which was sort of a disaster. And then they had to walk that all back because they just weren't ready yet. And the rebuild wasn't at the point where they could add some free agents and trade for some players and actually put together a competitive team. Usually when a team, quote unquote, wins the offseason or is the freest spender in free agency, they're usually at a different point in the win curve where maybe those marginal wins matter more.

Like if you're the Tigers and you have Eduardo Rodriguez and you have Javi Baez and you have Tucker Barnhart, are they a playoff team in 2022 as currently constructed? I wouldn't pick them as of today, I don't think. They might still have more moves to make, but it wouldn't be the hugest shock if they were to make that leap now.

They were a 77-win team last year. They were better than 500 after April. And so even if you're talking about going from 77 wins to 87 wins or something, okay, suddenly you're in the thick of it. Whereas if you're going from 60 wins to 70, or if you want to be an optimist, 75, I mean, you're still no closer to playing really meaningful games in late September, late alone October. So that is the source of the question. Like, was this the right time to strike? And I think you could say, well, Marcus Simeon and Corey Seager were not going to be free agents next year. So if they wanted to sign some big middle infielders, this was the winter to do it. And they signed those guys to long-term deals. And so, yeah, in 2022, it might not pay immediate dividends in terms of playoff appearance, but you'll have a more entertaining team and then you can start to fill in around them. So really the question is like, does this preclude them making later moves or did they strike so early that by the time their prospects show up, these guys won't be as good anymore, right?

show up, these guys won't be as good anymore, right? Like Marcus Semien is 31. If it takes until 2024 or 2025 for the Rangers to have a championship caliber core, is Marcus Semien still a superstar? Or can you count on Corey Seager, who is far younger, he's not even 28 yet, but has a spotty track record when it comes to durability. So that's basically the concern. Like if you're going to pick an offseason to go all in, was this a one to do it or will they still be an entertaining or competitive team next year? But I think they got good players. They'll have them a long time and there are reasons to think

that they will still be a big part of that team when that team is ready to get good. I don't know exactly what the ETA for the prospects is. They're coming from a really low point where not only were they bad last year, but it wasn't even like they debuted the next great Rangers and there were just some growing pains. It was just kind of pretty fallow. The farm is getting better obviously there's

some promising blue chip type guys in that system but the rangers recent track record of player development pretty bad so it's been a while since they really converted prospects into good players at the major league level so still some concerns about whether they can do that and i know they're kind of overhauling their player development infrastructure too so hopefully that will pay off sometime in the next couple years yeah I mean I think it's a fair question but I also think that like you said I don't think that it's not as if Seager and Simeon are going to be like bad in two years in all likelihood you know I know that with Son, maybe the decline risk is a little higher given the age, but I just think that when you have the opportunity

to sign guys who you think are going to be impact players, you just do it. Like you said, they have room. They have wiggle room in their payroll. It's not as if, you know, they're going to be up against whatever the luxury tax thresholds end up being. And presumably if they are able to successfully

overhaul some of their player dev, they are going to get some contributions from the farm. So I can appreciate the reason that fans of teams worry about that stuff, because I think they have been properly conditioned, not because this is the way that it has to be, but because this is the way that it is to view payroll as a scarce resource, right? Like you only have so much. And then teams tend to get pretty stingy when you start to brush up against the CBT thresholds. But I think that if that were the approach that Texas were going to employ, it seems unlikely they make these moves, right? Maybe that is an overly optimistic read of where they are going to view themselves in a couple of years when they're a couple of years

into these contracts but i don't think that if you're the rangers you go out and sign these guys with the understanding that you aren't going to be willing to commit resource whether it's you know trading prospects to acquire other big league talent or spending more money to to supplement it and make this a winning team in a couple of years so i you know again maybe that's an overly optimistic read on why you sign these guys and sort of what your approach is to payroll and you know your competitive stance but i just don't think you do that if you're gonna turn around in two years and be like meh well we tried you know that just doesn't seem consistent from a roster building perspective right it's gonna be a pretty top heavy lineup for the time being and the

rotation the pitching staff behind gray like gray's been good and he's probably underrated if anything because of course he's been one of the he's probably underrated, if anything, because of Coors. He's been one of the best Rockies pitchers in the sad pitching history of that franchise. So he's done a decent job of managing Coors. But get him out of Coors. Get him away from the Rockies. It seems like those can only be beneficial things for a pitcher. And maybe there is another gear that he can find there and so that's a start it's a

start and behind him i guess you just hope that like spencer howard and glenn otto don't have literal nine something eras for you again and they have done a decent job of finding some pitchers and reclamation projects and maybe they can keep doing that but yeah it's probably going to be rough at times and Corey Seager and Marcus Simeon are not going to save you or score you enough runs to overcome that pitching more often than not next season but at the very least you get to watch Corey Seager and you get to watch Marcus Simeon so that's pretty cool and yeah I was somewhat surprised by the terms of the Semyon contract, especially just the length at that AV given his age. But he has proven to be a very not at that elite level but he's done it more often than not and he's done whatever has been asked of him and he has shifted around the field and

he has added a lot of power to his game and he comes with great makeup grades and work ethic and all of that so yeah the Rangers have some very good players now which is not something I would have said a week ago yeah and the Seager brothers have made some history. I think they're the only two brothers in major league history to have each signed a contract worth at least $100 million. Well done, Seagers. All right. So let's move on to the Mets for happier reasons. That has historically been the case. So last time we talked the Mets having had a hard time hiring a GM were also having a hard time appealing to players Steve Cohen was mad

because he couldn't sign Steven Matz and since then he has given Max Scherzer basically Steven Matz's entire four-year earnings on a per year basis and added a couple more years to it and also signed three position players in a single day in like escalating order of how exciting they were which was nice because i think eduardo escobar signs and mets fans were like okay mark canna signs okay that's a little bit better starling marte signs hey all right and then max scherzer signs whoa so as of now the mets have the highest projected payroll in mlb by far yep 268 million as of today according to roster resource at fan graphs and that is uh a what, 40 million more, 50 million more? 50-plus million more than the next best team, and the Mets may not be done yet either.

So Stephen Cohen is putting his money where his mouth and his tweets are, and I guess given whatever concerns, I mean, it seems like the Mets were having a hard time convincing pitchers to come play for them, and Max Scherzer had seemed somewhat reluctant to come to New York in the past, but they broke the bank for him, certainly on an average annual value standpoint, $43.3 million, which easily outstrips the previous record holder. record holder and a three-year deal with an opt-out not that i can imagine him using that opt-out but no trade clause all the trimmings basically on top of this deal for max scherzer who will be 37 to 39 over the course of this deal yeah it's kind of so i try to not be on Twitter when we have holiday breaks. I kind of set my Passin and Rosenthal notifications up,

and then I try to not be on there so I can enjoy time away. And coming back several hours later and watching the progression on Met's Twitter of people reacting to all of these deals was very funny with the benefit of hindsight and a complete understanding of what they have done. I also have to admit that Scherzer is Scherzer and you're so excited. And then you remember they also have to grow. Yeah, hopefully.

I mean, yeah. But it's like, wow, that's a pretty potent one-two punch at the top of the lineup. And you look to what they kind of needed to do to shore up their outfield with some of their likely free agent departures, and they've done a good job there. And I know that Escobar is toward the tail end of his career. I know that in Arizona, people with the D-backs were very sad to see him go because he is just one of those really great clubhouse guys.

So it seems like a pretty productive day. with the D-backs were very sad to see him go because he is just one of those really great clubhouse guys. It seems like a pretty productive day. Mets fans are going to have to grapple with optimism for the first time in a while in a way that I can't wait to observe as a social scientist. I'm sure an unfamiliar feeling for them. I think that this is what other owners feared with Cohen when he was made an owner, right? That he would use his financial might to bolster the team in a pretty intense way. And I don't want to say those fears were justified because I think that

baseball would be better if we had a couple more owners who are willing to do this. But, you know, this is a dramatically better baseball team than it was at the beginning of last week and i think that you know obviously the scherzer and and starling marte signings are the most impactful but i think that can has like an underrated signing like i think he's been an underrated player and he's one of those guys who is pretty useful to a contending team when they're looking for production. So I don't know. I liked all of these moves. I think that if the worst had come to pass

and all they had done was Eduardo Escobar, then that team is better. But yeah, that would be something of a disappointment. But I think that this was maybe the first real indication that we have gotten since the Lindor extension that this is a team that is endeavoring to set new precedent in terms of the way that they approach payroll and signing. Obviously, I think our criticisms of some of their other processes remain yet to be fulfilled in terms of changing them. It's not to say that they can't, but we kind of have to wait and see if they are able to course correct on some of their front office process-related stuff.

But whatever their process was on this, it ended up netting them some really good players, albeit for fantastically high salaries. Yeah, these are moves that the Wilpons wouldn't have made. The Mets have made many missteps in the past year that the Wilpons would have made. But have no made many missteps in the past year that the puns would have made but yes these at least are our sightings in the wind or extension probably moves that would not have been made under the previous mets regime and it has been a long time since the mets were

leading mlp in payroll yeah and that alone is a start they have a ways to go. But looking at this roster now, and obviously, like, they have a lot of losses in free agency too. Sure. So Sindergaard is gone. Conforto, it seems, is almost certainly going to leave. Marcus Stroman maybe may leave too,

even if he does. The Mets, I mentioned the bad showings for the Twins and the Rangers on the FanCraft starting pitcher depth chart. The Mets currently are at number one with scherzer and tywin walker and de grom and carlos carasco and others that is obviously assuming health for those pitchers which is assuming a lot in the mets case so if you want to be the fatalistic mets fan and imagine how things will go wrong

because i'm sure that many mets fans are doing that and it's the Mets so you don't have to think too hard to imagine the worst case scenario but it would be basically that these players are pretty old so all three position players that they signed are entering their age 33 seasons and Scherzer of course is 37 and it's pretty old just the roster as a whole is pretty aged now i mean you have pete alonso is like the young whippersnapper in that lineup he's 27 you have robinson cano theoretically returning to this roster at 39 but you also just have james mccann who's going to be 32 and you have others that are getting up there and Carrasco and DeGrom, and you are banking on DeGrom's UCL being as intact as he and Sandy Alderson says it is. Which, fingers crossed and ligaments crossed, but hard to trust that or have a whole lot of confidence in that, really. And then you're hoping that this is not the time when Scherzer breaks down.

And historically speaking, signing Max Scherzer to a free agent contract has been a very smart decision. So maybe it'll be a smart decision again. And he has a pretty strong case even now as the best pitcher in baseball. I think combining the track record, the recent performance, the durability by 2021 standards, like he is still great. And if you wanted to have concerns about him, I guess it would be based on, well, just the age in general,

but also a rough couple of starts toward the end of last season and some fatigue and dead arm in October after he was used out of the bullpen and who wasn't injured or having some sort of fatigue or malady last October. I mean, by that point, everyone had broken down. So the fact that Scherzer was not like actually on the IL or anything is probably putting him in good standing relative to many veteran pitchers but you just have to hope that that will hold up like your rotation yeah it seems pretty good right now but you are fronted by I guess a 37 year old and a 34 year old or a 33 year old and a 35 year old I guess Carrasco will. And all of these players have some recent injury history or concerns about wearing down.

So you just have to hope that they hold up. And hoping that players hold up hasn't really worked out that well for the Mets. But it does seem like their roster is better constructed now. The mismatched pieces on the roster and the moving parts and the like defense that never really seemed to gel well like i know nimmo did a better job in center last year but if you can slide him over to a corner and then put marty out there yeah like yeah marty signed for four years and he's 33 and there aren't a lot of like good defensive centerfielders in their mid-30s out there. So I don't know how long he will stay at that position or be a plus defensively at that position, although he clearly keeps himself in great shape.

Guy looks great in a uniform. Most players look pretty good in uniforms now. Baseball players in pretty good shape. But he looks great in a uniform. in uniforms now. Baseball players in pretty good shape. But he looks great in a uniform. And he has had the benefit of some really striking uniforms to play in lately. I had this thought too. I was like, wow, he's going to look great in a Mets uniform. And then I was like, he would look good in any uniform. He is just a real, yeah, I don't know. I'm trying to break my, not that I had a bad habit of it, meaning a ton of usage, but I'm

trying to get away from calling guys specimens because I feel icky. And also, it is perhaps an apt descriptor in this case. He's just a very physically impressive human person. It's an aesthetic physique. Yeah, yeah. It's an aesthetically pleasing physique. He clearly keeps himself in shape. Hopefully he ages well because of that, although you never know.

And yeah, hopefully Kana holds up. And if you're just asking him to play left field then the defensive burdens are a little less and maybe there's a little more flexibility there like i don't know how you end up using jeff mcneil is he roving around a little is he gonna play second and get in more fights with francisco lindor about positioning i don't know how that all works out but there's a little more depth there and you have mcneil and have J.D. Davis and you have some backups. And then if there's a DH, then maybe you can just slot in Dominic Smith and players who should have been DHs all along. And so things fit a little better.

And I was optimistic about the Mets in spite of their entire track record last year. And ultimately they let me and their fans down but you don't really have to squint to see it now i mean you do have to hope that they can just avoid falling into holes and stepping on rakes all season which like they have not been able to do recently but if they have a little better luck and a little better health track record than maybe. They certainly have the talent now. I can see it. Yeah, definitely. And, you know, you have, I think, a number of guys in that clubhouse who are sort of known for having a positive impact on clubhouses.

They had those guys anyway. I mean, conflict over Rodentia aside, like, you know,indor is like a a ball of sunshine and then you add scherzer and escobar to the mix and like that's a great you know that's a great bit of business so i just think it's um it's a team that if they don't do well it will be because they have either gotten in their own way or because they are kind of injured but the pieces are all there for them to put together a really exciting season and in a division that I think is pretty winnable, even with some of the guys who Atlanta will get back. I think that's a pretty winnable division for them. So yeah, it's cool. Maybe managers will be more interested in working there because they don't

have a manager, by the way, but that's okay because you can hire a manager during a lockout. So that's all right. They can figure that out while there's a hiring freeze in other areas, presumably. All right. Tell me about the Mariners. So Mariners trade for Adam Frazier and then they sign Robbie Ray. And kind of curious, I guess, who you would rather have in the Robbie Ray or Kevin Gossman debate, because they signed for somewhat similar terms, both five-year contracts. Ray got

a little bit more money. What was it? 115 versus 100, something like that. So I guess the market valued Gossman a little lower, and maybe that makes sense. Robbie Ray just won the Cy Young Award. But who would you rather have for the next five years? Because they're sort of similar in the sense that they have been up and down, to say the least, in their careers. And they are recent breakouts or players who just put things things together and they have certainly shown signs of that in the past but as it happens the blue jays let ray go or at least he decided to go and they got gossman instead well the mariners said okay we will take the defending alcyon winner what a

good and reasonable question that i should have anticipated more i guess i would hmm i think i would maybe rather have ray but only slightly only slightly i mean they're interesting insofar as like i guess ray is a little less of this but they are you know they're sort of reliant on particular offerings guys wow robbie ray threw his fastball a lot more than i thought he did in 2021 oh yeah that was a big part of his success yeah i i did i knew that that was true but i did not realize quite what the breakdown was here but i'm looking at our lovely and convenient pitch summary and being reminded that it was quite yeah they are they are sort of interesting mirror images of one another when you think about it i don't know i guess robbie ray

because he's got tight pants that's not a good reason yeah i guess i would go with ray too for other reasons but i i think both of them like you would have to maybe bet on some regression, probably. Sure. I guess a guy who is able to be a little more independent in terms of his outs, so Ray struck out more dudes. So I like that, although it's not like a huge gap. Yeah, they're both good. They're both good. Some sort of changes with their fastball specifically i guess throwing it more throwing it higher in gossman's case like they were both for a while

like oh this guy has been good at times like if he just made this tweak or that tweak he could be good and then they did and it all worked out wonderfully and it's not like they were some products of like low babbitt that is totally unsustainable or something. I mean, I guess Gossman had a bit of that, like just getting better results on contact without huge changes in the contact quality seemingly. But it seems like they should both be good. Like even if they don't perform their FIPS anymore, like their FIPS were fine too. So that's okay. So you'd have to expect that, yeah,

probably like they will not completely reproduce their career years, but they should be okay. So not saying that either one is like a potential landmine or something, but it's an interesting case or debate. Yeah, I guess if I were going to, if I decided I wanted to feel nervous about Robbie Ray, if I was a Mariners fan and all I've ever known is feeling nervous, really. So I am staying true to myself more than anything else. Like I would note that his strand rate is

probably not sustainable. That would maybe make me kind of nervous. I would perhaps remember that he can be kind of homer prone. And so that might make me nervous. But then I would think to myself, well, he still does strike out a bunch of guys and T-Mobile might help from a home run perspective a little bit. I mean, it definitely plays more friendly to hitters than it used to, but perhaps that helps out. And I'd also remember that the Mariners have been pretty good at pitch development in the last couple of years. They are an org that has sort of distinguished themselves in their ability to help guys adjust. And I would remember that Robbie Ray has adjusted before, right? So he's shown a willingness to sort of make adjustments to his repertoire and his approach in order to be better. And so I'd feel

excited about that. And if I were a Blue Jays fan and I wanted to feel optimistic, I would remember that like Kevin Gausman has been able to make adjustments in the past and very, as you said, the location particularly of his splitter and that's that's pretty good so i think that they're both quite good and even if they do regress they're guys who were able to just pitch a a lot you know in a year where guys really weren't able to do that so even if they are performing more at their floor as sort of innings eating good but not great starters, like that is useful. And I think there's upside for a great deal more than that. So that's what I'd say.

It is interesting sort of how they were valued relative to each other. It did seem like their market moved sort of in lockstep. Right. Yeah. Same age even. A lot of parallels there. So how much more do the Mariners have to do in your estimation or how much more will they do do you think well i was uh noting earlier that mariners twitter was very

concerned about their inactivity and i think that the the ray signing has assuaged some of that they need another batter too i mean they still need another batter too i think this is maybe a way for us to talk about the trade for Adam Frazier, which I think was fine. Like it makes the Mariners better. And so in that respect, it is useful. But I thought the way that Brendan Golaski wrote about it for us was a good way to think about it,

which is that the danger of that trade is that you can squint at this roster and see a competent lineup, right? And like that's a weird thing to say because you might think well we like competent lineups and big stretches of Seattle's weren't last year so isn't that a good thing but it it would be a bad thing if it precludes them from doing other stuff now I I think that they are endeavoring to add and so assuming they do that they will have had a pretty successful offseason but yeah i think that they need um another impact bat or two and luckily there are still a couple

available on the market you know like right now abraham toro is their starting third baseman and that is better than him being you know like they're starting second baseman i guess because third is his more natural position but you know ch know, Chris Bryant would sure help that Mariners lineup or, you know, Trevor Story, who gets pivoted over to third. So you can let Crawford stay at short and maybe worry a little bit less about some of Story's injury stuff. I don't know. I think that they they need to keep being active in the market. And it sounds like they have the intention to do that. Another starter wouldn't hurt. Maybe they can they can they can run back james paxton again it'll work out this time i don't know but i think they still have additions to make and i think that the the justification

apart from the fact that every prospect doesn't hit and so they should probably be prepared for some of their guys not to work out even though I think they have a really talented group, is that if they just take time to adjust, it's nice to have veteran big leaguers around them who can help sort of pick up the slack. And then if they, much like with Texas, if they sign a couple more guys and then all of their prospects do hit, you're like, wow, now you're taking on Houston in a really meaningful way. So I think that that's the approach that they should take. And I think that by signing Ray, I think this indicates that they have a pretty good understanding of what their needs are. They did need pitching.

So this is a good signing. If Adam Frazier is a complementary piece who kind of moves around as needed, I think that that is not only his ideal sort of play distribution, but an indication that Seattle has done the other stuff they need to to sort of reinforce their roster. So I'm excited for Seattle fans. I think it's funny that this Mariners team, even if they have a super successful offseason, they might end up winning exactly as many games as last year.

They'll just deserve it this time. Right, yeah. So before we leave the AL West, which has been busy, just one more minor move to mention the Angels signed Michael Lorenzen, who harbors aspirations of two-way play, which I obviously support, even though he is at best a bargain basement Otani a bargain basement Otani who will be making more money than the actual Otani in 2022 I think 7 million versus 5.5 but anyway I read on MLB trade rumors that the angels haven't given a multi-year contract to a free agent starting pitcher since Joe Blanton in 2012.

What? Yeah, I did a double take there. Can that be true? I think so. I mean, I assume that it is true, but... Yeah, I mean, it's not because they've done such a bang-up job of developing homegrown pitching. Like, I get that for a while they were locked into some long-term deals that didn't work out so well on their end.

But come on, like your perennial problem is pitching. Try signing some marquee pitchers instead of squandering the primes of Trout and Otani. So one-year deals for Syndergaard and Lorenzen are all well and good and they make you better. But this one-year strategy is not working so well, and they really need some certainty, and moving Michael Renzin to the rotation and depending on Noah Sindergaard post-Tommy John surgery doesn't give you certainty. So unless they've signed Stroman or they've been linked to Luis Castillo, maybe they trade for him or someone else, but I don't think they should be done, especially with how busy the AL West has been and the Mariners getting better and even

the Rangers getting better. The Angels window is kind of closing here in the not too distant future potentially. Which is wild to say. Just go for it. I mean, they have missed out on much of the starting pitching available on kind of a long-term high level. But if they want to bring some confidence into this rotation entering 2022, and Alex Cobb, who was actually pretty good for them this year, has signed with San Francisco now. So they have some holes to fill. And yeah, they do have some promising younger starters. But still, like as someone who will probably be watching a lot of Angels baseball again in 2022, whether or not they do anything, I would think that Angels fans would not be happy unless they emerge from this offseason with someone else. It's a start, but I don't know that that quite does it. Maybe they'll sign Carlos Correa. Could be.

Someone has to sign Carlos Correa. Where will he go? Because with Seager, Simeon, and Baez off the board, Carlos Correa is the lone big-ticket shortstop still standing here, and some of the potential destinations have dwindled i mean pretty sure the rangers are off the off the board here unless they they've won a third baseman now but i think i guess detroit in theory could still sign carlos correa but probably won't they had been linked to him so i guess the the obvious landing spot would be the yankees a lot of

pressure on the yankees to make that move on the other hand the yankees are like linked in trade rumors to isaiah kiner falafel now so you never know what the yankees will do now whether they will just bring in x rangers infielders i guess that's their thing now so wouldn't be surprised if he ends up there but there are other places where he might make sense I mean St. Louis sure they could use him to replace Paul DeYoung but will the Cardinals sign Carlos Correa I kind of doubt it so there aren't as many places as many obvious likely landing spots left I mean he will obviously end up somewhere and he will make a mint as he should. But really, like, I know there's been some consternation about like how he would fit in the clubhouse with the Yankees or the Dodgers, for instance. Those teams have had their grievances with the sign stealing Astros and Correa specifically. I tend to think that often those differences get resolved.

You know, like once he's one of your guys instead of one of their guys, then you realize, oh, he's a human and I kind of like talking to him and suddenly I am rooting for him instead of against him. And, you know, maybe he addresses the team in spring training or something and then those differences get smoothed over. But there are a lot of eyes on Carlos Cor correa wondering where he will end up now yeah because let's go in reverse order from the bottom of our depth chart projections to the top so the rockies need a short stop yes i'm apparently interested in trevor's story What are the Rockies doing? What are the Rockies doing?

What are they doing? Colorado, you're so good. Constant refrain. I mean, I know it's like John Heyman is tweeting incessantly for some reason about how the Rockies are going to contend and they have a lot of good players or something. I don't know. No one ever knows what they're doing,

but John Gray not getting a qualifying offer was pretty obviously a mistake. they're doing but like john gray not getting a qualifying offer which was very weird obviously a mistake at least you know if you want traffic compensation and now is is even more obviously a mistake after the deal that he signed with the rangers yep and now there's like noise about no the rockies are like going for it which like hey okay i mean i like to see teams try but the rockies try so ineptly that they might be better off like not trying right now i mean they'd be better off like just cleaning house seemingly given the way that they operate i know they have a new gm now but it's someone promoted from within as is their way so no one knows what the rockies are

doing like can you imagine a trevor story reunion with no right now seems hard to imagine didn't really seem like someone who was interested in returning to the rockies seems hard to imagine so cross the rockies off nationals seem unlikely to sign carlos Correa because if they wanted to have a, you know, MVP caliber shortstop, they would have just held on to Dre Turner. Yeah. Mariners? Mariners seem like they like Crawford, right? Yeah, they do like Crawford. And I think that liking Crawford is fine. J.P. Crawford is a good player.

He's clearly a leader on that team, and I think that that's fine. And I think that if, you know, Carlos Correa is in your budget, you should probably sign Carlos Correa because with all due respect to JP Crawford, Carlos Correa is better. So, but like the D-backs, probably not in the Carlos Correa sweepstakes. The Angels, probably not.

The Reds, almost certainly not given how, you know, stingy they have been from a spending perspective. Orioles, no. A's, no. So really, the Yankees at 23 or have you heard of this team, the Houston Astros? Yeah, forgot about them. Yeah, seems like they're in the market for a shortstop, yeah. So, I mean, there are some teams who are contending that could probably use the help. Wow, we have a pretty nice little projection on J.P. Crawford. Good for J.P. Crawford. He had a great season. Like, he's fine.

But, you know, Carlos Correa's better. That's not an insult to J.P. Crawford. That's just an acknowledgment of reality. Yeah, twins, Blue Jays. I mean, there are teams that obviously would be better with Carlos Correa. insult to to jp crawford that's just an acknowledgement of reality yeah twins blue jays i mean there are teams that obviously would be better with carlos correa it's just like will they do that i don't know but with correa like i mean with semien with seeker it's like okay well you can play semien here or there or bias he could play second or seeker maybe he shifts to the third in a while with correa like he's going to want to play shortstop

and he should play shortstop. Yeah, you want him to play shortstop. He's a really excellent shortstop. He's a really very good shortstop. So you should want him to do that. That's a smart thing to have him do. Right. So that means there are fewer obvious vacancies maybe

or you have to say, well, the Puget's, yeah, they would get him, but they could move Beau Pichette. You would have to move Well the Puget's yeah they would get him But they could move Bo Bichette like you Would have to move someone who is already Entrenched in that position in Order to get him anyway I'm sure he Will sign somewhere and he will make his money So yeah a little Brief tour through the AL Central

Here we touched on the Tigers We talked about the Rodriguez Signing so they have Rodriguez they Have Barnhart now they have Javi Baez on a six-year $140 million deal. So I guess they have crossed off most of what they wanted to do this winter. And maybe they will do more still. But they have really filled some holes here. And these are positions where they're getting good players who are

big upgrades over the alternatives and so this is pretty encouraging and i know that there are concerns about how javi baez will age and i understand those concerns like no one understands like how javi baez does what he does and has done what he has done to this point. So, of course, there will be questions about, well, what will he do in his 30s? And I don't know. Like, maybe he will just keep having this unique outlier profile and it will continue to work for him. And he turns 29 on Wednesday, I believe.

So, happy birthday, Javi Baez. Happy birthday, Javi. He is still a really good shortstop really good infielder wherever he plays and one way or another he always ends up being well other than 2020 he ends up being basically a better than league average hitter sometimes a lot better sometimes right there and average is like maybe where he ends up sometimes but does not do a good job of describing Javi Baez he's like not not average in any respect the sum total of Javi Baez offensively could be average but generally has been better than that and he gets there in

a weird way and he strikes out a ton and he's not gonna get on base all that much for the most part but he makes it work he has made it work to this point he has power he doesn't strike out well he strikes out a ton but manages to maintain a decent batting average most seasons so it's an odd assortment of skills but as long as he has the elite defense it is still a very productive assortment of skills but as long as he has the elite defense it is still a very productive assortment of skills well and i think that the reality is that and i i i hesitate to say stuff like this because it always makes fans feel bad and i don't mean to but i think that when you have teams that are still in the process of emerging from their rebuild and haven't been good for a while like sometimes you pay a premium You just pay a premium to get the free agent to come to you.

Sometimes that takes the form of money and years, and in Baez's case, maybe it takes the form of both. I think that it is perfectly fair to wonder what he will be like at the plate when his physical skills degrade, and we can wonder the same thing in the field. Maybe the last year or two of this contract is kind of gringeworthy for Detroit, but it could also be fine because I don't think that we have a particularly clear picture of how this weird amalgamation of skills is necessarily going to age. Like I think it could go any number of ways and some of those are, you know, outcomes that would be quite bad, but other of them are fine and i think that in the meantime he is if

nothing else like just electric to watch you know he's just so fun to watch and he is he is a magician in the field i still think he didn't do anything all that magical in that one weird play. But I just have to keep pounding this particular table, I suppose. But I think that apart from attributing weird mind control to him in that moment, he is just incredibly fun to watch. And the combination of skill and baseball IQ that he exhibits in the field is really spectacular and so I think this will be great fun for Detroit and their fans and he like you said he addresses some obvious needs on that roster and watching

Detroit sort of emerge from their rebuild with a team to be excited about is really cool so that's great yeah it's funny i know bias like at his best is an incredibly exciting player and tons of fun to watch and at his worst can be very frustrating because he is somewhat streaky that maybe is an understatement and when he is striking out all the time and making miscues then you wonder how is this guy good but then suddenly he'll go on a tear and he's incredible and so i know a lot of fans love watching him and sometimes they hate watching him like i have a friend who's a mets fan who's like happy that bias is leaving so he doesn't have to watch bias anymore and not even because of like the thumbs down thing or anything he just found bias to be frustrating and i'm like he hit 299 371 515 for the bats like like he was playing like i don't know a seven or eight win

pace or something for them probably now i know like he was slumping terribly at times and then he was on fire at times so it was very up and down and i guess the the whole picture at least for my friend was frustrating but if you look i guess the the whole picture at least for my friend was frustrating but if you look at just the stats at the end of the season he is generally always pretty good well and i think that we we sometimes forget or underestimate how streaky a lot of players are um a lot of players are sort of prone to that but yes the swings with bias perhaps unsurprisingly given how forceful they are literally at the plate can be yeah can be pretty wild i mean here are his 2021 splits by month these are his wrc plus splits by month march april 101 may 123 june 59 july 139 august 84

september october 169 so it is it is here and there and everywhere. But like you said, it all adds up to a player who is generally pretty good. And so I think as long as you can kind of weather that back and forth, it's a lot of fun. So that's pretty cool. And maybe, gosh, maybe they will sign Carlos Correa. I don't know. I find the argument that A.J. Hinch just wanted to give him a baby gift to be compelling because they spent all that time in Houston together. But maybe they talked about other stuff at that brunch. And listen, if you haven't had a brunch that extends into another meal,

you're not doing it right. You should hang out. Just make sure you tip well at the end because God, you have to sit on a table for a long time to do that. Yep. Move Xander Bogart's over maybe and he can have a reunion with alex cora too that's another yeah so just before we leave the ale central the

buxton extension yeah so we talked back at the trade deadline when it seems like the twins might either trade or extend bucks and then about how complex any Buxton contract was going to be. And we were not wrong about that. So I haven't been giving the full terms for all of these signings that we've been talking about. But with Buxton, you kind of have to because there was just so much uncertainty about how do you structure a contract for someone who, when he has been on the field, has basically been the best player in baseball over the last few seasons, but has so rarely been on the field? And it seemed like the obvious answer would be you structure it so that if he's on the field,

then he can max out and he can make money that would be commensurate with his production, but you also build in some protection for the Twins if he remains unable to play often. So this is a seven-year contract worth $100 million, but there are a lot of incentives, as you would expect. So there are incentives for various plate appearance thresholds. So at 502 plate appearances, which is qualifying for the batting title, then he gets an extra 500K. And then at 533 and at 567 and at 600 and at 625, then he's getting 500K each time. And if you're the twins and Byron Bruxton is meeting those plate appearance thresholds, you are probably pretty happy about that. And then there are big

mvp incentives here so if he wins mvp he gets an extra eight million dollars but then there are a whole lot of escalating incentives below that so seven million for a second place finish six million for a third place finish etc so if he ends up playing full seasons and producing at the level that he has of late one would think that he would get mvp votes and he would end up making somewhere in the mid-20s at least for that season if all goes well which is not what he would make necessarily if he were to sign a contract after an mvp season but, he hasn't had that yet. He has played at an MVP level, but very sporadically. So this was always what a Buxton deal was going to have to look like.

And there's also a no trade clause, which I know was a point of emphasis for him. So seems like Twins fans are very happy to have Buxton. And I know that it has been frustrating for those fans too to see him go down over and over again but probably less frustrating for him to be there and continue to get hurt than it would be if he were to walk and fully blossom and somehow stay healthy with some other team and you had to watch him do that in some other uniform so obviously they will be hoping that he can put things together and stay healthy and he still has not turned 28 so age is less of a concern than durability that's a big concern but there are protections here for the twins if he isn't

on the field and at least some upside for Buxton if he is. I really liked the point that Ben Clemens made at the end of his write-up of this so I'm gonna quote I'm gonna quote from it because I thought it was well put so rather than paraphrase I'll just quote Ben's good words. This extension goes a long way towards explaining the twins intentions next year and beyond. Previously the team set of long-term commitments was non-existent. If they wanted to tilt back into a tear down and rebuild phase after this year however ill-intentioned it might look to outside observers the money would allow it now they have too solid of a court for that to make sense from that perspective this deal is everything a twins fan could ask for and that's before we consider what might happen if buxton

spikes an mvp season or two down the line and so that's the other part of this it's like it's not just what you get from from buxton it's not just that they have managed to come up with a deal where everyone's incentives are well aligned and they're well aligned toward winning. It's like this is also a, you know, a marker you're putting in the ground to say, like, we're gonna we're gonna keep trying to do this thing. And yes, they need like an entire rotation. this thing and yes they need like an entire rotation they need much of a rotation and you know they will need to supplement buxton with additional bats because while they do have some players on their team who will stick around for the early part of this like they they need more but they are sort of on their way and this would signal that they want to win because you don't give out a deal like this if if you don't so that's pretty cool we like we like all this team signaling that they would like to win some stuff that seems that seems good for the sport yeah so it does seem like too good a core to tear it down and yet not enough of a rotation to contend in 2022 so i don't know exactly where they go like there's definitely some bounce back potential here just the way that a team like the giants makes major

strides and you just have to figure like some regression some plexiglass principle will come into play here similarly with the twins take a huge step back and maybe you just imagine that there will be some springboard action back into respectability but yeah no burrios and kenta maeda having had tommy john surgery in september i know it was the the brace type of tommy john surgery that in theory has a quicker recovery but really just no rotation to speak of here i mean i like joe ryan there are other arms there but you can't go into a season with that rotation and realistically expect to contend so i don't know what they have up their sleeves and how much more they are willing to spend and whether they'll be active in trades or sign one of the bigger remaining starters.

But it does seem like there's more work to do here. But it is at least encouraging that they have retained the services of Byron Buxton. So I think the only other team maybe that we need to touch on right now, I guess, is the Marlins. And we talked a little bit about the Marlins recently when the rumors were circulating about the Sandy Alcantara extension that is now official. And in addition to that, they have signed Abisail Garcia and they have traded for Jacob Stallings from Pittsburgh. So this is sort of what we said last time, that they had the pitching and now it's about spending and or trading from depth to put together a lineup. And that is what they are attempting to do now.

So Abisail Garcia signed a four-year, $53 million contract, which maybe is bigger than people had projected for Abisail Garcia. But the Marlins just need a lot of offensive help. They need, I guess, they need a catcher who can help their young pitchers, and Stallings, who just won a gold glove, is certainly that. It's like, I guess if you can't go get pitchers, well, in the Marlins' case, they don't need to. In the Twins' case, they do. But, hey, at least if you have Buxton out there, he will save you some runs in center. Like, the Twins' run prevention is a lot better when Byron Buxton is on the field.

And you would think that the Marlins bringing along a young pitching staff it is probably helpful to have someone like Stallings not going to be a huge help offensively but he's not a bad hitter for a catcher so that's kind of what they needed to do they needed to either spend money as they did with Garcia or they needed to trade from their pitching stockpile as they did trading Zach Thompson to Pittsburgh to get Stallings. So this was sort of the playbook and they're not there yet either. But it is a start to making this a more balanced roster. Yeah. And, you know, I think that while the options here around catcher just bat across the league, like his ability, like you said, to be sort of a consistent defensive force for them is really good.

And when you look at the alternatives, this seems fine. Yeah. I don't think that they really were going to play in the Jan Goms space. And I think that it's defensible to say we want someone younger who can kind of come along with the staff. And the only way to really do that is in trade because it's like, I don't know, can I interest you in a Roberto Perez? I mean, I know that he has signed now, but I think that this is a better option there. And then you look to the extension and it's like we're identifying the pieces of this roster who are going to contribute when we're really ready to contend. And I think that that alcantara

is one of them so i don't know i like it for miami i think that they are gonna get in a spot where they have to spend more even than they did with with garcia but i don't know seems seems fine all right so we've covered the major moves i i know that we haven't gotten to everything there's no way we could there There were many reliever moves. The Giants made some pitching moves and brought some guys back and got Alex Cobb. And maybe we will get to some of those other moves during the long, cold winter months with no transactions. And there's been other interesting news, too, that presumably we will talk about next time. There's a proposal about a 14 team playoff format

with a draft lottery so there are things to discuss about that and friend of the show bradford william davis has an interesting report up about mlb using multiple models of baseball this past season who is surprised by that but still good to have it documented so lots more to discuss next time we will be talking about either the beginning of the lockout or the miraculous resolution to avoid the lockout one of those two things but we'll have plenty to talk about next time and then the last show of the week in lieu of talking about the hot stove we will talk about stove league again so is this a good model for the offseason i know a lot of people have made jokes about hey we should have a lockout every offseason and i

know they're just kidding and obviously we don't actually want that but is this good is the envy that baseball fans feel about watching nfl free agency nba free agency and saying hey super exciting day or two here that's basically what we've had in MLB. And it's great for right now, but there will be a price to pay. Like the monkey's paw will curl. Like there's a finite number of moves and the offseason is the same length regardless. So either you spread them out or you get them done all at once and then you have little left to talk about like all else being equal better to front load the offseason than backload it i think i would rather

have this than wondering like where's brace harper gonna sign in february or whatever like you know teams are in spring training and some of the best free agents are available yeah if only like hey if you're a fan like you you get to daydream about what your roster will look like over these long, cold months. So that's good. But would you rather have like, if we could just parcel it out so that you have a steady stream of moves

rather than just ultra compressed frenetic activity? I am the worst person to ask this question of because my perspective on it is shaped by a very particular position I occupy within this ecosystem. But I think that having stuff come out sort of at a regular pace over the course of the winter months is a nice way to do things. It gives people little jolts that remind them like spring is coming and baseball is coming and now you have two months to remember that that guy is going to be on that team right so i tend to like the the steady drip and not just because it allows for sort of a more manageable balance of work to life in in these months when we are meant to perhaps rest,

rest ever so slightly, just rest. But absent that, I think that if you're going to have a frenzied pace, having it at the beginning of the off season rather than the end is meaningfully better for all of the reasons that you highlighted. I think that it sort of creates an excitement that can sustain itself over the winter months and it gives people time to sort of adjust to the new reality of their roster. And we don't have any of that sort of prickly contentious, we're a week away from spring training and the best free agents are unsigned sort of thing. clump them together this is the preferable clump but i think that an advent calendar opened by a non-toddler is is really the model that we ought to to strive for we have bits and pieces that unfurl themselves and we get to write our stories and feel excitement and sleep yeah we never really rest here on Effectively Wild. So we will podcast regardless of whether there is actually anything to talk about.

We promise to talk at you no matter what. We'll just have to get creative. All right. So we will end there and attempt to post this podcast before every other free agent signs. All right. That will do it for today. Thanks as always for listening. I was hoping we could post this podcast before there were more moves.

Didn't quite make it. It's the Marlins making more moves. We had an intra-Florida trade. The Rays bolstered by Corey Kluber and bursting at the seams on the 40-man have traded Joey Wendell to the Marlins, not for a pitching prospect, but for an outfield prospect. So the Marlins are now one step pitching prospect, but for an outfield prospect. So the Marlins are now one step closer to a credible lineup and deep bench. Wendell's a pretty good player, pretty versatile player, sort of squeezed out by the Rays' excess of infield talent, but should be a

good fit for the Marlins, possibly spelling the end of the Louis Brinson era. Not a distinguished tenure in Miami for Mr. Brinson, but the Marlins are officially an interesting team who may have more moves ahead of them. While we wait to see what other activity comes to pass before the expiration of the CBA on Wednesday night, you can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going and get themselves access to some perks. While also keeping Effectively Wild ad-free, Larry Hawley, Liam, Paul Sutton, Eric Fetter, and Jonathan P. Thanks to all of you.

The Effectively Wild Discord group for Patreon supporters is poppin'. Mid all this transaction activity, you can join that for $2.50 a month. Shortly after we post this podcast, I will be posting the first of our Patreon-exclusive bonus episodes for patrons at the $5 level and above. Many more perks are available. You can also join our Facebook group for free at facebook.com slash group Sasha Bechtel A Wild. I guess it's not entirely free. You still have to sign your soul over to Facebook. But once you do that, you can join the group for free. You can also rate and review and subscribe to the podcast 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. We will depend on your emails to get us through this winter. You can follow Effectively Wild on Twitter at EWPod. There is a subreddit devoted to Effectively Wild. It's at the name of the podcast. Thanks to Dylan Higgins, as always, for his editing and production assistance. And we'll be back a little later this week to talk more transactions and perhaps the cessation of transactions. Yes, we will get into the lockout if there is one, as well as other news, so we will talk to you soon. The Tangriest Days So the same old story