Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 190: The Ike Davis Enigma/Trading Prospects Straight Up for Stanton

Episode Date: April 26, 2013

Ben and Will discuss the confusing career of Ike Davis, then talk about whether there are any prospects teams wouldn’t trade straight up for Giancarlo Stanton.

This is a gangbuster start here. We're off to a rip-roaring beginning. Yeah, we always start with a bang. Yeah? No, I know. Believe me, I know. Good morning and welcome to episode 190 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Prospectus. I am Ben Lindberg, Sam Miller, still on vacation. When he goes away, he goes away for more than one day.

So he will be back on Monday, or at least that's the plan. So joining me today for the first time on the podcast is Will Woods, who's writing you may have seen on Baseball Prospectus. He really started writing for us towards the end of last season and did a bunch of really interesting articles, I thought, and then filled in a bunch of times on Dan Rathman's Rumor Roundup a few times over the winter. And I hope that I will be able to persuade him

to start writing regularly again soon. But hello. One day at a time, Ben. I'm delighted to be here. As you know, I've been warming up in the bullpen ever since this podcast started. And like a pitcher that's been warming up for the entire game, obviously I've got nothing left. So this is going to be a perversely entertaining episode of effectively wild i have a feeling yes you've been you've been up all you've been up and down

all all game all 190 episodes you've been exactly you've been waiting for the call um well uh well it is it is nice to talk to you uh would you would you would you care to to tell the listeners anything about yourself? Oh, there's nothing that the listeners don't already know about me. I've already bared my soul every rumor roundup I've filled in on. No, I mean, I think I was a poor Division III baseball player. And I used what ample time I had sitting and watching other people play baseball to learn as much as I could about the game.

Student of the game. Yeah. And so now I get to pontificate about it every three weeks or so when Dan Rathman goes away. I think that's pretty much the bare bones of me right there. So we have a history. Do we ever. Yes. We are old friends.

Yeah, you know, the backup room roundup guy is not what you'd call a meritocracy. You have to know somebody in this business, okay? You get kissed into it. And that's exactly what you did. Since first grade to get that gig. And I won't call you old nicknames that would thank you that would embarrass you i know you're a professional now yes okay yeah this is we'll leave it at that we'll leave it uh okay so you are uh you are a mets fan uh or some days use the we use the term fan very loosely around here. Yes, right. But yeah.

So we are going to do a kind of Mets-centric show. You're going to talk about the Mets, specifically Ike Davis, I gather. And I am going to break from tradition and do a listener email, which we received just a few hours ago. And normally we would answer that next Wednesday. But since it is Mets related and it is something that was just published in an article recently, I figured we would just get to it now since we have no shortage of email show questions. So it's a question about prospects and Mets prospects and trading for Giancarlo Stanton. So I guess we can get to that second. Sure.

So take us away. Okay. Well, yeah, I know I feel no guilt at all about doing a totally met centric show since this is a a one-off for me and i have no doubt that i won't be invited back um i'll get going i haven't talked about the mets this season i don't think we may never for good reason why would you yeah so uh this is this is a major league podcast um okay I want to take you back to a couple of weeks ago. I'm looking at an article right now in the Newark Star-Ledger about Ike Davis, who at the time was four for 27 on the season for a 148 average. And of course, he's markedly improved. Now he's

into the 160s. And talking about his slumpry collins said the one thing that made him very good in spring training is the fact that he went to left field and went to center field so much he took a lot of base hits up the middle a lot of base hits the left center we've got him back doing that because that makes him dangerous when he can hit the ball the other way okay so that makes sense we've got a lefty pole hitter guy who steps in the bucket a little bit, tries to open up and tries to yank it out to right field. That all makes sense from Terry Collins. Here's Ike Davis's quote within the same article about exactly what is going on with his with his slump. Quote, they'll start making some mistakes and i'll start hitting some homers well

that's that's fantastic ike um we're all we're all thrilled for him um but he did something he had a game this afternoon as i was uh thinking of things to say tonight um against the dodgers he was one for four i believe and had three miserable miserable at-bats before he got up against Brandon League who uh grooved a two seamer uh middle in and he did what Ike Davis typically does which is yank it out of the park about 430 feet into the bullpen um there is no doubt in my mind or I think I think anyone's mind who watches the team every day that Ike has been able to do that can do that now and will always be able to do that and I don't doubt that pitchers will make those mistakes and he'll hit those home runs and pitchers will make

30 something of those mistakes a year and he'll deposit 30 something of them into respective bullpens and that could happen in perpetuity what he does he does not seem to understand that his fundamental flaws at the plate put him you know at best in the adam dunn 2011 zone you know justin turner is overmatched by Major League pitchers. Ike Davis gets himself out all by himself, kind of irrespective of the pitcher, of whatever any pitcher is doing. to me because one of the things that I've written about on on baseball prospectus and one of the things that I scream about all the time watching games is a marriage between sabermetrics and an old-school scouting and and this and I think the sabermetrics would indicate to us that certainly he's had some

injury issues that that we have a very difficult time accounting for and obviously that makes it that makes it difficult to predict. He's got a pretty high standard deviation of where his career might take him at this point. But we generally assume that he's going to bounce back. And yet anyone who watches this team every day and watches him take first pitch fastballs on the outside corner that not only doesn't he swing at, but he doesn't even register those pitches as strikes. That's how bad the problem is. Um, anyone who watches the team knows that this isn't getting better and it's not going to revert back to the mean. And, and it's so, so that's something I,

I really struggle with. And I'm sure that, uh, people listening to this, you know, watching their local teams have a person that have a player in mind who, who sort of fits that bill. And certainly for me, Davis is that player. Well, I mean, in his defense, I guess there, there aren't, uh, there aren't an unlimited number of players who can yank 30-something home runs in Citi Field. Absolutely. That is something in his favor

even if he is not a particularly high average hitter. He's a guy who walks fairly often. He's not up there hacking everything. He's a guy who walks fairly often. He's not up there hacking everything. He's not Jeff Francoeur. He walks.

I feel like maybe the worst thing that happened to him was when he had that really, really hot start to the 2011 season. Yeah. And then he got hurt, and the getting hurt was bad, but it was almost as if I feel like people kind of took what he had done to that point as his new level. At the time, he was hitting.302,.383,.543, and he was coming off a good rookie season. Very strong.

Yeah, absolutely. He looked like a star. Yeah. No doubt. So then he had that really excellent just partial season and then got hurt, and it seemed like there was kind of an assumption that if he hadn't gotten hurt, that was just who he was. He would have just hit that well all season, which maybe was not a safe assumption.

And then he came back last year and did not look as good. He went backwards quite a bit, although he still, I mean, he had 32 home runs. So there's some value there. But for a first baseman who has a low average and didn't, I don't know whether there was any kind of bad luck going on. He had a low average on balls in play and that sort of thing, which has continued into this year. So I don't know.

I mean, I guess that partial season kind of gave people the impression that he was a star and just a young guy to really build around in the core part of the team. And now maybe he looks more like, I don't know, is his upside just sort of, I don't know, just kind of an average player I guess well well it's a difficult I mean to me that's a that's still of a wide open question because on the one hand if he doesn't if he doesn't adjust if he doesn't honestly just take

a half step closer to the plate when he when he there. He'll go on like this forever and he won't get better if he doesn't make that adjustment. Well, I mean, how would he rip off two months, you know, of a, you know, of all star caliber play? Probably maybe. I honestly, I don't know, but we'll never know. I think that's I think that's the thing that that frustrates me so much is that it's a question question that sabermetrics really can't answer or even really put a probability on. Because when you look at it and when you get really up close to it and into the micro details of his specific situation, it's really up to him and it's up to his coaching staff. And I don't think that's something that we're really comfortable dealing with in the BP community. Is he going to help himself and are his coaches going to help him? talk of the Mets trading Davis. And there was a suggestion that he is a guy who goes out after games and stays out late and who is not receptive to coaching.

And it wasn't really clear whether that was true or whether it was just some sort of front office source or some source who had an ax to grind or something it was just sort of an anonymous i think an anonymous met source maybe wait wait a minute wait a minute the mets have the mets have anonymous sources we're talking about the new york mets so i don't know if that's if it was true and it wasn't just someone who had some beef against Dyke Davis for some reason, and it was weird, I mean, just even if it were true to say that sort of thing about your own player, especially if you're considering trading him, it's not the greatest idea to come out and talk about his flaws. not the greatest idea to come out and talk about his flaws. But I don't know.

I mean, if there was some truth to that, then maybe he is a guy who would be less likely to make adjustments that pitchers have made to him since he first came up and had some success. Okay. I don't know. I don't watch him on a daily basis like you do. I don't know. I don't watch him on a daily basis like you do, so I look at the numbers, and the numbers say that he has been decent on the whole. I mean, not this year, not last year, but if you just kind of put it all together, he's been someone that you'd be kind of comfortable playing not really excited about playing as a first baseman but a decent defensive first baseman i would think do you would you agree with that assessment well he threw in a nice drop pop up today but other than that

right so he occasionally lollipops the throw to first base but other than that yeah he's he's now he's doing fine i think the only thing i can say about that uh obviously we can't we can't speculate from from here about the about the whole work ethic thing but when i read that article a couple weeks ago and the quote the quote again is they'll start making some mistakes and i'll start hitting some homers uh that is that that is an alarming alarming that is a strange coming from a person in ike davis's situation let's just put it that way it was strange i mean every hitter has to take advantage of mistakes but it's it's kind of strange to hear someone sort of say that he's dependent on mistakes almost as if he yeah like if the pitcher makes his pitch then he has no chance he has to

kind of wait for a mistake it's yeah exactly and my question would be on what universe do you consider that to be your problem you just spent an entire 2012 season in which you hit 32 mistakes out of the ballpark and did essentially nothing else. I mean, it's, it's, it's pretty difficult to hit 32 homers and, and slug for 62. That doesn't, doesn't happen all that often.

Yes. Um, so, you know, so I look, yeah, I don't know what his work ethic is. And as far as people wanting to take a run at him,

I have two good friends. One of whom is in the next room who went to high school with ike davis i i want to love ike davis i want to try and meet him and get his autograph and have a beer with ike davis which i'm which apparently he's more than willing to do by the way um but it's an alarming quote and it's an alarming point of view yeah i guess so uh there was i mean there was talk last year I guess it was around the time that that article came out uh because it seemed like the Mets had sort of two first basemen and that Lucas Duda is basically a first baseman or at least you don't want him to be an outfielder

it seems like and he I guess was kind of disappointing last season or at least with his stats last season you wouldn't want him to be a first baseman either but the way that he has started this season um is is impressive he has he has looked pretty good in what i've seen of him and has been pretty selective and seems like he has a decent approach and idea of what he's doing. Yeah, well, I'll tell you what he's not doing is having conversations with Ike Davis because he is completely – they're two guys, two big lefty power hitters who are in basically the same situation who have some of the same tendencies although duda doesn't really step in the bucket the way the way davis does but duda is a guy who wants to get on top of the plate and maximize what he does best and use that to the pitcher's

disadvantage whereas ike see ike does the same thing that i used to do when i played which was we can only pull the ball. So let's stand as far away from the plate as possible and just expose ourselves to the outside corner. Anyway, to your point, Duda looks fine. He is a guy who has had a lot of struggles and has made the adjustments. I don't know. You know, it's all it's all it's it's to be perfectly frank. It's what you would expect of a major league hitter,

which is what Lucas Duda is. And we shall see. Yeah. I mean, you certainly wouldn't have ever thought a couple years ago that we would be almost equating these two players. No. Or even, I don't know, considering the idea that the Mets would possibly be better off with Duda at first base than Davis over the next few years. I don't know whether that's the case now, but I guess they were just flipped in the order.

Was it today or yesterday? Well, yesterday i think was the first day well yesterday being yesterday being tuesday and terry collins had said that he wasn't gonna move davis i think a few days prior to that and then did well there's a there's a lot of there's a lot of variables there because number one the the uh the mets are fielding an outfield that would look a little bit better at Binghamton right now than it does uh in Queens so Terry Terry Collins seems to be married to the idea of Davis at first duty in the outfield and I think he's even gone so far as to uh forbid Duda from taking

ground balls because he doesn't want to mess with his focus. He's so focused on playing the outfield at a thoroughly mediocre level, which he doesn't. He needs extreme focus to play it that poorly. Yeah, exactly. So, you know, who knows? There are a lot of other things going on. So, I mean, Duda was not the draft pick that Davis was, was not the prospect that Davis was. I guess he's a little older, maybe a year older, not a lot older.

No, no, not that Davis is necessarily going to bring back an enormous prospect package at this point or anything. No, but at what point do you call him a sunk cost and cut bait? You know, they've wanted him to succeed. And at first he gave them that impression that he would. And now I'm just depressed. So let's read a reader email. Okay. All right. So this email is from Jerry in Philadelphia. He wants our thoughts on this nugget from Jason Stark's latest column. So this was published at ESPN on Thursday.

Okay, and here's Stark. He says, you know those rumors that the Mets are monitoring Giancarlo Stanton, the ones that also mentioned the Marlins would undoubtedly ask for Zach Wheeler and Travis Darnot in return. I wouldn't give one of those guys for Stanton, said one NL exec. The catcher has a chance to be a 10-year all-star. The other guy is one of the best pitching prospects in the game. So there you have it. And Jerry goes on to say, if I were the owner of an NL team that happened to read this article

and come across this quote, I would immediately make sure that this was not one of my execs that said this. And if it were, they would be fired because i would not want this person anywhere near an important decision in my organization yeah go jerry jerry's fired up yeah uh to say that you wouldn't trade either for stanton straight up uh trade either for stanton straight up is borderline insanity and then he goes on to to compare the three players stanton is younger than darno only six months older than Wheeler. Neither of them has played in the majors yet. We know what Stanton has done. And then he finishes, shouldn't Stark at least put the caveat of every other exec with a pulse disagrees with this statement after he mentions the quote, or maybe this quote was put in the story just to drive

people to read the article and drive reactions like this from readers like me, et cetera, et cetera. So I think there is an element of that in that if you're a writer and you have a stable of sources that you kind of go to whenever you have to fill a column and you need some little nuggets like this, then you might send the question out to, I don't know, 20 people, 30 people, who knows? Stark has been around forever and must have a lot of contacts. And then you use the one response that is most interesting. So maybe every other response he got was just sort of your your basic uh response that that sure you would you would trade either of those guys for stan and then and then this one guy for whatever reason

said something different and unexpected and interesting and so of course you put that one in because it it gets jerry fired up and it gets us talking about the article and linking to the article and and that's how you get page views uh and and you're not making it up someone actually said that so you can just relay it you just pass it along um and i mean i don't know what the nl exec uh does i'm assuming that that it is not uh the concessions department director or something. I'm assuming that this is someone in baseball operations somewhere. And, yeah, it is kind of hard to understand. I mean, those are two very good prospects, two of the best prospects. But I don't know what argument you can make.

I mean, certainly if Darnot becomes a 10-year all-star, as he says, then there's a possibility that that could be more valuable than Stanton because as good as Stanton is, he has three years left before he's a free agent, and now his pre-arb years are over, so he's going to be first-time arbitration eligible after this season, and then he'll start making decent money over the next few years, whereas he's just been dirt cheap up until now. So you have three years of Stanton left,

and he'll be making more money in those years. So, yeah, if Darnot goes on to be the best catcher in baseball and you don't have to pay him anything for his first three years, maybe that is more valuable to you. And you have him for six years, sure. sure uh but it for a guy who hasn't been in the majors and who there are certainly still some legitimate concerns about it it seems like a stretch to i mean you're you're just assuming that that both of those guys reach their their ceiling and their full potential um and i mean i guess if if they do, then yeah, maybe it makes sense. But what are the odds that they will? Well, I mean, I think just the fact that you had to do about eight laps around how we could

possibly justify this statement pretty much says all you could say about how legitimate that assessment might be. You know, keep in mind now, Darno broke his foot last week yes and uh he's gonna be out for i think seven more weeks just about and and stark still ran that comment so i think this is uh a situation where inches are just as valuable in on the internet as they were in prince made after the injury the comment i presumably but more importantly the article was run after the injury and you know i didn't feel the need to include the small detail that now we have to discuss whether one of the best catching prospects in baseball

is injury prone and i don't want to put that label on him because you know he was struck by a foul ball and he's a catcher and it happens um but i think more more importantly it affects his trade value for sure so if you're going after a guy like stanton or pretty much anybody now that's going to come into the conversation so he tore a ligament uh in his knee last june he hurt his back a couple of years ago now he's got a foot issue and we're talking about a catcher who could be a 10-year all-star here. Well, he's got to get through those years. Right.

He's got to have one year of just being healthy. I mean, he's had... Yeah, be a nice touch. His maximum is 132 games in 2010. And since then, 78 and 98. And obviously not going to be a full season this year and and i guess a lot of people i mean that was kind of the the knock on him entering the season or one of the knocks on him was that he he has hasn't been able to stay healthy and then i guess a lot of people took uh the injury this year is kind of confirmation of that but i guess it's not

really fair to do that or it seems like it's not i mean catchers get hit by by foul tips that happens uh i don't know whether he is somehow more susceptible to that than than anyone else would be i mean like he's yeah he's got weaker bones or something yeah he's gonna say it's not enough calcium right he doesn't really it's a really job you know growing up or something exactly i mean i i don't know and then the other thing is is now wheeler on the other hand this is a guy who first of all is a pitcher so right let's just hold let's just let's just hold the phone on you know anything that he might deliver because he's a pitcher um and anyone named matt harvey is uh you know not not named

matt harvey is is not a sure thing so um you know and wheeler really first of all is off to a poor start i don't think there's any other way you can say it at a AAA this season and really hasn't dominated the, the higher levels of minor league ball in the way that you would, would hope he's, he's a guy that the scouts salivate over and you can, you can definitely see why when you, when you watch him throw, but the, the makeup doesn't seem to completely be there. Now you could have said the same thing about Harvey. And I have no doubt that if and when Wheeler gets up here towards the middle of this season, most likely, he'll perform somewhat close to expectation.

But look, as far as getting a superstar like Stanton, who has zero home runs to date as of this recording, the guy's a superstar. I'd trade him in a heartbeat. Yeah, and I don't, to be clear, I don't blame Stark at all for running the quote or for not ridiculing the quote along with the quote, because, I mean, presumably he wants to talk to this source again because this source is such a goldmine, apparently. I would blame Stark.

Yeah, I'm sure. He makes good copy, right? I think I would blame Stark just for not adding a little caveat about, you know. I guess. I mean, it seems like it's so. Post-exec say something along those lines. I guess. I don't know if it's just so obvious that this differs from the consensus that he felt like he didn't even need to to point that out but

i don't know uh and and maybe this source just kind of said that because he figured it would get him in the column and he likes seeing his words in print who knows some people like saying like seeing his anonymous his anonymous quotes yeah it's off on that i know totally so but i mean just even aside from those prospects specifically i was kind of thinking about whether whether there is any one prospect in baseball whom i would not trade straight up for for st. And I don't know. That is, I think, a more interesting question or also an interesting question. It's, I don't know. I guess if there's one guy, I guess it would be like a Profar.

Profar? Yeah, who is, I mean, kind of the consensus top prospect but also major league ready right now. And seems like he would be starting if the Rangers were constructed a little differently than they are and would probably be starting for a lot of teams or most teams at this point. And so maybe there's less uncertainty with him. He's seen as someone with a very high floor who is more or less ready to be average or so, at least right now, at a very young age.

And so I guess he would be the one guy that you would consider it for. I mean, I don't know. There's Oscar Tavares, who's kind of the top hitting prospect in the minors but um i mean i don't know the odds are that he is not going to be he's not going to be as good a hitter as stanton has been so far and you would expect him to be so i don't know that there is really any any one prospect that i would not trade straight up even though stanton is going to be making more money over the next few years and not quite as much surplus value from him as the Marlins have been getting. Even so, it's tough to say that there's any one guy you wouldn't trade straight up for him. Well, you and Sam have covered this topic and covered it pretty well and I think came to a pretty sound conclusion,

which is that really there is no prospect that you would ever trade for john carlos stanton i i don't think that you would not that that you there's there was yeah that you would not sorry it's late um it's late it's late and we have to warn our affiliates that we're running long tonight um i think i think the the crux of the issue is that we have this weird fixation with prospects, even though the industry standard is extremely hit and miss and that's always the way it's going to be. There's just no real grounds for making that kind of deal or even thinking about making that kind of deal. And it makes sense because we don't see deals like that really ever

unless they're cost-cutting. So yeah, I don't think there's anything more that I can say about it. Yeah, me neither. Get Wheeler and Darnot out of here. And with that, I'm sufficiently depressed about the Mets. Hold on, I need to Google image Matt Harvey. Just hold on a second. Okay, I feel better.

All right. Well, we will end on that happy note. We will be back next week or I will be back next week. You'll be nowhere near this podcast next week. I'll be absolutely within 500 feet of a microphone. It's a pair of my court order um

so yes anytime uh anytime that sam is not here that is anytime you don't want to test that one i'll be i'll be in your apartment uh send emails at podcast at baseball perspectives.com uh they will be answered next wednesday and we will be back with a new show on monday