Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2106: New Year, Blue Yu

Episode Date: January 3, 2024

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley recap news and transactions from over the holidays, including Yoshinobu Yamamoto’s thoughts on San Francisco and Yu Darvish’s thoughts on the Dodgers signing his WBC teammates, the Mariners signing Mitch Garver, the Reds signing Frankie Montas, a smattering of Blue Jays and White Sox signings, the Estevan Florial trade, and […]

If baseball were different, how different would it be? On the case with light rippin', all analytically Cross-check and compile, find a new understanding On Effectively Wild, how can you not be pedantic? Yes, when it comes to baseball, how can you not be pedantic? Hello and welcome to episode 2106 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Raleigh of Fangraphs and I am joined by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, happy new year. How are you?

Happy new year to you. Welcome back. And also happy season when we can finally say last year when we refer to last season and it's okay. And even if you're pedantic about it. Yeah. Our brief but recurring national nightmare is over and here we are in the year of our Lord 2024 with last season firmly in the rear view. Thank God. Exactly. Yeah. So the GMs and the po-bo's mostly abided by your wishes, not entirely when it came to taking the holidays off. They took them off to the extent that you did not have to make your mom mad by editing and publishing anything for fancraft. So that was the important thing. Maybe that's just a reflection of there aren't that many major free agents left or moves to be made that would merit a holiday post. Because there were some signings and some trades and we can catch up on the backlog of those today, but none of them

really rose to the level, at least individually, of, okay, I got to slack someone and get them on this immediately. Well, I mean, you deputized our good friend, Craig Goldstein, I'm given to understand, to talk about the transaction most proximate to the holiday week that would have required bothering people with the Dodgers signing of Yamamoto. In case anyone was wondering, like it for the Dodgers. That's my take, you know? Think he's going to be good? Think they're going to be good. I don't know.

I'm sorry that you were denied this brave perspective for a whole week. But, yeah, I mean, like, look, I don't want to therapize anyone I've never met. I don't want to therapize anyone because I'm not a certified counselor of any stripe, Ben. And I don't know that we need to pathologize behavior that might just be seen as sort of typical doing business. But I am inspired to ask the following question. What's up with Jerry? You know, like, what's up with him? What's going on with Jerry? Does Jerry harbor animus toward people in his life, toward himself, toward us, the media? Is this a dare on Jerry's part? Is he speaking to me personally, trying to sort out just how big a signing in terms of the duration, the size of the deal, the caliber of the free agent he would need to do in order for me at literally 7 p.m. on Christmas Eve to go, I gotta go bother somebody now, you know, to look across the living room at my mom and say, I got some bad news. We have to wait to make cookies and watch White Christmas because, you know, jerry depoto must have his way and i want to say i like the mitch garver signing i think that's a good move by those seattle mariners i've been

i think appropriately harsh but pretty harsh uh towards seattle and their off season as we've recorded our winter pods here but like i like this i think this is good i think it fills an obvious need that they have. I think they will look back and say, yeah, we did well by signing Mitch Garver. But Jerry, my guy, Jer Bear, you got to do more than that to get me to make someone else work on Christmas Eve. You got to do much more than that, especially that late in the day. You know, you do that. And it's like, look, that's 2024 Meg's problem.

you know you do that and it's like look that's 2024 megs problem and kyle kishimoto's for fan graphs who wrote a good little analysis of the garver signing for seattle but uh jerry what's up dude you need to talk to somebody about this i mean like a professional again not me because i'm not a certified therapist in any state but i am given to wonder what's going on with you because this is weird this is like a persistent enough pattern that I can go, you and AJ, you guys okay? Yep. He did make a trade on Thanksgiving Eve. Yeah. And then he made this signing on Christmas Eve. And this is not the first year when he has made moves on holidays or on the eves of holidays. Maybe it's a market inefficiency that they're exploiting by being workaholics. It's like everyone else has checked out. And so that's when you can, I mean, to make

a trade, it takes two to tango, obviously. It takes two teams to tango. And even to make a signing, it takes two parties to tango, right? Mitch Garver had to agree to that deal on Christmas Eve evening. I don't know when it was actually agreed upon and when it came out or what, but the player could say, you know what, get back to me after the holidays. But at least in this case, that didn't happen. So it does take someone else to aid in a bet, Jerry and AJ, when it comes to making these moves. But maybe they feel like, hey, I can be in the free agent's ear at this time, or I can be talking to this other GM or at a point where other people are sitting down to dinner or something, you know, and I can be

the only voice and that will help me make these moves. I don't know if that's part of the calculus. I mean, from Mitch Garver's perspective, even if this did get done literally on Christmas Eve, sure, great. Like from his side, I totally understand. Merry Christmas. You just got a deal and many millions of dollars. Right. I don't know if Mitch Garver celebrates Christmas, but you know, this is a week where, you know, regardless of what holidays you do or don't celebrate, like traditionally, you know, we observe Christmas as a federal holiday and like it's a quiet week for most people at work that week between Christmas

and New Year's. And now if it's the off season and you're a baseball player, you're kind of hanging out no matter what. But like you might even take some days off from lifting during that week. You might be like, this is Christmas. I don't have to lift on Christmas. This is a day for resting and presents and such, assuming you celebrate Christmas. But I get it from his side because how great it would feel.

You're getting ready to sit down to a holiday dinner, again, assuming you celebrate Christmas, and you're like, $24 million richer. That would be great. That would feel so satisfying. You know where you're going to live in the following year. Like, that's great. I would love that. You know, I get it. And like, if you're Garver, you're like, hey, where did I stay during spring training last year? Let's see if they're willing to have us back. We can go to the same one, run it back, right? Because those facilities are so close to each other in the Valley. So, We can go to the same one, run it back, right? Because those facilities are so close to each other in bit that I guess I would I should like admire.

Right. But don't generally. I found it funny. There were a lot of people on Twitter who are like, oh, poor Meg, she's got to work now. And I was like, no, no. The person to feel sorry for here is Ryan Dibbish, because I, you know, I'm a managing editor of Fangraphs. We're a national site. We've set an expectation that we are off this week, barring really big, big news. And I think everyone understands that this is not really big, big news. But Divish, he's the beer writer for the team, for the big local paper. He's got to go disappoint people no matter what.

He doesn't get that day off. So Divish was the one who should really have gotten your sympathy on that day. People, I am so sorry. I'm like, well, I am drinking a beer right now. We're good. I do have it on good authority, Jerry DePoto's authority, in fact, that he did take a little time to relax over the holidays because I'm working on a story for which I'm talking to a bunch of GMs and po-bo's that will be appearing at the ringer sometime soonish. And so I reached out to several of them who I wanted to talk to for this story,

including Jerry DePoto. And I sent out an email last week post-Christmas to some of them. And I said, hey, if you're taking this week off or whatever, Feel free to ignore me. I'll reach out again next week. But for some of them, it's like their only time to talk or it's a time when they don't mind talking. So I ended up speaking to a couple while they were, say, taking a long drive to or from a family thing, for instance. It's a little bit of downtime when they could squeeze me in. But Jerry DePoto responded to me and said, I am in fact taking a few days to unplug, at least to the extent that's possible. And we said that we would talk this week instead. So I guess it was possible because he did not make another move post-Christmas.

So hopefully he did have a few days there. And if signing Mitch Garver rose to the level of, okay, I got to get this done over the holidays, talking to Ben Lindbergh did not. And that is entirely appropriate. Talking to Ben Lindbergh will wait, but I was heartened. Now, he could have not responded to me at all. He was clearly checking his email. So there was some level of work going on there. But as he said, to the extent that's possible, it seemed like he did disengage briefly. So, well done, Mr. DePoto. Well, I'm glad. I'm glad to hear that because everybody deserves a rest, Ben.

You know, everybody deserves to have a little break or even a long break. And, you know, I know that not everyone who works in baseball celebrates Christmas specifically. So, maybe like some of your days are flexed in a way like maybe you're the person who's on call on christmas in case something happens um because you don't celebrate who knows like there's a lot of ways to do it but um i'm glad he took a i'm glad he took a break i mean lest we forget this is literally a man who had like a health crisis at winter meetings and then was trying to transact from the hospital, as I recall. And they were like, hey, what if you didn't, though? And then he didn't.

And that's good. But yeah, there was still activity, but there was nothing so dramatic. You know, it felt really good once Soto had been traded, once Otani had been signed, and once Yamamoto had been signed, I was like, how much people care about Blake Snell? You know, like really. Snell, Bellinger, yeah. Right. Like, how much do we have to? I was worried that there would be a big trade.

I thought that that seemed the most likely. And that, you know, if you were making a list of candidates, it might involve some of the Mariners starting pitching, for instance. There was a big trade that I believe Bob Nightingale called the biggest trade of the offseason. Somehow forgetting about some clearly bigger previous trades. But we will get to Chris Sale and Von Chrissom in a little while. But yeah, while we're on the subject, what did you think of the Mitch Garver fit? What was it, two years, $24 million for him to mostly DH and sometimes catch? Almost certainly to mostly DH.

I mean, I imagine that he will, if he catches, it will be on very rare occasions because in addition to Cal Raleigh, you know, they made the trade for Sebi Zavala. He does not have any options remaining. And so you would imagine he will be their primary backup, especially with Tom Murphy departing in free agency. So, you know, from a fit perspective, the obvious one is at DH. And, like, they need help there. The Mariners have not had a good sort of even semi-regular dh since nelson cruz really and they were um among among teams in baseball last year at the dh

position pretty poor uh as these things go relative to the rest of the league you've mentioned sam hagerty more than once on this podcast. Yeah. How about that? You know, it's like you don't want that. You know, and I don't want to be mean to the young man unnecessarily. But, you know, they were, whether you're looking at it as the primary position or the split wall guys are at DH, like a 91 92 wrc plus team at designated hitter to put that in contrast you know like shohei otani who is famously very good had like a 154 wrc plus i mean not him individually but like the angels posted a 154 wrc plus while their guys were dhing so like you know a bit of a gap there angels bad marininer's better than that and trying to be in the postseason. So like, they needed some help. Their offense was sort of meager across the board outside of Julio and Cal and JP Crawford. So I think it addresses a need. And look, I'm not trying to slight Mike Ford who, you know, hit well in limited duty, but like they needed like a real guy. And Mitch Garver's a real guy.

in limited duty, but they needed a real guy. And Mitch Garver's a real guy. Now, how many games will he ultimately play, whether a DH or catcher? That's a good question to ask of Mitch Garver because his history with injuries is pretty extensive. But, you know, I think he fits the need. Now, are they done? I don't know.

Should they be done? No. You know, they still need help in the outfield, I think, pretty dramatically unless other people are higher on like Cade Marlowe than I am. And Cade Marlowe's fine. But like, again, what are we doing here? So I think that it's good. And my instinct with Seattle remains being Adam Driver and Star Wars and just going more, more. I know he had an actual character name and I don't want you to tell me what it was. Okay, I won't. You can tell me if you want to. I know it's really bothering you that I can't remember. Nope, nope.

I'm not going to. I'm not going to. Don't tell me. I'm not going to collect that on you. Thank you. But I will say that I analyzed this move mostly in terms of how it affected your minor league free agent draftee, Brian O'Keefe, and also Ben Clemens' Ronho Ravello. Yeah.

So in that sense, I was— Bad news for Ravello in particular, I would say. Yes. So I was not sorry to see another name added to that mix, a more prominent name. But yeah, Mariners fans mostly care about other factors. And I think it is good to have a Mitch Carver in hand. But yeah, more work to do. More work to do.

Okay. Well, which other transactions do you, what else did you talk about with Craig? I didn't listen to that episode. I knew you were doing it. And I was like, cool, because I got not enough reception up here to record a podcast. Craig, we talked about whether the Dodgers are the heels and the villains of baseball now, and whether he was going to lean into that, or whether he was going to defend the Dodgers, and whether people are picking on the Dodgers too much, and whether it's the teams that don't spend

that are the bigger problem for baseball, and much more, really. But I think the one thing that we did not touch on, we talked about Yamamoto specifically and how he fits on the Dodgers and how we think he'll do, but he was introduced after that episode and a few details and quotes came out after that. And one of them was particularly painful, I would imagine, for San Francisco Giants fans, because Yamamoto's agent, Joel Wolfe, said he thought that San Francisco really reminded him of Osaka and thought it was a beautiful city. So far, so good, right? After the Buster Posey story about how some free agents supposedly don't want to play in San Francisco. Apparently, Yamamoto didn't have that concern at all.

The quote went on, if the Dodgers had not been pursuing him, there was a good chance San Francisco could have been his destination, which is exactly what Giants fans didn't want to hear, probably. I mean, I guess they were happy to hear that San Francisco reminded him of Osaka, and he would have been happy to play there, if not for the Giants' direct division rivals, if they didn't exist, which that comes on the heels of, of course, the Giants saying that they more or less matched the Otani offer that he accepted with the Dodgers. So, again, it's just the Dodgers are thwarting everyone, not necessarily by offering more money than anyone else, but just by being the Dodgers. Although often by offering more money than anyone else, but just by being the Dodgers. Although often by offering more money than anyone else. Yeah, or at least cumulatively, just given that they've signed or extended all of these guys. But in each individual deal, they didn't really blow everyone else away. It's just that they ended up being the most appealing destination. So this is sort of unusual for baseball, I feel like, where it's now as much

about the program as it is about the money. It is a very kind of college sports thing where it's like, who's the coach and what's the NIL situation or how good is the team, other things, not just what your salary is, which is very often what it comes down to for free agents. Now it's just how do you beat the Dodgers track record when it comes to player development and winning? That seems to be as big an asset for them as the ability to just spend a ton. They're getting, in some cases, maybe more favorable terms on these deals. But more than that, they're just the number one destination for these players. I think Yamamoto said that even if Otani hadn't signed there, the Dodgers still would have been his top choice. So how do you beat that if you're

any other team? It's more frustrating in a way, because if they were just outbidding you, you could at least theoretically offer more money, or at least you could just chalk it up to, well, they're rich and that's why they're winning. But it's not just that. It's these other factors. It's that they're good at building teams and building players. And that's an even tougher obstacle to overcome. that's an even tougher obstacle to overcome. I think a couple of things about that. The first of which is that I don't think that we can separate quite so cleanly the favorable terms from the commitment to winning to the spending thing, right? Like one of the primary ways that they demonstrate a commitment to winning is that they spend money to win and they do it over a long time.

So if you're a pobo or, you know, I think the primary audience for this kind of thing is the owner and you want to replicate that, like, you know, it's important to be good at everything. So good luck with that. But the thing that's most directly in your control is a willingness to spend and to sustain that willingness over, you know, a prolonged period. So I think that that part is sort of squarely within the control of ownership. Now, the Giants have been trying to spend for a while, so I can appreciate being a Giants front office person or a Giants fan and feeling frustrated. But I think that would bring me to the second thing, which is they still only have this, you know, like a 26-man roster and a 40-man roster beyond that, right? So like at some point,

the Dodgers will just be full. And then like like uh guess what if you are willing to spend and you have invested in player dev and you've shown that you can hire and retain smart staff and you sort of build a good team then yeah you can you can attract free agents if you translate willing to you know trying to win into being willing to spend i don't i don't think it's as grim um now if you're a fan the part of it that is as grim is that the number of owners that are willing to do the trying to win part that translates into willing to write a check it's not um an exhaustive. Like if you go through all 30 teams, it's short of 30, but it's non-zero. And again, that part is firmly within their control.

One other related story that surfaced is that Yu Darvish was sad because he thought that he was just going to get the whole gang together. He was going to help recruit other Japanese stars to come play in San Diego. Now, the Padres did sign Yuki Matsui since we last spoke. So that was somewhat notable. But they don't have Otani. They don't have Yamamoto. And Darvish said, I'm sad.

I don't know what to say. I'm sad. And he just thought that after the WBC, apparently, maybe they would just all reunite in San Diego. And he had talked to AJ Preller about that. He was imagining that Otani and Yamamoto could potentially sign there. Japanese people would get together on the Padres and want to beat the Dodgers is how the Google Translate translated that at least. And he talked to Preller and Preller said at the time, like when Darvish was going to sign his contract, he wanted to make sure that he would still be able to sign Yamamoto even with Darvish.

And Preller said, yeah, they could do that theoretically. Obviously, things have changed for the Padres since then. So that was, I felt for him. He just, he wanted to get all his WBC pals together again. And rather than that happening, they went to the Dodgers instead of Matsui. So that was one of the other notable signings that Matsui went to Santiago, but not quite as noteworthy as the others. Well, there are, you know, there are still notable NPV players in next year's international free agent class. So, you know, don't give up hope. Yeah. Imanaka is still out there. Right. That's true.

So there's still some hope to be had. But yeah, there right that's true so like there's there's still some hope to be had but yeah I get that makes me bummed for him um it's a bummer yeah I want to save the sale trade and Giolito signing for the end here because I think that'll segue into a stat blast inspired by that but maybe we could talk about Frankie Montas going to the Reds because the Reds have been active this offseason. I don't know what to make of their activity exactly. But after the Dodgers, the Phillies, which was just re-signing Nola, the Diamondbacks and the Giants, the Reds are fifth in free agent spending thus far. And we've talked about some of those previous moves, Nick Martinez, Emilio Pagan. We puzzled over the Jamer Candelario signing. Then there was like Buck Farmer and Austin Wins. But now they've signed Frankie Montas to a one-year $16 million deal, which I just do not know how to analyze exactly, because

I guess if this is good, healthy Frankie Montas, then that would be a steal. But I have no way of telling how likely that is to happen. I mean, he missed almost the entire 2023 season. He made it back at the very end, just got into one big league game and a few minor league games. And of course, in late 2022, after he was traded from the A's to the Yankees, he was bad and also hurt. So between that, the shoulder surgery, it's good that he got back on the mound before the end of the year but i have no idea if he's gonna be pre-shoulder woes frankie montas or not so i mean the saying goes there's no such thing as a bad one-year deal but like if he doesn't pitch it's probably a bad one year deal so right well and particularly since they have indicated, I think today they indicated that they're largely done, which is interesting in a division that, you know, is reasonably

winnable, where you have young players who you're pretty excited about, maybe some of whom, if you decide not to do deals now, you're holding on to, to potentially have ammunition at the trade deadline, question mark, is to sort of embrace variance and hope that the variance you get is good. We've already seen them kind of do a version of this when they signed Nick Martinez, right? Where it's like Martinez had been very good in relief for San Diego, had expressed a desire to start, had not been especially effective when he had been a starter previously, but I think had improved meaningfully in San Diego just as a pitcher in general. And I think, you know, his role with them was as much about need as it was about his own particular skills. So you look at Nick Martinez and you're the Reds and

you're like, hey, yeah, we'll try as a starter and see how that goes. And if you are great, great. And if not, we'll find a spot for you in the bullpen. And I imagine that Montas is sort of in a similar camp and that they probably know enough. Clearly, they've seen his medical to think that he's intact and will be able to pitch, but they probably don't know exactly what they're going to get out of him given the injury layoff this past season.

So if he is a version of his old self, and they can capture positive variance, they're awesome. If not, I guess they still have all those infielders. It is a little bit of a head-scratcher because I like big swaths of that Reds roster, and I like some of their young pitching, but also they struck me as a team that could benefit from some stable innings. And I don't think that they have a lot of those right now. So that's odd because you'd think they'd be like in the market for them.

And we've seen, you know, what the going rate for some of those you know mid to back of the rotation will give you a bunch of innings how good will they be i mean it depends on how many home runs lance lane gives up right but he he's gonna pitch a bunch of them in all likelihood and we've seen what that guy goes for this offseason it's in the like 10 to 12 million dollar range so you know maybe they tried for some of those guys and they didn't want to pinch in cincinnati that's totally possible but i'm i'm kind of surprised that they weren't interested in doing a little bit more like montas got one year and 16 million was lucas giolito really out of reach reach for cincinnati i mean i know he got to 38 but like you know there's options in that deal and all kinds of all kinds of goofy stuff like he

you know so i'm just surprised that there wasn't that there aren't more like stable innings that have been built into that rotation already but but also like it takes two to tango, as you've reminded us today, and maybe these are the tangos that they could arrange. These are the dance partners who were willing to put them on their card. That's a metaphor that kind of hangs together. Yeah, more or less worked. Yeah, right. Because compared to the four teams that are ahead of them in free agent spending so far, those four teams all got a star or someone a lot closer to a star than the best player the Reds have signed. The Dodgers got like three different stars

or at least two different free agent stars. And then the Diamondbacks got Eduardo Rodriguez and also Lourdes Gurriel and the Phillies re-signed Aaron Noah and the Giants got Lee. And then the Reds, it's just sort of this smattering of, you know, like a mishmash. It's like a dog's breakfast of free agents. It's like, you know, you have. Wait, hold on. Is that an expression? A dog's breakfast? Yes. That's an expression? Is this an East Coast thing? I don't think so. A dog's breakfast?

It might be a British thing. Sometimes I say some British things. But yeah, it's at least according to Merriam-Webster, it's a confused mess or mixture. A dog's breakfast. It's sort of like a girl dinner, but it's a dog's breakfast. Oh my God. Don't get me freaking started on girl dinner. Okay.

You're just making a cheese board. Like, what are we doing here? You're having snacks for dinner. We've all done that. We don't have to put... That's not a gendered concept. What are we... Anyway.

I fully agree. But they've ended up spending a fair amount of money where the guys that they've signed are making a combined $55 million in 2024, which is not a significant number. I mean, that's enough in theory to sign anyone. Right. But, of course, this is an in-practice situation, and they haven't made any really long-term commitments. Right. So it's obviously different to spend that much for one year than it is to sign up to spend that much for seven or ten years to convince ownership to do that.

And then also it does come down to persuading people to sign with you. So you look at the money they've spent and you're like, well, you could have just put that towards the best player on the market or maybe a couple of really good players. And instead you've got this guy who doesn't really fit in with your infield situation. And then this other guy who's coming off an injury and this other guy who hasn't started so regularly before it, just like a bunch of question marks, you know? And so I, I kind of feel like, well, if you could have put that same amount of money toward the top of the market guys, maybe that would have been more dependable, a better bet. But as you said, you do have to convince those players to sign. So, like, you know, I could say, yeah, they could have spent that amount of money on Yamamoto, but they're probably not going to commit to the length and the total dollars that it takes to get Yamamoto.

And also, if he's not going to sign in San Francisco, even though it reminds him of Osaka, then is he going to sign in Cincinnati? So, you know, what can they point to? I mean, they could certainly point to- Skyline Chili. Yeah. They could point to all their young rising stars and they could say, we're set up well for the future and you could make a convincing case, but you can't necessarily make a case based on look how high our payrolls have been or look

how consistently we've been winners. So maybe you do have to pick at the periphery and settle for some less sexy free agents and hope that you distribute that same amount of money over a bigger number of free agents. And ultimately, it gives you depth and it gives you the same amount of production. And that's kind of an intermediate step that you have to take until you establish that you are a perennial winner. And then you can take the next step and that'll catapult you to being able to really be in the market for the very tippy top guys so i i guess that would probably be their rationale or their explanation i mean they might just say we really like these guys and we think this is the better way to do it but if they felt like their hands were sort of tied when it came to persuading other players to

sign maybe maybe this is the better way, but it's more high variance as a strategy, I suppose. I will be fascinated to see what our understanding of the Candelario deal is 12 months from now, because it is easily the most head-scratchery of all of their you know, as I said, they have so many infielders. They just got a bushel and a peck. But when you look at the duration and amount of money on that deal, like I think people thought well of Candelario coming into this offseason, but people also were like, is Candelario like, you know, he hasn't done this all the time. Is he really, you know, the guy he was in 2023 and 21, or is he more like the guys he'd been before that? So, they had, did they have to give him

three years and $45 million in order to sign with them? Like, what is our understanding of that going to be in terms of how we interpret their offseason 12 months from now? I don't know the answer to that. Like, they could have given $45 million to a starter, like, in theory. But again, could they find one to dance with, Ben? You know, this is the question. But yeah, that one, that Candelaria signing is so weird. It is very weird. So, so weird.

It's still so weird. I keep expecting it to make more sense. But then, like, you still have Jonathan India on your team and you still have Noel have noel v marcha you still have all these just like so many infielders you know so it's a weird it's been a weird off season and since i want to give them appropriate credit for having committed some resources because that has been you know we're talking about them adding guys to the organization and doing stuff rather than the various sons of Cincy, right? And that's a positive tonal shift in their offseason. And this team is in, I think, much better position today than it was this time last offseason.

And so I don't want to give short shrift to what they have done, but some of what they have done is confounding. So where does that leave us? I don't know, with aift to what they have done, but some of what they have done is confounding. So, you know, where does that leave us? I don't know, with a plate of weird chili. Yeah. A couple other teams that made multiple moves, although not multiple major moves, the Blue Jays thus far thwarted when it comes to pursuing the big game.

Their trades were weird. Their signings were weird too, or at least one of them was. Yeah. So they re-signed Kevin Kiermaier. Fine. And then they also signed Isaiah Kiner-Falefa. Weird.

IKF is a blue jay now. Yeah. Which, yeah, I guess that one also falls into the too many infielders. Too many infielders. Kind of conversation. Makes me think they're going to trade somebody. That was the first thought i had when i saw that they had signed him i was like oh so it's like

biggio out the door are they moving right santiago espinal like is he is he gonna be on the move soon because it seems like i mean it's good to have depth but like i don't they got too many guys yeah and ikf plays some outfield too so you know you know, he's an okay utility guy. He's not going to hit much, but he can give you a decent dependable glove at a number of positions. But yeah, he did exactly what they wanted him to do last year. And so they're bringing him back for more. I had some doubts about Kiermaier when they acquired him, despite his track record, like he was coming off the hip injury, right? He had missed much of 2022 and he's into his 30s and you wonder how long is he going to remain an elite defender. And the answer was at least one more season. At least one more season.

He was his usual fantastic self out there. Plus 18 defensive runs saved, plus 13 outs above average, or plus 12 runs above average, stat cast base. So thus far, he has not shown any sign of slippage whatsoever and yeah he was about as good as he ever is offensively too just you know giving you a consistent league average bat i mean that's it's a valuable player and they're just going year to year with him so if you don't have to commit long term you can bring him back for one year, 10 and a half million or whatever it was. Then if he does start to slip or show some age related decline, you're not locked in to those decline years. So that's pretty much perfect. And I know he kind of became a fan favorite in Toronto, too, even though he was not really a fan favorite before because he'd been a division rival and because of the whole like

picking up the card remember that weird the scouting card oh we were so much more innocent than you know those were simpler days yeah he he quote unquote stole the uh scouting card that was found and did not return as maybe um a more precise way of describing that incident. I'm doing air quotes. Incident. Yes. It fell out of the wristband of Boudier's catcher, Alejandro Kirk, and he did not immediately return it. But that is a distant memory now, Toronto fans like Kevin Kiermaier.

So, yeah, they've still been mentioned in the pursuit of every major free agent and they still are. So obviously they have to land one of those players to make their fans happy, but making some moves on the margins. And yeah, maybe it will be a preparation for some subsequent trade or deal from depth. They're in a position where they can move a guy

if they want to and i mean like they do have to account for the matt chapman of it all somewhere i don't know that i mean like i don't know that ikf is like a one-to-one substitute for him you know there's the argument that they could just build depth and try to you know do the old money ball or place him in the aggregate but you're not getting matt Chapman's production either in the field or at the plate from some of the sort of utility guys that they have on the roster at the moment, even with Chapman's ups and downs over the years. But it just, it feels like a move in anticipation of future moves. So I do kind of want to reserve the right to grade it as an incomplete on the ikf front man good for that

guy like he's you know he's he's carved out a big league career for himself um even though he's not like a true standout anywhere so like good for ikf but um the cure myer one makes a ton of sense to me if there are no bad one-year deals there are especially no bad one-year deals for guys who have shown that they can play a plus center field so that is fine i'm still scoring them an incomplete um and i just hope that whatever if they if they do a big deal then i hope that the way we find out about it is braves like where it's just blue jays pr announces a big signing so that um their poor fans don't have to go through a day of, you know, emotional toil, even if it ends up being positive for them, right? They've been through enough, I think, the folks of Toronto.

So I hope that they have more to come. And then I imagine that if they do, we will see some consolidation of their infield depth with IKF sticking around because of the versatility he brings to the outfield. They're just collecting. They're collecting centerfielders. Are all of those guys plus centerfielders? No, but they're collecting centerfielders. They're collecting catchers. They're collecting centerfielder catchers. I'm at the centerfield game. I'm at the catching game. I'm at the duel. What's that meme? You know the meme? The meme's in a commercial now, which made me feel very old, even though I got the reference.

Yeah. So I'm quite curious to see how long Kiermaier can keep this up because centerfield is sort of a young man's position. There aren't many over 30 players there who stick and start, and there aren't many who are really good out there, but he's made it work thus far. The other team that made multiple moves, although really mostly minor individually, the White Sox made some signings. They signed Martin Maldonado. They signed Chris Flexen. They signed Tim Hill, not Rich Hill. Rich Hill, still a free agent, but Tim Hill is on the White Sox now. So yeah, I don't have a whole lot to say about that. We know that Martin Maldonado is employed somewhere. So they've been busy with their catching core. And now we will find out if there is some secret sauce that Martin Maldonado brings with him. If we see the Astros staff fall apart in his absence,

if we see the White Sox staff suddenly gel, then we will know that the Martin Maldonado effect that Carlos Correa is saying that he's worth 15 wins to a staff or to a team. And if those wins get transferred from Houston to Chicago, then we will know there's something that we have not yet quite quantified about Martin Maldonado as a pitcher whisperer, but obviously still has believers because he has not hit like a big leaguer, but he is still a big leaguer. Well, and they had to replace those Sebi Zavala innings. So, you know, what else are they going

to do? Can I say something about Tim Hill? Doesn't he look like he should be playing a bootlegger in like an old timey movie? Like he should be running, running rum from somewhere to somewhere else during Prohibition, right? Yeah. Doesn't he? He has that look like, and then he gets shot in the first act and his brother has to avenge him. Yeah, especially when he has a goatee, which just Googling his headshots, he doesn't always, but sometimes he does. And when he does, that only enhances that effect. Well, and there was a while pre-foreign substance enforcement where he would just have he'd have goop on his hat he'd have you know he'd have a like a touch of rosin back there

he just looked he looked uh dirty and from another time you know that was that's my main impression of tim hill that i i see him on the side of the road having been gotten by federal authorities going, avenge me. I don't even know if he's from the South. I'm just doing a terrible stereotype. That's what the guy in the movie is. I'm not saying that's what Tim Hill is. I mean, I'm saying he looks like that guy, but I don't know if he talks like that guy. Who knows what he talks like? Tim Hill's from Mission Hills, California. Oh, terrible. Sorry, Tim. I had you pegged wrong. I take it all back. Anyway, I guess the White Sox are doing their best to address their depth problems.

They haven't really addressed their top of the roster problems, but the depth problems that have been so acute over the past few years, they've made some moves to acquire more players than they have given up, at least like in the bummer trade with Atlanta. To be clear, a trade that involved Aaron Bummer, not a trade that wasn't Bummer. I mean, we can reserve judgment, but that's not what you meant. Yeah. So they've acquired a bunch of guys.

I don't know if that will make the difference for them, but hopefully it will help them avoid just some replacement level killers, some gaping holes in the lineup when someone gets hurt or in the bullpen or wherever, because it was kind of an issue for them almost everywhere over the past few years. I really don't know where they stand or how they see themselves. They'll be an interesting team to talk about when we get to preview season. Oh, yeah. Leland, he did get me.

I don't know. Is that what people who died in Prohibition era times were like? They're like, oh, no. Last year, they did track me down. I could write a great screenplay. I have no thoughts on the twin signing, Josh Stamont, or the Angel signing, Zach Plesak. Sure, no.

Do you have any thoughts on the Estevan Floreal trade? I guess you edited a piece about that that was published at Fangrass.com. I think that Eric's thoughts about it are very smart. No, it's like you have a surplus of outfielders. Are all of them good? I mean, and we have a surplus of pitchers. Are all of them healthy? And so let's swap some of those and see what we can each get out of it. very much because there were times where it felt like the home run leaders were just hitting more home runs than the entire Cleveland Guardians team last year, which was absolutely lacking in power. So that piece of it, I can understand the appeal of from from Cleveland saying because Floreal definitely has a lot of power again, whether he can actually make enough contact to get to it

remains to be seen. But he clearly didn't have a spot on that Yankees team given their outfield situation at the moment. You know, Morris is somehow still prospect eligible, which is shocking. I had to like double check that that was true, but can be really interesting when healthy. It's just the unhealthy part that's been a problem for him. So, yeah. healthy. It's just the one healthy part that's been a problem for him. So, yeah. The only thing I wanted to mention before we get to sale is that Andrelton Simmons retired officially over the holidays. Yeah, you may not have known that he was not already retired. He's not played in a while. But seeing the official announcement that he had retired just made me reminisce about the career of

Andrelton Simmons which I enjoyed he was certainly a frequent topic his defensive play in particular on this podcast in past years there was a time when we would just watch Andrelton Simmons defensive plays and giggle and marvel at them and it was not really that long ago once he headed downhill it was a pretty steep descent so he didn't really have a long decline phase or tail to his career but man he was just a really fun fantastic player one of the best defenders if not the best defenders, if not the best defender that I've ever really watched regularly or to play during my time covering baseball professionally. So it was just a ton of fun to see him get up to his hijinks and highlights out there. So I'm going to miss it. The end came so quickly that it was hard at times to remember how high the defensive highs were.

But he was really something to watch when he was at his peak. Yeah. Yeah. And there was a time when he hit for a while. That was never his strong suit, of course. But he made some changes at the plate. And, you know, a couple of those years with the Angels, he was at least a league average hitter. And if you're league average or a bit better

as a deserved gold clover, then that made him an absolute star. Like, I mean, I'm on his baseball reference page, but just going by baseball reference for like 2017, he was like an eight win player by their metric or a six win player in 2018, like those couple seasons. And he was like, you know, four, four and a half win player a couple seasons before that. He had several seasons where he was like a four to eight win player, mostly on the strength of his defense, which is really hard to do. But yeah, he was just so superlative. He was like Aussie-like out there and he would just make plays

that you didn't need the stats necessarily. It was like it passed the eye test totally that you could tell no one else is going to get to that ball. You know, like the plays that he would make just going out to the outfield the eye test totally that you could tell no one else is going to get to that ball you know like the plays that he would make just going out to the outfield to catch a pop-up or you know there were some plays like i don't he wouldn't always have to do like a jitterian jump throw or something because he just had such great range that he didn't need to do that but just so many flashy like flips and double plays and feeds or you know bare hands

or just like uh gloving and throwing in the same motion or diving and getting up to throw incredibly quickly and he was just really good i i wish he had stuck around longer i wish he had had a phase where he was like still maybe a good glove on the bench, that kind of thing. And he just didn't have that. Like he's cratered. Yeah. He's only 34 and his age 32 season was his last one with the Cubs. He kind of went from like starting to just done almost without much of an intermediate phase. He had injuries and everything else. So, you know, I think that sapped some of the talent too. But yeah, just don't let his quick exit,

I guess, overshadow the fact that he was maybe the best I've seen. Yeah. Only six players have as high a career war with as low a career OPS plus as Andrelton Simmons, Ozzie, Luis Aparicio, Omar Vizquel, Roger Peckinpah, Rabbit Moranville, and Mark Belanger, all defensive standouts. Also, isn't he like the all-time leader in defensive runs saved? I think that might be true i think he might be because uh he's you know that goes back to 2002 so it doesn't cover everyone before that you're using different metrics but yeah i'll i'll check on that but he he's up there if he's not the top he's very close to it so the sale trade. Chris Sale traded from Boston to Atlanta for Von Grissom, and the Red Sox also kicking in considerable cash, $17 million.

And then the partner move to that was that the Red Sox replaced Sale in their rotation by signing Lucas Giolito to a two-year deal with an option after the first year. So this is an interesting one to analyze for the Red Sox and for Atlanta. The Red Sox get themselves a young infielder. They get themselves a second baseman they're committing to who maybe was forced out of the picture, the playing time picture in Atlanta. What do you make of that move, I guess, before we talk about Gilito as a sale substitute? I think that sale makes a particular kind of sense for Atlanta insofar as he is someone they likely view as more valuable come October than he necessarily is during the regular season um i think they have the depth to whether injuries related to him which he probably will have some of i think that i mean he's not the guy he was but he can still strike dudes out and um i think that where else but the rotation are they going to add, really?

Like, they don't need anything on their infield, despite all their weird machinations that Bauman ended up writing about. Because he was like, I have to figure out this puzzle. What a weird little puzzle they've made for themselves. I think that he comes pretty inexpensively, given the cash that Boston is sending along with him. And there's not really anywhere for Grissom to play. And I'm pretty down on Grissom. So I like Atlanta's side of it better than, I guess, Boston's. But I don't dislike it for Boston because like, why not try Grissom and see if you have something there, right? Like, they're not, you know, for all their protestations, I don't think that they're a team that's really

going to be in a strong contending position this year. But their farm system is so robust that they might be in one in fairly short order. It is weird that they are moving pitching given, you know, like that they probably needed more pitching. So then they're moving pitching and that means they have less. But that's where G Alito comes in, maybe. So I think it was mostly just like, huh, what? You did what? And then it was like the Saturday before New Year's, right?

And I was like, that is definitely 24 Meg's problem. Yeah. And Jeff Passan broke the news, not the Atlanta PR department. Yes, yes. Again, I guess it takes two to go on a trade. Yeah, it had to have come from Boston side.

It takes one team to leak. Yeah. And I can guess which one it was in this case. Yeah. I imagine that that was emanating from old bean town rather than from Atlanta. But that was very funny. I was like, this is like not the most important part of this transaction, but it is an interesting part of it. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. So I guess in fairness to Bob Nightingale, he said it was perhaps the biggest trade of the offseason, which leaves some room for uncertainty. I think we can say with some certainty that it was not the biggest trade of the offseason. Juan Soto got traded, if you remember. That was like earlier in the same month. And Tyler Glassnell got traded and extended. So those were probably bigger. But this was a notable trade.

So you're down on Grissom. Clearly, Atlanta was down on Grissom. It seemed like in 2022 when he came up, his age 21 season, and he hit that he was just going to be another infielder of the future for them, that maybe he'd be the next guy to sign an extension and be there forever. And then he didn't hit in his 23 games in the majors in 2023, and he got sort of supplanted by Orlando Arcia, who did sign an extension. And of course, Albies was already extended too. And so there just wasn't a lot of room for him. Grissom did do fairly well in AAA, I guess, as a credit to him. He could have taken that as a demotion, a setback.

And instead, he really raked their 921 OPS in AAA. So that's some sign of optimism for Boston, right? But what is it about him? Is it the lack of patience? Is it the arm strength? What do you not like about Gris? Yeah. I mean, like, I think that he, the profile of the plate is fairly limited and he can't really be like you know if you want someone to be like the super utility guy who has a light bat but like he's a good defensive substitute like that guy generally needs to be able to play shortstop and i don't think that chris mccann like he they didn't have a shortstop right they were like i'm entering them and so they were given an opportunity to the guys on their roster source sees of seize a role coming out of camp.

And he didn't do that. And so that seems like maybe not the best, right? That they were just like, here's Arcea. We're going to go with Arcea instead of having, you know, some of their internal options. Like really seize the role out of camp, I think is telling you right that he did do well in triple a who knows like sometimes people need a change of scenery sometimes people develop late like there are things that could happen here and i don't think that it really is a problem from boston's perspective because like try some guys out and see if one of them is good like that's fine he's still young he is not prospect eligible anymore

because of the time he has agreed but like he's know, hasn't really gotten a ton of big league run. And I think you can, if you're Boston, talk yourself into the idea that like, you know, they had such a stacked roster, like them not having room for him isn't necessarily indicative of what he could eventually be. be. I just, you know, I think it's a limited profile. And so that's why I'm down on him relative to sort of his height as a prospect. But who knows? Like stuff can change. Things can break. But when you're, again, when you're given the opportunity to like really grab it, you can't but you don't. It's not the best. So. It's interesting to me that Chris Sale had a no trade clause and he also has a club option for 2025. Right. Which I think like if he finishes in top 10 in Cy Young voting and isn't hurt at the end of the season or something, it vests. But that's unlikely. But often in cases like that, you see the player hold out for that option to be picked up, let's say. And he didn't do that, which makes me think either he just didn't really have a whole lot of leverage because he's Chris Sale at this point in his career, or he just really wanted to go to Atlanta. It could be that, right? I mean, winning team, maybe he just, things didn't go so great for him in Boston and he wants to go back to the South and he wants to try somewhere else with a perennial playoff team.

But yeah, often you see that like, oh, you want me to waive my no trade clause? Okay, pick up my option. And I don't know whether that would have just scuttled the deal in this case or not. Like maybe he would have overplayed his hand. Anyway, that didn't happen. But I can see why just like that contract was kind of hanging over Hein Blum's head during his tenure, just wasn't getting a great return on Dave Dombrowski's investment there. And maybe Craig Bresla was just like, you know, well, let's move on. Like this was, this was not my millstone, if you want to call

it that, or this was not my signing. So let's just clear the decks here. And you get a young guy who maybe can be your keystone cornerstone. We'll see. It does mean that Trevor Story seems to be locked into shortstop, which I hope he can throw. I hope his surgically repaired elbow is up to that task because it wasn't great before the injury over there. But yeah, that's another investment that Craig Bresso did not make, but has to deal with. So we'll see. I mean, I think that if like, I always, I don't know Chris Sale, but like, it doesn't seem hard to imagine, particularly at this stage in his career, that if there's a contender out there that wants him and where he thinks he can make a meaningful impact and pitch postseason innings, I would view that as pretty appealing if I were him, I mean, I'm sure the money part matters and it wouldn't, you know, there wouldn't be anything wrong with him if it mattered a lot. But at this stage, like he's made good money, you know, and I suspect that being in a position to potentially win a World Series is probably pretty meaningful. So that part makes sense to me. to me. Yeah. Now, the Red Sox have been kind of confusing for years, just like, which way are they going? Are they adding? Are they subtracting? They're often doing both at the same time.

And that's what they did here. They said they wanted to upgrade their rotation. They clearly needed to. Here, they've subtracted from it and also added to it. And they've added Lucas Giolito, who's finally parted from Reynaldo Lopez, who will now be Chris Sale's teammate. So Giolito, I don't give him a complete pass, but because of how weird the second half of his season was. What a weird second half of the season. Yeah. Like, maybe there's a little part of me that's just like, that was weird. Maybe give him a mulligan for that.

Because when he was with the White Sox, he wasn't great. a little part of me that's just like, that was weird. Maybe give him a mulligan for that. Because when he was with the White Sox, he wasn't great. He wasn't like peak Giolito and he wasn't peak Giolito in 2022 either, but he was still a productive pitcher, still clearly a pitcher that multiple teams wanted. And then he went to the Angels and was kind of a disaster there. And then when the Angels decided, actually, we're not adding, we're selling everyone at once here at the last second. Then he went to Cleveland, much better track record with pitchers and pitcher development than the Angels have. But he was just as bad with them, if not worse. So I guess a lot of it was home runs. Now, he did get hit hard, but like the home run per fly ball rates in Anaheim and even more in Cleveland were like

way out of whack, you know, more than double what they had been in Chicago. And the peripherals were actually fairly unchanged. Not remarkable, but like XFIP, for instance, which, you know, adjusts for, normalizes the home run rate in terms of like the walks and the strikeouts and stuff. Like he was pretty in line with who he had been before. So I guess that's the reason for optimism that the gopheritis will go away and that he'll settle in as maybe a mid-rotation guy again. It's such a funny thing to say when you're like, you just dealt away Chris Sale. But like they need innings. They especially need innings now because I don't know if you heard, but they dealt Chris Sale to the Braves. Even when he has been less effective than he was during those really good years with Chicago, like,

he has provided innings and have at least been serviceable, even if they haven't been great. And so, yeah, I think that, you know, if you're Boston and you think, what a weird year, like, let's figure out if we can diagnose what happened. Like, I know that some of this might be the way that his fastball and changeup are interacting with one another. Like, let's figure it out and see if we can get him back to kind of what he was or at least something that's closer to that than what we had, what we saw from him last year. We give him one place to be. We will not subject him to the weirdest waiver nonsense that we've seen in the league in quite a while. I remember we were like really worried that that was going to happen a bunch.

I guess we still have to worry about that. But that was like a big, that was like a big deal. Did we do an emergency pod? I know I edited in kind of small rebuild. Let's see what we have. Let's figure out what, you know, who from the farm system we're like really keen on keeping, see if there's consolidation there. But I don't think that they're like going to be in a position to win the East next year. And I don't think they view themselves that way, but if they can help G Alito adjust back and find something that he has sort of been missing, he'll help to stop gap their innings. Like the, the back end of that deal gives them flexibility to keep him around if he's

both better and they're in a position to contend. So I think it's, I think it's fine. Like they, they still, they still feel a little coming and going at the same time to me. But Breslow deserves the opportunity to sort of put his stamp on the organization and dictate its direction. of the prior regime and like he's supposed to be the pitching guy right so maybe you know like he'll be the pitching guy and then they'll be pitching guys after that so like he seems smart um is that just because he went to an ivy league school probably not but he does seem legit smart

so i think like they get to they get to have a little time to show us what this all means and um we don't necessarily have to tag it with the same narrative that we had of the prior group. So. Yeah, there was a report that the Red Sox had said that they needed to shed payroll even further, that they had said that to some free agent. That's discouraging, Ben. I don't know if you know this, but I like it when teams spend money generally. Alex Cora had anointed Chris Sale as the Red Sox 2024 opening day starter back in September, which is an early time to call that. I guess he said, if all goes well. But maybe Giolito slots into that spot or maybe Brian Bale does.

It's not a great rotation. or maybe Brian Baio does. It's not a great rotation. Yeah, it's 17th in projected starting pitcher war on the fan graphs depth charts. The Reds rank fifth post Montas, but the Red Sox considerably lower as it stands today with Gilito and Baio and Pavetta and Cutter Crawford, Tanner Houck.

So yeah, depth has been an issue there. Really everything's been an issue there. And I guess it still is. So you'd like to see them. I mean, they've been supposedly in the running for some top tier starting pitchers this off season. I don't know whether they will end up getting one or whether Giolito will be the big ticket addition there. But yeah, it's just been one of the more confusing organizations in baseball over the past few years. It's been a weird offseason, you know, like some things make a tremendous amount of sense. Like it makes sense that Otani is a Dodger. It makes sense that Yamamoto is a Dodger, that the Yankees would trade for Juan Soto.

Like, that makes sense. But then, like, the Reds are doing weird stuff and the Braves are doing weird stuff, although I do like the sale trade. And then, like, the Red Sox are doing weird stuff. There's a lot of weird stuff going on, Ben. Don't know about some of this weird stuff. Yeah, and it's not a super fast-paced offseason, I suppose.

We've seen slower, but we've also seen faster, and maybe it's not a super fast paced offseason, I suppose. We've seen slower, but we've also seen faster. And maybe that's just a reflection of some of the top free agents remaining having kind of complicated cases maybe with Bellinger and Snell. And how do you value those guys? And will teams value them the way that they will value themselves or their agents will value them? So those might linger, but we'll see. So one last note here before I segue into the stat blast. I did check the all-time defensive run saved leaders. And Andrelton Simmons leads Adrian Beltre by one run. So Simmons is plus 201.

Beltre is plus 200. So maybe it's for the best that Anderton Simmons retired rather than add any below average innings to his tally, which would have taken him down from atop that leaderboard. Although I guess Beltre's career predated DRS. So he had a few years there before that was even counted. So we got to give him that. But still, it's a nice leaderboard to be at the top of, although I guess it's always subject to revision. You never know with advanced stats, right? These leaderboards don't stay static forever. Let's do a stat blast. And someone our reddit pointed out that maybe now that we cycle through listener submitted intro and outro themes we should cycle through listener submitted

stat blast songs and this person sergeant bode didn't even know that a few years ago we actually commissioned listener submitted stat blast themes and we played a bunch of them then, but maybe we will bring some of those out of storage here and play into our rotation, all listener-submitted. Hate to take away from my wife's original recording of the stat blast theme, so that will certainly still be in the rotation, but we'll mix in some new ones from time to time. And analyze it for us in amazing ways. Here's today's StatBlast. Okay, so this StatBlast is prompted by the sale trade and some other similar moves and some of the musings I've seen sparked by those transactions. I don't know that I've completely cracked this. I'm still sort of workshopping it.

I was considering writing about it. I am considering writing about it. So I'm interested in your thoughts and also in the audience's feedback and maybe some suggestions for other ways to look at this. The topic is innings eaters. How do we define them? Do they still exist? To what extent are innings still being served and consumed? Last July, when the Rays acquired Aaron Savalle, Jeff Passan said Savalle was an innings eater. And I thought, if Aaron Savalle is an innings eater. And I thought, if Aaron Savalle is an innings eater, I don't know what that term means anymore. But maybe it's time to retire that term. It seems more and more that innings don't matter much, right? Especially for contending

teams, which makes sense. If you're the Dodgers or you're the Braves and you can all but guarantee that you're going to be back in October, even if you don't have a whole bunch of innings eaters or whatever passes for innings eaters these days. Both of those teams last year were regular season powerhouses that got knocked out in one round when they were missing some of their starters. You just want to ensure that you have a healthy Tyler Glassnow in October, or you have a healthy Chris Sale in October. I don't know that you can ensure that, of course, and Sale has had a tendency to break down later in some seasons,

as I've written before. But in theory, it's like whatever we get out of him, as long as he's good when he pitches, when he is available, and hopefully, ideally, some of those innings would be in October, then we'll get our money's worth. Because it's not quite peak Chris Sale anymore, but he's still pretty good, right? Like he still misses bats and maybe there was some rust that he was shaking off. So he can still be pretty effective. I meant to mention, by the way, that the Giolito option, I guess, limits Boston's upside a bit because if he does have a good bounce back here, he can just opt out. They

can't capture that upside. He can hit the market again. And so they're sort of stuck with him if he doesn't bounce back. You're right. And then there's like a conditional option after that. That's maybe what I was thinking of earlier. It was still like, I don't know. I keep remembering. Yeah. But with sale and also with glass now and maybe even Montas could be another example or, you know, Yamamoto for that matter has not racked up huge innings totals, even for

an MPB pitcher. I know that, you know, they start on a different schedule over there and it's a shorter season. So maybe the innings totals tend to be a little lower, but even compared to previous NPB aces who've come to MLB, he has topped out in his NPB career at 193, I guess, was his high in 2021. And then, you know, there's just a lot of like in 2023, he threw 171 innings. So I've seen some people say that this is a response to sort of analytically oriented teams

evaluating starters differently. Like Fangraph's own Dan Siborski tweeted, I'm fascinated by the increasing tendency of some of the top teams in baseball to basically de-emphasize inning eater types, instead accumulating scads of talented pitchers with ifs and feeling confident at cobbling together the right available guys when needed. And Matt Trueblood wrote something along similar lines for Baseball Prospectus. He's been writing a series on the AL Central specifically, which is kind of undercovered maybe and pointing out that maybe one thing that's been holding the AL Central back is

that they're still going for innings eater types, not just the AL Central, the NL Central too, whereas some of the coastal teams have been going for these low volume, high performance guys. And, you know, that may be the best example of that this offseason is the Cardinals, who said that they were targeting innings, and then they went and they got Lance Lynn, and they got Kyle Gibson, and they got Sonny Gray. So I think there's something to the idea that some teams have decided we don't want the dependable guy to the extent that any pitcher is dependable, but we want the high upside guy. And if we only get 100 innings out of sale or 120 innings out of glass now, that's fine because there'll be good innings and we can fill the rest of those innings with someone else good because we're good at making relievers out of thin air. But what occurs to me is that it's not even just that it's a choice between the innings eater types and the low innings total high performance guys. It's that there just isn't really such a thing as an innings eater anymore. You know?

Or at least it's been, you know, it doesn't mean what it did. You know, there's innings eaters in 2024 adjusted terms, but they're nothing like what we are used to seeing back in the day. Exactly. So you're not really choosing between Chris Sale, who you're lucky if he gives you 100 innings as he did for the Red Sox this year, and someone who's given you like 250 of like, you know, dependable, maybe mediocre innings. No one throws that many innings. The best pitchers don't throw that many innings. So instead of 100, maybe you're looking at like 180 or something, right?

instead of 100, maybe you're looking at like 180 or something, right? And so the opportunity cost isn't so high because those guys just aren't really out there the way that pictures are developed and used these days. So I have several graphs, which is not ideal for a podcast. These are like exhibits in my presentation here, And I'll send them to you. And I will also link to them on the show page and can kind of describe the way that I'm looking at things here. And in many of these, I went back just like all the way to 1920, like the live ball era. And I skipped over the strike shortened and pandemic shortened years. So for instance, I looked at the standard deviation of innings pitched per game start. So basically how much variation does there tend to be in how deep you go into games? And this was like a three-year

rolling average and limited to pitchers who pitched at least 120 innings in any season. And as you can see on this graph, there's been a pretty steep decline in the standard deviation of innings pitch per game start, which is at an all-time low now and it's just a lot lower than it used to be because it used to be that you would have some guys going deep in games and other guys going less deep into games. And now it's just that like almost everyone goes sort of the same length in a given start, whether you're really good or you're not really good. There's a pretty narrow range now in how long you're going to be left in. And I think part of this is just that as the mean decreases, the standard deviation also decreases. So it's sort of a mathematical artifact. But I think there's also something to just less variation. I talked this over with frequent stat bus consultant, Ryan Nelson and fan graphs on Kyle Kishimoto and some others and got their thoughts on this. But that's what stands out to me is that, you know, like,

even if you're an elite pitcher now, it doesn't mean you're just going to give your team a ton of innings. And so there's just not really that much difference effectively between your innings eater or whatever that is now and someone who's just like Sale, who is basically like a five and dive. But Kyle Gibson was like a 5.8 and dive. It's just not that big a difference. He's basically what would pass for an innings eater these days, although earlier eras, people would scoff at the idea of someone being an innings eater who I think has never even reached 200 innings in a season, but he's consistently close at least. And that's just like the ceiling is so much lower that there just really isn't much of a difference anymore between a sale and a Gibson, at least in any given game. I guess part of it is like availability. Like it's not even innings eating. It's like start making these days. Maybe that's part of it that you just want someone who you know is going to take the ball. Even if you're not going to end up with that guy going deep into a game, at least you don't have to call someone up or use an opener, you know, juggle around your rotation.

Because someone who's maybe not so good, maybe it's partly that if you're really good, maybe you throw harder. Maybe that makes you more liable to get injured. And so you have like a Glasnow or a Sale who's not really going super deep into games. And then you have a Gibson who's also not going super deep into games but is at least taking the ball almost every time out. So maybe that's the difference. But in terms of just total innings, it's just, it's not really that great, I guess. And here's another way I looked into this, my second exhibit that I just sent you. exhibit that I just sent you. So I also looked at the correlation between war per inning and innings pitched per game start. So this is basically the correlation between how good you are on a per inning basis and how many innings you pitch per start, because you'd think that, okay,

if you're really good on a per inning basis, then they would want you to throw more innings. So this is looking at the correlation there among pitchers with at least 20 starts in a season. And as you can see on this graph, there was almost no correlation back in like the 20s and 30s. A very weak correlation, which I interpret this to mean that back then everyone was just going to go deep into the game. Like it didn't even matter if you were good or not, you know, there was just an expectation that you were going to finish what you started. And so unless you were really getting shelled or you got hurt or something, you were just going to stay in there. And the difference wasn't really the length of the start,

but the effectiveness of the start or how many innings, how many runs you allowed. But then over time, gradually the correlation rose and rose and rose to the point where it got to be quite strong. So by the time you get to say the late 90s, early 2000s, the correlation's like 0.7-ish, which is quite strong. So that means the higher your war rate, essentially, how much war you're accumulating on a per-inning basis, the more innings you're throwing per start. You're a better pitcher, they're letting you go deeper into games. However, as you can see, in the last decade or so, that has begun to decline again. The correlation is getting lower. It's like a roller coaster. It went up and up and up, and now it's starting to head down again. And I think that gets at what I'm saying here, that

it's just, it doesn't matter as much how good you are. That isn't really the thing that's governing how deep you go into the game because you're just, you're going to get pulled regardless, even if you're really good, because A, there's the times through the order penalty and just generally workload concerns and bullpens are better and you have more viable relievers who are going to be better than a tired even ace. And so everyone's going to go because we know that no matter how good you are, you're less effective after you've faced the same hitters for a few times. And B, maybe you're more likely to be good on a per inning basis because you know coming in, I'm not going deep into this game. So I can just air it out. I can let it eat. I'm not saving

anything for later. And maybe your team even tells you, hey, we just want five from you. Just give us a good five and you're done. And so you're just, you're not coasting, you're not taking any plate appearances off, it's max effort all the time. And so you're going to empty the tank more quickly, even though that'll make you a bit better. So that I think is a sign that, yeah, we've now gotten away from how good you are dictates how deep you go into a game to there's still a relationship there, but it's a weaker relationship than it was 20 years ago, let's say. Yeah. It's interesting. This is interesting. Yeah. Okay. I'm not done. I have a few more graphs to show you. So another thing that stands out to me is that starting pitchers just as a whole and even individually aren't as valuable as they used to be.

Now, maybe that seems obvious, but I feel like until really the last few years, it hasn't been dramatic enough to notice because just these past few years have really been like there was a trend, but it's gotten accelerated, I think. So here, for instance, is a graph that shows the average fan graphs were of the top 10 starters in a season. And this is a rolling average again in the 162 were not particularly impressive. You know, like there was no one having a seven or eight war, at least fan graphs were, pitching season. And I think part of that is just because, again, the inning ceiling has been lopped off. Even if you're an ace, even if you're elite, you're not going to go 250 or even 220, right? I mean, Sandy Alcantara was doing that for a while. Look what happened to him. I mean, it just, it doesn't really, even when Justin Verlander, his career started, like you could still go, you know, 250 or something if you were a top of the rotation guy. And now not so much. And so like the average fan graphs were of a top 10 starter these days is like somewhere between five and five and a half war. It's just, you know, and in let's say

the early seventies when, you know, men were men and they went deep into games, it was like seven and a half were. So like the average top 10 starter now is like two wins above replacement, less valuable than they were in the early 70s or even in like, you know, late 90s, early 2000s, it was like seven war was kind of the average of the top 10 guys. And now it's like five and a half or less than five and a half. There have been some exceptions, some really impressive individual pitching seasons. But on the whole, like an ace isn't worth what an ace used to be worth. Yeah.

And I think that there's this perception, you know, you're joking about it a little bit with the one men were men. Like there's this perception that this is like a flaw, a new flaw on the part of starters, right? That there's like increased fragility. And I mean that in an actual physical way, not in a like one men were men way. We have to grapple with the reality of what throwing like much harder than starters did, you know, 20 years ago. The effect that that has on the arm and the shoulder and whatnot. young starters are kind of bumping up against an innings limit, not because they have necessarily exhibited some fragility that teams are like, oh, we have to manage this guy carefully. That does exist. But a lot of it is teams being like, this is what we think the best way for you to be

deployed is so that we can have you continue to throw hard potentially minimize injury risk potentially minimize your salary and arbitration right like a lot of this is directed from the team side and there are a variety of motivations some of which are about maximizing you know velo while still maintaining health some of which are player development related and some of which are labor related but like i think that there is a persistent idea among fans that this is like, that there's some like preening soft generation of guys coming up. And it's like, you know, maybe that's true on an individual basis, but there are also just as many guys who are like, I'd love to throw 200 innings, but that's not what they're asking of me. And that's not the

way that I've been developed. So, you know, I think that's just worth noting. Yeah. And I've cited some research before by Rob Maines, who did show what you're saying about the impact of modern pitching usage on payrolls. And I don't know that this was a nefarious scheme necessarily, but I think that has been one of the effects that when you are distributing your innings over a wider swath of pitchers, and a lot of those pitchers are guys who are calling up from AAA who are on that AAA shuttle, or you put someone on the IL and you call someone up and maybe there's even some phantom IL shenanigans going on from time to time, one up and maybe there's even some phantom IL shenanigans going on from time to time,

then you end up with pitchers who are making the league minimum and are kind of coming and going. They're taking some of those innings that in the past might have gone to your top of the rotation guy who's really going to cash in in free agency eventually. And that's just not really happening anymore. So more of the innings are going to league minimum or close to league minimum pitchers. And that was on an individual basis, like an ace isn't necessarily worth what an ace used to be worth. And you can see that on a league wide level also. And I have a graph for that. In fact, I have two graphs for that, just different ways to look at it that show you like the total or percentage of pitching war by starters. Versus, yeah. Yeah, juxtaposed with the percentage of innings pitched by starters.

And so as the percentage of innings pitched by starters has decreased, so has the total war produced by starters or the percentage of total pitching war produced by starters. They have not moved completely in lockstep in the last few years, which is interesting. So if you notice on those graphs, the decline just in the past few years in war is not as steep as the decline in innings pitched. So there's been really a drop off in the percentage of innings pitched thrown by starters in the past few years, whereas the war produced by starters has declined a little less steeply, which I think is probably because if starters are not throwing as many innings, the innings that they are throwing are probably more effective on the whole, right? Because,

you know, they're not going through the third time through the order. And so they're not incurring that penalty. So probably their innings are a bit better on the whole. And maybe also you're digging deeper into your pool of potential relievers and calling up some scrubs to throw some garbage time bullpen innings. And that's maybe dragging down the war of the relievers and making the starters look better. But it really is like just in the past five years ish that there's been like a really steep decline because like from the mid-80s to the almost mid-2000s, pretty flat, like the percentage of innings by starters and then also the war produced by starters, not much of a decrease. Like there's a decrease, you know, going from the

60s and 70s when there were really guys racking up huge innings totals and offense was lower and pre-DH and everything. And then once you get into like the 80s, it was, you know, mostly unchanged or just the most gradual decline for a few decades there. And then just like, you know, the last decade or even less has been when some of these movements have really kind of, you know, gathered steam. Yeah. Yeah. And then the last thing to show you here, I guess this is also related to the conversation about innings and how desirable they are and what's an innings eater these days. So here's one thing I looked at, which is just the correlation between innings pitched and war among qualified starters. Obviously, there are fewer

qualified starters than there used to be, but just, and that's, you know, people who pitched at least one inning per team game, a lot fewer pitchers qualified. And we've talked about whether they should change what the qualifications are now that there's such a smaller pool of pitchers who do quote unquote qualify. But the correlation between innings pitched and warm unqualified starters has also dropped off the table just in the last handful of years from like 0.6-ish to 0.4-ish, which is a pretty big percentage decrease. And again, that just means that like knowing a starter's innings total just doesn't explain their war as well as it once did. You know, it used to be that like if you knew how many innings they pitched, that would be a pretty big tell

as to how valuable they were. And now it's not so much. And I think, again, maybe part of that is that there's just less variation, even among qualified starters. Like, you know, you only need 162 innings pitched to qualify if your team plays all its games. So it used to be that there were guys who like doubled what you needed to qualify. Whereas now, even the pitchers who qualify are barely qualifying, right? Like Logan Webb led the majors with 216 innings pitch in 2023. Only five pitchers got to the 200 inning mark. And so even most of the pitchers who qualify are like barely scraping by. So the variation just isn't that great. You know, it used to be that qualified pitchers,

there might be some guys who threw one hundred seventy innings and other guys who threw three hundred. Now there are some guys who threw who throw one seventy and like a handful who throw two hundred. But that's about it. You know, there's there's just not much variation there. So like innings alone, not really going to set you apart, I don't think. And then the last image in this same vein, this just shows the number of above and below average pitchers per team who've gotten to 180 innings pitched. And so, yeah, so I used ERA minus for this at FanGraphs and I looked for pitchers who had a greater than or equal to 100 ERA minus. So ERA minus higher is bad, unlike ERA plus. So with ERA minus, you want to have a lower one. ERA plus. So with ERA minus, you want to have a lower one. So guys who had 100 or higher, so basically worse than average, and guys who had below 100, so better than average. And there have

always been more good pitchers, better than average pitchers who get to 180 innings pitch than below average pitchers who get there., if you are good, they're going to want you to throw more innings in general. But there's been a similar decline. So, yeah, there aren't really any innings eaters anymore. If we're defining innings eater as someone who's mediocre or maybe below average, but still pitches regularly and racks up innings, there are hardly any of those guys anymore. But the good pitchers who get racks up innings. There are hardly any of those guys anymore, but the good pitchers who get to that innings threshold have declined just as much.

You know, like back in the 20s, let's say, there were like two and a half better than average guys who got to 180 innings per team. And there were like one below average guy who got there per team and now it's like you're not even getting one per team of the good guys and the below average guys you're you're barely getting any it's just like a handful in the whole league. But the magnitude of the decline for each is similar. So it's not just that like the innings eaters who aren't really throwing good innings that teams have been like, well, we only want you to throw a lot of innings if they're good innings. No, even if you're throwing good innings, you're not going to be allowed to throw that many. So there just aren't innings eaters who are good or bad anymore is basically what I'm getting at. So that to me, I think is sort of a different wrinkle. It's like, yeah, we know that pitchers across the board are throwing fewer innings, but

one effect of that is that there just isn't that much variation anymore. Like what is an innings eater now in relative terms just isn't really separated from the like good, but rarely available guy. There's just not much of a difference anymore. So no wonder that teams are like, yeah, I'll take a flyer on Frankie Montas or I'll sign up for Chris sale or Tyler Glass now, or even Yamamoto. And I'm not expecting that many innings, but that's okay. If they're good innings, I'm not really missing out on the alternative because the alternative is not, you know, it's like Jordan Lyles is the last of the old school innings eaters who's just not good, but still pitches a lot of innings every year. You know,

it's him and Kyle Gibson. It's like, you know, even like a Lance Lynn, you think of him as an innings eater, but how many innings is he actually going to eat at this stage of his career? So yeah, I think the innings eater, and Chad Jennings wrote something about this for The Athletic recently about the death of the innings eater,

but I think it's just the death of high innings totals for anyone, even really good guys. And so might as well roster someone who will be good whenever he pitches, even if he doesn't pitch that much. I think part of why I've always resisted being too concerned about this is that there's like a natural, there's a floor, right? Because you only have so many roster spots. You can only bring guys up and down so often guys only have so many options to begin with right like there is sort of a natural limit but where that limit is and like how fun it is to watch are not necessarily perfectly

overlapping with one another right yeah and so i think that while there's going to have to be arrested momentum around this at some point that doesn't mean that like it won't be unfun to watch in the meantime so like we should think about how we can construct probably roster rules to try to stem the tide a little bit because it doesn't seem like there's going to be a natural you know like there's not going to be a natural turning away from this trend from a player dev or roster construction perspective without like a rule in place that as always the answer is speculation in all likelihood. Yeah.

In theory, right. Some team could decide, well, we want to go for softer tossing guys who are always available because there's this epidemic of sproings and UCL injuries. And maybe we will have the market inefficiency of healthy pitchers who are not that great on a per inning basis, but they're always available. And thus we won't have to dip deeper into our depth chart to get our innings from somewhere. But I just, I don't know that that will happen. Yeah. Barring further roster restrictions, which I'm in favor of, we've talked about many times, just lowering the number of pitchers permissible on the active roster. If you do that, then you are going to have to have guys

go deeper into games and pace themselves and pitch in a pinch, as the Christy Mathewson saying goes. So I'm in favor of bringing that back, but you're right. I don't think it's going to happen organically, right? And I guess you could say, well, how fun is it to watch a Kyle Gibson or a Jordan Lyles or someone of that ilk go deep into a game? No offense to those guys, but the stuff is not spectacular, right? So maybe there's something to be said for that. Like if we're just watching high talent, high stuff guys in shorter bursts, maybe that is more entertaining in some ways than watching these like plotting pitchers just pile on so-so inning after so-so inning. But I still think, you know, all the times we've talked about the starting pitcher as protagonist

and the entertainment value of seeing someone go deeper into a game and have to adjust to that, that there is some merit to that. Yeah. All right. So memo to innings eaters. Innings are off the menu.

If you have ideas for other ways I could convey that flattening of workloads, that decreasing separation between innings eaters and non-innings eaters, please write in podcast at fancrafts.com. I welcome suggestions for other charts I could make, other ways I could crunch those numbers. And a couple of quick follow-ups. We've talked probably multiple times about possible solutions for the problem of players breaking their own appendages in frustration after things don't go great for them in games.

Chris Sale, for instance, had a meltdown in a minor league rehab assignment, smashed a TV with a bat, and the team moved a punching dummy into the tunnel between the dugout and the clubhouse in his honor. We have suggested that teams should either pad the walls around the vicinity of the dugout or maybe put a punching bag in there, prevent any Jared Kelnick incidents, any Kevin Brown incidents, pitchers punching walls, players kicking coolers. While Craig, Patreon supporter, wrote in to say, in episode 2038, you responded to a message

from listener Diego who asked if a solution to ballplayers punching and thus breaking their hands on hard dugout surfaces could be solved by a dugout punching bag. As I recall, we subsequently followed up to say that there is or was a punching bag in the visitor's dugout bathroom at Miller Park or American Family Field. But maybe it's not the only big league ballpark that's punch-proofed. Because Craig says, I was watching a drone tour of the NHL's Winter Classic set up at T-Mobile Park and was struck, pun intended, by a brief cameo of Mariner Moose going to town on a punching bag located in the tunnel behind the home dugout. I can't be certain if this is something that was added for the Winter Classic festivities

or if it's a feature of the Mariner's dugout, but I wanted to let you know that although it is not in public view, the dugout punching bag is a thing, apparently in multiple Major League parks. Thank you, Craig. Maybe it was installed in response to Kelnick's injury, or if it was already in place, then that suggests that this is not a foolproof prevention tactic. Another thing Chris Sale is famous or notorious for doing is cutting up a jersey with scissors. Well, listener Patreon supporter Ed wrote in in response to episode 2104 when we talked

about bullying in Korea and Korean baseball and noted that in light of that conversation, Chan Ho Park's extreme reaction to rookie hazing doesn't seem so surprising now. He reminded me of an incident when Park was a rookie in 1996 with the Dodgers, and his teammates used scissors to turn his suit into a short pants and vest outfit. He was extremely upset about this. He thought it was demeaning. He said he was hazed when he was in school. The players eventually explained that it was supposed to be an affectionate gesture, but because of cultural differences, it was not interpreted that way. It was seen as an affront, as a humiliation. So very relevant in light of that conversation with Jiho Yu last week. You can ring in the new year by

supporting the podcast on Patreon. Just go to patreon.com slash effectively wild, sign up to pledge some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going, help us stay ad-free, and get yourself access to some perks, as have the following five listeners. Bobby, Michelle Barone, Dan Wiley, Justin Behan, and Bob Bryan. Thanks to all of you. Patreon perks include access to the Effectively Wild Discord group for patrons only, monthly bonus episodes, playoff live streams, prioritized email answers, potential podcast appearances, discounts on merch and ad-free Fangrafts memberships, and so much more. Check out all the options at patreon.com slash effectivelywild.

If you are a Patreon supporter, you can message us through the Patreon site. And of course, you can contact us via email at podcast at Fangrafts.com. Send us your questions and comments. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectively wild. You can follow Effectively Wild on Twitter at EW pod, and you can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at r slash effectively wild. Thanks to Mac Longpre and Sophie Welsman for today's amazing Stat Blast song cover. And thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. We'll be back with another episode a little later this week. Talk to you then. and steamer for the forecast. Coming in high, big boss on a hovercraft. No notes,

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