Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2196: Trades, Valued

Episode Date: July 27, 2024

Ben Lindbergh, Meg Rowley, and Ben Clemens break down the Randy Arozarena, A.J. Puk, James Paxton, and Austin Hays trades (plus real-time reactions to the Yimi García and Zach Eflin deals), Stat Blast (29:21) about the most WAR ever dealt at a trade deadline, banter (54:45) about Garrett Crochet’s extension desire and the MVP cases […]

What did Jerry Depoto do? What did Jerry Depoto do? We're gonna talk to Meg Rowley about a trade or two. It's what did Jerry Depoto do? What did Jerry Depoto do? What did Jerry Depoto do? We're gonna talk to Meg Rowley about a trade or two. It's what did Jerry Depoto do?

What did Jerry Depoto do? What did Jerry Depoto do? What did Jerry Depoto do? We're gonna talk to Meg Rowley about a trade-off too. Cause what did Jerry Depoto do? Hello and welcome to episode 2196 of Effectively Wild, a FanGraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rowley of FanGraphs,

and I am joined by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? Quite all right. Great. We are also joined byalphia of Fangraphs and I am joined by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? Quite all right. Great. We are also joined by Ben Clemens of Fangraphs. Oh, there, Ben, how are you? I'm doing well. I'm, yeah, kind of busy week, but it's almost over. Yeah, busy week, which is why you're joining us today. We have a bunch of trades to talk about, actual trades. Trades.

Trades. And then we invited Ben Clemens on because this week we spent time on our trade value series, our annual trade value exercise at Fangrass, which Ben spearheads. And we thought we should talk to him about it, you know, all the trades that probably won't happen. So yeah, some actual trades that have happened and some that almost certainly won't happen. I guess there are maybe two guys on the top 50 who could potentially get traded, but it's kind of an annual theoretical exercise in what would these guys be worth if these guys who will not get traded got

traded. LS So should we start with some trades that actually did happen because true to form, Jerry. Jerry Bear. I had to do one of my patented prefaces to the podcast because I posted it just shortly after that news broke. And so I inserted a little, by the way, we're about to talk about how the Mariners sure could use some offense and they just got some. So you must have been pleased maybe? Laurenie I am pleased. I find Randy or Rosarena, and we should just spell out what this trade was and then we can react to it. Seattle Mariners have acquired Randy or Rosarena from the Tampa

Bay Rays in exchange for Aiden Smith, Brody Hopkins, and a player to be named later. We can talk about those prospects if we want to. There is a good write-up of this transaction at FanGraphs already and a fresh list concerning the Mariners guys who went back to Tampa Bay to peruse Eric Long and Hagen. Quite high on Brody Hopkins actually. Thought he was the centerpiece of this deal. Aidan Smith, a bit more of a mystery, a question mark. What will he be? What kind of defender? But obviously the name that highlights this for Mariners fans and for most baseball fans is Randy. And I just, I find Randy or Rosarina fascinating because here's the question that I think Randy

seeks to answer. What if a guy without an approach were a good big leaguer? What would it look like? It would look like Randy or Rosarina because it's not that he has a bad one. It's that I don't know if he has one at all. And sometimes it means a guy who's like, you know, anywhere from like 20 to 30% above league average as a hitter. And sometimes it means a guy with a 109 WRC plus. So Randy or Rosarina, come on down.

You're better than most of the hitters in the Mariners lineup. So we'll take it. Sometimes it's those guys in the same season. It's been that, right? So if you look at the 109 WRC plus and the 1.0 Van Graaff's war, you might not be very impressed, but if you do some cherry picking

and you do some arbitrary end points, then you could come away quite impressed by Randy Rosario's season. So that's not always a fair or just thing to do. But if you do pretend that his season started on May 1st, let's say, instead of starting in late March, then suddenly he is the 25th best hitter in baseball this year qualified with a 140 WRC plus. And I guess you could start the cutoff even later and he'd probably be even better because

he's been hitting really well for the last couple of months. So he was sort of sub replacement level early on and everyone was wondering what's going on with Randy Rosereta. And then he was like, I'm still Randy Rosereta. And then he started hitting. I will say if you just like peruse down his player page, it's like, he's walking around as much as always striking out about as much as always same power. Oh, 250 bad bib. So like, okay. He's bad in a predictable way. Like if that happens, you probably will be worse.

Yeah. Here's what I think. You tell me if I'm wrong about any of this. Randy Rosarena, better hitter than Mach Henniger at present. Yay or nay? Yay. Yay. Why are you waiting? I'm wondering how... I thought there was a trick.

No, I wasn't tricking you. I'm so desperate to want to watch this stupid marriage. I have a very strong bit of affection for Luke Railey because he is a refrigerator who runs the base as well and I am delighted. But like Randy, better hitter than Mitch Haniger. Did you know that Jason Vossler is in the Mariners lineup right now? That seems, that seems bad. You know, like no offense to him.

As a manager? Right, like what is, you know, and so I'm not super high on some of their other outfield options. Like I think Jonathan Closet is just like, you know, he's like a reserve outfielder. Cade Marlowe, he's a reserve outfielder. So I think Randy's a big league starter. And at times a pretty good one. And I think go do it. It's fine. You know, go, go do that. I thought you were going to play that game with every hitter in the Mariners lineup, this guy or Randy Roserano. I'll just say blanket Randy Roserano.

Better than. I think probably the best active hitter Active, yeah. on the Mariners right now with Julio on the aisle. Yeah, I mean, I don't even necessarily think it's much of a question. Like maybe Cal Raleigh, I at least think about it, but. Right, yeah.

Wow. It's pretty grim and Randy's not that and he's gonna be around for a while. I at least think about it, but. Right. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. It's pretty grim and Randy's not that, and he's going to be around for a while. So I feel like this is the kind of trade that satisfies all of the urges that might be present in the Mariners front office as they look to acquire bats this deadline season, because they need a good bat. And Jerry is like, but how long is he around for? Like, is it a long time? Can I, can I talk about how long he's around for?

And you can, you can just do that with Randy. So I feel like this is, I'm going to be excited about it. I get how it could go badly. I get how it could be like kind of meh, but like we're not doing that right now. I'm not doing that. I'm doing this. This seems great. Like he's a very good hitter. He's been a very good hitter for

years and years and not like it costs nothing, but it feels like the Rays sold low, the Rays so that they probably have some plan what they're doing. But I don't know. There's a lot less inspiring corner outfield bats you could be trading for. And I think that like you put Brody Hopkins with the raise, like that's very exciting. You know, like the Mariners are good at pitching dev, so are the raise. So it's like Brody can kind of continue his journey. I know that he was beloved by many in the Mariners org and then like they'll see what

they can get at. I didn't spend, I think it's, I think it's great. And I got several messages last night from concerned friends being like Oh, it's so late. And actually I think that this happened at the perfect time of night because here the here's the bad Here's the bad time of night for for trades to come down It's 5 p.m Because if it comes down to 5 p.m And it's like of this size you're like I gotta I gotta bother somebody, you know

I got a bug someone to write about this If it comes in after midnight on the East Coast, it's like, this is a morning edit. Everyone knows that. It's fine. No one's expecting us to be up to four in the morning writing about Randy or Rosalina. And it's like, it's late but it's still early enough West Coast time that provided a West Coast writer is dealing with it, which Jake did. Thank you, Jake. They're going to bed late, but not like so late. It's not 4 a.m. So, you know, five is worse. After midnight on the East Coast, that's tomorrow Meg's problem. That's future Meg's issue to deal with. So this is, I do find it disrespectful that two franchises that employ former fan grass writers were like, let's do a late night trade, but it was late enough that it was okay.

So I forgive Jeff and Dave for this one. I don't know that they played much of a role, but here we are. Anytime after we've stopped recording is too late in my mind, but they are not done seemingly, maybe. I mean, you can never count Jerry out, but there was a report by John Marosi a few hours before we started recording. The Mariners are remaining active in trade talks today.

Even after the Randy Rose-Randith deal, they would like to add a leverage reliever and at least one more bat. Stay tuned. So that will inevitably come to fruition after we finished speaking today. And then I'll have to do another update. You will have to draft someone to write potentially. But yeah, it's good. I think for them, it's much needed.

I don't know if it's sufficient, but it was necessary. And gosh, they got Luke Railey from the Rays. Maybe they can just, are there any other Rays outfielders Jerry DePoto could acquire? But there is a perception that there's playoff Randy, right? Or WBC Randy, there's big moments, national or international stage Randy. And then there's streaky regular season Randy. And I guess that's not entirely unfair in the sense that yeah, he can be up and down and he's just been a fantastic postseason player.

I guess if you believe that that's a thing, then that's not so bad because he has a career 125 WRC plus in the regular season. So he's a solid hitter. And then if you think that he does have another gear, yeah, I guess it would be great if you could get him to just be in that gear all the time. But maybe that's not possible. Maybe he would burn out, the gears would break. But if you think that's a real thing, you're acquiring him if you're the Mariners and Jerry DiPoto because you hope that you will get to see playoff Randy at some point. Obviously you have to get there and that is far from a

guarantee for the Mariners. But if you think that that's something that he can just snap his fingers and become a superstar in October, then that would be real value if not quite the real value that he would provide if he could just do that all the time. KS I want to clarify, like I know that Randy has an approach at the plate. But this is kind of actually what I mean, which is that I've heard it theorized by a smart baseball person. I know that part of why a Rosarina has such a sterling postseason record is that some hitters feel like they have to sort of shift their approach when they come up against postseason competition in part because the

pitching tends to be better come October than what they are seeing every single day during the regular season, right? It's like the best guys. And I think that Rosarina is just unfazed by that because he's just like the same. He seems to be the same guy. So it's not that I think he is maybe demonstrably different. I mean, the results have been better, but that seems like small sample size stuff, but he just seems like a guy who's very comfortable in that setting, seems unfazed by the fact that it is a bigger and more prominent stage and is just like doing, doing Randy stuff. So I sounded rude at the beginning, but what I really am doing is paying him a compliment that he is just like himself and seems to do fine.

And it has so far been a bit above what he has managed in the regular season because of the vagaries of, you know, being however many blade appearances. But I think that there is something to the notion that there are hitters who seem to be unbothered by it being October. And he seems to be unbothered by that in a way that I think is good. You know, he's just like, I'm just going to go up there and do my thing. And like, here it is, my thing, my Randy thing. Well, we look forward to seeing what else Jerry has up his sleeve.

And I guess this answers the question of what are the Rays going to do? Which way are they going to go? Now we know. Yeah, it seems like that's the case. They were one of the teams we talked about last time in our bubble team conversation and could go either way and we kind of figured, yeah, the Rays, they will do the unsendmital thing because that's what they always do, right? They always kind of try to maximize the long-term value and I guess they

got good prospects here. You said we could talk about the prospects. You could probably talk about the prospects. I could not talk about the prospects intelligently. Okay. Would you like me to say something about those guys? Yeah, I guess briefly, maybe. Okay. So as I mentioned in here, you say I could say something about the prospects. I'm largely leaning on the work that Eric put into this, but Hopkins was, I think, the seventh best prospect in the Mariner system. When we recently did their org list, he was a 45 future value prospect. Hopkins is a right-handed pitcher for those unfamiliar. And Hopkins is like, I think a

pretty interesting and exciting prospect because he's a converted outfielder. He's still relatively new to pitching. He came from a smaller school and is already flashing a plus wipeout slider. He has mid-90s heat. There's more development to do here. Even though he's kind of old for single, I think it's balanced out by his background. I'm excited. I was excited for what he could be under the Mariners dev, which was like sort of a ceiling

of a mid-rotation guy and a floor of a two-pitch sort of high-leveraged reliever type. And I don't think that this is an organizational move that portends like a shift downward in our expectation of him. And then in terms of Smith, like he was a fourth rounder for Seattle last year, prep player who has the speed for center field, above average physical projection, really loose hitting hands but at the moment has a fair amount of length in his swing. Seattle helped him with this a little but it doesn't seem like he's able to kind of move the barrel around the way that you necessarily want to.

He's pulling the ball but he still doesn't have particularly good feel for contact. So I think Eric had him evaluated as like an athletic reserve outfielder type because his hit tool isn't likely to be average and the game power is going to play down because of that. But interesting guy for Tampa to try to develop and help improve the hit tool and you know, the centerfield piece of it gives him something of a floor. So we'll see what they can get there. And you can find all of the prospects who move at the deadline on the board. Eric has done a put a fresh

coat of paint on the top 100. He put the draftees on there. He pulled the graduates off. You can go to the 2024 updated report on the board and see where all of these guys sit. And for instance, these gentlemen are now on the list of the Tampa Bay Rays, just like the guys who moved for AJ Puck are on the Marlins list. So as you're navigating this deadline time and trying to figure it out. That's where you want to go. Okay. Segue, let's talk about Puck. So last year, the Diamondbacks made a trade with the Mariners to upgrade their bullpen with Paul Seewald.

And now they have done so with AJ Puck of the Marlins for two prospects, Davidson De Los Santos and Andrew Pintar, which when I read that at first, I thought was Andrew Painter. And it's not, it's Andrew Pintar, which when I read that at first, I thought was Andrew Painter. LS. No, Pintar. CB. It's not. It's Andrew Pintar. Different guy, maybe not as famous. But Puck, I am almost reassured by Puck's season because in a year when all of the guys who've converted from Reliefing to starting have become aces and I've had to question

everything. Puck is the one guy who did not, or the guy who most prominently did not, and really fell flat on his face as a starter and didn't last long, but his splits are so extreme as to be amusing, probably not amusing to him, but he as a starter this year 13 and two thirds innings pitch. He had a 9.22 ERA in the bullpen, 2.08. The weighted on base allowed 439 as a starter, 203 as a reliever. The strikeout rate, 15.6 as a starter, 28.9 as a reliever. The walk rate, 22.1 as a starter, 5.3 as a reliever.

So if you're doing the math, the K minus BB, the strikeout minus walk rate there as a starter was negative 6.5% which is that bad? Yeah. Directionally, that is the wrong direction. 23.7 as a reliever. The FIPS 6.29 as a starter, 2.42 as a reliever. So it's like somewhere between, I don't know, two to three to infinite times better as a reliever. So he's like somewhere between, I don't know, two to three to infinite

times better as a reliever than as a starter. And maybe that doesn't reflect his true talent as a starter. Perhaps he would have been better if he had been allowed to remain in that role. It would have been hard to continue to be that bad. But in the season of Garrett Crochet and Reynaldo Lopez and all the guys that we have returned to over and over again and have kind of wondered, how is he doing that? Is this really gonna work? I guess so, Jordan Hicks, right? Puck was the exception.

And so he is back in his natural habitat now as a late inning reliever. And that seems to suit him quite well. Yeah, it's interesting to me that he was the first reliever the Marlins traded because they're just going to be, I would assume, trading a lot of relievers in the coming four days. They have like the most attractive stable of relievers. I kind of thought that they would maybe have like an endowment effect problem where they thought he could maybe still start and would hold on to him because they deemed the offers too low for a starting potential guy. But I guess not. And to be fair, the Diamondbacks did offer them a lucrative return for a reliever,

which I think made it more reasonable for the Marlins to say, okay, fine, you must really want this guy specifically. Let's trade them to you. Jared Ranere Well, that was the one that lit the grill, the hot grill season that was like proof of a pulse that teams actually did remember that the trade deadline is coming up in a few days here and that they were actually going to make some moves. coming up in a few days here and that they were actually going to make some moves. So yes, it will not be the last Marlins move, I'm sure, but the Diamondbacks were another team that we talked about which way are they going to go. And obviously we were pretty confident that they were going to go this way. And they did.

And this will help. Yeah. I mean, I don't think it helps all the way, but I do think that they're smart to often trade for relievers at the deadline. They've needed a lot of relief help in recent years. So maybe you're just supposed to be doing both. I suppose they are, but yeah, I don't think they're done. I think they could use more help just kind of across the board, but this is a good start. You can't get done without starting.

Or relieving in Puck's case. And another trade that is not particularly surprising, the Dodgers traded James Paxton to the Red Sox. This is one that I think we may have teased the possibility of last time. It seemed like this was kind of a match given that Paxton was recently a Red Sox. And if you're not going to go bring back Rich Hill, then you might as well bring back, I think I called Paxton Rich Hill light and yeah, the Dodgers DFA Paxton, but he'd been good enough this year that you got the sense that someone was probably going to want him and give up something in this case, a player minor league, low minor league infielder named Moises Bolivar.

So Red Sox really needed pitching help and, and perhaps still do because think about the Red Sox is their rotation has been their strength and the surprising strength this year. And when I was looking up the stats a day or go, cause I was going on a Red Sox podcast, they were fourth in fan crafts were on the season, but over the previous month, they were like 25th and over the past two weeks, they were, I think 29th.

So the wheels had kind of come off and maybe that was less surprising than how good they'd been at the start of the season. Even though that was backed up by changes that Breslow and Bailey and co made and, you know, junking fastballs that weren't so great and throwing sweepers and all sorts of other off-speed pitches. And it was working well, but it was working with, I guess, a bunch of guys who in the past had been relievers

returning to that refrain. For the first half or so of the season, Tanner Hauck looked like the AL Cy Young favorite, and then things looked shakier. So I guess that is what will happen potentially when you have guys like Hauk who are already past their single season innings high and other guys in that rotation who just haven't really had this workload before. You just kind of have to worry about if not the talent and the stuff, then certainly whether they are running out of gas. So I don't know if James Paxton is the guy you want to count on to like bolster a flagging staff.

But then again, that's what I said at the start of the season about James Paxton. And I doubted his ability to remain intact and pitching. And he has done that much thus far. **Jay Schieffert** I like the idea of him as just kind of like an all-time quarterback, except for in baseball, he just kind of wanders around between teams, throwing innings for everybody. He's not really on any of these teams particularly for them that he's a long-term member. He's just like, oh, you guys need five innings this week. Yeah, I'll do it. Yeah.

He's the Ryan Fitzpatrick of baseball. Now he needs to grow a big beard. You know, we got to bring it full circle there. And we also had another AL East and NL East move. So this is one that I guess falls into the category that we heard we were going to see more of this deadline because there just don't seem to be that many sellers. The buyers outnumber the sellers. And so there was some speculation that we would see trades between contenders. One contender trading away from a strength and shoring up another team's weakness and vice versa. So the Phillies and the Orioles have made a move here. The Orioles have traded outfielder Austin Hayes to the Phillies for Sir Anthony Dominguez

and Christian Pache. So what do you make of this one? Nicole Soule I love a challenge trade. I love a, we have a lot of this kind of guy and so we can strategically deploy some of those kinds of guys to shore up areas of weakness or at least relative weakness. It's hard to call the best team in baseball by record, like a team that has a lot of weaknesses in the Phillies. But I think that they definitely needed outfield reinforcement. Rojas is great as a defensive center fielder, but they need a bat that can shore up that spot and marsh.

And obviously Whitmerefield didn't work out. Ben, do you feel really smart about not having Whitmirefield on your top 50 free agent list in the off season? Yeah, pretty much. I was a little bit surprised that people thought this was going to be a great fit. So I think Philly gets what they need. As Bauman noted in his write-up of the transaction, which just went live a couple of minutes ago at Fingertracks, this doesn't preclude them making a bigger move if they really want to

go get like Luis Robert Jr. And then like they have a tremendous bullpen and Sir Anthony Dominguez has sort of fallen down the the preff list there in terms of the leverage innings he was pitching and I think is a good reinforcement for Baltimore's bullpen, which has been good in the aggregate, but doesn't have like real, real standouts at the top. Famously, Craig Kimbrel pitches for them and it's going like, okay, but isn't amazing. And I think Philly fans are sympathetic to the notion that he might not be the guy you want like taking big innings in the postseason. So who could have foreseen that?

Yeah. I mean, Craig Kimbrel up and down gives fans heartburn. Never. Yeah. I mean. Craig Kimbrel up and down gives fans heartburn. Never. Yeah. I appreciate the existence of Craig Kimbrel at this stage in his career because he reminds me all the time of that Alec Thomas home run in the postseason, which remains hard to believe as a thing that happened for the Diamondbacks last year.

And then Pache is, at this point probably we can close the door on him being a guy who's ever going to really learn how to hit and he's still a defensive standout. I don't know if he will actually linger on Baltimore's roster all that long, but as a guy who was likely to get cut from the Phillies, kind of given Baltimore a throw in and write a first refusal on him, I think it has appeal. They could use some defensive reinforcement in center. Mullins isn't what he used to be. So I like it. CB 05.30 Carrying Rojas and Pache seems sort of redundant. Pache is kind of like, we have Rojas at home. They have identical 60 OPS pluses.

LS FLEMING Really? That's great. CB 05.30 I have a question for you guys. Do you think Hayes will basically push Brandon Marsh into a platoon role? Or do you think he'll platoon with Marsh or do you think he'll be a near everyday starter and have Marsh more of a platoon with Rojas? I think that's a great question. I think that Marsh is fine in center, but he's obviously a downgrade from what they have. And so I imagine that he will end up platooning with Hayes a good bit. And that there might be times where they're on the field at the same time where you like sit Rojas and kind of give him a rest. But I suspect that he'll be a platoon partner for Marsh.

Yeah. I mean, that would suggest that they're still in the market for a center fielder because Rojas is really like, look, he's a good defender, but he cannot hit. No, he cannot hit. I'm inclined to keep starting him given the alternatives because we have seen what like bad center field defense on the Phillies looks like and it makes you very stressed. And I am center field defense built, but I think that they would appreciate an upgrade there. And this doesn't preclude them from doing that.

I wonder if this will be the last move the Orioles make like this, where they trade with some other contender, because they have this generation of guys who are not old, right? They're just older than the young guys who came along. And so you have your Hayes's and your Mullens's and your Santander's and Santander's been really good, but there's just this kind of previous veteran class of Orioles who are blocking the younger guys in some cases. And it's not that they've been bad or unplayable or anything, but it's just, will they move more of those guys to make way for the younger guys who in some cases are still waiting in the wings here?

And the Orioles have the luxury of maybe dealing from that depth because at almost every position, there's some younger guy who's coming along and is maybe just as good as the old guard, if not already better. So they could do this again, potentially. All right. Well, some stirrings, some activity. Maybe there will be more by the time this podcast is posted. Nothing that happened here changed my fundamental understanding of the deadline or made me think, oh, actually, this is going to be a lot busier than we thought. These are mostly minor moves of guys who were known to be probably available,

but still nice to see it happening. And the extreme procrastinators who run front offices, not waiting for the very last minute, just a few days before the last minute. So that's something. Spread out the moves. Give us something to talk about on more than one podcast. We appreciate it. Yup. All right.

We will transition, I guess, to Ben's Trade Value series. I do have a quick stat blast to get us there. I wrote an article about the White Sox and their unusual situation here. We're polite. A terrible team and yet a terrible team that has players who are very much in demand, which is an odd situation because you would expect that a team as hapless as the White Sox have been this year wouldn't really have much that other teams were interested in. And you would think that especially given that the White Sox were one of the most active sellers at last year's trade deadline, only the Mets really were more

active. And then over the off season, the White Sox continued to trade away guys. And so you wouldn't think that they would still have enough talent remaining, especially given their record, which is historically terrible, that all the other teams would be perking up and talking to Chris Getz about their guys. And yet they are. So we're all sort of waiting to see and teams are waiting to see will they actually trade Garrett Crochet? Will they trade Louise Robert? Will they trade Eric Fetty, who maybe seems like the most likely of those guys to go. And we can talk about the crochet situation in a second on the other side of this staff last,

I suppose. Yeah. But I got some help from semi-frequent staff last consultant, Kenny Jacqueline of baseball reference to look for the most production. I guess you could say talent, but at least production moved at a deadline. So the most year to date war traded by teams period. And then I drilled down to look at bad teams period to see what sort of precedent there might be for the White Sox dominating the deadline the way that they at least have the potential to hear. So I went back and Kenny went back to 1921, which was the first year that there was a unified deadline across both the American

league and the national league. Was there a real hot stove season then? Not particularly, no. We're switching to hot grill season when we're talking about, but I don't know if they had hot grills in 1921, maybe. I mean, they certainly knew how to cook things. It was not that long ago. They had fire. They had fire. Yes. Prometheus had paid a visit by that point. So the most active deadlines in terms of most year to date war shipped out, they tend to be from fairly recent years because from 1923 through 1985 the deadline was June 15th and that meant that there had been just a little more than

half as many games typically as we have now before the deadline. So there just wasn't as much time to accrue year to date war before the deadline. But the most war shipped out, and this was baseball reference war because we are dealing with a baseball reference stat blast consultant here. We looked at the two weeks before the deadline, which was semi arbitrary,

but felt like deadline two weeks. And we use the exact dates, which have fluctuated a bit from year to year. The most year to date war ever traded the 2021 nationals, 14.1 combined war. That was the year that they traded Trey Turner, Max Scherzer, Josh Harrison, Jan Gomes, Kyle Schwerber, Daniel Hudson, Brad Hand,

and John Lester, who was actually sub replacement level. So he subtracted from their total, but that was, that was a lot of guys. That was a busy deadline and not the only busy deadline, I guess, that the nationalists have had in the wake of their world series win. It's been a strange past several seasons after winning a championship for them. That was number one. Number two was actually the same year

and it was the Cubs divesting themselves of the last of their dynasty, the dregs of the dynasty. So they shipped out 11.2 year to date war in the persons of Javier Baez, Craig Kimbrel. There's that man again. Chris Bryant, Andrew Chaffin, Anthony Rizzo, Ryan Topera, Jake Marisnik, Trevor Williams, and Jack Peterson. By the way, when Craig Kimbrel's Hall of Fame case

comes up, as it will, do you think that people who watched him, will that be a case where it's like, we'll be there like the crusty old timers being like, you had to see him play, you know, you can't see the numbers, don't tell the story. Wait, like which direction? But yeah, I was going to say in a keep them out kind of way or throw them in kind of way?

In a keep them out kind of way. Although I guess you maybe have to distinguish between like peak Atlanta Kimbrough and this like latter phase of his career where the numbers are sometimes solids, but like it just, he never gives you any confidence. There's also like watching as a fan of his team versus as a detached observer. As a fan of his team, there may be no worse experience. Exactly. It's the bird stance. It just, people get so upset when they see him like leaning in that way and then giving As a fan of his team, there may be no worse experience. Yeah. Exactly.

It's the bird stance. People get so upset when they see him leaning in that way and then giving up a home run that it really overrides everything. That's why I'm thinking even though the numbers and the save total will be very impressive, if you watch Craig Kimbrell and he was on your team, it didn't really give you a hall of fame feeling for a good portion of his career. It gave you more of a, how is he going to blow it feeling, which is not unique to Craig Kimbrel. There are a lot of good closers. You could maybe put Kenley Jensen in that category,

though I think he was for a longer period, closer to automatic and extremely consistent and kind of Rivera-esque. But there are a lot of closers who are known for kind of, it's a tightrope act, right? And you know, that's the case with a lot of guys who ultimately are very good and effective and usually lock it down, even if they make you sweat a little bit. But yeah, Kimbrough might be a case of like, I don't know if that felt like a hall of famer in the moment, at least, you know, post-prime Kimbrough, where he kept hanging around for years and kept getting late ending leverage opportunities. Okay, the 2009 not yet guardians,

they shipped out 9.7 year to date war, Cliff Lee, Victor Martinez, who came up on our last episode, Ryan Garco, Ben Francisco, and Rafael Bettencourt. Also with 9.7, the 2000 Orioles, Charles Johnson, Mike Bordick, BJ Sirhoff, Will Clark, Harold Baines, Hall of Famer, who may not have felt like a Hall of Famer to everyone at all times, Mike Timlin and Gabe Molina. Not the Molinas you might know better. And then I guess the 2015 Tigers, 8.8, that was Ioannis Sespidis, David Price, and Joachim Soria. And also I mentioned last year's Mets, we're quite busy,

8.8 war for them as well. Verlander, Scherzer, the ageless David Robertson, Tommy Pham, Mark Kanna and Dominic Leone and the 2018 Orioles who I'll mention because they will be relevant to the terrible teams at the deadline. They traded 8.6 wars worth of production. Manny Machado, Jonathan Scope. That was great. Kevin Gossman, Zach Britton, Darren O'Day and Brad Brock. Was that like five war for Machado and then like a 10-year war per person for the rest?

It's actually, it was 3.6 for Machado and Jonathan Scope surprisingly had 2.4. Got it. Yeah. And Kevin Gossman had a couple too. And then the only other team over eight, the 2003 Reds, Jose Guillen, Aaron Boone, and Scott Williamson. And I will link to the full list. It's pretty much every team.

And I have a table in my article that goes a little deeper, but you can scroll to your heart's content. Now, if you look for the biggest bad deadline dealers, so bad teams that still manage to trade a lot of war, it's a much shorter list because it is hard to be really bad and still have a lot of talent to trade. Usually like the White Sox, you have already done a lot of your selling

and subtracting by that point, or you just don't really have any good players anyone would want. So I looked at teams with a 350 winning percentage or below on deadline day at the start of the day of the deadline. And 350, that is a lot better than the white socks have been to this point, but I had to set the cutoff somewhere because if I said it at where the White Sox have been, there wouldn't really have been any teams. It would have been a very small simple. That's how bad they've been.

So at the top of the list, it is those 2018 Orioles who were 32 and 74 at that point, a 302 winning percentage. And I guess you could say if you're a White Sox fan, condolences, but you could look at that 2018 Orioles team and say, okay, maybe that's precedent. Like they were bad, they got worse. They took away some players who made that team somewhat watchable and a guy like Manny Machado,

who is homegrown and everyone loved him. And they tore off that bandaid and then they were truly awful for the next few years. And then they built up, I guess, the best farm system since, well, the White Sox probably, who had a really good farm system themselves in the late 2010s that paid off for a couple years in good teams. And then that didn't last at all, but that would be a precedent, I guess, of doing the thing that makes them truly unwatchable for a while, but ultimately pays dividends down the road, at least collectively, though, maybe not so much from, from that deal, I guess, or those deals.

Then the 2022 Nationals, I mentioned there were going to be multiple Nationals, I mentioned there were going to be multiple Nationals teams here. So they were 35 and 69, 337 winning percentage and they shipped out 6.6 year to date war, mostly in the person of one Soto. Actually it was a lot of Josh Bell. Yeah. Yeah.

To that point too. And Ahire Adriaanza, who actually was negative to that point. And then the 2011 Astros, who I guess are kind of in that 2018 Orioles camp of embarking on the tank or doubling down on the tank. They traded six wars worth of your today production, Hunter Pence, Michael Bourne, and Jeff Keppinger. And yeah, those are the only three really that, that had nearly that much to trade. After that, you have to go down to the 2013 Astros still getting worse at three year to

date war. So half of the 2011 Astros tally. So they were trading Bud Norris at that point, who is not a particularly happy Astro as I recall and Jose Veras and Justin Maxwell, but yeah, it's all three war and below so if the White Sox were to trade their big three of crochet Fetty and Robert those guys have totaled ten baseball reference war to date so if they dealt those guys forget about Kopec and Brebia and Banks and Vaughn and DeYoung, some of those guys would probably subtract from their total too. But forget about the marginal guys. If they just traded those big three, which probably

won't happen, but is conceivable, they would right there be the third biggest seller of all time without any minimums or anything and the top terrible team to trade at the deadline. So history is within their grasp. They could be the biggest, the most prolific trade deadline, terrible team. So I guess that's something maybe, but yeah. The White Sox threw 105 games, which is where they are as we speak, because they've lost 11 in a row, which is their second double digit game

losing streak of the season. Yeah, it's bad. They lost 14 in a row of the season. Yeah, it's, it's bad. They lost 14 in a row earlier this season. So they're the seventh team in the 30 team era to have two streaks of 11 or more losses in the same season. We'll see if they can add to that current streak, but they're 27 and 78 and they are along with the 62 Mets, whom they are chasing or trying to run away from, I guess.

Right now they're on pace for 120 losses, which would tie the modern era record of the 62 Mets for the most losses in a single season. And the 62 Mets are the only team that has played since the start of World War II to have started a season this badly. So yeah, they've been really bad. Like in their defense, I guess someone has to defend them briefly. They're eight and 22 in one run games and they've played a tough schedule.

Although I don't know how much of that is the fact that they've just made their schedule look tough. Yeah, exactly. Their base runs record says they should have won eight more games than they have, which, you know, if they had, they would still be really bad, but they wouldn't be on pace to lose the most games ever. So I guess you could say the underlying talent is better than they've been. And for what it's worth, when I looked this morning, Fangrass projected a 417

rest of season winning percentage for them the rest of the way, which would result in a 51 and one and 11 record on the season, still taking the under on the projections there, if only because the projections don't account for the fact that they may very well trade all or some of the three players on their roster who are individually projected to amass more than half a win of value over the rest of the season. So the downgrade from all or some to three is just, yeah, to put it in perspective, again, this is baseball reference war. So those three,

I said have produced 10 war thus far. The entire White Sox team, including those three, Crochet, Robert and Fetty have collectively. Eight war. Accumulated 4.2. That was too high. 10 war for those three, 4.2 for the entire team, including those three. So you can do the arithmetic if you want to know what that means

for the production of the rest of the roster. It's not good. Eric Fetty is having a Steve Carlton season here. He's seven and three. Yeah. That's outrageous. I know, yeah. It's a significantly winning record

on the worst team of all time. And it's a tough call. Do you want to trade the only remaining good players that you have? I mean, I know they called up Thorpe and in Canon, and so they have a couple promising rookies up there, but do you want to trade the only guys who, who make this tolerable to hopefully hasten the rebuild or do you want to hang on to them to give your fans someone and something to watch and also maybe decrease the likelihood of being the worst team of all time, which,

you know, seems like it might be worth something, I guess, just not to embarrass yourself. I don't think this speaks well to the White Sox, but when you were like teams that were bad, that still had good players to trade, I was like, oh, like the White Sox from 2016. Like, that still had good players to trade. I was like, oh, like the White Sox from 2016. That's true. Yeah. That's where my head goes was like the Chris Sale, Adam Eaton, like that group. Yeah. There were a lot of White Sox representatives on my spreadsheet and my table that the white flag trade in 97. That's not what this would be. They waved the white flag before the season

started. Their playoff odds flatlined. I found on April 7th. That was when Fangrass pronounced them. Wow, it took us like what, nine more days than it should have? Maybe, yeah. Well, we don't like to go in with all that many teams at actually zero. It feels rude when we get bad emails about it. So Garret Crochet, the odds of him being traded seem lower now for multiple reasons, one being that there were already some concerns about how he'd hold up over the rest of the season because he missed all of 2022 with Tommy

John and then most of 2023 with shoulder injuries. And he just has not been in this role for full season before. So he is way past his single season innings high. And so you might've been concerned about, well, will he hold up or will he get gasped on the stretch? And now there is reporting seemingly straight from his representatives that he wants to remain a starter, which fair, I guess I would too. It's going well, yeah. Yeah. And not just because he's done well, but also because seemingly he feels like that has helped him stay healthy, which is kind of interesting, right? Because usually you think of

pitching and relief as maybe easier on the arm just because the workload is lower, but you never know, right? Relievers get hurt all the time too, and maybe he's not great at getting up and down and he likes the predictability and having a routine and everything. So hard to say, which is actually more stressful, but he has apparently, I don't know whether you could call it a, an ultimatum or a request or a demand or what, but it seems like he has expressed a desire for an extension before he commits to pitching in the postseason. So if you want him to pitch in October, then you, you gotta show him the money. You gotta extend him.

And I don't know if that is just posturing or a bluff, because really, what is his recourse, I guess? If he were acquired by a contender, could he just not pitch? Isn't that kind of a ticket to the restricted list or something? If you just say, if you do a Bartleby the Scrivener and say, I prefer not. LS. He can pull a Mean Girls and go, I'm sick. CB. You could do that.

BG. I mean, they say pictures are always hurt some. LS. Yes. You could convince me that Garrett Crochet had some sort of injury, I would believe that with precedent. But I wonder, because he's under control for a couple more seasons, and how would that play like in the clubhouse? You know, like if, if some team called him on that and was just like, yeah, we're going to go get you. And if you actually want to essentially do a Derrick Bell operation shutdown when October

rolls around, like how is that going to affect how your teammates see you, how the fans see you? Like if you want to play hardball there, I'm sure that teams wouldn't want it to get to that point. Like you might just want to give him an extension because you want to keep your crochet. Like you might want to sign him to an extension. But I don't know.

For a non-impending free agent to make that kind of condition is unusual. I feel like it has a lot to do with how much of a high he's going to set his career in his pitched total by. I can understand that you might feel if you were crochet that, I don't know, pitching the highest leverage innings at the end of the year, after you've already set a massive career high, you know your adrenaline's going to be high,

you're clearly going to be, you know, a hundred percent in those games. And the team does not really have long-term commitment to you. I understand why he's doing it. Yeah, I can't remember anyone doing something like this, but he's a pretty unique case in that he might be one of the best pitchers in baseball, but he really should be on innings limit.

Yeah. Yeah. And yet if he's innings limited, then no one will want him right now. I mean, over the off season, sure. But, and so yeah, if teams balk at this demand or this position, or they just feel like he'll break down or he'll get fatigued regardless, then there might not be as much of a market as you would think there would be, and maybe the white socks say, we'll wait for the off season and we'll try again then.

I'm off two minds about this because on the one hand, I think that signing Garrett Crochet to an extension or you keep a guy who has demonstrated that he's very good at pitching and has managed to do that despite being in an organization that isn't like especially strong from a player dev perspective. It shifts the market, but I don't know that it necessarily forecloses it because like, I'm just going to pick a team that doesn't seem to be worried about money at all. Like if you're the Dodgers, are you bothered by this? No, you just get to have more Garrett crochet.

That sounds good. Garrett crochet is great. You know, like you just say like, Hey, it just get to have more Garrett crochet. That sounds good. Garrett crochet is great. You know, like you just say like, hey, it's a, it's Garrett crochet. Let's be in the Garrett crochet biz. Just assuming that they want to acquire all the good players because that seems to be their MO lately and not caring about money also seems to be their MO. But I also think that there are definitely teams and executives who work for teams who look at stuff like this and find it like, I'm not saying I find it distasteful. I think it's rad. But like if I'm a GM, I might look at someone being like, I'm just not going to pitch at the most important time of year and find that like fundamentally disqualifying because you're

annoyed that you can't get the guy for the time of year that you're acquiring him for most likely. And you're also annoyed that like, how dare he, you know, try to exert any power over his career before he hits free agency. I think from his perspective, like what's the worst that's going to happen? They're not going to move him now, but they're probably still like to your point motivated to move him in the off season. And you know, Josh Hader was like, I'm not going to move him now, but they're probably still, to your point, motivated to move him in the off season. Josh Hader was like, I'm not going to throw anymore. He signed a big fat contract with the Astros. He's represented, by the way, by the same agency that represents Hader.

I hope he went to the White Sox with a straight face and was like, look, here's the deal, guys. I'm not going to pitch for you in the playoffs unless you give me a contract. Yeah. Has him where he wants him. Yeah. I thought a hater too. This is like the next level where haters like I'm pitching the ninth and that's it. And Krish is like, I'm not pitching at all if I don't get what I want. Yeah. I mean, worth a shot, I guess. And if a push came to shove, maybe he would actually pitch. If some team actually pushed him on this, it would be difficult politically. It would be kind of uncomfortable, but if he wanted to try it and do some brinksmanship, then you never know. Maybe it would pay off. But I'm sure any team that acquired him would probably not want it to get to the point

of like, you know, it's late September. Do we know where our starter is? Like, will we have Garrett Crochet or not? They would probably be want to resolve that situation. Ideally when you trade for him, but certainly far before the playoffs. So yeah, it was surprising, I guess. Yeah And, you know, I had this in my article too, the whole dynamic behind this deadline that entering Friday's game, so four days before the deadline, there were only seven teams that were six or more games out of the closest playoff spot. And if you compare that to the past two years with the 12-team playoff format, it was 12 teams four days before the 2022 deadline and 10 teams four days before the 2023 deadline. And six games is kind of arbitrary. The Rays were within that and they

already traded a Roserena and the Cubs are within that and they've already indicated that they're more of a seller and then the Tigers are within that barely and they've been dangling their top pitchers. But that does just kind of go to show that there's just an imbalance between the buyers and the sellers here. And you'd think that if you're the White Sox, like, yeah, you could wait for the off season and there will still be interest in those guys, but will there be more interest than there is right now when you have so many teams that are in it and you kind of have a feeding frenzy and the demand outstrips the supply.

Like it certainly seems like it should be a seller's market on the surface. So we'll see how that actually plays out. And if the White Sox activity at the deadline will be unprecedented. Did just want to ask you about two guys, two short stops who figure on your trade value top 50 here. We got an email from listener, Jeff H, a Mets fan in DC, who wrote in to say, you know, we talked about the NL MVP race recently.

And we mentioned that Otani certainly seemed like the leader, but there was Ellie and there was Ketel Marte. And there was some other guys who were within striking distance. I don't think we mentioned Francisco Lindor the last time we brought this up, but we should. So Jeff says, should we start having the conversation of Francisco Lindor for NL MVP this year?

Yes, we should. If you take your to date Fangrass War plus rest of season projection, Lindor jumps ahead of Otani and Ellie to lead the National League. He's playing in the world's biggest media market and somehow didn't make the All-Star game despite how much he's been producing since mid-May. I know you talked on the pod about how much of his value is tied to defense and his mid-250s

batting average doesn't jump off the page. However, we're talking about a guy who's on pace for consecutive 30-30 seasons in the prime of his career. In my mind, it truly is the curious case of Francisco Lindor being in his fourth season with the Mets and being so underrated from a national spotlight perspective. It does not seem he's in the same tier as judge or Soto across town or even Alonso, his own teammate. We've talked about this multiple times, right? Like where is the spotlight on Lindor? It's so strange. It felt like he was more prominent when he was with Cleveland. He was more like face of baseball kind of conversation. And then he went to the Mets and I thought, oh, he's just going to own this town and he's going

to be a super duper star. And then because he started slow that one time or maybe multiple times relatively speaking, and thus hasn't been an all-star and because a lot of his value is tied up in defense, like he's just totally gone underrated and under the radar. And it seems like maybe some Mets fans formed an impression of him early on that he hasn't corrected, at least until very recently. Like he is still absolutely in the prime of a Hall of Fame caliber career. It's just, it's, you know, and we could play the game that we played with Randy Rosarena, where we just pretended that the season started in May.

And if you do that with Francisco Lindoor, then he looks really fantastic too, right? Like, I mean, let's see, he has a 154 WRC plus since May. And if we sort by war, he is behind judge Bobby Witt Jr. The other shortstop I'm about to mention, Juan Soto, and that's it. So he's number one in the national league in fan grass war since May 1st. And he's just, you know, totally turned it on lately. And we're talking about judge and Soto and for good reason, they're the only ones who are propping up the Yankees at all, who've been like almost as bad as

the White Sox over the past month. But meanwhile, the Mets have been going in completely the other direction to the point that they've swept the Yankees in the subway series, right? Like they've been the best even baseball over that period. And a large part of that is because they've been powered by Lindor. So yeah, if he keeps this up, then he could absolutely challenge Otani and Co for that race. I mean, he's like half a win, fan graphs war wise, behind Otani now and a tenth of a win behind Ellie.

He's right there. Yeah, I looked really quickly and he's been about as good of a hitter as Alonzo over the last three years. Yes. And he's, you know, I don't know what, 80 runs better on defense maybe. It's pretty wild. He is very good.

I think he is very underrated. It's just so weird. It's so weird. I, it's, it's. He has gotten better since leaving Cleveland, I think, which like, I think his first season. Just makes it weirder. But his first season in New York was bad.

Yeah, that was it. It was 2021, just being like a league average hitter. And his last season in New York was bad. Yeah, that was it. It was 2021, just being like a league average hitter. And his last season in Cleveland was, yeah. Yeah, well that was 2020, right? But still, yeah. Didn't feel great. He felt like he was on a downward trend, right? Like 2019 had been his worst full season.

Yeah, well, maybe not because of defense, but his worst offensive full season. And then he was worse in 2021. But yeah, it's wild. It's confounding. It is one of the great mysteries of baseball. I do not, I, Mets fans, what happened to you guys? What, you let this happen.

It's fun too. I'm convinced of it. He's so funny, he has an incredible smile. He's like a dynamic, charismatic guy. I don't, I don't understand this. It is, it's so wild. It remains a tremendous mystery to me. And I get it.

Like the defense thing in the whatever. He has a 135 WRC plus. What are we doing? Why was he not an all star? Was it really that they had to make this deal with Alonso? Is that really what, I don't, I don't get it. I guess maybe it's because that 2021 season just kind of colored the perception

because the Mets won 77 games that year, right? There was a high hopes, we got Lindor now and then he arrives and he's just kind of a league average hitter and the Mets were disappointing on the whole. And then you'd think, yeah, but the next season he bounces back and he's good again and the Mets win 101 games. But I guess by that point he was already sort of

saddled with the big contracts, big city, you know, it's New York kind of thing. So it's just a first impression, right? You don't get a second chance at a first impression, but he's doing his best to like make a, a second impression here or a fourth impression that is, is really good because the thing you could hold against him, maybe his Mets tenure to this point was that his offensive peak had come in Cleveland, like his, his best offensive season was still had come in Cleveland. Like his, his best offensive season was still

with Cleveland in 2018. But now, he has, he has surpassed it. Yeah. Yeah. And it might not show that because, you know, weaker offensive environment and, and pictures park, et cetera, but WRC plus wise is now above where he was in that career year of 2018. So I think people are kind of coming around because he's just been so good lately. Well, he's just hit a lot of home runs like that. That makes it hard. It's hard to ignore that. He hit 20 home runs in 2021. Yeah, but he has more than that and it's still July. So I understand, but this is, this is my thing. It's like I don't understand. It's so confusing to me. I know that things haven't gone the way that they wanted just on a franchise level since

he's been there. I know they haven't won a world series. They haven't had like the deep dominant postseason run that they were expecting. Whatever. What are you all doing? Are you in sore souls by Jeff McNeil? Like, what is happening? Yes, they are.

I used to live in Queens. There are reasonable people there. What is going on? Get over yourselves. My God. I have to tell you, people I talked to on the team side were like, I don't know if Lindor belongs in this Bryce Harper, Corey Seeger tier. It's like, come on.

I'm furious. What a delight. What a joy. What a privilege that we've all been able to watch this guy's career unfold. He's still on, he's in his age 30 season. He's 30. Yeah, you started yourself. 50 were already. I'm so mad. I didn't enter this episode mad, but now I'm all worked up. We should have put him number one, Ben, just to make a point. I mean, that would have been

unhinged, but- I'm sure there are a lot of Mets fans listening who are like, it's not me, it's not my fault, it's my fellow fans. You're painting with a broad brush here. I know it's not you. It's not the Effectively Wild listeners, it's everyone else. It's everyone else. You Effectively Wild listeners listening to this and going, we know Meg, like you deserve a winning Jets team, but no one else does. This is divine retribution. Was that a Freudian slip there? No.

No, there's a lot of Mets Jets overlap, unfortunately, for those fans. I have a working theory, Clemens, that this isn't just about like Mets or Yankees fans, but basically like, I've said this on the pod before, I think that if New Yorkers took that John Updike quote a little less seriously, that God would let the Jets be good again, but they can't. There's a self-seriousness that means that they have to be brought low in some way, and I think it's mostly the Jets. And so to the extent that there is overlap in the Jets Mets fan community,

like this is part of your embrace this delightful, good baseball player who is charming and wonderful to watch. What are we doing? Yeah. And I think if, if the Mets overcome their slow start, maybe it's like as Lindor goes, so go the Mets, so they looked like they would be sellers and then suddenly they've been the best team in baseball in a while powered by Lindor, then, you know, if they sail all the way cruise October, and it's largely on the back

of Francisco Lindor, then maybe he will get his due. He does career-wise historically have an OPS more than 50 points higher after the break than before, and that's been pronounced in some recent seasons, which has something to do with why he hasn't been an All-Star. But I wonder whether that does, if you are sort of a perennial slow starter, whether that affects perception. I think so. Coolio. You'd probably, if you had to choose between the two, you'd probably rather be a fast starter than

a slow starter. You'd rather be a fast starter and slow finisher because your stats, it affects your stats. If you start slow, if you're a Rosarain or a Lindor this season, you're constantly, it's an uphill battle all the way, right? Yeah. And even if your stats end up in the same place, the entire journey to that ending point, they will look less impressive.

Yeah, we all look at stats throughout the year. So like integral of how good you were over the year. Yeah, exactly. Okay. And then Bobby Witt Jr., who, I mean, if Lindor is hot, then Witt is just incandescent. I don't know if Lindor is red hot, Witt's white hot. Witt is now leading the majors in FanCrafts War. So for all we've raved about Soto and Judge. And when we talked

about like, will someone other than Judge win AL MVP? We talked about Gunnar Henderson, who is, you know, right there too. And Ben, you debated between Henderson and Witt for number one on the trade value rankings. And you can't go wrong with either, but Wit has been so good lately that he has now vaulted to the top of the leaderboard and potentially put himself in MVP consideration. And he's been so good that he has now made people suspect that he is cheating. So I just have to say we've, we've gotten multiple emails over the past few days that I think at least a couple of them were prompted by the same tweet, which just showed the home away splits for Bobby Witt Jr. this season

with the caption, I totally believe that nothing illegal is going on at Kaufman Stadium. So we had multiple people write in to say, is this suspicious? Is this weird? What is going on with the Royals writ large, but also wit as a microcosm of the Royals? Because yeah, the Royals do have pretty extreme splits this season and wits have been extremely extreme, right? Like 500 points of OPS higher at home and, you know, better strike out and walk rates and everything, right? So you might look at that and think something fishy is going on here. However, so I did a little bit of stat heading here and I wrote back to a couple of our listeners

that it would take a lot to make me suspicious of a home road split because the samples are small enough that there are a lot of extreme ones. And there are also like a lot of opportunities for extreme ones, especially if you're talking about players, not teams, because every player has a home road split in every season and you have enough players in enough seasons, you're going to just get some weird ones by chance alone. So the Royals, I think this is current or a day old at most, have a 117 TOPS plus at home, their home OPS relative to their overall OPS. And that's high. That's a pretty big split on a team level. However, 116 other teams have had a split at least that large, including a couple previous Royals teams, the 78 Royals and the 2002 Royals. Witt's home road

split, he has a 145 TOPS plus at home. Even so, 58 other players have matched or surpassed that in a season of, I think I set the minimum at 450 played appearances, which he just barely clears. And you wouldn't expect a home road difference that large, obviously, but Kaufman is a good park for wit. It's the second best hitters park for right-handed batters, according to Statcast's park factors. So between that and the regular home field advantage that you would expect any player to have, you would expect them to be somewhat better at home.

Obviously not that much better. Plus the season isn't over yet, so odds are that will regress somewhat and those splits will look a little less extreme in a couple months. And so we can check back at the end of the regular season. And I guess more broadly, if the implication here is the Royals must be cheating or Witt must be cheating or they must have some sort of system going on at Kauffman here, the 2017 Astros hit better

on the road than at home. So not only am I skeptical, I guess, just based on how much random variation in splits there is, I'm also just generally skeptical about the efficacy of cheating, right? So like my explanation hierarchy randomness is always gonna rank well above cheating when I tried to explain an anomalous performance like this.

But yeah, it's a little weird, but it's not weirder than splits we've seen in the past. I tend to not feel very fussed about the Astros and the banging scheme anymore. And I've said before, if you still feel fussed, enjoy your fuss. I'm not here to litigate that. I do not personally feel that fussed. But the times when I feel the most rancor toward that group are in moments like this because I do think it has, their shenanigans and cheating has contributed to an environment where everyone assumes

that this kind of thing is the result of cheating. Which isn't to say that there won't be instances in the course of baseballs happening where it is cheating. I don't say that like I think the Royals are cheating. I don't think that this is compelling evidence of that, which doesn't mean they aren't, but I don't think this proves that they are. But I think the banging, it has contributed to an environment where we're just like there has to be something malicious afoot here. And I resent that. CB Yeah, I think the Astros have contributed to that. There's always suspicion about players who were doing something unusual. And maybe that stems from earlier instances of cheating, you know, it's,

it's because of guys who we found out later were on PDs and they had some big offensive season. And so anytime you see some big offensive season, you say, Oh, he's got to be juicing or something, right? So that's kind of a constant, but you know, and yeah, even though the strikeout and walk rates are better at home for wit, it's also like largely babbip driven, you know, he has a 440 babbip at home and a 307 babbip on the road. And again, you know, I guess that that doesn't disprove anything, but often these extreme splits are based on just ball

and play luck over, you know, you're talking like 200 ish at bats in each of these splits. So it's just, it's not that much, right? So we'll see where it settles, but the sum total of it, even though he's been pretty pedestrian on the road, he's just been so otherworldly at home. It has amounted to maybe the most valuable player in baseball. So if you thought Whit was good last year, which he was, and the Royals thought he was, and they committed to him long-term, well, he's even better than that. Nicole Soule-Naguero I hope that the Royals are not cheating. Again, I don't think this proves or even really hints that they are. But if there is a Royals cheating scandal, I demand that the Pass Squatch be involved

in like an instrumental way. He needs to be right at the center of this thing. He was running it all from out in center field. Yeah. It's the Pass Squatch the whole time. I mean, I, and not like, this makes it sound like I think that the Passwatch is like an actual entity and not a person in a costume. I don't care. You know, we could learn that he's real. We could learn that it's a guy named Glenn. I don't know

who's in there, but I need, I need the Passwatch to be like a key cog in a Royal cheating scandal. I don't want there to be one. I don't think there is one, but if there is, that guy's gotta be in the middle of it. So Ben, in the umpteenth annual trade value series, we've sort of spoiled the top of the list. I guess you actually had Henderson number one, but probably as close to a coin flip as it comes, I guess. Did you flip-flop personally as you were making this list many times as you were

getting feedback from front office folks or just watching Bobby Witt go off? I didn't really. I think I decided early on that it was so close that I was not going to feel particularly bothered whichever way it went. One very helpful person that I exchanged emails with sent me like their own tier list of the top and I won't tell you the non top two but there's just a top two gunner slash wit flip a coin and I was like yeah that that gives me the the vibe I'm looking for here I think one thing that I did this year that really

helped me in thinking about these things is like drawing tier lines where it's like these players are pretty similar this next group is not And these two are about as similar as it gets. I think they're on, despite the giant contract for wit, like similar deals in that they'll be around for a while. And if they're truly like incandescent, they will leave after that. And they're both similar players kind of, you know, obviously Gunnar Henderson's a lefty, Bobby Wit's a righty, Wit's faster. But they're like the Cal Ripken model, I think, of like a big burly shortstop who's still

good at defense. I'm not actually sure where modern analytics land on Cal's defense, but I always thought of him as good at defense and big. And they're just like so similar overall, like giving you the clean up bat from your plus shortstop at a young age and going to do it for a long time and not breaking the bank in terms of contracts. And also being there for a while with years that could be better. You can't really find holes in either of their profiles. And that made it very hard to pick between them, but also very easy to say, well, no one else is really worth having in this discussion.

Baseball reference has Cal has almost 200 runs above average defensively. Over 21 seasons, but still. I'm curious. So Lindberg said this is the umpteenth version of this. This is the third year that you're sort of spearheading this exercise on your own. And before we get into some of the other individual guys and where they fell, I'm curious, what have you learned and changed as far as compiling the list, adjusting guys within it? Because it felt to me as we were talking through your

selections and your process that you really had things kind of dialed in this year and I'm curious what first year Ben did that you look back on and go, oh, that wasn't quite right. I think I have like two main things. One is that I think I'm a little bit less of like a surplus value monkey now, where I just like, just like run that and then like everything else is kind of a tiebreaker. That's kind of historically how this worked, right? That was the impetus for this, is that it's fun to have a vibes-based trade list, but we should have one that is based on a single number.

That really was the north star of this list for probably a decade, and very helpful. I think at this point, we just kind of have, like, projections have gotten to the point where we basically have that. And, you know, Dan releases these extensive preseason Zips forecasts for every team. And you could do the math yourself on what that means for, like, pure projected win, projected salary kind of gap. That's not so hard to do. I think that increasingly looking at what teams trade has made me feel like that is not the correct way to do it and that

I just need to keep bringing in more concepts of what teams perceive to be valuable. I've been leaning this way for a while. I ranked Juan Soto sixth in 2022 and several people that I talked to were like, essentially, you dummy, he's only around for two more years and those will be expensive. That is not what's valuable in trade. And then he got traded for like every prospect in the entire world. So I felt pretty good about that. But that was like very much an outlier in that season's list.

I was really focused on the guys who just kind of stacked up the belt that gets exchanged for the arbitration salary suppression. I was really thinking in that not-good way too much. And I feel like what I've done over time is kind of interpolated what teams will trade when you can get a superstar, which is like never. It's never. And if you can get a superstar, there's something wrong. Like they've asked out and they're opting out soon, or they're on the decline, or your team's on the decline,

or there's only one year till they become a free agent. But teams will just trade a lot even in those conditions. And that's just kept happening in the intervening years. Corbin Burns got way more than you'd expect from a surplus value model. Juan Soto did again. The gift that keeps on giving. Dylan Cease did.

In all of these trades, if you are just like, well, here's what a 50 FV prospect is worth, you're going to get the math wrong. It's not going to reflect what teams actually do. And the smartest team in baseball, the Dodgers, seems perfectly content to do these kinds of trades over and over again, where if you're really just stacking up the kind of naive numbers, you would not agree with the things that they're doing, but obviously they're right. So this year, I put a lot more effort into

kind of calibrating all of that into a single thing where I really do care about how kind of exemplary the players are. And the other thing that I'd say I am a lot more willing to do now is stick to my guns when I talk to people who are on teams who have often very strong opinions. You don't end up doing player evaluation on a baseball team if you don't have strong opinions, like you would do something else. So lots of people I talk to really feel strongly about what they're thinking.

And in past years, I let those views guide me too much, not to say to the exclusion of my own views, but just too far. And I feel like I've gotten a better balance there now. I'm not disregarding things people say, but I'm increasingly learning like you have to understand that they have a perspective too, but that it's not like inherently better than your own. And you need to like weigh arguments based on merit, rather than based on kind of appeal to authority and balance those things to where you can take feedback without parroting what people tell you. That's just hard.

And I think I'm getting bad at it over time. And I guess with these players, it's probably not going to be a case where the team will be trying to sway you to pump up the value of their player. Because again, most of these guys are not going to get traded and the team would not want to trade them. Yeah. Also, it seems to be, I mean, even though Wonsoto has switched teams a surprising number of times for a young superstar who hasn't reached free agency yet and has commanded pretty big packages of prospects, it's worked out fairly well for the teams that gave up Wonsoto. If you had to do that,

they have gotten decent returns. Certainly the nationals have and the Padres, it's kind of early, but it's not just the package that they got, but I guess what they did with the money that they saved, the salary and don't cease, et cetera. It's kind of hard to do the math there, but they have at least been competitive this season, even after subtracting Soto, which is not to say that they wouldn't be better with him. All of the teams that have acquired Juan Soto have gotten the guy that they wanted, but also the teams that have traded him away have done pretty decently, all told. And it's interesting that you note that this is the case that teams will sort of still pony up for a super duper

star because there is this perception that executives are prospect huggers and hoarders and that you can't pry away top prospects anymore, which I guess is true in some cases. It's true for rentals, right? It's true for a guy you're getting for a few months, you're not going to get a top prospect for that type of player typically. But when you're talking about one of these guys, the ultra elite's best, most valuable players in baseball, teams will still pay if anything disproportionately for them.

Yeah, there's kind of like a squeezing of the middle class and it's just like real life. Where the guys at the very top teams, I think are a little bit willing to discard the models or use different models, but they've gotten a lot better at valuing the, the 15% better than league average left fielder with an average glove. That's like, well, like you can't have very much for him. I feel like that, that is really where the squeeze has been felt or the, you

know, the third or fourth starter, the seventh inning reliever, those guys have felt the press a lot more than the very top end of the market. But also teams don't trade the top end of the market as much. So it could be hard to tell. Who have you gotten the most grief about? Whether it's someone you omitted entirely, or someone teams or readers thoughts should be higher? Is it Jaren Duran? It's certainly a red sock. It's Jaren Duran or Rafael Devers, I'd say,

are the two contenders. And I can go through what I thought on each. Duran was like right there. I think my last final list that was numbered past 50, you know, I stopped doing that later, had Duran like 53 or something. Like not meaningfully different than in the top 50. I've moved around a little bit since then, but like quite high. I basically wouldn't have blinked at putting him in the back of the list, except for that I put a bunch of pitchers there,

because they're all similar, and having one that just said, like, Jaren Duran is like these guys too, would feel a little weird. I asked a lot of people about Jaren Duran specifically, because I thought he was an interesting case, where, you know, projection-wise, he does not belong. Zips is not alone in that. Projection systems just don't think he's going to keep this up. And the reason for that is basically that he has no track record of doing so.

He was hyped as a prospect, but not incredibly so. And then he struggled long enough that the models are picking up largely on his Major League performance and lack of availability. I was a little skeptical that that made perfect sense. He's definitely much higher on my list than he would be if it were a pure computer ranking. And I asked a lot of people we talked to, hey, like, what do you think of Jaren Duran on the back end of this list? Am I gonna feel really dumb for leaving him out? And they were like, you know, take it or leave it. He could go either way. And that's really how I felt. I think there's something to be said for just putting him on there, because he's, like, been very good this year. But these

are not the kinds of players that I lose sleep over not having on the list. I am drawing some parallels in my head to Brian Reynolds. In 2021, Kevin Goldstein and I co-did this list. As the first year I did it. And we left Brian Reynolds off and oh my God, like that was just... I'm trying to think of...

It went over really well. It's like we left baby shark out of describing the Nationals. Yeah. And look, Brian Reynolds was very good in 2021. Spectacular. He had six wins that season and he has averaged about two a year since then with acceptable left field hitting and was a similar player in that he had been a formerly hyped prospect. He broke out a little faster.

You know, he had that very exciting 2019 rookie season and then it was kind of bad in 2020 in actually like a fairly extensive sample to 55 games most of the whole season. Like those kinds of players kind of mid-career breakouts I feel like are capped in the range of call it 35 plus on the trade value list. And so then I'm not going to feel abysmal about leaving them off. I probably should have put a red sock in the top 50 just because like, look, I'm not going to lie to you. I don't feel confident at all about the difference between number 38 and number 62. They're really close.

And so like at that point, why not just do it for some kind of air cover? But in terms of me thinking I have the ranking wrong, not really. I really enjoy Jaren Duran, and so I hope I'm wrong. Because he's really fun to watch. But it doesn't seem to me like it's way off. I'd feel a lot worse leaving off like Riley Green did not

make the list last year. He was a top honor I'll mention. And that feels bad in retrospect. I mean, I'm going to feel less bad about 27 year old corner outfielders than like 23 year old ultra prospects. I honestly, I think the case for Devers not being on the list is very simple. It's this, I'll ask you guys these questions.

Do you think Rafael Devers is a better hitter than Bryce Harper? No. Do you think Rafael Devers provides more defensive value to a team than Bryce Harper? No. No. No. No. Do you think Rafael Devers provides more defensive value to a team than Bryce Harper? No. No. No.

I guess so. I'm like a hard no on that, to be honest. We're talking about changing positional weightings. I think DH and first base do feel too penalized. I think that is a legitimate gripe. But the people who are, I think, overestimated by that are the like 30 defenders at middle-ing-ly challenging positions, so like bad left fielders and third basemen. And like, that's Deference, right?

He's like a 30, maybe he's a 20, I don't know. He's a pretty bad defender. So he's like a DH level bat. I think his defense is worth about that. He's a good hitter, not as good as Bryce Harper, I don't think. You'd be hard pressed to find someone who thinks so. Not really different defensively. And his contract is like, it's just more money owed, somewhat significantly. That just said

it pretty clearly for me. Like, I would not, there's no way I'd want Devers over Bryce Harper. And so how could I put him in the tier with Harper? And there wasn't really space for him after that. I guess he could have been an honorable mention, but that, I don't know, Megan and I were talking about this. The honorable mention list this year was longer than the list. Like, so... So bloated, oh my God.

He had the lowest projections of anyone in the, you know, star on big contracts group. And I was just like, we gotta draw the line somewhere. Those two were, let's say the most controversial exclusions. I agree that Durran could have been on there without me changing anything about the way I did the the exercise at all. Find me ranking the last 25 players on a different day and he might have been on there. I think I'm pretty confident in where I had Devers. We had this conversation about the

honorable mentions because, look, there's a utility to the honorable mentions being huge, which is people yell at us less, you know? And that's their, let's be honest about it. That's why they're so big because it's like, yeah, just put them in there because why not avoid a comment, you know, at least one. But it is getting quite large, the honorable mentions section in a way that perhaps requires a little hemming in next year, but we like not getting yelled at. So maybe we'll leave it as is. So I mentioned your top two were the two AL short stops.

Number three, Paul Skeens. Now Skeens, interesting placement. Can't quibble with it really in that he may be the best pitcher in baseball already and is super young. He is high just in the sense that pitchers have fallen down rankings of all sorts recently. Wait, he's a pitcher? Oh, I'll be right back, guys. Yeah. Yeah. Prospectless, I wrote about this a few years ago. You just don't see pitchers as high on prospectless anymore. And that has something to do with the injuries and something to do with just the role of a starting pitcher these days. And it's just arguably not as important

as it was, but Paul Skeens is special. So did you have any qualms whatsoever about stuffing him that high? And it was a process. Um, I started with him just behind Logan Webb, very unlike Paul Skeen's kind of player, uh, as like the top two pitcher values in baseball and that much remained the same, but I basically kept going to team cross checking sources and to, you know, non-team, but industry people who I like and trust. And they were just like, what are you doing? Wouldn't you want Paul Skeens for five

or maybe six more years at suppressed salaries over ex-random guy who's pretty good? And I was like, yeah, okay, fine, probably I would. And when you have the the the scout types, and the stats types, both saying why isn't Paul Skeens in the top five, he's in my top five, then you have to say like, what am I doing wrong in the evaluation process? I feel like I'm pretty good at predicting, like going to somebody and knowing categorically which direction they're going to go on a lot of players that I have. I talked to Meg about this during making the list, but Michael Harris was a good one.

I could tell you whether people would think I was too high or too low on Michael Harris before talking to them. And not everyone was the same direction. And so that kind of let me know I was probably right. If different people give you different opinions, you're often right. Everyone was the same way on Skeens. And I think that the point that really came across to me is

you just have to have like top pitchers. You can't just build your team and not have top pitchers. Those teams don't win. Like, doesn't matter how you get them. Maybe it does. But regardless how you get them, you need them. And he is one who you can have for a long time. Like all your pitchers are probably going to get hurt. That's because they're pitchers,

but he's not more likely to get hurt. I don't think he's definitely going to cost less and he's almost definitely going to be better. So I'm finding it hard to draw up in my head, like why skeins shouldn't be the best pitcher, and why if that's the case, when he's this good with this much control left, he shouldn't be just tremendously valuable.

One thing that Dave definitely gave me some pause is that, yeah, the counting war is not there. But I do think that a lot of teams who are trading for these kind of like top of the top guys or considering it or valuing them care a lot about the playoffs. And obviously the war production is a little different there. So yeah, sure, his position among all players in terms of projected Zip's war is low, but his position among pitchers, who we all I think pretty much agree are roughly equivalent in value to position players in the playoffs, like a great hitter

and a great pitcher, fairly similar. He is the number one pitcher. And so when you do some kind of balancing that way, I think that that really kind of cleared things up for me. That's also part of the whole like getting away from just adding up the projected war and adding up the projected salary. Scarcity does matter and there just aren't guys like him. And he was your only pitcher in the top 15. He and Webb were the projected salary. Scarcity does matter. And there just aren't guys like him. And he was your only pitcher in the top 15. He and Webb were the only ones in the top 20. I think just eyeballing it, it looks like you've had maybe 11 pitchers in total. So it's clearly still skewed toward position players. Out of his 11, most were the last five or six in the list.

Yeah, I know. 45 through 50 were all pitchers. It was like a run on pitchers where you're like, I better get a pitching staff here. You had Jones, Grayson Rodriguez, Tanner Bybee, Hunter Green, Justin Steele, and Mackenzie Gore were rounding out the bottom of the 50. I think that is partially because this is a reflection of my view of trade value and that's how I'd be trying to build teams. I think good teams are telling you that this is what they do too. If you look at the way that the best teams in the league are constructed these days, they love these young, talented pitchers, but a lot of the value is concentrated in really good hitters.

And it's just really hard to trust pitchers to deliver you a ton of value for a long time. The Mariners are the one consistently competitive team like truly button that trend. And I guess you could say the Phillies, but the Phillies are smart. They just go out and you know, like use their money to get pictures. Yep.

Seems like a plan. Speaking of the Mariners, can I break in with some trade news here on the pod? And then we can go back to, okay. We've had two transactions in the last five minutes One involves the Seattle Mariners who are acquiring Yimmy Garcia from the Blue Jays for outfield Jonathan class a who I think I underrated earlier in this very pod. No, I rated him properly and then the

Baltimore Orioles who famously need some pitching are getting Zac Eflin from the race. So the race continue their mini tear down. The Orioles get a starter, which they need. And the Mariners reinforce their bullpen, which is a little leaky. And that is all the news that's fit to print. I have a trade value question, but I will pause in case either of you want to react to these earth-shattering transactions. Well, I don't have extensive Yumi Garcia thoughts, although he has been very good this year.

He has been. But Eflin, wow. Eflin. That's pretty big. I like it. I like it. Intro division. I know.

The prospects have not yet been reported as we speak. They have not, but there are apparently three of them. Ben Clemens, can I ask you a trade value question? The prospects have not yet been reported as we speak. They have not, but there are apparently three of them. Ben Clemens, can I ask you a trade value question? Talk to us about Fernando Tatis Jr. because Tatis is great. He is not always available, sometimes because of injuries, sometimes because of boneheadedness. And I know that he was the guy who you got the most sort of pushback on on the team side. I think he also generated a fair amount of conversation internally

as you were sort of cross checking this list with fan graph staffers, including me. But he still was pretty well stuffed. He's a great player. Talk to us about your your Tatis ranking here. I think actually I talked to to one of my cross-checkers as it were today about Tatis after the list came out and he was like I think you're a little high but I think the comments on him are wild. I think that you would be

hard-pressed to convince me or really to convince a lot of people that Tatis is not a top 15 hitter in baseball. Like one or two or three expected stats can lead you astray, but all of them for a long time every year consistently probably won't. And Tatis just does so many things so well. I just can't believe that he's not a really good hitter. He hits the ball incredibly hard. He makes a good amount of contact. He doesn't strike out too much. Increasingly, he doesn't strike out too much. That's a skill that a lot of people learn as they age, and he apparently is. He puts the ball in the air. He hits home runs to all fields. He's pretty fast. Just hard to believe that he's not a very good hitter. His career would tell you that he's a

very good hitter. He's 40% above average for the life of his career. He's been a good hitter since returning from PED suspension. Again, not only in realized stats, but in expected stats based on the process. So that's a pretty good baseline. And then the question becomes, well, A, is he a good defender? Yes, I think that's pretty unquestionable. I don't know if he's platinum glove winning right fielder forever,

but very good defender. No one would really quibble with that, I don't think, in the long run. So, in terms of is he a star, I think the answer is yeah. And I don't think you can make a good argument against that. That's not just kind of baiting. He is, when he's healthy. So then the question really becomes, how much risk are you willing to wear? Because he does have a large contract. He's making about 31 million dollars a year for the next 10 years. That's like a big chunk of money. If he is a star, it's a great deal. You should be thrilled he's going to be the face of your franchise and play at an MVP contender level. You know, he's like sixth or seventh in projected Zip's war over the next five years. Like, really good player. I don't know the exacts, I can look that up later, but like very good player, when healthy, and that is the question, how much of this when healthy are

you willing to wear? Because you will pay him for these 10 years, regardless of that. And if he was on like an orb deal, he would be like in the top three probably, but he's not. And so that's the issue. I personally have a lot of risk tolerance for that. Cause I think it's a, a positive expected value bet to like, want to pay for end of head, he's a lot of money to be good for your baseball team. I think that on average, the people I've talked to are much more risk averse than me and that seems wise. Uh, they're, they're actually doing, doing it.

Um, and I'm not. And I think that generally speaking in industries like this, people tend to be risk averse because the errors look worse than the successes look good. That I think would push down his trade value to a lot of teams. And because of the size of his contract, if three or four of those teams happen to be the ones

that want to go get him, that could matter a lot. I know that people I talk to and trust, who said you are ranking him higher than I would, thought he should be like 15th or 16th, you know? We're not talking like... They weren't like taking him out of the top tier. Yeah, like I wouldn't give him away for free. No one thinks that.

That is a thing that some people think about some players, so I asked that they would not acquire him if the cost was a player to be named later and $1. But Tatis is certainly not in that category. It's just a matter of what the risk tolerance is. My risk tolerance in life is quite high. Not in like personal safety things, but in kind of things that I can place in an expected value framework in my head. I will make the high expected value play a lot

and trust it to work out in the long run. That is how I would manage a front office where I making those decisions. And I think that this view basically reflects kind of the same expectations around Tatis and handles the risk premium differently. I do wonder if his trade value is hurt by the fact that the guy who might be most aligned with you in terms of how he views trades is the GM who currently employs him.

Yeah, that probably does not bode well for him ever getting traded, but he's also not getting traded. Like, the Padres need to keep getting people to come to the ballpark, and Tateus is awesome and fun. It's in the same category as all these guys in the top 10. Like, they're not getting traded. This is a fun exercise to do. But I don't know, he's just gonna be there until, until like he's not playing baseball anymore, or the Padres get sold. There's really no point in speculating about what might happen to make him leave

because it's going to be something unpredictable. I think I miscounted. You had 12 pitchers, not 11. Apologies to pitchers. Yeah, the top 10 is pretty fun because you had the two short stops at the top and then skeins. And then you also have dedicated DH in Jordan Alvarez. You have DH for now, but two way player in the past and future Shohei Otani. You have a couple catchers in Richmond and Smith. You have outfielders, Julio and Tatis. You have Ellie. So there's just a lot of variety there in player types and positions and skill sets. So that's fun.

It is interesting to me that there's a lot of variety, but it feels like a really bright cutoff at top 10 in a way that there hasn't been in years before where it's like, oh man, like could you get one of these 10 guys on your team? That would be amazing. And then the next group, I mean, there's some of those in the top 20 as well, but there's a really, there's a cutoff where everyone in the top 10 is like, I think unquestionably a great expected value, like great value and expectation, who is also incredible right now. Did you struggle with Corbin Carroll, who ended up at 15?

I absolutely did. Every successive revision of this list had him lower, unfortunately. Which is no fun. I think honestly I probably should have just started with him lower. You know, I've mentioned that I'm less risk-averse than major league teams are in general. This is the kind of risk that scares me because it feels serially correlated. If his shoulder has issues in the future, that will not only hurt you right then, because then he won't be able to play, but it will probably change your

opinion of Corbin Carroll going forward. And it's just really hard to think about that. Someone I was talking to gave me a really good way of saying it, which is Corbin Carroll's expectations are quite high. His projections are really good, his career line is really good, even with a bad year this year. He is not playing well right now, I think it is fair to say, I think he would tell you that too, but that doesn't mean I don't expect him to play well in the future. However, it would be incredibly nerve-racking to go out and trade for him like he is an MVP candidate when one of his two seasons has been pretty bad. Another of his last few seasons has been extremely impacted by injury.

Some of those same risks are there with Tatis, but Tatis is currently playing like a borderline MVP candidate. Obviously not this year, but the hitting wise he certainly is. He's missing time and his defensive value is down this year, but he's batting like an MVP candidate, like kind of down-ballot guy. So you can talk yourself into it. Carroll has less track record and is currently playing worse. And you know, you mentioned Julio Rodriguez in the top 10.

Also kind of not playing well right now. But I look at his process stats and I'm like, ah, I feel completely fine. He looks like a 130 WRC Plus hitter who's getting unlucky. Carol looks like he's, like, I don't expect him to be worse next year for it, but he's just having a really bad year. And it would be, it'd be really hard to kind of pay the prospect premium needed to get a guy this elite and who showed out this much in his first year when you're like trying to catch the falling knife as it were, trying to grab him at his low tick and value. And that I think suppressed where he finished on this list because yeah, love the player, think he's amazing, would be just really, you'd have to think long and hard and you'd also

have to wonder, I don't know if you know this famous economics paper, like the problem with lemons. It's very hard to have a market for things like used cars, because the seller knows so much more private information than the buyer. I think that would particularly impact someone who has had in the past. This might be the case for Tatis too. So maybe that's just a general thing about people with injuries and Ronald

Acuna as well. But I would feel a little bit weird about the asymmetric information here because it's one thing if Carol is just, you know, and just having an off year. And it's another, if he is like playing through some kind of nagging impediment and not telling people and only the Diamondbacks know that. And so that would, that would worry me a little about trading with trading for him. That said, he's awesome. And only the Diamondbacks know that. And so that would worry me a little about trading for him. That said, he's awesome. And so I do think that his position on the list is lower than you would get if you just counted up how good he's likely to be in the future accounting for

injury risk. And his contract accounting for injury risk. I think that it reflects the fact that teams would be trying to kind of, yeah, like buy the dip from the Diamondbacks and would not offer kind of their full like puke point price in prospects right now. I think that next year he'll likely be higher on this list. surprisingly strong champions as you were floating it, either internally at Fangrass, but probably more interestingly for listeners on the team side. Was there anyone where you're like, oh, wow, like the team consensus on this guy is like way higher than I was expecting it to be? I think it's basically a bunch of short stops. I've been lightly mocked, lampooned, perhaps in the past, because I really like good defense short stops who have team control for a long time.

That's the style of baseball I like. I love little dudes who can pick it. In past years, I have sometimes had them pretty high. Jeremy Pena, I think I had like 20th or so in trade value one year. And in retrospect, yeah, that was too high. Recency bias issues there. So I've generally tried to not devalue defense a little bit, but kind of normalize it a little to where you can't just have a guy who's a great defender who doesn't make much money

like Kevin Keirmeyer, who's just completely fouling up the way my systems work. And so I thought I was doing a good job of that. And then I sent this list out to teams and they're like, where's Zach Neto? Why is Ezekiel Tovar so low? Anthony Volpe should be higher. Mason Wynn should be higher. And then I was like, that's weird. Like, well, that's just one guy. Like, let me send it to somebody else. And they're like, where's Zach Neto? Like, why isn't Ezekiel Tovar higher? And

I was like, wait a second. Like, you guys don't talk to each other. And it was just, it was kind of strikingly similar. I think there's disagreement over the Michael Harris tier, like I mentioned earlier. I think that high up, I think people start to disagree and reasonable minds can be like, oh, I value offense more. People really like elite shortstop defenders. Volpe, I think, I'm lower on Volpe than the industry consensus, I think by a fair amount.

I think that he would be in everyone's top 30 that I talked to. And he was not mine, he was 38. I know for a fact that I ended discussions with everyone I talked to, and they were like, I'd have Volpi higher. And it's not because he's playing incredibly well offensively now. I think it's because he's a great defender. 65 shortstop on the scout scale, probably. And that really matters a lot at shortstop. An example that I gave is Bobby Witt through last, like when I was doing this list last year, I ran everyone's like last two years stats.

And so for him, that was his whole career. And he was like a 98 WRC plus hitter for his career. And I was like, huh, that's not as good as I thought. This guy said, I think he's better than that. That's surprising, but he was awesome as a prospect. And obviously he picked it up right away after that. And he's been one of the best hitters in baseball since then. Anthony Volpe is not as good of a hitter as Bobby Witt. You heard it here first.

But I do think that in a similar way, it's possible for him to be better than what he's shown offensively in the major leagues without it being a growth and skill set thing and just like, oh, you know, like bad one year run. That happens sometimes. Like maybe he's a 110 WRC plus guy, like a little bit better than average guy. And that is a really valuable player at shortstop given his defense. Mason Nguyen, I think maybe flies under the radar

for people because the Cardinals are boring and he's come up like in the modern Cardinals era where they're really boring and kind of bad. And he also... I mean, the thing is, he was a top prospect. That's what's a little bit strange about it to me, is that he was a top 25 guy on our list. Yeah, he was 23rd overall coming into this year.

I always had him pop up on my traits that make it look like a hitter will succeed in the majors lists when I do my yearly look at unheralded prospects. I could never put him on those lists because he was too heralded for his defense. But I always thought his bat was underrated. The Zip's top prospects thing always had him really pushed. So he's kind of a stats darling who's been playing well, and Statcast thinks his defense is comfortably

above average and it is the lowest on him by just a comical amount. DRS thinks he's the best defensive player in baseball. I think uh, what's the baseball prospectus one called? Range defense added? Derp. Yeah, they like him a lot. Just watch him play defense. He's incredible. Right, yeah. I refuse to believe that Statcast thinking he's like a plus three defender is correct. I think he's like a plus 10 kind of guy. And everyone

seems to agree. I got roundly consistent feedback. I think I had Mason Winn in the 40s starting out, maybe the high 30s. And everyone's like, what are you doing? Like this guy is really good. He's like an above average hitter. I know that his ex Woba would not agree with that. But guy, that's not the only thing that matters. His process is pretty good. He's like a on-base, over-slug kind of hitter, which is completely reasonable for your plus-plus defensive shortstop. He's 22 and succeeding in the major leagues after succeeding in AAA, after succeeding in a bunch of levels that he was too young for. I think that teams have bought in.

They think that this guy is for real, for real. And I'm surprised, but not that surprised. Cause again, where he plays the team that he plays is having a different disappointing season coming off of a disappointing season that I think people are kind of down on him. You know, I ran this poll on Twitter, just cause I thought it was funny. I had decided that I was going to have Jackson Holliday below him. And I was like, Cardinals fans, would you trade Mason Wynn for Jackson Holliday?

And do you think the team would? And people overwhelmingly would, but didn't think the team would. And they were right. I think that's accurate. I do not think the Cardinals would trade Mason Wynn for Jackson Holliday. And I honestly, like in talking to people, I'm not sure a lot of teams would because Mason Wynn is performing in the majors and the Orioles who badly need second baseman are like, eh, Jackson Holiday, I don't know.

But I think that surprised me and would surprise a lot of people. I loved the Rockies fans who were like, how dare you disrespect Tovar by not having him be an honorable mention. And I was like, it's coming you guys, don't worry. He's like, he actually makes pretty well. In fairness, there's some like Stockholm syndrome going on there for them. Where they're like, look, Brenton Doyle's in the honorable mentions. I thought we'd get two honorable mentions.

No, don't worry. It's going to be fine. I think our last question on trade value and then we will let you go have a well-earned beer is, you know, and maybe Durant is just the answer to this question, but who do you think has the potential to really rocket up this list in a year? Like who, you know, last year you like really stuffed Ellie De La Cruz and people pilloried you for it and you were right and they were wrong. But is there anyone who is either an honorable mention or lower on the list? Do you think you're going to look back

in a year and be like, ah, I wish I had put that guy in the top 10? Yeah. So first I'll exclude all the injured people because I think if Spencer Strider comes back and looks like he did before, he's like top 15, probably. And Matt McClain was on the list despite being injured for a while. I think he's like a top 25 guy if he's what he was before he got hurt. But those don't really count, right? Like that's not, I don't think the point of what you're asking here. I think that the player who could improve the most in a year, I'll give you two. Uh, first, Francisco Alvarez. I both got a lot of different opinions on him and had a lot of different opinions in my head that I was trying to balance.

I find it really hard to know what I think he should look like if he's great. Is he gonna be like a slugger catcher? Kind of like a modern day toned down Mike Piazza? Is he gonna be a like defense and a little bit of thump guy? It's very hard for me to exactly pin down where I think he could take a step forward to be better, but he does like a lot of things really well. The fact that I can't tell you what his best tool is, but that he's been a good hitter and defender is a sign that I feel like if he puts it all together, he could move up the list a lot. I got at least some support for having him in a group with Patrick Bailey as the best non Will Smith and Adley Rochman catchers. I decided that I don't really feel that way. And I certainly did not have unanimous support for that,

which explains why I didn't have him there. Cause I both didn't think it and didn't have everyone telling me that. But I think that I feel like he's like, you know, the clay is not dry. Like he could be a lot of different things. And if he hits his upside in a few of them, I think he could be like a top 15, top 10

player. If he's like as good on defense as he looked in 2023 and has the power that we think he has that he's never really been able to consistently show, he could really fly up. The other guy I'm going to give you is, I mean, maybe this is a cop out. I'm not really sure, but Wyatt Langford. I am not a Wyatt Langford believer. I didn't think he was in the tier of Skeens and Cruz and I guess Max Clark. I don't have a strong opinion on him, so maybe I'll leave him out.

But certainly Skeens and Cruz last year in the draft. And then I know that kind of he had some late helium and then he looked awesome in the Miners last year, and he was debuting, and it was really cool, and the models loved him. And I mean, he just hasn't been anything special, right? He's been a kind of not particularly interesting defensive value guy who hasn't hit all that well. And those combined are just not appealing.

He has 0.7 fan graphs for, and I can't imagine baseball reference is very different for him. He's batting 245, 313, 370. That's not good. And he's supposed to be a hitter first. But it's only been 300 plate appearances. He torched the Miners last year. Like, that's not saying it well enough. He was way too good to be playing against those guys. It was just silly.

He had like a 4-62 ISO in his Complex League games, a 300 ISO over 100 plate appearances in high A. He just, it was dumb. And you have to imagine that if that happens for like the rest of this year and the first half of next year, well, now you look at his career track record and it's like, oh, he's all he's done is hit except for the first time that as a 22 year old who was in college in 2023 he tried to play in the major leagues and okay fine. So I think you have a case there where if he starts hitting really well again, and I don't think that's a central case but I absolutely think it's in play, then you're going to be able to retell the story pretty easily to like, oh well leave out the first half of this year because that is a big adjustment and kind of focus on the long-term stats.

Models are still in on Langford because he was so good in college and in the minors last year. I mean, the batting line is hard to overlook right now. And yeah, I've seen a lot written about this this year. And I think it's true. The gap between the minors and the majors is larger than before. And you do have to like really think, oh man, maybe he can't hit the majors like he could in the minors. But if he starts doing it, I'll be very quick

to change my priors there. And I wrote about this in terms of all three of the, I guess, not prospect eligible, because Langford has graduated, but the prospecty types, Langford, James Wood, and Jackson Holliday, who made the top 50, I just wouldn't go trade for these guys, because the teams that are getting rid of them obviously want to get a premium. These are great players, but it's weird to trade

for somebody who you can't put in your lineup and expect them to click right away. And so I think they would get low bids, but I would be willing to change that very quickly if he started succeeding essentially. And so I think he's a good bet. If you're kind of looking for volatility, he's really high up there because the difference between what he's done this year and kind of his observed prior years

is really high. All right. Well, we will link to the full list for people to peruse and object to or agree with. We will for now return to refreshing MLB trade rumors like the rest of you and we will figure out when we're going to do another podcast and how many trades will happen before then. But Ben, thank you. Hope you get a bit of a break, although I guess this is not a great time to take one. Well, next week, next week after the deadline will be good.

All right. Well, the prospects who went back to Tampa in the Eflin trade were Matthew Etzel, Jackson Baumeister and Mack Horvath all in high A or double A. I looked at the Fangrass depth chart's projections for starting pitchers before and after the Eflin trade was reflected. The Orioles had the 20th best rotation for the rest of the season before the trade, now 6th. The difference in war is only a win or so, there are only a couple months left in the regular season, but they leapfrogged a lot of teams there, and there is a postseason after the regular season, and you go into that with Burns, Efflin, Rodriguez? Even

if they don't do anything else, that's solid. Similarly, I looked at the reliever. Depth chart projections before and after the Ymi Garcia trade, Mariners went from 10th to 6th, and that's after also trading Ryan Stanek to the Mets. Maybe the Orioles should have traded for Ymi Garcia too, because after we recorded, guess who gave up a game-winning, or I guess game-losing, home run? Yeah, Craig Kimbrough took the loss after blowing a save in his previous appearance. This is just the raziest deadline so far with the Arroserina and Efflin trades. It's funny, the Rays have almost the same record as the Mariners, but not as clear a path to the playoffs in the AL East. Plus they've been outscored on the season, they just haven't been as good a team as

Seattle. Just hope Arroserina's bat survives safe go. Sorry, T-Mobile. Still, some other team in this same situation might go for it, and the Rays for better or worse? Nah, we'll just trade our pricey veterans with little team control left. Yandideas Ground Beef could be next. Get a potpourri of prospects. Lots of depth. No top ranked guys. No one who needs to be added to the 40 man immediately. This is how they keep their perpetual motion machine moving. And you know how we keep our perpetual podcast machine moving? With your support on Patreon.

Which you can provide by going to patreon.com slash Effectively Wild and signing up to pledge some month 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. Dan Labriola, Ian OJ, Will C, Jeremy Piesh, and Jonathan Piesh. Thanks to all of you. Patreon perks include access to the Effectively Wild Discord group for patrons only. There's a dedicated channel for trade discussion, so it's a great time to be in there.

Plus, playoff livestreams, bonus episodes, one of which we will be recording this weekend, prioritized email answers, discounts on merch and Ad for FanGraphs memberships, and so much more, check out all the offerings at patreon.com slash Effectively Wild. If you are a patron, you can message us through the Patreon site. If not, you can contact us via email, send your questions and comments, and intro and outro themes to podcast at fangraphs.com. 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 find the Effectively Wild sub-edit at r slash effectively wild, and you can check the links on the show page and in your podcast app for information on upcoming Effectively Wild listener meetups at MLB ballparks. Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. We hope you have a wonderful rest of your weekend, and we'll be back for more trade talk next time. What did Jerry DePoto do? What did Jerry DePoto do? We're gonna talk to Meg Raleigh about a trade or two. What did Jerry DePoto do? What did Jerry DePoto do? What did Jerry DePoto do? We're gonna talk to Meg Raleigh about a trade or two. What did Jerry DePoto do?