Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 254: Are Wealthy Teams Winning?/Pushing the Trade Deadline Back

Episode Date: July 30, 2013

Ben and Sam revisit the question of whether wealthy teams are winning (and will win) more, then discuss a proposal to push the trade deadline back.

I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further. Good morning and welcome to episode 254 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Prospectus. I am Ben Lindberg, joined as always by Sam Miller. What's your confidence level today for A-Rod playing this season? I'm going to just ask you every day until this is decided one way or another. It wasn't a good day. No, it or another. It wasn't a good day. No, it was not. It wasn't a good day.

So I'd say right now I feel about 15% confident. Yeah. And before today? It varied from day to day. But, you know, somewhere between. Like originally when I picked him him i would have said probably 75 80 maybe even higher maybe 90 maybe 85 or 90 yeah um but you gotta hear i i'm not gonna say it i'm not gonna do it maybe i will tomorrow but you've got to get dan brooks to explain uh how a rod is

like the large hedron collider and how, I mean, he's got this like incredible theory about how, like if a rod ever plays a baseball game, the world is going to end. And it's very compelling. It's very compelling theory. I'll ask him about that.

okay. And in fact that a rod has played, his theory involves that a rod actually has played games in many, many universes and or realities and that those worlds didn't that we are the only ones still going okay well then i'm rooting against you and your and your fantasy no warp team uh what's your topic for today um i want to revisit the correlation between winning and money as well as talk about Jake Peavy. Okay, and I thought we could talk about the trade deadline and whether it should be later.

So you remember in, I'm going to say May, I think, I wrote a piece for ESPN the magazine about how the relationship between money and wins had dropped to previously unseen low levels. At the time, part of this was based on a large part of it. Well, a large part of it was based on the fact that the correlation between payroll and winning percentage in 2012 was the lowest in the post-expansion era, but by a significant margin, and that 2013 was well below average. And at the time, it was early enough in the season that I was really actually very terrified

that this trend or whatever was going to happen. That the Dodgers would start winning every single game? Well, that was one thing, yeah. The Dodgers and the Angels, and originally the Blue Jays were involved too. And I knew one of those three was going to make it to the playoffs and embarrass me. The Blue Jays ended up getting cut from the thesis.

And so they weren't part of it. It is too bad. I really should have gone. I should have done an American League thing, stuck with the American League. But, you know, I mean, even still, the Dodgers have like a 520 winning percentage and a $225 million payroll. So it's not like they are the 27 Yankees, which I think a lot of people would think that you should be if you have that much money to spend.

And I just didn't know if the correlation was going to hold up. I mean, there's like a three-week lag time between when you file and when it comes out. So it was possible that it was going to get undone even that quickly. But I reviewed today. It's been months now where we've got a pretty big amount of games played. So I went over and I did the calculations again just before this. And in fact, the correlation between wins and payroll this year has dropped just about to the same level as last year. So it is now the two lowest recorded correlations

in post-expansion history are the last two years. And if you remove the Astros, which admittedly is convenient, but also the Astros are such an extreme that I don't feel guilty removing the Astros. If you just look at the 29 teams that have any sort of major league payroll, the correlation is slightly negative, which is incredible, right? We're talking thousands and thousands of games have been played. Well, not this year. This year, like 1,400 or something have been played. But if you go back to last year, thousands and thousands of games. And, you know, we're seeing a weak correlation and perhaps something approaching

no correlation. And so I just bring this up partly because I was curious and it's what I did before this podcast. And so I wanted to mention it. But also one of the things that kind of went into the discussion of why this would be happening is that the trade deadline this year – and it felt this way to some degree last year, but it definitely feels this way this year. It just feels like players don't get really traded unless they're flawed anymore. Sounds like it's going to dovetail nicely with my topic perfect yeah well it's just uh we did this pv thing you know and that hopefully everybody saw on monday in which we asked 11 players to uh try to trade for jake pv and then we looked at what the range of trade proposals were and you know i i was playing rick hawn and one of the things that kind of i acknowledged is that pb's not that good like he was we picked him because he was the

highest profile most in demand player at the deadline other than some sort of long shot guys who might be there like the fleet and um you know he's he's like somewhere between maybe like the 40th and 75th best pitcher in baseball. And part of this is that there's a lot more teams that can convince themselves that they should be buyers or at least not sellers at this point. And part of it is that, of course, there's so many players being extended. But the upshot is that we have Jake Peavy. It's like that seems interesting to me. So do you want to just start talking about your topic and then we'll see where this goes?

Yeah, and RJ Anderson sent me a report from, I guess it was from rival executives or something that said that the White Sox have told people that they want to build around Peavy, which is kind of a strange strategy. I mean, he's a fine player, but when you're not a contending team currently, a 32-year-old injury-prone pitcher who's signed for one more season is not really a building block of a franchise, it doesn't seem like.

Can we pause for a second and not pause the show, but pause the way we're going? Because I'm curious. I'm going to assume, and maybe he sincerely means it, but I'm going to assume that this is not a thing the White Sox actually believe, that this is something to sort of boost PV's perceived value. Oh, I was thinking boost PV's perceived value slash make it seem that you're not desperate to move it. Give yourself a little bit more leverage.

And maybe that's not the case, but I'm going to assume that that's the case. So I want to know if you were a GM and it was your job to say things that are just so untrue and that you can't really say with a straight face and that you know that people are going to mock, which this was mocked a lot today. Do you think you could do it? Like, do you have the ability to just say something that you know to be not true? Because I don't think I do. I genuinely don't think that I'm capable of lying like that. Like, I would love to. I'm not morally, I mean, I'm morally opposed to it, but I'm not so morally strong that I wouldn't, you know, that I, that I don't tell lies, but, uh, but I don't think I could do it. I legitimately think that I would break down. Well, yeah, I think I could, I could do it via text, via email maybe. Uh, sure. Now it's, now it on paper, though. I mean, if you look at every, I assume that you're a person who often reads and rereads and rereads emails to make sure the wording is just right.

Any times. And so if you know that you're saying something that is not true, don't you think you would try to put in hedge words? I just find it hard to believe that anyone's going to fall for this, really. I mean, what rival team is going to look at that report and say, wow, maybe we underestimated Peavy. They're building around him. He's a building block. And there was another thing like that that came out yesterday where there was a rumor for a while that the Orioles were willing to trade Dylan Bundy

and and then responding to that rumor Dan Duquette said that probably came from someone who wants to trade for the player which is really funny how does that work I know like if you want to you want to trade for Peavy so you or Bundy so you put it out there you put it out there that the Orioles are thinking about trading for Bundy hoping that the orioles will then believe that they are shopping right this is not a democracy it's not like we all get to vote right and you put it in our heads yeah you think there would be a yeah that wouldn't really work i don't think that would work no i i appreciate the effort though if someone actually did that, hoping that the Orioles were so weak-willed that they would just be convinced to do that

by reading a report that they were doing that. Ben, I heard today sources close to your camp that said that you were thinking of cutting this to three days a week, this podcast. Oh. I heard from, well, I assumed it was from you. So just, just putting that out there. Okay. I'm going to have to rethink this. Yeah. So, so I don't know. I guess if I felt like it really would help the team in some tangible way, I would just kind of swallow my reluctance to say something silly and do it because it's part of my job. But I guess I'd have to believe that it would work in some way.

And I can't with that kind of statement, really. All right. So where were you going? So there's been some suggestion because this deadline is slow or has been so far. because this deadline is slow or has been so far. And I do feel like maybe we all kind of have this ideal deadline in our heads that's like super exciting and every great player gets traded. And maybe it's like a deadline that we lived through when we were kids rooting for some team. And no deadline since then has ever been as exciting as that deadline.

Because it seems like every year I can remember, people say that this deadline was slow. and no deadline since then has ever been as exciting as that deadline. Because it seems like every year I can remember people say that this deadline was slow. But this seems especially slow. And as you said, there are reasons for that. So there's been some suggestion, like John Marossi tweeted yesterday, some other people have written that the deadline should be moved back a couple of weeks, maybe to mid-August, and that that would allow teams to figure out whether they are buyers and sellers or contenders or not. And that that would kind of free things up and that the reason that there haven't been trades or that there's the second wild card and there's a lot of parody, as you're saying. And so teams have kind of convinced themselves that they are contenders when maybe they're not or it's too early to tell that they're not. So that's the suggestion that moving it back would help.

But I guess I'm kind of skeptical about that. And Charlie Wilmoth at MLB Trade Rumors did a good post about this and kind of ran down all the reasons why players maybe have not been dealt so much. And in addition to the obvious ones like the wild card and the parody, there are, I guess, I mean, we've talked about the trend toward extensions a lot, and we've talked about it more as it relates to the free agent market. But John Mazalek, I guess it was yesterday, maybe over the weekend, pointed out that it also has an impact on the trade market. Because if there are fewer free agents, that means there are fewer players approaching free agency, fewer free agents, that means there are fewer players approaching free agency, which means that you would be less willing to deal players because you have more guys locked up long term. So that makes sense. And then there's the CBA change where players who are traded in the middle of the season don't get you draft picks if you, you can't get a draft pick for giving them a qualifying offer if you're the team that trades for them um so that's another thing and then uh in this post he kind of runs through

and he says that that teams have gotten smarter um and that they've kind of done the math and realized that mid-season trades don't usually make the difference or don't lead to a ton of wins and that the cost-benefit analysis usually comes out in terms of or in favor of the seller or, you know, who gets the prospects back and that long-term that it works out in their favor. And so, I don't know. I guess, I mean, if you push the deadline back a weeks, and if that were the case where teams just don't think it's worth it to give up prospects for these players, then I would think when you've got six weeks left in the season, no one's going to want to give up anyone for anyone. Because over six weeks, there's even less of an impact to be made. So you think that it's counterintuitively that the earlier you make the deadline, the more trades there will be? I don't know about that. I just don't think it

will make that big a difference to push it back a couple of weeks. I think it's possible that this year is kind of an outlier. There are reasons to think that, that there, uh, are new circumstances that haven't been around for the whole time that the deadline has been July 31st, which is what, since 1986, I think, uh, it was June 15th before that. Um, but it's possible that there's just kind of a confluence of factors and you've got kind of, you know, a couple of GMs of, of potential sellers who aren't selling because they have, you know, convinced themselves that, that they're still contenders. You've got, you know, Dayton Moore and Ruben Amaro and, and teams that maybe seem sort of like sellers, um, who aren't selling for various reasons. And maybe that's not something that is just here to stay.

It's just kind of what's happening this season. And maybe it would be an overreaction to completely change the system based on one or two years. I don't know if this is true. Somebody could check it by looking at transaction logs. But it also feels to me that the August period is more active than it used to be. I don't know if more players are clearing waivers, but we certainly hear about more players clearing waivers, but it feels like if you want to upgrade, you can continue to upgrade in August, particularly if you're willing to take on payroll. And so that

kind of defeats the purpose of a deadline, right? So, you know, the idea of a deadline is it's supposed to spur people to act because it's impending, it's counting down. And if that's sort of an artificial deadline, then you just see it, you know, you see the, you might see the same number of impact moves, they're just spread out over the course of a month. And there are teams who are not contending right now but still think that they'll be contenders next year and maybe have reason to think that. You know, like the Blue Jays or the Angels,

teams that kind of have everyone on their roster signed for another season and seem to have contending team talent, but things have gone wrong this year, and maybe they could retool and be back next year, so they're not sellers, even though their place in the standings would seem to dictate that they might sell. So I don't know.

I think it's sort of persuasive, but I think maybe it's too soon to say that we need to change the date. It's worked well for a while. What do you suppose the point of a trade line is? It does seem a little bit paternalistic to just have this league say, no, you can't be trusted to act like you know to to i don't know to what to not tank or something like what is the fear the fear is that teams will once the the season is lost completely that they'll just dump players in a way that really heavily distorts uh playoff contenders teams yeah i guess I guess. But I mean, a like, so what that you have the right to do with your players,

whatever you want. I mean, it seems sort of weird to, to legislate against that, but also it's not like, I mean, there are, there are,

there are, uh, you know, there are, there are a dozen teams that have essentially 0% playoff odds at the end of July. And you know, there are right now, there are like six teams with playoff odds over 90% probably.

I'm not looking that up. So there's not that much mystery about what a lot of these teams need, and yet you don't see this happening in a way that sort of turns the game into a sham. So why not just eliminate the trade deadline? Or certainly you already have a rule in place that nobody who isn't on the roster by September 1st is allowed in the postseason. So that would act. If you took out the DL loophole,

excuse me, the DL loophole, or the DL loophole, you know what I mean. If you took out the loophole, then that would essentially act as preservation of the game's interests if that is a game's interest. And just let people trade. It seems weird. They're grownups. Yeah, it's kind of like the fantasy league argument that always rages, except it makes more sense in fantasy leagues because you do have people who kind of tank, and if it's not a keeper league, then it's just that one season. And, you know, I mean, that.

Yeah. So but. Yeah. A lot of people just have no incentives. Yes. But I mean, at least at least in in baseball and major league baseball, you're trusting that people are acting rationally in their own interests, which is what you want to encourage. Yeah. I guess I don't know.

The danger is you have Jeffrey Warrior selling everyone, which he does anyway. So. Yeah. Well, don't let – yeah. I mean if you don't want that to happen, then just have – Do a better job of screening the owners. No, just have Bud Selig run all 30 teams. He can just tell us who won. Yeah, that will work well.

Well, that's a hot take. Abolish the trade deadline. Wow. So let's go back to mine. I'm just curious. If we have this conversation in a year or let's say six years, are we going to see a correction? I mean it seems inevitable that money will win, right? That money has to win.

How can money not be an asset, Ben? Says the guy who wrote like 2,800 words that got cut down to 1800 words not that long ago i think well i mean it can be if you put enough measures in place to try to curtail that uh which baseball has sort of um i mean it's not coming completely out of nowhere. It's the result of considered moves and changes to the CBA that are made to kind of enhance competitive balance and seem to have done that trick. But it does seem inevitable to me that there will be some correlation, some relationship.

I mean... So you would speculate speculate and i'm not disputing i think it's reasonable to speculate perhaps this way how it's reasonable to speculate however you want that this might be a fluke year with oakland tampa bay and pittsburgh having the 27 28 and 29th uh or actually 26 27 28th payrolls all with huge winning percentages, that this is just sort of maybe a little bit of a fluke where those three teams have had great success, are in a winning cycle, while the Angels and Phillies and the remnants of the Mets payroll are all doing terribly?

Yeah, I think there's probably some cyclical aspect to it. But I mean, I would certainly believe that the correlation is going to be lower than it has been in the past. I would buy that. You know, maybe it's like maybe the rich teams need a little time to figure out what to do with their money now that some of the things they used to do with it aren't working as well. But it seems to me that they'll find something. Do you agree or are you confident that this is the new normal? I have a hard time believing it can be the new normal. I'm not ruling it out, but I have a hard time believing it can possibly be true. Yes, I agree. I just can't accept that having more money is not better than having less money.

I recognize the institutional disadvantages that have been put in place. I don't know. Maybe I need to revisit it. I should go back and read my notes. You know, if there were a hard cap on salary, I guess I could buy it then. Although even, I guess, it still seems like there are things that you could do, whether it's just kind of putting money into your minor league system and just taking good care of your minor leaguers or building academies somewhere or something. But I could buy that that would be a slight advantage if there were a hard cap. And the luxury tax sort of functions as a soft cap and seems to have actually dissuaded, say, the Yankees from spending unlimited money. But there's still such a gap between rich and poor, even with those controls put in place, that it is hard for me to believe that there would be no advantage to that over time.

Well, we'll wait and see. I have more thoughts on this, but they're not well thought out. Okay. Well, we'll save them for when they are. Tomorrow's the email show, so send us some at podcast at baseballperspectives.com.