Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 258: 2014 Team Option Options/Matt Garza, the A’s, and Exploiting Unwritten Rules

Episode Date: August 5, 2013

Ben and Sam discuss whether teams should pick up various 2014 options, then talk about whether teams can make unwritten rules work to their advantage.

so many options. Good morning and welcome to episode... Ben, you want to help me out here? It's been 10 seconds since I told you what number this is. 258. 258? Alright. Welcome to episode 258 of Baseball Perspectives'

Daily Podcast, Effectively Wild. That was out of order too. This has been a rocky day. I'm Sam Miller in Long Beach in Vancouver. Is that right? Canada, where he has told me about 30 times a day that he was on a boat. Ben Lindberg, are you still on a boat?

Not on a boat anymore. No. On solid land. All right. So did you have a chance to keep up on baseball from your boat? A little bit. I heard that there's some biogenesis news, which prompts me to ask you.

It calls for a confidence level. Maybe for the final time, what is your confidence level on A-Rod playing this season? My head says that this is way too low, but my heart won't let me go higher than 40%. Wow, you've been up and down wildly over the last couple of weeks. It went from 80 when I first asked to 1.5. It was 15, and then it went to 1.5, and now it's back up to 40?

It was back up to 15 in the meantime. Oh, okay. So, yeah. But now it's 40, and realistically realistically i think it's probably higher than that but i just i i have it in my head that they're going to figure out a way to like you know like they're going to be checking ids at the at the at the stadium and he's not going to have brought his that sort of thing one way or another we may get an answer before we record again he's gonna break his foot wrestling with Scott Downs' kids.

That's a good joke. Yeah, that's good. So my topic, because I didn't have time to pay a whole lot of attention to baseball this season, is I've put... This weekend. This weekend, yeah, this whole season, is extensions or options for 2014. I have put them all into a spreadsheet, players who have, or team options, and I've put the amount of those options.

And I'm going to ask you whether you would pick them up. That's the topic. Okay. I'm going to ask, I mean, I'm going to talk about Matt Garza and Unwritten Rules. Okay. So why don't you go first? Yeah, because mine's going to be bad. All right.

So some of these players have vesting options, but I don't think any of them look like uh they're going to vest so um so i'll just go through uh some of them are very easy some of them maybe not so much uh first one is lance berkman for 12 million pass adam lind for 7 million uh oh that's a tough one i uh i will take adam lind at that yeah uh i would too probably adam lind is uh i think in baseball perspectives chats over the past two years i think i've been asked more questions about adam lind than possibly any other player uh people with fantasy teams have been fascinated by adam lind it seems that i should probably not pass now it seems like sorry i should probably not pick it up i'm now looking at it

and uh i'm now gonna i'm gonna decline twoout. Oh, well, you didn't tell me that. No, that's totally different. So it's $7 million with a $2 million buyout? Yeah, okay. I'll take it. Yeah, I think I'd take it anyway. I don't know. Yeah.

Okay, next one. Let's see. We've got Mark Ellis for $5.75. I'm going to require you to tell me the buyouts up front None of this switcheroo at the end Well that's either going to take extra time Or loud typing sounds Well why don't you just subtract the buyout And just give me the number that is the true cost

I presume that I looked up all the buyouts Mark Ellis has a $1 million buyout Give me the number that is the true cost. You presume that I looked up all the buyouts. Oh. Okay. Mark Ellis has a $1 million buyout. All right. Let's generally presume that there will be, let's say, a $1 million buyout for every player. All right.

What's Mark Ellis's? 5.75. Oh, I'll take that. Yeah. I'll accept. Yeah? You're not going to make a big play for Robinson Cano and let Mark Ellis go? That's a good point. No, I think Mark Ellis brings a layer of grit that can't be replaced by some high price. Certainly not by a player like Robinson Cano who doesn't run out and ground balls.

No, I'll take grit over cano any day of the week no i i mean you know what i was just i was just handicapping the chances that mark uh or that robinson cano will sign with the dodgers today with somebody and you know it's just it's not a it's not a particular i don't think it's anywhere close to a sure thing and you know the way that second base is right now. There's not a lot else out there. I mean I guess you could decline the option and then just re-sign Mark Ellis later anyway. But yeah, I mean the basic gist of the question is Mark Ellis, is he worth that much or is he not?

And he is. He's definitely worth that much. He's a good ball player. Grit aside, grit irrelevant. Good ball player good ball player okay grit is never irrelevant but okay uh benzo brist seven million oh my goodness that's it that's it yeah uh okay i would take that if it were for i would take that if he had 100 game suspension i would still no seriously if he had 100 game suspension i would still pick up that option especially because isn't there another option yes next year like yeah that's another thing that you you turn right yes i think adam lind had a few options that were more expensive after the first one uh okay big names jamie Carroll, $2 million.

Pass. Okay. Alexi Kassia, $3 million. Pass. Younel Escobar, $5 million. Oh, I think I've been pro-Younel for most of my life. I'm not going to change now. I will take Younel Escobar at that price uh yeah without much without much question i would too and he has another one the year after at the

same price uh okay derrick cheater eight million oh derrick cheater derrick cheater has an eight million dollar officer grade one strain derrick cheater how did Jeter. How did he get that? How did he get that? How did that happen? Isn't he on like a three-year, $51 million contract? Okay, this is a player option. Oh, okay. So you're Derek Jeter. Can you take it?

Yeah, I think I would. I mean, I guess I would. Yeah. I mean, I guess he'll probably negotiate something with the Yankees. Right. For more. Doesn't he get to do that? Doesn't he basically have the right to. I guess so.

To negotiate. He'll get he'll get like 11. He'll get 11 or 12. Right. It would help if he could stay on the field for more than a few games at a time. But it might not. It might not help. Maybe not. This might not help. Maybe not. This might actually be his best strategy.

Right. He doesn't look bad when he's on the DL. He stands on the top step and looks captain-like. Okay. Chris Young has an $11 million option. I think that I would reject that. And

probably I'm being swayed a bit too much by this year. I think I would have picked it up a few months ago, and normally if I would have picked it up a few months ago, I should pick it up now. But I don't think he'll make that. I think he'll get paid less than that this offseason so i'll i'll reject it all right uh jason kubel has a

7.5 million dollar team option i think that i am rejecting jason kubel yeah i am rejecting jason cool yeah uh i think i probably would too uh coco crisp also has a 7.5 except except accept it no matter what and then name a number i accept any price any price okay uh all right this this should be um okay uh we have kurt suzuki has an 88.5 million option. That's a pass. Yep. Okay. All right there. Did I say – I'm pretty sure I saw a quote the other day that Kurt Suzuki said that the best move Billy Bean ever made was letting him go.

Really? I didn't see that. I swear I saw that quote. I feel like I might have dreamed it because I've been looking up Billy Bean quotes a lot lately. And it's also possible that I saw – it was like some sort of parody. So now I'm looking it up, but go ahead. And then the last – Yeah, yeah, Kurt Suzuki, November 12, 2012.

November 16, 2012. Kurt Suzuki says Billy Bean's best move was trading him away. He's had a lot of good moves, though. There you go. I feel like that probably wasn't the best. I guess it was a good one. Probably not, yeah. Like Keith Falk. Yeah, that can be a future podcast topic.

The Trevor Cahill trade? Yeah. The Dan Heron trade? trade mark molder trade how did he get back in the mark molder trade uh he got dan heron he got dan dan heron and derrick barton and uh and uh the reliever the reliever uh kiko kiko calero that's a better that's a better trade okay so re so Reed Johnson, 1.6 million. I wouldn't even know where to start with Reed Johnson. Yeah, I guess if you need a player like Reed Johnson, then maybe that's not the worst price for him.

I don't know. He has limited use. Yeah, if you need a player like Reed Johnson, though, you also maybe would be better off not investing in Reed Johnson. Yeah, all right. It's hard to say. It's hard to say. You can't go wrong.

You could. Okay, so that's all the position players. Pitchers, Nick Blackburn, 8 million. Pass. Okay, you said that with conviction um roy halliday for a cool 20 million pass okay uh all right let's see chris capuano has a six million million mutual option. One way or the other, I'm passing. All right.

If I get to be both, then I'm going to pass. Okay. Another mutual option, Aaron Horang, $7 million. Pass. At any price. You don't want any part of Aaron Horang. All right. Ubaldo Jimenez. Pass.

You don't even want to hear the amount. What is the amount? The amount is $8 million. I mean, you know, given who's a free agent starter this winter, it wouldn't kill me if a team did that

at all. I would pass, but it wouldn't kill me if a team did that at all i would i would pass but it wouldn't you know wouldn't break my heart yeah uh okay john lester 13 million uh i'll take that yeah uh sure i wouldn't feel i don't feel great about it i feel i feel about as strongly in favor of that as i feel in against ubaldo like i don't think it's a slam dunk, but yeah, I'll take it. All right. Brett Myers, $8 million. Pass. Yeah, that seems like a fairly easy one.

Wandy Rodriguez for $13. Pass. All right. Didn't have to think about that one, huh? Why would I? Yeah, I guess you wouldn't have to. Johan Sant huh why would i um yeah i guess you wouldn't have to uh johan santana 25 million are you sure final answer great reference man yeah um would you like to phone a friend i'm in canada so that show just, it's in its first season here, probably.

Okay, James Shields, is that a team option? Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah. James Shields, $12 million team option. Oh, definitely, I'll take that. Yeah, you kind of have to. Okay, Ryan Vogelsel song 6.5 honestly i mean i passed but i don't know that it's i don't know that he's not worth that but you know he's been so bad he was

so bad and i don't even know i don't know when he's even coming back i don't know how much he might be missing time for all i know next year uh okay relievers i feel like with your your attitude towards relievers you won't want any relievers um rafael betancourt mutual option for 4.25 i'll take it okay uh okay then you might take casey jansen for 4 million i'll take it all right i'll take almost any reliever for 4 million. The difference is that I won't take any reliever for five, but any reliever for four, I will take.

Well, the next reliever is for four, uh, Matt Lindstrom. Pass. Okay. Well, we put that resolve to the test pretty quickly.

Um, Joe Nathan, 9 million. Uh, we put that resolve to the test pretty quickly. Joe Nathan, $9 million. Gosh. For one year, I'll take it. Okay. You got her. Two more. Matt Thornton for $6 million. Pass. Okay. Pass. Last one, Jose Veras, $3.25. I'll take it. You know, he's got a zero era in the american league

if you just keep him there unhittable all right zero ben so if anyone was wondering uh whether these options would be picked up two months from now um we have weighed in did you weigh in i wasn't sure if you were no okay didn't really, no. Okay. But you did. I trust your judgment. It did feel like if you disagreed, you were saying something, but I'm not sure if that was inclusive. Well, we never disagree, right?

Not much. All right, so Matt Garza. Have you been following the Matt Garza thing at all? I have caught up on it. I am up to speed. So to review, Matt Garza can't throw. He's very good at pitching. He's very bad at throwing otherwise. And the A's try to take advantage of this or at least rattle him by

bunting at him a lot. After the fourth bunt or so, he started yelling at Eric Sogard for bunting. He then went after Eric Sogard on Twitter, as well as eric sogard's wife on twitter uh and said some pretty horrible things i'm not in any way going to deny that matt gars is a monster who said awful awful things and that is beyond the scope of this clearly everything that matt gars has said uh about uh you know gender issues and you know, Eric Sogard's relationship with his wife, horrible, awful, monstrous, completely beyond the pale and just horrifying. Okay. But I wanted to talk about unwritten rules because, um, you know, whether, I don't know, maybe this is not an unwritten rule that anybody, but Matt Garza knows about, but clearly Matt Garza felt that the A's were violating an unwritten rule by kind of bunting at him and non-competitive and silly and also unwritten,

whereby they cease to be rules. But I've been thinking about this a lot and, again, limiting it just to the unwritten rule aspect, not to any of Garza's particular reaction, especially off the field. But I've kind of decided I sort of like unwritten rules even though they're absurd um and i will tell you why i like unwritten rules um to me uh the unwritten rule is actually a fairly subtle and ingenious and kind of crafty way of getting your opponent to play worse than they could that it is essentially this sort of not well I guess sometimes it spills into violence but essentially it's this kind of non-violent way of intimidating your opponent into behaving against their own interests and that kind of strikes me as brilliant and now I'm sort of of into it. And when you think about unwritten rules, so many of them are essentially basically telling your opponent not to behave in a way that helps them win.

So very famously, you have Alex Rodriguez yelling, ha, which as far as i know is not against the written rules of baseball but is considered bush league and so it's you know theoretically if somebody's mad at a rod for doing this on the field it's because you know it actually would be distracting and you might actually drop the ball and so nobody does this even though they're you know theoretically allowed to do it because they've been intimidated by like etiquette into not doing it. And you think about not stealing bases when you're up by six or you think about not bunting to break up a no hitter, even if it's your best chance to get a hit. Even if it's late in the game and it's a one run game, you're not allowed to do it by the unwritten rules. All that really is, is this incredibly crafty way of getting

your opponent not to beat you and so i decided i love it and i also even more than that love the teams that violate the unwritten rules i had i think i mentioned before that in my slow pitch softball league i am a i am a walker i am – my goal is to walk five times a game. And this is not considered a noble way to play the game. I do expose myself to some abuse. There are people who will unfollow me now because of this. And yet I love the walk-in, and I love it partly because there's not a lot of pitchers who are capable of throwing three – or two strikes in a row or two strikes before they throw three balls. It's a, you know, you start one, one in slow pitch softball, start with a one, one count or even throwing one strike before they throw three balls. So, you know, I basically

make them throw a strike and, uh, this probably violates an unwritten rule. And yet it's the only way our team wins because we don't have good baseball players or good athletes or young human beings. We're old and slow, and the only way we win is by drawing walks. And so I like the A's. Slower than Jose Molina. I'm a half second slower to first than Jose Molina. It's true. And I'm one of the fast ones.

It's true. I like the A's because the A's, I've been wondering, and forgive me, there might be some team that's done this before to Garza, but I've never seen any team do it to Garza, and I've been wondering when a team was going to do it to Garza. He can't throw. It makes perfect sense to do this. And I love that the A's did it. I love that the A's totally wigged out C.J. Wilson when he got all mad because they were playing lawyer ball by drawing walks,

which is just incredible right i mean cj wilson's biggest biggest uh flaws that he you know sometimes loses the strike zone the a's very famously draw walks it's not a new thing and yet like he totally got frazzled by them and insulted them for violating an unwritten rule about taking pitches. I love it. I love that the A's aren't afraid to break the unwritten rule. And I kind of love that other teams invoke the unwritten rule. So that's all I'm going to, I'm no longer ever going to insult an unwritten rule. I will complain if my team follows the unwritten rule. I think that following an unwritten rule is dumb, but enforcing an unwritten rule is brilliant so that's the thing

do you have the the moral authority to enforce an unwritten rule if you don't consider yourself bound by the unwritten rules if you don't observe the unwritten rules uh then i feel like you wouldn't you wouldn't have the authority to to compel another team to observe them, right? I mean, you have to be an old school guy who believes in the, you can't be the A's bunting against Matt Garza and then turn around the next day and you get bunted against with a pitcher who can't throw and complain about it, right?

You can no longer intimidate the other team because you perform the same tactics. So I guess the i see the benefit of being the team that that doesn't uh play by these rules but you can't be both really can you right i mean it would be it would be impressive if you could be uh the team that does both the garza thing and the A's thing and somehow gets away with that. But I feel like you have to have it one way or the other, right? You can either be the defender and the upholder of these unwritten rules and therefore use your authority in that position to compel

other teams to give you an edge that they wouldn't otherwise. Or you can be the team that just thinks that all the rules are silly and doesn't play by any of them but also doesn't expect the opponent to that's a really good point and i hadn't thought about it i'm i'm not sure i'm not sure if your reputation for breaking unwritten rules would would necessarily get around that quickly it probably would i'm not sure that even if your reputation did get around that teams would still be able to change the way that they play uh it's possible that they would still kind of revere the code uh and go down with the ship i don't know but it's a good point and it yeah it suggests that maybe it actually does make sense to follow the unwritten rules that don't seem to matter that much like stealing stealing when you're up by six because probably a make sense to follow the unwritten rules that don't seem to matter that much.

Like stealing when you're up by six is probably a good one to follow if you get some moral authority later. Right. I mean, how many unwritten rules are there that actually give you an edge in a game? Because a lot of them are not showing up a team like that, stealing with a ton of runs where you're not really increasing your your win expectancy by anything at that point um i mean what other one there there's the the bunting this this situation with garza and there's the bunting to break up a no hitter or a perfect game uh that one i guess helps you if it's a close game well that you know not showing up an opponent might actually be useful it might have a strategic

advantage especially if you have a pitcher who you think you can rattle but yeah i mean you're right a lot of them aren't that significant and those ones are probably worth following if it helps you maintain the moral authority and the a's probably picked a good time to uh to go freelancing i mean this is probably a good case if you you're going to use your get out of unwritten rule jail card, this is probably a good one to do it. So yeah, that's a good point. You're right. It is about picking your spots, isn't it? Yeah, I guess so. You have to play by the rules most of the time when it doesn't really hurt you. And then every now and then you get a situation like this and you can just conveniently forget about that. And then the next time a situation comes up, you can be the old school team again when it doesn't hurt you to be that team.

I guess if I were a team executive or a manager, how fervently I would wish that my players would not be on Twitter, I guess. I mean, you can't compel them not to be, really, and there are rules about not tweeting during the game and that sort of thing, but it seems like there's not a whole lot of good that can come out of this for a team. I guess there's maybe some good. Like if you, I don't know, if you have a really charismatic player on Twitter, I guess it could maybe get some more fans for your team, but it seems like it would just kind of get that player more Twitter followers.

Like I don't know if the Diamondbacks are more popular because Brandon McCarthy is good at Twitter. So it seems like there's not a whole lot of upside and there's just a lot of downside because it's a medium where players will say things without a media relations person standing next to them and ready to cut off the interview if they start going off the rails a little bit. It's, uh, it must be kind of scary. Yeah. Why couldn't you compel them not to be? Uh, could you, I know there are, I guess, I guess you could. There's, there are, I feel like there are teams in either other sports or maybe like college sports where that's a thing. Again, when we talk about other sports, it's not our strength.

I guess you could. I don't know. You could make it some kind of team policy, I guess. But there's like an MLB social media policy, I think. There's like an MLB social media policy, I think. I guess you could have a team-specific thing where you put it in people's contracts when they come to your team or something. I don't know whether that would make it harder to sign free agents who have millions of Twitter followers. Maybe.

I think only one free agent has millions of Twitter followers, to be fair. I mean, sorry if that's a little pedantic, but I nick swisher is the only one i guess so yeah uh and a lot of players just have twitter accounts that are run by someone else and are boring um and they might have a lot of followers because they're famous but not because they're putting any effort into it themselves uh but yeah okay i guess we're done all right talk to you tomorrow okay