Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 321: Should the Yankees Be Big Spenders?

Episode Date: November 4, 2013

Ben and Sam discuss what the Yankees will (and should) do this winter.

And the Yankees win it 5-4 on the day that Derek Jeter collects his 5,000th hit. Good morning and welcome to episode 321 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives. I'm Sam Miller with Ben Lindberg. How are you, Ben? Okay. We actually were here. All of you thought we were just bluffing about continuing to do the show. All of you thought we were just bluffing about continuing to do the show. Kind of reminded me of that Seinfeld episode where George drives out to the Hamptons pretending that he has a house out there because he doesn't want to get caught in the lie. But the other people call his bluff, so he just keeps driving out there until he's forced to admit it. So here we are.

We're doing it. Do you think that living in Manhattan you have a particular appreciation for Seinfeld, or is it the case that when every other show on TV takes place in New York, you just become totally immune to it, to the effect? I don't know. I think it's probably universally appealing. There may be some things that are more familiar to me and I enjoy the humor a little bit more, but I'm sure I'd like it if I were from somewhere else. I spent a month living in New York once in the West Village and every day I would walk past the balcony that was used as the balcony in Friends like uh rachel and and monica's balcony

and every single time every time i would look up like kind of excited and i i did wonder like if i had moved there permanently as i had considered like how long it would take before i stopped looking up excitedly didn I didn't really watch Friends. Okay. So today we're going to talk about the, it's my turn to pick a topic. Yeah. We're only doing one. So here we go. This is it.

New format. Today we're going to talk about the Yankees offseason and two sort of, I kind of brought two topics, even though we're only doing one topic, because're both quick i guess um and they're both related so one is um that the yankees re-signed derrick jeter um did basically it's like a it seems to be an accounting trick uh to maybe save a little bit of money it's hard to tell uh while definitely giving him more money it's like it's almost like they're taking the money that they would have otherwise spent on the luxury tax and giving it to him if i understand it correctly and then and then sort of they're hoping i guess although nobody seems to really know for sure, that it might save them a little bit as well. But it's sort of an accounting thing to give the money to him instead of to the

league, basically, as I understand it. And secondly, RJ Anderson has his top 50 free agents list article coming out Tuesday. And I have looked at it, and he has predicted where players are going to go. And he would acknowledge that this is an almost impossible task that he, like everybody else, is poor at. I had to force him to do it. Yes, exactly. But nonetheless, there are players that he has given to the Yankees, he has assigned to the Yankees. And I just wanted to mention those and see what you thought

a realistic winter would be for the Yankees. So first off, Jeter, let's say that the Yankees had declared early on that under no circumstances, for some reason, I mean this is a universe where this would make sense, but for some reason they refused to re-sign Derek Jeter. He is not going to be Yankee under any circumstances. So Derek Jeter becomes a free agent, and he wants to keep playing. What do you think he gets from a non-Yankees team?

And he's still Derek Jeter. He's just not Derek Jeter on the Yankees. What kind of contract does he get? I think he gets one year and maybe like $8 million. Okay. And almost because I just feel like any team kind of has to give him a like a derrick cheater boost of some sort like i feel like he just well only if they want to i mean they could just let him sign somewhere else yeah uh yeah i like i can't really imagine him taking a like a bargain

basement deal like maybe he just like wouldn't wouldn't play instead of just taking i can't currently imagine him as like one of those oh i'll just take a cheap deal and prove myself guys so but you yeah you can't really imagine him playing for the yankees either i mean we're we're imagining that he is i mean yeah it doesn't matter what he would play for or wouldn't play for i'm't play for. I'm asking what a team would give him. And you think that there is a team out there that would give him $8 million? I wouldn't, but yeah, probably.

And I don't think he's worth as much to any other team. I think he's worth more to the Yankees, probably quite a bit more, just for off-the-field stuff, for selling jerseys or whatever. Probably quite a bit more just for off-the-field stuff, for selling jerseys or whatever. But yeah, I think he'd get probably—he'd still get more than you'd think he would just based on his projections. And just curiosity, I mean, we don't know this. I'm asking you to speculate about what's going on in a man's head. But what do you think his endgame is in this career of his?

How does this end for him? I think he long ago said that he wanted to play to 40, and this will be 40, and it will be the end of a deal and i don't know i mean if he comes out and and has a really good season somehow uh maybe he'd want to keep playing and if the yankees are are competitive then i guess i could see him kind of continuing like rivera did but rivera was still rivera so um i don't know if he if he isn't so good this season or he struggles with injuries again, I could see him just sort of bowing out. Seems like kind of a proud, proud guy probably wouldn't want to have a really long, ugly decline phase. It it seems like there's I mean, OK, he said he wants to play to 40, but I mean, that's arbitrary. And he's not you know, he's not stuck with that proclamation, right? He could have quit.

And it feels like the amount of work that has gone into it. Roy Oswald said he was going to retire, right? He was going to retire at 34. He said he couldn't see himself sticking around and all he needed was his tractor. He couldn't see himself sticking around and all he needed was his tractor. But it seems like the amount of work that it's taking to come back this time for really unpredictable rewards. And, I mean, you know, he could have very easily packed it in early last year when it became clear that it was going to be difficult. So it seems like there has to be something else he expects to get out of this that makes it all worthwhile.

And I don't exactly know what that is. And what I'm going to say next sort of sounds like kind of cheap. And I mean, I guess it's more than it's going to sound like. But basically, he – it wouldn't surprise me if – I mean, he probably kind of deserves the tour of the league that Chipper Jones and Mariano Rivera got. Like he wants his rocking chair made out of broken bats maybe. And I don't begrudge that. I mean, like you get a few moments. I mean, there are very few players that get this

in for one thing um and i don't know you just get very few moments to like reflect and bask in everybody's unbridled happiness now to some degree he i think he got something like that when i think it was his 3000 hits i remember the I remember the Angels had some sort of ceremony for him when he came into town after his 3,000 hits. So I don't know. Maybe he got his hit. Maybe he feels like he got that. But I wonder whether he wants the tour.

But then if you want the tour, you need to announce. To get the tour, you need to announce. You don't, you, to get the tour, you have to say early on. So he hasn't, he hasn't said anything. He hasn't said that this is going to be his last year. He hasn't, other than saying that he'd like to play to 40, he hasn't given any indication that this is his last year. Yeah. I can't tell if he has come to terms with the situation or not.

And I don't really want to psychoanalyze the guy, but when I, when I was at his uh press conference last year the first press conference he did at yankee stadium when he kind of he resurfaced after being away rehabbing for a few months after spring training and this was before he came back but uh it was the first time anyone had had an opportunity to ask him how he was and when he would be back. And he was just he sounded like so certain that he was going to be back and that he was going to play at the same level that he had always played at. And I don't know whether that was just sort of a facade of confidence or whether he literally cannot comprehend the idea of of not being Derek Jeter. So, and maybe that changed after the rest of the season and how that went. But the only quotes that I've heard from him are just sort of, yeah, I'll be back next year.

There's no, you know, when sometimes when players start aging and they're not playing quite as well, they acknowledge that. And they sort of acknowledge that they're not the same player and they're not playing quite as well, they acknowledge that. And they sort of acknowledge that they're not the same player and they're dealing with fewer physical gifts. And we talked about CeCe Sabathia being almost depressing about it this year when he talked about how he didn't have the same stuff. So, I don't know, Jeter made some comments about how he was kind of weak because he hadn't been able to work out his lower body like he usually does, but he never really seemed to acknowledge that he was less than he had been before, that he wasn't going to come back and be that again.

So it's possible that he really thinks that way, that he has that confidence that got him to this point and hasn't deserted him yet. that way that he has that confidence that got him to this point and hasn't deserted him yet. All right. Okay. So as for the Yankees off season, and again, this is speculation from a person who quite possibly was doing it out of spite and cannot be taken in good faith. But RJ predicts that the Yankees will re-sign Cano. And I apologize to RJ for giving this away a day early, but I don't think he'll mind. Re-sign Robinson Cano.

Sign Nelson Cruz. Sign Carlos Ruiz. Sign Kelly Johnson. Sign Kelly Johnson. And the specifics are impossible, but just want to get your sense of whether that kind of rings true as the sort of offseason you expect the Yankees to have. And if so, this seems like a pretty terrible team. Yeah. Well, I think the part that was spite in RJ's article was when he included the random number generators prediction. Yes.

That was the spite part. Spectacular, yes. So I don't know. It seems like there are mixed messages about how they have to stay under this certain amount of money. And if they bring back Canoe, I mean, they are losing quite a bit of payroll. And people have been writing about our friend Andy McCullough a few days ago wrote an article for the Star-Ledger and said Yankees will be busy in offseason, could pursue big-name free agents, and the team intends to be quite active,

and he named Tanaka and Cano and Beltran and McCann and Chu and everyone basically all of the marquee people uh which is random random number generator by the way has Chu going to the Yankees yeah just so you know right um so I don't know it feels like it feels like a Yankees offseason always used to feel where they would be linked to everyone at the top of the board, basically. And yet there's also this new fiscal restraint thing going on also. It's hard to imagine them being good even if they do go out and—I if they added everyone that rj speculated that they would add yeah that's a lousy team yeah still seems sort of and i don't know whether there's do you think there's an element of red socks here where we wrote off the red socks because

they had a terrible injury year but there was still talent there. And then the talent came back and was healthy. And then they supplemented it with some good veteran signings and suddenly were the best team in baseball. Is that like even a possible outcome for this team? I mean, they had terrible injury problems. Yeah, they did. But I mean, to some degree, I mean, they had a lot of money injured. And maybe I'm diminishing this. But I mean, like if you look at their injuries, like A-Rod, missing A-Rod at third was significant.

But they might not have A-Rod this year. They probably won't have A-Rod this year, it seems to me. They didn't have Teixeira, but what really is Teixeira at this point in his career? They didn't have Granderson, but they're not going to have Granderson back next year. And they didn't have Jeter, and I don't know that they were worse for it, for what Jeter is right now. And meanwhile, they're losing Pettit and Corota in this scenario, who were two of their three best pitchers, and they're losing Mariano Rivera. So, and did I say Granderson? Yes.

Yeah, and that's the injuries, basically. That's the injuries, plus not the pitchers. And maybe you consider Sabathia to be an injury. Sort of. He still pitched 211 inks. It's hard to know how to deal with that. Yeah, you're right. Just about everyone was on the DL at some point. Other than Cano and Ichiro, that was about it.

Everyone did some time. Um, but you're right. A lot of those people weren't, weren't really so great. Um, so I don't know if they, if they were to sign like McCann and over the, the Chris Stewart, like Rom Romine, like, Cervelli combination that they got through the season with last year, that would seem to be a pretty big upgrade there in one swoop. Overbay was bad. So Teixeira, you expect, would be at least, I don't know, above average probably. Or at least average better than Overbay. So I don't know.

But then again, everyone who's healthy will also be even older than they were last year and even more likely to get hurt and more likely not to play very well. There's a full season of soriano they'll have which it maybe kind of helps a little bit uh i don't know it's uh it's a weird weird team in a weird situation and they were and they're just go ahead sorry i don't mean to interrupt i mean their pythag record was 79 and 83 uh so they like true talent wise with the the actual players who were playing probably weren't an 85 win team um they they kind of kind of lucked out there even to be

that good uh they were they were 30 and 16 in one run games which is really good um so i don't know so yeah give me an off season that would make you excited about this Yankees team. I feel like the only way that I get excited about teams anymore is if they do a youth movement, if they have prospects. Well, all right, let me rephrase. I mean, that would make you excited about their chances for for 2014 uh if they sign everyone i mean i don't know uh like if they sign if they sign mccann and yeah and they sign I don't know if they brought back well I don't know if they

like signed Ellsbury or something and and moved Gardner to left and like I don't know they'd have to they'd have to sign all of the good players yes they would yes that's I I could like that's what I'm asking you and I think that's the answer answer. I mean, they do. That's what they have to do. But I mean, would you like I would be excited, I would say, if they like, and this is not necessarily realistic, or maybe it is. We've lived through some off seasons where this is exactly what happened. But like, if they signed McCann, Chuou tanaka and traded for david price that'd be exciting right that'd be an exciting sure yeah and you know and re-signed kano and maybe signed kelly johnson as a backup third baseman or something that would be a pretty exciting team hayman says they're discussing ellsbury mccann and garza they've also been connected to drew mahalam chou tanaka uh so it's just like just like the old Garza, they've also been connected to Drew, Mahalem, Chu, Tanaka. So it's just like the old days when the Yankees were connected to everyone.

I wonder in the current situation, if they are still planning to be frugal, I wonder what the most kind of profitable message for them to be projecting right now is. And if they are planning to spend and do like what Heyman says and sign everybody, I wonder what the best message is for them. Like, do they have an incentive to lie in either scenario? Or do they have an incentive to tell the truth in either scenario, do you think? Or do we just not know? Is that too hard to know? About the finances, you mean? Just about their plans.

About, like, what they are this offseason. I mean, I guess there's never really much incentive to say anything. But if, like, they're worried about criticism one way or another, or if they're worried about tipping their hand one way or another. Yeah, well, they could do, like do like what maybe the red socks have done in the past where they just say that it's like kind of a transition year or something like they're still going to try to be competitive but but they're really laying the groundwork for for some new collection of talent um it's hard to it's hard to see because their their minor league system i've

been i've been writing annual comments i've been writing yankees comments over the weekend and before that and i mean all of their minor leaguers had disappointing seasons almost all not not everyone like you know depala had a good year or something but all the people who came into the year you know gary sanchez and mason will Mason Williams and all the people who were the touted prospects really kind of stagnated or took a step back. Um, and they had a good draft or it was perceived to be a good draft. So, so that's nice, but that's many, many years away. Uh, so I don't, I don't know what the, what the, what the short term, and we've, I think we've talked before about how, uh, like the idea that in New York, there's no such thing as rebuilding. You can't ever say rebuild because the fans will just be outraged and they'll desert you. And I know that all of the Mets fans I know, and granted, maybe they're not the greatest

reflection of Mets fans in general, but they've always said, please bring on the rebuild. We would welcome that. What we don't want is to get stuck in the middle and keep signing free agents and never having good prospects and just kind of getting caught in between. And they've always told me like, oh, of course we'd support a rebuilding movement. I don't know whether that works for the Yankees. If there's any team that it doesn't work for, I guess it would be the Yankees. I don't know. It seemed like they kind of built – they had a model there for a while where they almost had to make the playoffs and get the extra money from that because they were spending so much on players

then again it seems like they've they're making so much money that it i we don't even know how much they're making because they'll they kind of cook the books a little bit it seems like with how much yes is making as opposed to how much the yankees are making and it's hard to to actually pin pin down how profitable they are but uh it seems like even if they had a down attendance year they'd probably still be making money um so yeah I don't I don't know where they go from here it seems like with any other team with this kind of roster composition, you would be pretty pessimistic about the next few years with them. There's, I suppose the chance that they could go out and spend a ton of money.

And if they, if they have it, then I guess they could, they could keep it going because they, they did. Right. I mean, that was kind of the thing with them,

like for the last decade or most of the last decade, they just, they sustained this thing by continuing to throw money at every hole. And they would get old, but then they'd sign some other old free agent who was still decent. And they would just kind of keep chugging along without really having a lot of new young players to plug in there. It's just like— Yeah, but, you know, we've talked about this. It is the position of

this podcast that that is harder to do now. Right. Yeah. Yes. So yeah. So either it stopped working or, or they, I don't know, maybe they got too conservative financially. And once you, once you go one winter, not throwing the money then you just you kind of have to keep keep moving keep keep spending the money to keep that kind of roster going all right so uh prediction uh who makes more playoffs who has more postseason appearances in the next three seasons the yankees or the sum of the pirates and the astros uh three seasons you said yeah um i made a previous prediction about the pirates right five years yeah what did i say to be consistent who cares five years is different than three years that's true all right uh

okay well i don't i don't think the astros will have any, um, maybe, maybe one at the end there, but probably not. So I guess I'd still say Yankees. Okay. All right. Fair enough. All right. We'll be back tomorrow.