Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 340: Attempting to Make Sense of the Doug Fister Deal

Episode Date: December 3, 2013

Ben and Sam try to puzzle out the Tigers’ motivation for making the Doug Fister trade.

I don't get it. I don't get it. I don't get it. I don't get it. I don't get it. Good morning and welcome to episode 340 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectus. I'm Sam Miller with Ben Lindberg. Ben, what do you have to wake up early in the morning for? I have to go on TV to talk about transactions. Did you do that yesterday too, today? I did. Wow. It's a lot of TV.

It is. And it disrupts my usual schedule of staying up all night, which is a problem for writing. All right. So they'll probably ask you about the Doug Pfister trade, don't you think? They probably will. Well, let's consider this a dry run. Okay. So this is the most probably universal response to a move since the James Shields trade, I would think.

It's not quite as universal as the James Shields trade. I think we're at a point now where the knee-jerk contrarianism of which I think probably you and I find ourselves in sometimes will prevent anything from ever being as universal as the James Shields deal. It's sort of like how Willie Mays didn't get elected into the Hall of Fame unanimously. elected into the Hall of Fame unanimously. And so now there's like a handful of guys who will refuse to vote anyone in because if Willie Mays couldn't be voted in unanimously, then they certainly can't be. We're that.

We are the jerks who will take the wrong side on things just because. But I feel confident saying this is a pretty odd trade, I guess. It's not the trade I was expecting to hear. It's not the return I would have expected for Pfister. I wouldn't have expected Pfister to be moved unless it was for something really good.

And you have to wonder how this fell into the Nationals' laps. Is there another way of looking at this besides that? I don't know. I'm trying. I haven't written about it yet. I have to write about it after we finish recording, and I'd like to come up with a take that is not the same as everyone else's take, but I am struggling. such a great record of trades that yeah that i want to find the the hidden genius here uh because he has proved time and time again that when he makes trades with other teams usually the the tigers get the best of it um but i it's it's tough to see that happening this time I I certainly would have expected Pfister to to command much more than than what I mean what Detroit got and and we should probably we should probably say what the trade is we never

say what the transaction that we talk about is so we should do that right so it's so it's Doug Pfister who has two years of team control left going to the Nationals in exchange for Steve Lombardozzi. There's a vowel I always say. It goes on much too long. Lombardozzi? It's not Lombardozzi. It is. And Ian Kroll, who is a reliever.

And Robbie Ray, who is a left-handed starting pitching prospect, who was in a this year as well as high a this year uh lombardozzi who i still want to say lombard easy which isn't a name uh lombardozzi uh is a utility guy uh plays some infield plays some outfield and doesn't hit does that sum it up yeah and and robbie ray is not a he'sof-the-rotation projected starter or anything. No, he was like a 12th-round pick or something like that three years ago and hasn't been on a top 100 yet. I don't know if he will be this offseason, but it doesn't seem like he will be. And I think Jason said that he would have been around number five on the national system,

I think Jason said that he would have been around number five on the national system, in the national system, and number two in a Tiger system that is in contention for the worst in baseball. So, you know, it's not like – I mean, there's a reason that nobody's, you know, freaking out about trading a young player for two years of a veteran like they did last year, right? This is a different kind of a prospect. Ben Badler might have had the definitive analysis of this when he said that last year the Royals traded, you know, got two years of James Shields and they traded Will Myers. This year the tigers trade two years of doug fister and they get robbie ray um and you can play that game with a lot of recent trades you could talk about the return of the met scott ferrari dickie or or you could talk about the met garza deal just all of these trades for pitchers who are no better than Pfister, maybe worse than Pfister, and have less control than, you know, fewer years of team control than Pfister. I mean, you could just,

you could look at the Scott Casimir signing that was done today. I mean, Scott Casimir signed a two-year deal, and so the market priced him at $22 million for two years. Pfister is just so far beyond Scott Casimir as a pitcher, I think. I mean, it feels fair to say that this is like, there's a $20 million difference at least over two years between those two guys in my mind. And there's no way that Robbie Ray is $20 million worth of surplus value. Yeah, no. Lombardo, he's a replacement level utility guy so far in his career he might be slightly better than that but he's not a starter by any means

so a utility guy, a 7th inning reliever and a back end starter maybe is what they seem to have gotten unless they have some scouts who are extremely high on these guys is what they seem to have gotten unless they have some, unless they have, you know, scouts who are extremely high on these guys for some reason and are right where everyone else is wrong. That seems to be the return here. I mean, you can sort of see why they wanted to make a move to trade a starting pitcher if they think that Drew Smiley can start,

that he's being wasted or underutilized in the bullpen, and they wanted to clear his space for him and maybe save a little bit of money in the process to go after Shinsu Chu or someone else. But even if you accept that they should have traded Pfister, which is kind of a leap in itself, it seems like they just could have gotten more from someone. I mean, it seems like there's no way that the other 28 teams,

that among those 28 teams there wouldn't have been one that would have given a greater return than this. I don't know if there was just some pressing reason why it had to be made immediately, but I mean, there's no way, right? That you couldn't find someone. Yeah. So, okay. So now here's where we have to start taking the other side, because anytime I find myself making that argument, I have to, I feel like I have to stop. That's such an arrogant thing to say from where we are. sort of blind spot in his assessment of baseball players or that he might have some sort of character flaw like hubris or something that just leads him to do irrational or reckless

things. Right. I mean, there are all sorts of ways that, you know, man fails. OK. But the idea that like that Dave Dombrowski is just like not like working hard enough to like call another team. It doesn't make call another team it doesn't make any sense though it doesn't make any sense i mean the i it really feels like um like if there's anything that i feel confident i get i want to say if there's anything that i should get that we should give general

managers the benefit of the doubt it's making making phone calls and like, you know, doing some due diligence, right? It seems unlikely that there's a lot better trades out there that they didn't find in general. But even in the cases where that might be the case, it seems really irresponsible for us to like say it. Like, we don't know that. How can we possibly know that? I mean, aren't we supposed to have some faith in the market that it's rational and that in fact uh you know what a player is traded for represents his real value uh usually um i mean this doesn't this like if if rick porcello had been traded for this package, maybe that would have seemed – would even – would that have seemed like a logical return for him, do you think? It seems a little light to me, but it would have made –

Even for Porcello. Right. Well, so that's the thing is that's actually what I was thinking is when I started wondering, well, surely he could have found a team that was willing to give him more. Actually, the option of just offering a lesser pitcher is really the easiest possible thing in the world, right? Right. Presumably he did, didn't he? Like, presumably they suggested Porcello first.

Oh, that's pretty arrogant of you to say. I don't know. pretty arrogant of you to say i don't know um i mean there's no reason is there any reason in the world why why he would value porcello more highly i mean he's significantly younger obviously but hasn't been anywhere close to as as effective i i don't i don't know they're both they're both two years from free agency so age at this point doesn't even really matter. He could be 37 or 23. For the next two years, age doesn't really matter at all. And the money is not that different.

In fact, I think Porcello is more expensive because he was a Super 2, so this is his third trip through arbitration. So, yeah, I mean, clearly the Tigers think Porcello is an inferior pitcher to Pfister. Like, they make that choice every, you know, every fourth day in the playoffs. So, yeah, so that would, you'd almost have to assume that they would have offered Porcello for this package first and been turned down. You'd think that, I mean, you'd think that the like like fister's gonna make less in the next two years than casimir is you you'd think that the a's would have been on this yes you think a lot of teams would be i mean you think the well i guess the angels we know that the angels talk to them okay could we like uh alden gonzalez uh reported Gonzalez reported that a week ago or so they offered Howie Kendrick for Pfister and were turned down.

And so at least we know that there was dialogue with other teams. This was not just like two guys in a bar one night. And we also know that this wasn't a quick development. I mean, the trade talks around Pfister, although there weren't like a quick development i mean the trade talks around fister although there weren't like a lot of rumors it's sort of coming out now that trade talks around fister have been sort of percolating for you know over a week so um it wasn't like a a rush job or anything like that uh yeah so is is that our take are we just gonna throw up our hands i don't know maybe maybe doug fister is just not light in major league baseball maybe um there's something about him that i mean

he doesn't throw hard that's the the obvious bias that you could you could speculate about that he's underrated because of that or i don't know he's really i don't know it i mean since he since he was traded to to detroit and even in his his last year with seattle he's just been extremely effective i mean he's he's thrown innings. He's topped 200 innings twice. He's, I mean, his defense independent stats are great, even though he's pitching in front of a lousy defense in Detroit. There's, there just, there aren't a lot of weaknesses you can identify. I mean, he's not a, he's not a high strikeout guy and he doesn't throw hard. He's not a high strikeout guy, and he doesn't throw hard. But, I mean, I don't know.

It's hard to really poke any major holes in his game. Yeah, so in the last three years, Shields has a 124 ERA+, and Pfister has a 124 ERA+. And so the last three years are Shield's good years that that does not uh conveniently rope in his his terrible 2010 season or anything like that so this is not doing him any any any uh disservice his three good years and Pfister's three good years are roughly the same now Pfister threw 100 fewer innings so that's significant 100 innings of a good pitcher. So it's not necessarily—well, it's not.

It's not fair to say that they've been equal pitchers, but Pfister's super good. It's sort of odd that—I mean, it does—maybe it's just in the kind of air uh environment that we're in it feels like Pfister reached ace or or like near a status in the last year like everybody talks about him people like him he's he's gotten to that point where he's like talked about being underrated so often that you just quit thinking he's underrated at all and yeah appropriately rated I thought he was maybe still a little underrated just purely because of the other pitchers in the rotation with him like if he had been on any other team he would have been mentioned more often but as it was on a team with verlander and scherzer and sanchez even when people talked about detroit's playoff rotation and their big three. Pfister was often not mentioned when he really deserved to be mentioned alongside those guys or not far below them.

But, yeah, he's that kind of quality pitcher. And the Nationals rotation looks extremely impressive right now. Strasburg, Gio Gonzalez, Jordan Zimmerman, and Pfister is now, and Detweiler, I guess, at the end, is now the Tigers rotation. Yeah, they are now the Tigers rotation. Um, so, I mean, people were expecting them to bounce back and be a contending team, even if they didn't do anything, it seemed like. And now that they've done this, that will add more fuel to that fire. So I don't know. I wonder, so let me ask you this. Um, do you think that this, uh, makes you reevaluate Robbie Ray?

I mean, not reevaluate, like you had an opinion about Robbie Ray this morning. But, you know, basically, I mean, you look at Robbie Ray, like you know that people weren't, you know, talking him up much. He wasn't a guy considered with the, you know, to have a high ceiling. You look at his numbers, he had a, you know, he had a good year this year. It was a, it was a year where things clicked and you could definitely, I mean, if, if he were a second round pick or a first round pick, you'd look at this year and say huge things because he, um, you know, he was pitching, he was young for his level. He pitched across two levels. Um, he struck out 10 batters per nine. Um, you know, his,

his control isn't, isn't bad. He, you know, he did everything prettys per nine um you know his his control isn't isn't bad he you know he did everything pretty well um you know he's a he's left-handed he's a skinny guy maybe he gained 25 pounds uh and you know added two miles an hour of velocity and he's sort of a stealth prospect um so i guess the the point i'm getting at is that a year before and just to make it very clear the guy that the tigers got who is like the centerpiece of their of their trade had a 6.56 era in a ball the year before um and you know he's uh like i said he's a he's a low round draft pick nobody was expecting him to click so um so do you think that the tigers kind of vouching for him the way that they apparently have uh is significant data or do you just think that

maybe it's just a gm who i don't know either like overreacted to um something i don't know what like does this is this is this is this a bit is this a big thing for his future in your mind uh it it it like it does make me think more highly again of him again as if i i had thought of him before um yeah i mean it's like when a, when a team signs a player to an extension, uh, instead of letting him hit free agency or something, I, I think that's generally a good sign that the team that knows him so well, uh, wants to keep him around and thinks that he'll age well. And historically we've seen that that tends to be the case so so yes um but i don't i mean i you know if he were someone who did make a major change in stuff this season i'd like to think that

some of the the prospect people would be aware of that either from from seeing him themselves or talking to people who'd seen them. And it doesn't seem like there was a ton of buzz surrounding him. It could just be that the Tigers were on him and no one else was. And I guess the odds of that are slightly higher than they would have been if this trade hadn't been made. But I don't know. than they would have been if this trade hadn't been made. But I don't know.

I'm sure GMs and scouts do fall in love with certain players sometimes because they happen to see them on a really good day or maybe they got to know the guy and he's a really good guy. It happens from time to time. I don't know whether that is the case in this instance, of course. I'm going to give some more pertinent information, which I didn't realize. It's not really fair to say that he was a 12th round pick because he was a $800,000 signing bonus. So really he was like a second round pick or uh or like late first round picks you know supplemental round pick so uh he actually is he does have some uh you know a little bit of glitz in his background

so so so take back that part okay i will uh yeah and i, a lefty starter who throws 91 to 94 apparently is, you know, probably pretty valuable. According to Josh Herzenberg, who's one of our new prospect writers and wrote him up for the transaction analysis, again 91 to 94 simple delivery curveball change up guy repeatable mechanics but uh no real devastating pitch no real no out pitch really um so i i don't know it sounds like a guy that you'd want to have in your system especially if your system is as weak as Detroit's is, but still not quite the guy that you would want to get for Doug Pfister. All right, so who's better right now, Tigers or the Nationals? Probably still the Tigers. And of course the offseason's not over, it would be you know unfair to conclude that this is the last thing that they're gonna do maybe they think it's unlikely that it is do you

yeah sort of i i mean why why make this move if not like are they in such dire financial straits that they needed to well Well, one of three reasons. One is that, yeah, maybe they were over budget. I mean they've made some moves. They've spent money, and maybe their owner said, hey, look, I gave you a long leash, but we got to get this under control. So, yeah, maybe it's just a matter of getting down to a budget. So, yeah, maybe it's just a matter of getting down to a budget. Number two, instead of signing Jacob Ellsbury or something, maybe their plan is to lock up Max Scherzer to an extension, and this is a way of clearing some money for that.

So that might be the case, even if they're – they might still be done for the offseason, but planning on spending the money another way. And number three is that they have the worst farm system in baseball and that they are more worried about 2016 than 2014 right now. They have been to the ALCS and the World Series recently. They still have a very good team with a great postseason rotation. They should have probably in their mind a fairly clear path still to the playoffs next year. And so they're thinking that to some degree they can afford to start taking some steps toward the future so that instead of having a three- or four-year window, they have a two-decade window? That could be. We've talked, many people have talked about the window closing and how they're a win-now team and guys are going to get old. But I don't know.

I mean, I'd certainly support trying to build for the future somehow but uh i don't know if i would sacrifice this much in the in the short term no and if that were the case you'd have to really really really love ray because otherwise there's no there's no pressure you could move fister at the deadline you can move fister anytime so there's absolutely no need to make the trade today if you're planning for 2016 unless you somehow have looked at ray and said he's our guy he's the fourth best prospect in baseball and nobody sees it but us but if nobody sees it but them can't maybe can't you get him for yeah maybe the nationals the nationals and the tigers see him like that no one else does

uh because otherwise if they're the the one team in the wilderness that thinks robbie ray is a future ace then they could still get him for rick porcello or someone other than fister and take advantage of that but yeah i don't know well we we always try to look for the the bright of a deal, and usually we find it. So I guess it's okay that once in a while we don't. All right. Okay. Fair enough.

All right. That'll do it. All right. Back tomorrow. See you. Okay. Now we're recording. Go.

Okay, now we're recording. Go. You can start. You always make fun of the countdown, and now you can't live without it. It's too awkward. Right. Three, two, one. Good morning, and welcome to... See, now I can't do another okay three two one