Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 341: Hot Stovepocalypse

Episode Date: December 4, 2013

Ben and Sam discuss the year’s busiest day for big baseball news.

it's all happening it's all happening it's all happening good morning and welcome morning to good morning welcome to episode 341 of effectively wild the daily podcast from baseball prospectus i am ben lindbergh joined by sam miller uh so i'm not generally a quick-tempered man, but on a day like today, I get angry at baseball teams irrationally just for insisting on doing everything at once. This was probably the biggest baseball news day of the year, right? Has there been a bigger baseball news day?

I don't know how you would measure baseball news as a measurable thing. But, yeah, I mean, it seems like it. I guess you could say that the day that we find out who wins the World Series is the biggest baseball news day, or a day with 15 games going on is the biggest baseball news day compared to this, which is no games going on. I think a day when 12 players' names leak out of a PED investigation is pretty big. Pretty big.

More hot takes. Different kind of news. Anyway, not really worth debating. It's a big day. Yeah. A few hours ago, Kevin Goldstein posted on Facebook, everyone in baseball trying to figure out why everything happened today. Is there a reason?

There's no reason, right? It's just a confluence of events. I don't know. I mean, it is. I think one thing that's interesting about this collection of moves is that this is not the Blue Jays last year or the Marlins the year before or the Angels the year before. This is not one team that had a lot of money and went into this determined to throw their money around and made a big splash. This has been strangely spread around.

It seems as though every team has done something already, I guess. Daniel Rathman was counting earlier. I think he counted 14 teams made a transaction today. Today, and many more over the last week. I can't think of anything the Mariners have done, and I can't think of anything the Indians have done, but maybe I'm just forgetting. Indians got David Murphy.

Oh, yeah, that's right, they did. The Mariners have been quiet. Nobody has emerged as the big mover slash shaker of this offseason. I guess you would say if Hunter Pinson and Lincecum had made it to free agency and the Giants had re-signed them both and also Hudson and also Lopez, you might say that, but it wouldn't have felt that big because it was just everybody basically staying home except Hudson. There isn't really a team... Anyway, the point is, the way that I'm answering this

question is just to say that there's no reason that it happened today, but we've been to some degree talking for the last year and a half since we've been doing this podcast about how the way the game is set up, as well as the way the game's finances are developing, there are more buyers at any given moment. So it could just be the fact that there's a mix between teams wanting to get ahead of a bear market or a bull market. It depends which side you're on.

And as well as having 30 teams that are all actually trying to improve right now or close to it. Who would be... That count of 14, I think, was prior to the Rockies officially signing Morneau, so it must have been 15 at least. It would have included the Fowler deal. Oh, that's right. I'm not going to use the term winner or loser, but is there a team that you think has, and not one,

I don't want to know who's made the best most, but is there a team that you think stands out as the most active? Like you think of one team that has been the most active? Well, probably the Yankees, right, for signing, I guess, two of the top five guys available spending the most money. Yeah. In a kind of a boring, predictable way, just the Yankees spending lots of money,

although that's not something we saw last year, and so it feels almost fresh and new for them to be doing that again. But that's a pretty old hat for them to just be signing the best players available, which apparently they're going to continue doing for a while. But yeah, in terms of wins added and dollars spent, I guess they would be the one. Are you surprised at all that they've done this? I mean, after two years of hearing austerity talk, and really maybe even more than that after watching the red socks

sort of to some degree uh shift the the the narrative of what big market teams should be doing or can do um to win are you surprised that that they've kind of acted like this is uh 2008 again uh not really i i don't know did the the Red Sox really change that narrative? I mean, they spent quite a bit of money last winter. It was only after they shed all the long-term deals that were sort of crippling them that they were able to improve at nine positions instead of just having three guys. So yeah, I think they did. I don't know. I don't see a reason why the Yankees shouldn't do this, really. I mean, what they're doing probably doesn't make sense for any other team, but it worked for them for the last decade or so or more.

So I don't know. They're still probably making plenty of money, spending tons of it, and having guys on the back end of deals that aren't efficient anymore. Three questions for you about the Yankees. One, what will their payroll be on opening day? One, what will their payroll be on opening day? Two, what will their payroll be on opening day of 2018?

And three, who will spend more money in the next, let's say, five years, the Dodgers or the Yankees? Well, they haven't blown the $189 million thing yet, have they? They haven't blown the $189 million thing yet, have they? It's hard to keep track of where exactly teams are at this point in the offseason before we know arbitration totals and everything. Before we know suspension, rulings. Yeah, that too. I don't know. I guess they've said it so many times that, that you feel like

they almost have to stick to that. But then, but then just before we started recording, Jeff Passon tweeted that, that the Yankees not only believe they've got room for Ellsbury and Cano or Chu, or true, they still plan on signing a starting pitcher. So I don't know. I guess my guess would be that they would be under by like a penny. Okay. That's one question to answer. Their payroll next year. No, no, no, 2018.

2018. I don't know, $230 million. Okay, and more money in the next five years, Yankees or Dodgers? Yankees or Dodgers? Yankees. Really? Dodgers are going to have like a $50 million head start if the Yankees come in under. Well, yeah. I guess I was thinking about money spent from now until then.

No, I'm talking five years payroll. Anyway. Yeah, then I guess the Dodgers would five years payroll. Uh-huh. Anyway. Yeah, then I guess the Dodgers would make the most sense. All right. So we're not going to get to everything. We're not going to get to the Eric Kratz trade, I'm afraid. Maybe we'll do kind of what we did last week a little bit. Your tactic of spreading moves from a busy day over a couple podcasts,

unless there are just as many moves tomorrow, which I hope won't be the case. But let's talk about, I guess, the Fowler trade, since you wrote about it, and since it was interesting that the astros were the team that was trading for the player instead of trading trading the the best player in the deal for prospects or or the the old player in the deal for the younger players uh so you wrote about why you thought that was why you thought they might have made that shift now with this player.

So why don't you talk about that? Okay. Well, you know how I hate to do this. You know how I hate to talk about something that I've already written as though it's somehow new. Just do it. I don't even know how. I don't even know. I don't say the words.

I don't know. I, I don't even know, I didn't say the words. I don't know. I, I, I think that, well, okay. So for one thing, I think that the Astros, I mean, I'm totally speculating on all of this, who knows, but I think that it's fair to assume that the Astros want to have a respectable team in 2015. And by respectable, I mean, you know, something like the Royals had this year, a team that, you know, could have a few things break right in when the division should be, you know, past 500 and putting the sort of stench of this experiment behind them and sort of showing the, you know, the positive outcome. So I think that they want to be able to do that in 2015 and they're going to have all this money to spend. And I think that they would probably be wise, uh, to consider that, um, it might be hard to get players to sign with them after next off season, if they're coming off another hundred loss, uh, season, if they've basically lost, you know, 420, 430, 440 games over a four-year period,

and they have just this ridiculous, like, losing nature about them. Like, not only have they been losing madly, but they've been losing, you know, borderline intentionally in a way that I think probably by the end of next year will be even more somewhat controversial and people will talk about how it's bad for the game or whatever. So I kind of look at this year as being actually an important year to reestablish sort of their goodwill with free agents and with the rest of the league so that they can show that they've made progress, so that they can show that they're moving in a good direction, so they can show they're not a farce, and get free agents after 2014. I sort of look at this year as being like their credit rating, where it's not actually

... like when your credit rating gets downgraded, it's not directly money out of your pocket, but it makes it harder to borrow money and it makes it more costly to borrow money. So in a way, having a good credit rating is an investment in your future finances. And so I feel like this season is an investment in next offseason for them. So Fowler is in a lot of ways a guy who could be part of their next good team. He could also very easily be spun off for parts, probably, if a few things break, right? And bring back prospects who could be part of the next good team. He could be extended. He could be non-tendered.

He can be almost anything, depending on where this season goes and where the Astros feel that they're going. But adding him now seems like a good way of building a 73-win team this year. And a 73-win team would be, like I was saying, almost in a lot of ways, the best thing for their future now is maybe not even to get more prospects, but to get to 73 wins this year. So that is kind of what I was thinking. But to get to 73 wins this year. So that is kind of what I was thinking. Do you think that the Marlins signing Saltalamakia falls into the same bucket of a terrible team trying to gradually build towards respectability? Or is it more of a, we have to spend some money or the players' union will get really angry at us. So the thing that, okay, we can talk about that.

First, though, were you surprised that they were able to get Saltolamacchia to sign with them? Are you surprised that... Sort of, yeah. I wonder what his next closest offer was or what he thought it would be. I wonder what his next closest offer was or what he thought it would be. Because, yeah, I mean, when you sign to play for the Marlins for the next three years, you're essentially saying that you're not going to win a World Series. You're not going to probably contend for one. You're okay with that.

You're probably going to be just about the only veteran on the team, or maybe you'll be traded at some point during it. I don't know whether he got a no trade clause or not. But yeah, I mean, you're signing up for a very unique set of circumstances there. Well, more than that, it's not just that they're a bad team. It's not like you're signing with the Twins or even the Astros. It's that you're signing with about at the time, there were good baseball reasons for it if it were any team but the Marlins. But with the Marlins, you wondered whether it was just, you know, one scorching too many of that earth. And I'm sort of, I wondered whether, you know, basically players would just refuse. I mean, there's 29 other teams. I mean, yeah, you know,

maybe you're leaving a little money on the table by not going to the Marlins. And a million dollars is not just a little money. So I can understand wanting to get an extra million dollars. But there's 29 other teams. team that wasn't going to do whatever it wanted to to humiliate you if it were in their best interest. I mean, it's a broken organization. Nobody likes that. The players that they traded were mad about it, felt that they had been lied to. The players they didn't trade were mad about it also?

The players, yeah, exactly. I mean, all the players are unhappy about it. You know, the hitting coaches were mad. The manager was mad. I mean, everybody was, that was just a brutal situation. But I mean, really, it feels like if you're a player, when an owner looks, according to reports, at other players that have come before you and tells them things and then instead basically humiliates them, you'd think he'd just be like, okay, I'm not going there.

It doesn't seem like it would be that hard to avoid that city. So I'm sort of surprised that they got one. I didn't think they necessarily would get one. I thought that it might be a story, them being unable to attract talent. I mean, the Mariners can't get anybody to take their money just because the park doesn't play well. Florida doesn't play well, and it's a horrible place to be. It's like hell on earth. Not the city itself, but the franchise.

So, yeah, anyway. I'm unable to debate it. I've never been there. But if you want to alienate people, by all means. They know. Yeah, right. So I guess that helps them follow through on their vow not to lose 100 games next year, which is probably a pretty safe bet.

You can, I don't know. I was actually considering writing about that once to see how likely it actually was that they would be able to avoid that. I feel like probably pretty likely. They just barely lost that many games last year. It's hard to lose that many games. All right. We should probably talk about the A's

just because if we talk about the A's, we can knock out more of these trades than we can with any other team. The Gentry for choice and various other players going back and forth trade was, I think, my favorite move of the day. Partially because I just really, really like Craig Gentry,

but it was just a very aesthetically pleasing trade. It was a trade between division rivals, which is always fun. It was a trade with a lot of variety in the players, just in terms of, you know, you had an established Major League veteran in the trade, you had a guy who just debuted last year in terms of, you know, you had an established major league veteran in the trade. You had a guy who just debuted last year in a trade. You had a guy in a ball in a trade. And you had very different types of players, a speed and defense guy and a strikeout home run slugger guy. So and also the fact that I felt like, you know, both, both teams could have a strong

argument that they won that trade or would end up winning that trade or would be happy that they made that trade. So that was, that was a very pleasing trade to, to write about and think about. and then the other two moves were sort of atypical for the A's I was as as I was writing about the Luke Gregerson trade I was looking back at your article from September when you wrote about how the A's built their bullpen following a discussion that we had had on the podcast about why teams pay for relievers when it seems like it's so easy to just find someone on the scrap heap who can turn in a good season for nothing. And you wrote then, which was true at the time that the A's don't pay for bullpen players.

They, they at the time their entire bullpen was making something like 8 million and was, was one of the best bullpens in baseball. History. History. And so now we've seen them trade for Jim Johnson and also trade for Luke Gregerson,

which is just kind of buying effective, reliable relievers off the rack for full price, not unearthing them somewhere as free talent. So what does that shift signify to you? I don't know, Ben. What does that shift signify to you? I don't know. I mean, if you're going to pay for relievers, these are two guys who are in their walk years, so you're really just paying for one year of each of them.

So it's not like they suddenly signed the Joe Smith deal that we were surprised that the Angels signed recently. So they are paying a lot of money for these two guys, but they have been among the most reliable relievers in baseball, and they're just signed for one year each. And I guess also the fact that the A's aren't spending a ton of money on their team, and once they had Scott Casimir on the roster, there wasn't a whole lot left for them to do, really. They kind of had someone everywhere. But they had lost Grant Balfour and sort of had a vacancy at the back of the bullpen. And so they got these two guys for less than it would have cost to bring him back. Yeah, it's not...

That was a particularly fitting time for me to write that piece because their bullpen was so cheap and had been brought together so cheaply and was doing so well. But I noted in the Joe Nathan transaction analysis that it isn't as though Billy Bean only gets busted starters from single A and puts them in the bullpen and has them close games. I mean, throughout the last 10 years when he's been supposedly, you know, refusing to pay top dollar for a closer and, you know, in a lot of ways, kind of more famously than any other GM in baseball, that was kind of one of the orthodoxies of his system. But that entire time, he was actually getting pretty good closers. He would

never get Jonathan Papelbon for four years and $50-whatever million, but he was getting good second-tier candidates, with some exceptions. Keith Folk had a closer experience. Arthur some exceptions, but Keith Folk had a closer experience. Arthur Rhodes was coming off some success and was a little bit of a trendy reliever. Octavio Dottel was definitely considered a future closer, a closer who was knocking on the door and who required a decent trade to acquire. Brian Fuentes was signed for two years and I think $10 million or something like that to close terribly. Houston Street was a first round draft pick. So they did invest in the position. They just didn't go crazy for the position. And yeah, like you're saying, $10 million is a lot and it's probably a new high watermark

for how much they've invested in that inning. But at one year, the true risk, the true investment But at one year, the true risk, the true investment is a lot less than if this were a three-year deal, is what I was going to say. How awkward. You should just tell us what the tweet was Nah it's okay Okay And the other teams that we saw Pay for relievers you wrote about Joe Nathan I guess you also wrote about

Brian Wilson although we're still Waiting for confirmation of that But those None of these relievers Moves has none of these like Cl closer moves has been a Brandon League contract. We haven't really seen that kind of deal. I mean, Joe Nathan for two years and, what is it, $20 million seems like a lot. And as you pointed out in your piece, he is old.

He doesn't throw as hard as he used to. He had a lot of luck indicators favoring him last year, but he's, he's Joe Nathan next to Mariano Rivera. He is, he is the most consistent leading reliever of this, of this era. He is the most impervious to or to those year-to-year fluctuations that we are worried about with relievers. And the Tigers could use a guy like that. Yeah, nobody in a million years would have mentioned anything critical

of the Tigers getting Joe Nathan for two years and $20 million before the Doug Pfister trade. The only reason anybody would pick on this move is that it looks like they cleared money to do this. Like these two things were related. It looks like they cleared, it appears, to a very simple cause and effect way of looking at things, that they cleared money to get Joe Nathan,

and so then you look at him and go, oh, geez, I'd rather have Doug Pfister, um, than Joe Nathan. But of course that, you know, there's no reason to think that there, this one was dependent on the other. They might've planned it all along.

And, um, you know, they, this might still be about clearing money for, um, you know, for Max Scherzer or something like that.

So the, it's probably not fair to, to lump those two together. That said, I would rather have Doug Pfister than Joe Nathan. Yeah, sure. If it's in either order, then yes. All right. We've actually touched on almost everything.

Do we want to have a brief Ryan Hannigan love fest? No. tomorrow. Tomorrow? Okay. No, I want to ask you something that's different. All of these moves snuck up on us, it seems to me. I didn't, I mean, what? Joe Nathan to the Tigers seemed like something that had been building for a while. It had been all those. So did Brian Wilson to the Tigers, right?

Yeah, sure. One of those guys. Yeah. Yeah. But for the most part, a lot of these moves, they came out of nowhere. And part of what made today so crazy was that every move, like it arrived fully formed. It's like they took it out of the oven and gave it to us and we didn't even smell it cooking. That's a metaphor. Just so you know. So I was wondering, do you think that it's possible that teams have decided to quit sharing information with the public in this weird way that they do and that the new market inefficiency is keeping your mouth shut and getting deals done without letting the public interfere with them?

I hope so. That'd be great. I don't want to know about anything until it happens. Way more fun. It's totally, it's so much more fun. I'd be happy if we found out about everything when teams put out a press release. I don't need to know anything before that happens although our

pal Chris Cotillo or Cotillo right has made an even bigger name for himself since we had him on the podcast yeah no he's spectacular and bless his heart but but yeah I mean he's that's the thing that's actually kind

of what got me thinking about it is that he's not uh it seems to me and and maybe maybe i'm wrong but it seems to me that what he he has done is he has broken news as it is that is as it is done and you think wait a minute why didn't john haymanman have this Doug Pfister rumor four days ago? Or why didn't Olney have Ricky Nolasco five days ago, like when it was just in its infancy? Which is where we're used to getting our rumors. We're used to having 50 rumors about a guy linking him to a team before he signs with the team. But here it's just like Chris goes, oh, it's done. And so yeah, I mean, that's sort of what got me thinking about it also. And I think, and Chris hasn't told us this, but what I've sort of picked up is that a lot of where Chris's advantage seems to be is that he's in touch with a lot of like, I might be wrong. So sorry, Chris, if I'm wrong about this.

wrong. So sorry, Chris, if I'm wrong about this. But the rumors that I hear is that he's really good with being in touch with like players and people, you know, at the player level, through social media. And so that would that would be maybe why he has the edge because maybe front offices are tight lipped, and aren't giving as much information to their sort of classic sort of their classic outlets. And, and Chris has the advantage. That could be. I don't know. I don't have any idea what that's through. Right.

I'm totally off. What is the advantage to be gained by not letting anything slip before you sign someone? Well, you, I don't know. I mean, teams are always complaining about if, you, I don't know. I mean, teams are always complaining about it. If, you know, if you're about to. Yeah, there have been times like if a guy is about to be traded and he has to waive his no trade clause

and he finds out about it from reading a media report before he hears about it from the team and then he has everyone asking him questions while he's trying to make up his mind in that case i can see why it would be a disadvantage if it's just going after ellsbury or you know some big name free agent is are you losing anything if it comes out that you're interested in that player i mean maybe you lose leverage in negotiations with him if he reads that you're interested i i don't know is there i i don't know that we're qualified to answer that uh i mean i could see it just being uh looking tacky if if if you look like you're running out of the room and then calling CBS Sports and telling whatever happened in this closed off room, it's maybe a bad position to be negotiating from.

Or I don't know. I don't know. I think that that would be an interesting question to ask somebody. All right. Since we started with Ellsbury, I feel like Ellsbury is sort of... I know you're done, but

I don't have much to say about the actual signing, both because I haven't written about it and because I feel like there's not that much to say. It's just... Can we close the book on Ellsbury? Because it's just the team with the most money or the second most money signing maybe, you know, the second most expensive player.

And he's going to be good for a few years. And then he's going to be less good for a few years. And then he's probably not going to be good at all for a few years, and they'll just live with it and sign the next guy to overlap with his decline phase, right? I mean, is there anything else to say about it, really? It's just a typical Yankees big money signing where they'll put up with the back end of the deal for the front end of it.

Remember how we got that email from somebody asking if we thought that it was possible that um uh gosh what was how did the story go uh that oh geez uh boris had alexander guerrero's sign with the dodgers so that cano couldn't sign with them and he would lose leverage and have to sign for less with the Yankees. And then Jay-Z would have gotten a taste of Boris's revenge. And so now I like the idea that this insane conspiracy idea is actually going forward even further and that Boris orchestis orchestrated ellsbury to new york just to just to keep the yankees from having any money to sign cano like i just love the idea that that the greatest agent of all time is just like going around totally screwing over his his clients because he doesn't like hova that's my favorite possibility of the offseason. Right.

Yeah, I like that. I like that narrative too. We almost made it through a show without me going, Yeah, I knew it would happen at some point today. People were tweeting at us asking if we were going to do a three-hour show. And every time we got one of those tweets, I was afraid that you just weren't going to show up just on the

off chance that I would try to push it that long so we got to most things we touched on most things we'll probably circle back tomorrow on some of this stuff maybe talk about Ryan Hannigan some more and talk about Craig Gentry some more because

two of my favorite players were traded today and maybe one of yours. So we'll talk about whatever we didn't talk about today, tomorrow, and maybe we'll have more moves in store. So we will be back with more then.