Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 352: The Day in Transactions

Episode Date: December 19, 2013

Ben and Sam discuss moves made by the Royals, Rockies, Padres, and more.

Good morning and welcome to episode 352 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Every hour upon the hour Before we start, I just wanted to shout out Andrew Koo's article at Baseball Perspectives, because I think that people should read it. And it relates to something that we talked about not too long ago. We talked about how the A's were built. This was in August, mid-August, episode 266. And we mentioned that they haven't really been built like the typical small market team. They have acquired a lot of players from outside the organization as opposed to developing their own. And we wondered how they did that and whether it's sustainable. And so Andrew wrote about the other platoon advantage that Oakland has gotten in the last couple of years.

The article went up on Wednesday. You can read it, find it at Baseball Perspectives. It's called Oakland's Other Platoon Advantage. And it's about how the A's have not only exploited the lefty-righty platoon matchup that everyone knows about, but they have also exploited the battedy platoon matchup that everyone knows about, but they have also exploited the batted ball platoon matchup that is less well-known but was researched in the book, and it works the same way as the lefty-righty platoon split, except with ground balls and fly balls. So the A's, Andrew found over the last couple of years, have had a far higher percentage of fly ball hitters than any

other team. They have acquired many, many fly ball hitters to the point where it doesn't seem like it could be a coincidence. And Andrew goes through the numbers and he makes a pretty convincing case, I think, that that has helped the A's. They have killed ground ball pitching because of all their fly ball hitters. Fly ball hitters also hit a lot of line drives. Line drives are good. Fly ball hitters tend to be patient hitters also. good fly ball hitters are are tend to be patient hitters also um so it's an interesting article it's one of those articles that i wish i had written because it kind of it mixes a an interesting narrative about the a's and sort of a a new money ball angle that that they've been exploring with some some interesting stat stuff um so i encourage people to go read that article.

And that sort of suggests that in a way that this is how the A's have done it. This is how the A's surprised everyone over the last couple of years. It wasn't so much that they, I don't know, that all the players that they got were so much better than we thought they were, but they have used them in such a way that it really makes them more than the sum of their parts.

They've used all these platoons to get the most out of their roster, and maybe we've just underrated fly ball hitters as a group. So it's an interesting article. And everything at Baseball Perspectives published today and tomorrow is free. We're kind of doing a promotion of sorts timed with the holiday season and hoping people that will buy

gift subscriptions for people. So you can go check out the site and read everything that we publish today and tomorrow for free. Uh, so you can go check out the site and read everything that we published today and tomorrow for free. Uh, so please do that and consider, consider giving a gift subscription, which I have, I have done in the past. I think before, before I even worked for BP, I did that. Um, I have not, I've not given one, but I got one for about eight years in a row. It was, uh, every year I asked for it and it was a great present. It was always a great present. And I know that to people who are our age, it feels weird to spend money on words and on anything on the Internet.

And it is a great way to get over that weird feeling by having your parents or somebody else do it. Yeah. No one in my family, by the way, has a baseball perspective subscription. Do you have by the way has a baseball perspective subscription do you have any family members with a baseball perspective subscription no yeah i don't have any family members that would be interested in it yeah me neither oh wait my my aunt my aunt does actually my aunt does your dad listens to the podcast which is free he He's just not willing to pay for the site. Okay, so moving on to things that happened today. One of the things that you mentioned on your podcast with Will Leach was about Brian Cashman's willingness to say things that no other general manager will say.

And he happened to say one of those things today. Did you see what he said? Oh, did he? I didn't. Wallace Matthews of ESPN New York asked Brian Cashman what the status of Carlos Beltran's deal is because it still hasn't been officially announced after two weeks or so. And Cashman's response was, there are terms to do, physicals to take, items to be worked out when you do a contract. There's no scoop here. Nothing's falling apart. I don't have time to deal with stupid questions like this.

Wow. And you know that every general manager must be thinking that anytime he's asked almost anything by a beat writer, by a columnist, but rarely if ever actually says that thing. So it's interesting amazing that Brian Cashman has been a general manager for as long as he has, over 15 years in this market with the ownership that he has to deal with, with the expectations on that team, with his own personal sort of public scandals and his comments. It really is sort of an interesting survivor story hypothesis I have a hypothesis okay I've noticed I've noticed in the past that that if you say something like horribly offensive in public for it you know something that is considered you know retrograde or or or bigoted or or know, offensive or tacky or whatever, the best offense is generally that you say that stuff all the time.

Like if you're, like Adam Carolla says things that are like insanely offensive and, you know, never really gets suspended because that's what he does. Like why are you starting now to notice the things he says? He says 100 offensive things every day, right? he that that's what he does like he like why are you starting now to notice the things he says he says a hundred offensive things every day right and it's actually the guy who never says anything offensive who like slips one time where you're uh that that guy you know usually has a hard time defending himself and ends up getting suspended or fired or whatever the case may be. So could it actually be that, um, that this is not a, uh, a, a, um, an uncorrelated thing that maybe Cashman is bulletproof specifically because this

is what he does. Like, like his defense is like, I always do this. Like he's, he's like the John McCain of, of, uh, of, of, uh, GMs. Yeah. Although it sort of seems that he he started saying these things fairly recently i feel like like in the last few years it wasn't something that he did right from the start i guess it was once he once he got comfortable in the job once he got some tenure he figured it was time to take the gloves off. And yeah, at this point, when he says one of those things, it's just Brian Cashman saying one of those things again. So it doesn't create much controversy. of minor moves, and I want to touch on a few of them. First, there were a couple moves. Well, let's start with the Royals move. Again, not a big move, but the Royals traded David Luff to the Orioles for Danny Valencia. Seriously, it's Luff? Every time i've ever heard it said out loud the person says both possible pronunciations just to cover all the bases uh i so i've always thought of it as low

and and i oftentimes i come up with a pronunciation without ever having heard it said and i'm wrong but oftentimes i actually have heard it i mean it's not like I haven't, I didn't see a Royals game this year. I probably, my guess, the best, the best guess, the best bet is usually that I've heard it from an announcer, but it's not, it's not, it's not foolproof. Well, we can just avoid saying his name again, probably. But in, in my Omar Infante transaction piece. We'll just call him Jack'll just call him Jack Z. Okay. In the Omar Infante piece, I sort of looked at what the Royals lineup projects to be with Infante, and I like it.

I think it looks like a pretty strong lineup. It's one of those lineups that doesn't really... It has one glaring hole in Alcides Escobar, but he's a shortstop and he's a good defender and he's pretty young and maybe he'll get a lucky babbip and hit 260 or something. And that's not the worst place to have a hole in your lineup. But everywhere else, top to bottom, was pretty strong, I think.

I mean, there's no huge star power really in it, unless Eric Hosmer turns into a stud all of a sudden or something. But top to bottom, it's not, there's no hole. There's Aoki at the top, there's Infante, there's Hosmer, Butler, Gordon, Perez. Kane probably bats eighth, and then there's Moustakas batting seventh. And Moustakas possibly could be a hole. He's projected to be a below-average player. He was a far below-average hitter last year.

And this kind of helps address that weakness in that Valencia can platoon with Moustakas or at least start part-time. I don't know whether Moustakas will be a full-time, whether it will be a full-time platoon at least at the start of-time. I don't know whether Moustakas will be a full-time, whether it will be a full-time platoon, at least at the start of the season. But he, I mean, his skill set matches up pretty well in that Moustakas just, you know, can't hit lefties and Valencia hits lefties really well, at least in a pretty small sample. So I like this. It's a minor move, but the outfielder who shall not be named was sort of expendable.

They have Justin Maxwell kind of to be a fourth outfielder after acquiring Aoki. So they got rid of him and they got someone who shores up a lineup that looks pretty good to me you seem to have some reservations no i don't i'm not sure that they're not um a decent offense and that they won't be a good offense but um this is like sort of the standard royals trap right it's you're you're kind of it seems like you're to some degree projecting your best impression on every position. And one of the problems with the Royals lineup is that they don't have, they don't really have one great hitter. They don't, they certainly don't have two great hitters. And so in order to have a good offense, everybody does need to hit more or less like your best impression of them in your mind.

And, I mean, they certainly weren't a good offense last year. And they've addressed that to some degree by, you know, filling their two worst positions and getting a little bit more on base percentage. The worst position in the case of second base and Chris Getz over the last few years has just been the least productive position on any team. I don't know why it took so long to address that, but it has been. Well, because Dayton Moore has been strapped with Goetz since he was cuddled in a cabbage patch. Been holding on to that one for like four months, trying to figure out when the right time to use it is.

I'm glad you got your chance. And the other thing I like... It's so bad. The other thing I like about this lineup is that, and I wrote this when they acquired Aoki, but I think I sort of jumped the gun on it. And I said that it sort of Yoast-proofed the lineup because I wrote last year a couple of times about how Escobar was batting second all the time. And it seems strange.

And briefly that changed. And there was some talk about Yoast having reached out to the front office to get an optimized batting order and then abandoned that. But now there's, there's no way, I don't think that Escobar ends up batting at the top of the lineup when you have Aoki, who is a leadoff hitter and capital capital L capital H leadoff hitter and Omar Infante, who sort of fits the traditional number two type hitter mold, it seems like it will be a more optimized lineup as well as a better lineup. Well, they had a pretty good pitching staff last year, and they had a great rotation, and they just couldn't hit it all. So sounds like you're buying. Well, I'm not necessarily buying that they will have that great pitching again, which could be the problem. But, yeah, I don't expect them to lead the league in ERA again necessarily and have an incredible bullpen and guys like Guthrie pitching really well for a while and Chen and all of the sort of, I don't know,

somewhat fluky performances they got there. But you could also kind of wish-cast with guys like Jordano Ventura and Kyle Zimmer and say that maybe they'll make up those innings there. But if there is some regression coming on the pitching side, then do what you can to shore up the offense. And they already had a good defense, So I like what they have done this winter. Just curious. Remember after the trade when Jeff Passan was sort of making the case for it and said it's easier to get a corner outfielder who's passable and has some upside than a starting pitcher.

And so do you think that having Aoki in right field is proof of that, or does that way, way overvalue Aoki? Well, I like Aoki. I think he's at least an average guy. It's the Hall of Fame, Ben. It's not the Hall of getting on base via air he would he would be a first ballot member of that hall of fame um yeah i don't know i i didn't think that was the greatest argument at the time and i guess i still still don't really um i mean you

who's the who's the pitching who's who's the starting pitching equivalent of Aoki? If they had Myers and tried to go get the pitching Aoki on the free agent market, is there a name that comes to mind? Is there ever such thing as an undervalued starting pitcher? I guess Bartolo Colon was. Yeah. Arguably. I think so. Not necessarily this year, but...

I don't know. Were the guys that they acquired last year? I mean, they got good innings out of Irvin Santana, who no one wanted at the time. He was not, I don't know whether he was undervalued with the contract that he had, but he's going to be making more than that now. So, I don't know, maybe that. Yeah, actually, you're right. It seems like, to some degree, well, Guthrie costs money, so maybe not.

Never mind. Okay, and another couple moves. There was, well, what do you think of the Raul Banez signing? Where does he fit in with the Angels? I have no issue with it. Banez, you know, RJ and I were talking about this. Banez actually seems like a guy whose public perception is way low because he's played for bad GMs.

His entire career he's played for punchline GMs for the most part. And not as much recently, but for most of his career, you know, he went from the Royals to the Mariners when, you know, it was Babasi. And I don't know if it was Babasi. It was Babasi, right? Yeah, around that era it was Babasi. And then to the Phillies and Amaro. And so I just feel like Abanez doesn't quite get his due. As you know, I'm a huge fan of Abanez, the career arc. That's not the same as saying I like him right now. But I'm fond of pointing out that he has a – since he's turned 30, he is better than the median Hall of Famer in the post-30 years.

So essentially he's had half of a Hall of Fame career. It's the less sexy half, but he has had it. So anyway, I do generally like Iponius. But yeah, you can't really go wrong with signing a guy for $2.5 million after he put up the same year as Justin Upton at the plate. signing a guy for $2.5 million after he put up the same year as Justin Upton at the plate. He had a really good year last year, and people will point out his age, and I will continue to insist that in a one-year contract, age is almost entirely irrelevant,

and that for the next 365 days, a 41-year-old is very, very, very marginally more risky than a 31 year old would be um and uh it seems like a a good move for a team that couldn't afford to get anybody it's not like they could afford to sign anybody who was going to cost more um and it's not like it would have probably been a good idea if they had um knowing what their their payroll situation is like. And, you know, he'll hit some balls and then he'll go away. If there's one guy that I wish I could just have hit FX information for right now, I think it might be Raul Banez. Just looking at his gigantic first half, second half split, and the fact that he hit 24 home runs in the first half, five home runs in the second half, second half split. And the fact that he hit 24 home runs in the first half, five home runs in the second half, and some of that, and his BABIP was identical in first half, second half. His

batted ball rates were identical, really. I mean, his ground ball fly ball ratio in the first half was 0.83. In the second half, it was 0.82 he hit just as many line drives according to baseball info solutions classification so based on you know sort of the the brute primitive almost stats that we have in comparison to hit fx information it looks like he was doing everything the same and i haven't done like a deep dive on it to look at his plate discipline stats or anything, but just based on his batted ball stats and his BABIP and all those things, it looks like he was sort of hitting the ball in the same way that he was earlier in the year, but it wasn't going out. It wasn't, he wasn't getting

any sort of good results. So would love just to to be able to look at some more granular stuff like speed off the bat and angle off the bat and all those things just to to see because at his age you wonder whether there's a sort of a sudden collapse risk and when you look at what he did after the second half or after after july i guess it was it was not great so i'd i'd like to i'd like to see that but i can't you know what he's a case of he's just a classic case of the famous home run derby snub curse and whenever whenever a hitter has an insane first half and gets snubbed for the home run derby, he usually sees his home runs go down. Yep, yep.

Should have put him in. It's because he was trying to hit home runs to get into the derby. It screwed up his swing. Yeah, messed up his swing sitting at home. Okay, the Rockies made a couple moves, and I guess in isolation I'm okay with those moves or at least the the move for drew stubs they they traded josh outman to the reds uh or to the indians sorry for for drew stubs um and i kind of like this move in that one of the reasons that i i thought the

boone logan signing was sort of strange was that it gave them three lefties. It seemed like if anything, they had a surplus of lefties. So now they traded one of those lefties. They also traded for another lefty, Franklin Morales today, but four lefties probably would have been overkill. They traded one of them for Drew Stubbs, and I sort of, I like this move for them. Stubbs is a good outfielder, or at least certainly has the reputation of being a very good outfielder. So you figure that will be useful in Coors Field. They now have what looks like it will be a pretty good defensive outfield they also they also traded for for brandon barns recently in the the dexter fowler trade and i didn't like the dexter fowler trade but

brandon barns was second on that list that craig gentry was at the top of of the the the rate of of team batted balls recorded that were that were turned into outs by a center fielder, Barnes was second on that list. Can you please do something on Brandon Barnes' defense? Please, please, because his numbers are insane. If you believe them, then he's better than Dexter Fowler probably right now. And yet he doesn't have the body of a great center fielder. He doesn't have the speed, it doesn't seem, of a great center fielder he doesn't have the speed it doesn't seem

of a great center fielder he's you know he's never been a distinguished player in really any capacity he's not young even he's like 28 or so so do you i need you to do a i need you to do one of your famous i'll watch every fly ball that was hit anywhere near Brendan Barnes. I'm going to need you to do that for me. Okay. Have it on my desk by Friday. Sure. So between Barnes and Carlos Gonzalez and Stubbs,

it seems like a pretty good defensive outfield. And Stubbs seems like the sort of hitter who might be helped by going to Coors Field in that he has really struggled to hit curveballs more than anything else. If you look at his results when he makes contact with a curveball and also the fact that he rarely does make contact with a curveball, seems like he could be helped by going to Coors because we've referenced before that article by Dan Rosenson at BP about how curveballs seem to be affected more than maybe any other pitch type by the altitude and the different break, the reduced break. So he seems

like the kind of guy who maybe offensively would be helped by going to Coors Field. And so maybe he'll be decent for them. And for the Indians, he was sort of expendable after the David Murphy signing. So I kind of like that move. I still don't really have a great handle on what the Rockies are doing this winter, trading Fowler, but then also sort of bringing in some veterans. It's kind of a confusing sort of schizophrenic offseason and i guess we can lump them in with another that that's your that's the that's the entirety of the schizophrenia as they traded fowler while also trying to add players who they thought would make them better yeah i i don't know and well i mean they they got a 23 year old who's got 400 career innings and the defensive center fielder who i just said might be better than Fowler.

And Fowler was about to get expensive. Yeah, I don't know. I'm not a big fan of Jordan Lyles. Maybe I'm underrating him. No, no, he's terrible. But the trade is, I mean, to me it felt defensible. Well, okay, so two NL West teams have been pretty active this winter, and we, at the beginning of the offseason, I think we talked about the Dodgers,

and we said that there was really no competition for them almost in the division, that they were the clear favorites. Is that still the case are you are you buying the the padres surprise team thing which we've i feel like we've heard that for the last i don't know two years at least that the padres are saying that for the last two years we haven't even been recording for two years and we've been saying that for two years i don't know that i've been saying it but people have been saying it i've been saying nice things about the second episode uh-huh so the padres signed joaquin benoit yesterday uh or today and kind of that fills the the luke gregerson role

and i wasn't a big fan of the gregerson trade since it sort of seemed like Seth Smith was redundant on their roster. But then someone pointed out that he's not really because Carlos Quentin is going to get hurt at some point, almost inevitably. I think Jeff Young made that point. And so you almost have to just carry someone expecting that Carlos Quentin will get hurt. So if you look at the Padres pitching staff, it's looking pretty strong. The rotation certainly between Kennedy and Kashner and Josh Johnson and Tyson Ross, who looked good last year, and Loupke, and they have some depth beyond that, and lots of minor leaguers on the way and I guess, I don't know, not a great bullpen,

but some guys in there. Benoit helps. I still, I can't, I'm not sure whether I'm buying them as a contender in 2014 yet, but they are getting there, getting are you buying it uh no as i recall um what we said in roughly the first week of the show was that they were a team that seemed to never make bad moves they like they just have been clicking along for three years without a single bad move and that still seems to be the case but somehow they uh haven't

it hasn't really turned into anything that i think is a a serious threat for 92 wins and partly i think that's because uh i think i might be wrong about this but quietly it feels like their uh top three uh farm system of a couple years ago has very quietly produced nothing like it it seems like they've almost that farm system it wasn't as good as the 2010 royals or 2011 2010 royals but in in some ways maybe has even been more disappointing so uh part of what you know what seemed to always be good moves was building this really great farm system, and the farm system still has to take the next step. episode of his podcast with Rani that they've sort of escaped notice or escaped criticism as a low payroll team, that all the ire that has been directed at, say, the Astros and the Marlins has not been directed at the Padres, and that maybe they've sort of skated by.

Then again, if you look at that, I i mean they did spend twice as much money as as those two teams last year so uh and they spent more than the a's and more than the rays and more than the pirates um yeah so i don't think the pirate i don't i don't feel like the padres have been um tanking in any considerable i'm not even sure the padres are spending lower than their than their capacity really um but you know you said they haven't spent money you know neither did the pirates that somehow the pirates made that leap without really spending i mean they added um three famous names martin and burnett and um liriano without really taking on much money um and uh you know somehow they made that jump the padres just i still, you know, somehow they made that jump.

The Padres just, I still don't think the Padres have made that jump, even with, you know, Kennedy and Benoit and whatever. Yeah, I don't see the offense there, really. Uh-uh. Yeah, the lineup is not strong. I like it less than the Royals lineup. All right, well, those were really the interesting moves. The Cubs, as we began to record, signed Jonathan Sanchez,

but I have nothing to say about that. And the Mariners. Oh, no, you do have something to say about that. Do I? Yeah, he's on my list. Oh, was he? He was. Oh, our list of minor league free agents.

Yeah, so that's big news. That is a team he could pitch on. Man, that's upsetting. We will have to do an update on that at some point this winter. Yeah, but I lost somebody to Korea. Yes, you did. I lost Wolf to Korea. Yes, you did. Was it Wolf? I lost Wolf to Korea? Yes, Russ Wolf.

And it just dawned on me that I was all excited when the White Sox signed Alex Liddy because they had no third baseman. Now, after the Matt Davidson trade, they kind of have a third baseman. So that's upsetting. But we'll do an update on that at the end of the offseason once all these guys have signed or once it's clear that they're not going to sign, and we'll see who actually did better there.

And that's probably it. The other move was the Mariners signing Franklin Gutierrez, which is nice for them. He seems like a decent fit. He's a right-handed hitting outfielder. All of their outfielders are left-handed hitting, and he can probably still play center if he's healthy. So that seems like a pretty good fit.

And that was the day in transaction. So we will be back with another show tomorrow an email show tomorrow uh send us emails at podcast at baseball prospectus.com and if you're not a baseball prospectus subscriber then remember to visit the site over the next day or two to take it for a spin and see if you like it uh so we'll be back tomorrow 44 minutes with will leach didn't you tell him you prefer to keep it to 12 what's your point

just a little hurt you don't want me promoting the show i just i want you going 44 minutes with me sometimes sometimes i do