Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 41: The Brewers Are Back in Contention, Technically/Max Scherzer and the Tigers’ 2009 Trade Revisited

Episode Date: September 13, 2012

Ben and Sam discuss the state of the Brewers, which is a lot like the state of the Phillies, then talk about Max Scherzer’s long-awaited improvement and which team won the 2009 trade that brought him to Detroit.

Good morning, good evening, welcome to episode 41 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Prospectus. I am Sam Miller. It is my turn tonight to say introductory words, and these are those words. Ben Lindberg is in New York. New York, Ben, how are you doing tonight? Good. The Orioles won a one-run game tonight.

Seems like a pretty good idea for a piece. Yeah, we should talk about how they're doing that. We should write about that tomorrow. Both of us should write separate pieces. Yes. About the Orioles' one-run win tonight. It was quite a night. The pennant races are getting to that point where teams are gaining and losing

10 or 12 points in our playoff odds at a time. The Giants, as of this moment, have a seven-game lead on the Dodgers, so that race is basically over. It went from fun to over in the span of like four days or something. Did we both pick the Giants when we did our NL West? We did, although I think we then, we might have talked about it two days in a row, though. We did, because there was the trade. Yeah, and I think I hedged a bit, maybe,

or perhaps I just distanced myself from my credibility. But yes, definitely we both picked the Giants. I think I had the courage of my convictions in that second round. Yeah. And now the A's are, I believe, four and a half or five games above the third place team in the wildcard race right now. So they're getting dangerously close to being a sure thing as well. So we're at that point in the year, it's a lot of fun. Everybody's having fun.

How are you feeling about the second wild card these days? I'm sorry, the A's? Yeah, no, I was right. I take it back. I love it. I think it's great. It messes with my head when I look at the standings. But I don't know. I generally think about these sorts of things as being like the weather, and you just take it as it comes and have fun with it. And I don't know if I would have picked this or not, but I don't really consider the alternative very much, and I'm enjoying baseball this year just as I always enjoy baseball in a slightly different format.

It's hard to ruin it. It is hard to ruin it. I wonder what the closest – this is a good topic for some time. I wonder what the closest anybody has ever come to ruining baseball was. What are we talking about tonight? This is highly unorthodox. We've been talking about topics before. You're still talking. You're now talking about talking about tonight? This is highly unorthodox. We've been talking about topics before. You're still talking.

You're now talking about talking about topics. Okay, my topic is the Brewers. And my topic is Max Scherzer. So go on now. All right. So we talked about the Phillies yesterday. I know. I almost brought up the Brewers because they're almost the exact same.

Yes, everything about these two teams is the same right now. Yes, they have the same record, 72 and 71. Surprisingly, they are also tied in the wildcard race. So they're three games back, which is kind of kind of real. I know we kind of dismissed the Phillies' chances for this season yesterday, but they won again, and the Brewers also won again. So they're both three games back. Three games back of a lot of teams, though. Yes, yes. There are four teams ahead of them. They have many obstacles in their way. They were both sellers at the deadline, Milwaukee with Granke.

And so these were teams that were both very good last year, got off to bad first halves this year, kind of. I don't know if they threw in the towel, but they were sort of written off in that they appeared to be out of contention and they were selling. They were sort of written off in that they appeared to be out of contention and they were selling. I don't know that it makes sense to compare the two teams, except they are alike in so many superficial ways. I guess if you had to take a franchise right now, and let's say based only on the roster, because obviously the Phillies have a number of institutional advantages that the Brewers don't have, like a population, which would you take? Which do you like in the short term and long term based on what's in the organization now, I suppose? That's an interesting question. That's a tough question.'s a tough question um wow wow wow wow i don't know if it's a

good question but it's uh yeah it is kind of pointless when you really break it down uh because there are no humans who are going to have to make this decision I, geez, I think that I would take the Brewers current organization. And I don't have a real reason for that. I guess they're younger for one thing. They are younger. They are. I'm trying to think of what. They don't really have any money locked up that's sort of significant.

Bronze, I guess, which is not a big thing. Yeah, but that's like probably similar to like Cole Hamels where it's like, oh, good. Right, yes. But on the other hand, they don't have nearly the sort of star power. They don't have nearly the – I guess I would say that if you were just looking at the very top of the roster, you would not see nearly the value. At the top, it seems like the Phillies get their value out of very famous people doing famous things. value out of very famous people doing famous things the brewers kind of uh win in a more midwestern way with little bits here and there and you know getting michael fires and having carlos gomez be quietly very good in his own way and having excellent pitch framing catchers and also catchers who can hit, and going to Japan and accidentally getting Norichika Aoki,

who, as RJ demonstrated earlier this year, it doesn't seem that the Brewers actually meant to get. They kind of put in a bid, and then they won, and they thought, oh, what do we have and so I don't know that maybe that maybe the whimsy of the Brewers roster construction is what is swaying me maybe I just simply like them a little bit more they look very much like a win now team with kind of a short window for contention as of, well, maybe now, but as of the last couple of years, they made the first cranky trade, the trade to get cranky, and kind of gave up the remnants of what was not a great farm system even before that trade.

not a great farm system even before that trade. And it looked like they were sort of saying, well, let's win for this one year or two while we still have Prince Fielder and we have Granke. And then we'll kind of just hope that carries us through the lean years pretty much. There didn't seem to be a very sustainable model for them on that roster. And I guess you could kind of say the same about the Phillies, except for their financial advantages, in that they have sort of the same not a really rich system, an older team. An older team. So I guess yesterday we kind of dismissed this as almost the last gasp of a formerly great team.

Or a team that was very strong for several years and is now kind of running on fumes. Because teams don't usually go from World Series contender to terrible in one season. It's usually a slower decline and i don't know do you think that is kind of the same progression the brewers are taking here that this is sort of the the tail end the last gasp for a team that was a strong contender for a couple years and i don't yeah uh sorry i cut you off but you were just gonna yes you were gonna restate a team that was a strong contender for a couple of years. Yeah. Sorry, I cut you off, but you were going to restate what you just said. Yeah, okay. I actually think that probably the idea of windows is kind of overblown. I think that that is now that there are two wildcard spots,

as we can see in this race with the Phillies and Brewers, two very flawed teams having poor seasons, managing to muscle their way in at the last second, you don't have to be that good anymore. And I don't think either one of these teams is, or I guess since we're just talking about the Brewers right now, they don't look like a team to me that's going to drop to 63 wins anytime soon. And if you're not a 63 win team, then you're, you know, you're basically in it the next year. You know, you're a couple of guys having good seasons and maybe a prospect or two developing from being respectable again. I mean, I don't think that the Brewers are a great team moving forward. I don't think they're like a hundred win team. And I don't think the Phillies are like a hundred

win team, even though they used to be. And that's what we're talking about when we talk about their declines. Both teams are contenders next year. And the Brewers, I think this is, I mean, it's, well, neither one of them is actually going to win this year. So, like, we're not talking about this year, right? We're talking about next year only. Just kind of – yeah. Yeah. Who do they lose?

Do they lose Ricky Weeks? They lose Ricky Weeks, right? I would have to check. They lose Ricky Weeks, and I think they lose Sean Markham. I should have said, I think they lose Ricky Weeks, and I think they lose Sean Markham. I should have said, I think they lose Ricky Weeks, and I think they lose Sean Markham. And they probably lose Frankie Rodriguez. Weeks is signed, actually, through 2014, apparently. Okay.

Well, never mind. Glad I said I think. Corey Hart, you got Corey Hart up? I do not. Markham, you were correct about, yes. And Corey Hart is a free agent after next season. After 2013. Yes.

And Randy Wolfe will, they're not going to somehow get Randy Wolfe back, so that's good. I'm just looking at the Brewers roster right now and saying names and trying to figure out how to end the sentence after that. They seem like a team that should have Randy Wolf at the start of each season, and then maybe he'll go somewhere else during it, but he'll be back with the Brewers the next year. Yeah. Well, the Brewers are fun.

All right. Scherzer? So you wrote about Scherzer in late May. After he struck out 15 men in a game. And at the time he had a 5.73 ERA. And you pointed out that he had a better FIP. And you also pointed out that we had in the annual said that he was a great bet for a breakout year. And you pointed out that he had made some mechanical tweaks,

and you suggested that there were probably good things going forward for him despite the 5.73 ERA. And it actually took about a month before the ERA dropped at all. It was about, I think it was 5.78 a month later. And then everything came together. And he's, since then, in his last 100 innings before his start wednesday night he has a 2.51 era 125 strikeouts in 100 innings 5ks per walk he's doing it without the benefit of a notable babbitt he's throwing two fewer pitches per inning in those 16 starts he has struck out at least seven batters in 15 of them. And obviously

you'd like to see it for a lot longer, but given his pedigree and given his peripheral stats before this season and given what he's doing, it's not totally absolutely out of control crazy to think that he maybe has become like a top 10 or 15 pitcher in major league baseball um and the point that i'm making is actually not so much about max scherzer but holy cow that trade the max scherzer trade if you look at it now that was like every player in that trade got better every player who moved anywhere got like significantly better and all those teams um probably are like look at what we got and um obviously it's not a zero-sum thing when you make a trade it's especially not zero-sum when it's a three-team trade but do you think that there is a clear

winner in that big trade and just to refresh everybody's memory, the main parts of it were Scherzer going from Arizona to Detroit, Ian Kennedy going from New York to Arizona, Edwin Jackson going from Detroit to Arizona, and then a few months later going to Chicago for Daniel Hudson, Curtis Granderson going from Detroit to New York, and Austin Jackson going from New York to Detroit. Yeah. Well, I introduced already, but I've just said it all over again, and I just think, wow, those players.

That's a lot of players. Yeah. I was hoping you brought this up solely to congratulate me for the prediction I made in that article. But you had to talk about the trade, too. It's just a crazy trade, man. Yeah, I guess I would say the Tigers probably got the best of it or at least ended up with the best players now from it.

I don't know whether those are the same things. So they basically traded Edwin Jackson and Curtis Granderson for Austin Jackson and Max Scherzer. Yeah, so they kind of replaced older, more expensive guys with younger, less expensive, and basically just as good or better alternatives, which is, I guess, exactly what they wanted to do. And the Yankees were kind of looking for the certainty of Curtis Granderson, as opposed to hoping that Austin Jackson would turn into something like Curtis Granderson.

So, I mean, they got that, clearly. Granderson has been very good for them. And, I mean, they gave up a lot, but I don't know. I guess I would say the Tigers, but it is a very fun trade in that everyone kind of got something good. And that's nice. It doesn't happen that often. I think at the moment,

probably the Tigers have the best pitcher in the deal and the best position player in the deal at the moment. And so I guess you would have to say they won the deal, especially because both of those guys are under team control for a long time and a lot less expensive. However, one of the nice things also about the trade is that almost every player in the deal has at some point been the best pitcher in the trade. You know, like Ian Kennedy was better than Scherzer for a long time and Granderson was better than Austin Jackson. Phil Koch was better. time and Granderson was better than Austin Jackson.

Phil Koch was better. Well, Phil Koch was better than Daniel Schlereth. I don't even remember who got Schlereth. Did Schlereth win the Detroit? So they got both of those. Well, they got the two best relievers too and the two worst. And, you know, to be honest, Edwin Jackson is like such a bubble commodity that if you can get him and trade something better, it's almost like a sure thing.

It's like owning gold. So Daniel Hudson, for a stretch, might have actually been the most attractive of the three starting pitchers if you bring him into this. I don't know. Going into this year, I think I would have taken Hudson over Kennedy and maybe Hudson over Scherzer. I'm not sure what Pakoda said. So, yeah, it's a fun trade because everybody has gotten to stand

at the top of the mountain for a little bit, and nobody got really burned, although they did all give up a lot of good stuff anyway i don't think we really exhausted how awesome that trait was but i just wanted to say it's awesome um and relive it with you for just a moment it's also real quick funny that um at the time everybody ripped arizona right i mean that was just considered such a stupid deal for Arizona to have traded – essentially traded Scherzer for Jackson to trade a younger, cheaper, better pitcher for Jackson. And Kennedy was kind of an afterthought. We're probably burning a topic for the offseason here, but do you edwin jackson gets a longer than one year deal this year yeah i do but we'll talk about it later yes okay all right i'll uh wrap it up

uh that was episode 41 of effectively wild we'll be back tomorrow with episode 42