Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 565: Joe Maddon Moves On

Episode Date: October 28, 2014

Ben and Sam discuss Joe Maddon’s decision to opt out of his contract with Tampa Bay, then talk about other front-office comings and goings and Miguel Cabrera’s surgery.

Sometimes I feel the need to move on, so I pack a bag and move on, move on. Well, I might take a train or see the dawn. Might take a girl When I move on Good morning and welcome to episode 565 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectus, brought to you by The Play Index at baseballreference.com. I'm Sam Miller with Ben Lindberg of Grantland. Hi, Ben.

Hello. I tweeted this during the game, but when I got my media notes handout in about the sixth or seventh inning of Sunday's game, the number one fact, the first, I might be exaggerating, it was very, very high. I think it was the first fact on the sheet was that the temperatures in these World Series games have been very consistent. It actually said, I think it had a pun about temperature consistency or something. And it said that it's the first game in recorded history, or the first series in recorded World Series history,

in which all five games were in the 60s. And at first I was like, what? And then I thought, oh, I wonder if they use the promo code BP to get Playindex at a special rate of $30 per year because that is something you could find with Playindex. I'd be surprised if they didn't use Playindex for that. Well, maybe. Maybe they went to Elias or something, but no need.

You can go to the Playindex and get that information, which is probably as useful as many of the other notes in that media packet i'm glad you asked i'm gonna go over and i'm gonna go over and get it just judging by my recent experience with media packets during the world series you gotta cram a lot of stats in those and there are only so many useful stats uh it was actually it was the first fact weather model of consistency it was the very first thing so then we have so is that a pun on on like radar models i don't know weather model no uh no weather model is not a phrase. No, okay.

All right, so we have some Hunter Pence World Series streakiness. We have a paragraph on teams scoring first, winning more often. We have three paragraphs of Madison Bumgarner postseason stats, Pablo Sandoval career postseason stats, and Brandon Crawford joining Ari Fletcher, Dave Bancroft, Al Dark, Rich Aurelia, and Edgar Antoria in an extremely select group, I guess, of Giants shortstops with at least two RBIs in a game.

Huh. Which feels not that select. That's pretty much everyone who's played shortstop for them in a World Series. There's a headline on AccuWeather from today. Weather model to help monitor devastating ozone pollution levels in India. Yeah, I know. I think it's a phrase. I think it's a phrase. No.

I think it's a pun. I don't. There's basically no other. It is not. I don't know. It is not prominently. It's fine. Yeah, well, those packets often have some of the same stats recycled and slightly updated.

Because, Ben, why would you assume it is exactly what you would say if you weren't trying to make a pun? Yeah, probably. So given that and given the fact that this is not a known phrase with pop culture ramifications or anything like that, you'd have to assume that it's, I think you have to assume they were playing it straight. Also, no other puns.

The other headlines for their little sections are Hunter Pence, scoring first key, Mad Bum, Pablo Sandoval, and Brandon Crawford. Okay, well, I am headed back to Kansas City, so maybe I'll track down a Giants PR person and interview them about this. By the way, two temperatures were exactly 60 and one was 69. So that's as big a spread as you could have. Yeah.

Well, every fun fact lies, right? That's true. All right. So I guess we're going to talk about the Rays today. Okay. There might be other things that you'll want to mention or talk about that have happened in baseball over the last few days, but certainly the Rays have been a big thing. Joe Maddon, of course, opted out of his contract

and is a free agent, which we don't have much as in terms of managers. I was just talking about this with someone today about the giant stability of the giant's core. And we were sort of going over the contract status for everybody and how young they were and everything. And then the question was brought up, well, what about Bochy? And it's like, well, managers don't really hardly ever leave. It happens sometimes, but for the most part, managers go until they get fired or until they get in a fight with somebody. And then they might go to another team after that.

But very rarely do you see a manager kind of take off like this. And so there's all sorts of intrigue about this and ramifications for the Rays and for the rest of the league I felt legit sadness for the 29 general managers who had to answer

a beat writer calling them to ask if they were planning to fire their manager and replace him with Joe Maddon because like what answer is there that you would ever say other than, no, I'm not,

and this sucks that now this is even going to be brought up in an article about me. But yeah, so it's a pretty big deal. So the weirdest thing about it, before we talk about the significance of it,

is that Joe Maddon didn't know he had this opt out i was just gonna say that i wasn't aware i mean was anyone talking about the possibility that no it was well it was triggered by friedman's departure and madden didn't know that. Madden didn't know he had this. So when they asked him a week before whether he was staying and he said yeah, according to his account, he genuinely didn't know he had an option. And so Matt Silverman, who is now the raised president of Baseball Ops, called him up to tell him that he had a two-week window and uh according to madden quote matt called me originally because i was totally unaware of it i didn't know and then i knew and once i had a chance to evaluate it i was able to make up my

mind for what we're doing now it wasn't easy there's a two-week window there to look at it and make a decision so uh maybe i should have asked Jason this. I wonder if Matt Silverman was obligated to inform him of this. And also, how does this get in a contract and you're not aware? I guess maybe he just signed it and his agent didn't negotiate it and it didn't come up i i i kind of like to think that maybe andrew friedman secretly snuck it in so that he had extra leverage and so if the rays ever tried to move him out he could say well you get rid of me you're getting rid of joe and or that he'd have the option to bring madden wherever he was going. Ooh, even better. Oh, wow.

Actually, I wasn't even thinking about that. But yeah, if he, huh. Yeah, it makes you wonder, doesn't it, Ben? It does. Doesn't it kind of make you wonder if Andrew Friedman secretly snuck this in? Nobody was aware of it. It's surprising that Madden's agent wouldn't have informed him about it Assuming he has

Right If the agent had negotiated it into the contract for Madden Then you would think that he would have remembered And told his client about it I feel like I have to be misreading this article Or that this article has misrepresented it But I keep reading it and the words are the same.

Madden learned of the opt-out clause when informed by Matt Silverman, who was obligated to inform him. That's just incredible. And how hard is that decision of your Matt Silverman? I wonder if he consulted with lawyers beforehand. Whether to tell them or not? Yeah. Well, if he hadn't told him and then Madden had found out it was in there somehow,

then that probably would have destroyed some trust if not have opened him up to legal action. I don't know that it would have destroyed any trust. I mean, if Madden doesn't know about it, how would he expect Silverman to know about it? Or, you know, I don't know why he would expect to be told about it, how would he expect Silverman to know about it? Or I don't know why he would expect to be told about it. So the whole thing is weird because Madden also has, what we understood was that he had one more year on his contract. So Friedman could try to poach him now, but he'd cost a prospect or he could wait a year and then Madden would be free anyway. But then all of Madden's quotes are like about what a huge opportunity this was.

It's like kind of a, let me see if I can get that. I don't want to misrepresent. I just hope they will understand that this was a unique opportunity for me and my family and the charities I'm attached to. There was nothing else I was looking for before that. Up until Andrew left, I didn't have this kind of opportunity whatsoever. And then once Andrew left and this opportunity opened up, I had to consider it. Four times the word opportunity comes up. But he could have left in a year.

So it's not as though he was stuck with the race for life. I assume that he's had multiple contracts over the course of his tenure, and so he probably had lots of opportunities to leave if he had wanted to. So I don't know. The whole thing, it's very weird to parse and figure out what – I mean, on a very, very, very simple level, it's like, oh, yeah, of course, Madden's got a chance to go make a ton of money, possibly from the Dodgers who have tons of money to pay for somebody like Madden,

possibly with another team that has tons of money to pay for someone like Madden. But regardless, it makes sense that his stature will probably never be higher, especially if the Rays have two bad seasons after this. And so on a very simplistic level, of course, this makes perfect sense. And then the more anybody talks, the more you're trying to figure out where the obfuscation is, and it becomes harder and harder. And so it's probably best to just stick to the simple thing and say, man wants to get his. You can appreciate that.

Right. Yes. And then the question is, where and how is he going to get his because of the lack of current openings. It's not as if he had done this at the end of the season even maybe, but I mean doing it now when there's only one opening, the Twins, which he is not going to leave the Rays to go to the Twins. That seems like more of a lateral move payroll-wise or market-wise. Well, but every managerial job is open. Technically, yes. Managers don't get paid enough to keep any GM from considering dropping the one that they've got. I mean, other than Mike Socha, maybe, who's got, you know, well, Other than Mike Socha, maybe. Who's got?

Other than Mike Socha, probably. But even that, it's like, I forget what it is, but it's the order of one year as a reliever or something like that over the next four years. Yeah, Socha was on a 10-year, $50 million contract. Yeah, so they would have to eat $20 million if they wanted to replace him. So that's the most significant one. Joel Sherman reported that Madden was looking for five years and 25,

which would be the same annual rate as Socha, half the length. So that would make him the second highest paid manager or maybe tied for first, presumably. Yeah. I mean, certainly nobody thinks that the Cubs are going to look at the $850,000 they owe Rich Renteria or whatever and say, well, I guess we're stuck with them. And that's probably true for, I mean, you know, Mattingly. Certainly it's like a coin flip, it seems like now whether manningley's gonna make it i mean there's a lot of openings if you want to have an opening and you don't have to make him a manager

either you could create some sort of front office field hybrid role that would put him in a position uh that maybe is arguably more powerful in some ways and man's gonna get jobs yeah certainly and alan nero his agent said joe's looking for a big challenge he's looking for an organization that's committed to win of course you could say that the big challenge yeah he should go to a team that's committed to losing because that would be a big right yeah. Yeah. Managing the Rays would be about the biggest challenge that you can imagine. They're an organization that's committed to win, but don't necessarily have the resources to do so. So there's your challenge.

So clearly there is something more to it. So does it suggest to you then that Madden is a pessimist about the Rays? That having lost Friedman, coming off a losing season, no price this year, that he feels that if he were to stick around, I mean, it's a risk he has to factor into his decision to opt out, assuming that he didn't have some kind of unofficial deal worked out with someone before he did it, which is possible, although we haven't heard anything about where that might be yet. yet. So does that suggest that he doesn't want to tarnish his Sterling reputation by sticking around for the Rays' 2015 season? Because he could have. He could have stayed for one more year. Then he would have left. It would have been the end of his contract. There wouldn't have been any potential for feeling that he had abandoned the team or anything. And Don Mattingly's contract will be up in LA and the path would be smoothed for him to join Andrew Friedman and take over the biggest payroll team if he wanted to do that. So why do this? Is the potential risk to staying with the Rays for a year so great?

Well, Ben, let me ask you this. Are you a pessimist about the race? Not really. With Friedman Lee? Not in the immediate future. I mean, I don't know what will happen this offseason. There's no point in speculating really what teams will look like at the end of March. But I mean, right now, I would consider the Rays about as likely as anyone to be the favorite heading into next year in the AL East. What about, say, in a five-year outlook? Well, the flip side of our usual stance that you bet on the Dodgers or some other team that can spend tons of money just because they can spend tons of money is that the Rays will probably not be spending tons of money.

And so, yes, I'd be more pessimistic about them in a five-year window because of the payroll, because perhaps of the brain drain losing Friedman, although who knows, Silverman might prove to be a great GM. He's been working with Friedman for years now. That whole front office is assembled by Friedman, although who knows? Silverman might prove to be a great GM. He's been working with Friedman for years now. That whole front office is assembled by Friedman, so it might function perfectly fine without him. But yes, given the payroll and the lack of attendance and the fact that they really haven't graduated anyone

from their system for the most part over the last few years, their drafts have not panned out like they did early in the tenure of Friedman when they had all those number one picks. Yeah, I would say the future is not quite as great. But the immediate future, the one year that Madden had left on his contract, I think I would be fairly optimistic about it. So we don't have as much insight. Well, I wrote about this when Friedman left,

but in some ways we have more insight into the Rays than we do with other teams because we obsess over every tiny thing that they do. In another way, we have less insight because they don't share. They're very close to the vest with everything they do, and so it's hard to know exactly what is being done. But based on kind of what we know, and books have been written about them and everything like that, so we know quite a bit.

What distinguished the Rays as an organization over the past five years compared to all the other smart organizations? What was the persistent advantage they had or the persistent strength that they had that allowed them to be better and more consistent than other smart teams that are able to pull off some good moves and some good windows, but nothing like this consistency at this payroll. Discipline, maybe?

Sticking to the tenets of running a team? And I don't know whether that is a necessity because of their institutional disadvantages because they couldn't spend as much money, they couldn't make a big free agent signing that could possibly go bad. But they didn't do that. They were pretty strict about not signing free agents, not signing free agent pitchers for several years they went without signing any, I think. And they were pretty ruthless about trading guys when they could still give you

value before you run the risk of losing them without value. So I don't know. I mean, it's possible that just looking into the stats helped them gain an edge more than some other team. But I don't know about that. Just looking on the outside, I would say that just maybe not over committing because you could imagine another team just making one bad move that would have sunk the franchise. Because if when you have a payroll that small, if you devote a significant percentage of it to one player and that player doesn't pan out, then you're in trouble and they never really put themselves in that position. So I don't know whether that's Friedman, whether it's ownership, or whether any smart team would

have done the same working under the restrictions that the Rays were working under. But you can't really point to any move that went south for them other than, say, Pat Burrell or something that was even close to catastrophic. They just didn't really expose themselves. They didn't overextend themselves. Yeah, I think discipline is a very good suggestion. And discipline seems to me the sort of thing that, not having ever done the job, not having ever been that close to anybody who's done the job, I can't say this for sure. But if you ask me what the most important thing a GM does or does not do, I might have like four to six guesses of what that might be. And one of those four to six guesses would be that he has discipline. He is the kind of ultimate firewall in a lot of ways. He's the one who gets his name on the move.

And he's the one who oversees all the different departments, and he's the one who is the liaison between the ownership and the moves on the field. And so discipline seems like it could be the single most important thing. It might not be. It might be not at all important. But it seems like it could be the single most important thing that a GM could bring to the job. And I don't know that discipline correlates all that well with intelligence. And so we have maybe a lot of smart front offices and a lot of smart GMs, but they're not necessarily guaranteed to have that discipline. They might be rational, and through that rationality, they might put in place good

processes that prevent them from following some of their more tempting whims. But I think I've known a lot of very competent people, very smart people who had no discipline in their lives. And I don't know that there's any reason to think that just because you hire a smart GM, that you'll hire a disciplined GM and the Rays like you say have been very disciplined and maybe that will be a significant thing that they lose maybe you can't replace Friedman by finding the smartest guy uh nearby even you know Silverman seems very promising because he's been there uh working under him and working with him and all that but you know it's a very particular quality that is difficult to recreate.

So, anyway, long way of saying that. I think that, well, we talked about, geez, we talked about Friedman going to the Dodgers and how much it meant. I don't remember if I said this. I don't remember if I even believed it at the time. I think maybe it seems like a bigger deal for the Rays to lose Friedman than it could be for the Dodgers to gain Friedman. If we're just talking about the fact that there's a range of outcomes here,

the range of outcomes for the Rays next few years probably has gotten much broader. And not a lot higher, not a lot on the upside, but there's a lot more disastrous outcomes that you could imagine. And whether you think that they're more or less likely to win the division or to win the wild card or to win 87 games with or without Friedman maybe that doesn't change that much but maybe you're thinking that the likelihood of winning 55 games goes way up without and that's kind of the disaster that you just don't want to be attached to so you know maybe this is the safe move and it's as simple as that yeah maybe so i mean sitting out a year i would probably not affect his irving potential at all if there are openings next year

at this time and madden has sat out the entire 2015 season i don't think anyone is going to look at him as stale or past his expiration date or rusty, like you can't bring him back after a year off. I think that wouldn't even be a consideration, really. So in that sense, he is probably not costing himself anything. I mean, he's potentially costing himself a 2015 salary but probably not costing himself anything beyond that so plus it's probably i mean it'd be fun to take a year off like sure who doesn't who doesn't want to do that it is possible that he just thinks oh it'd be really nice to take a year off i would like to that. I haven't done that in my entire adult life. I'm rich.

I'm successful. I'm getting up there in age. Maybe it's just a sabbatical. Everybody should take sabbaticals. Yeah, sure. I wouldn't begrudge him that. Or, yeah, maybe he does have his eye on some particular position. Obviously, the speculation has been the Cubs.

some particular position. Obviously the speculation has been the Cubs. Maybe he is dead set on being the guy who wins the Cubs' first World Series in forever, and he is willing to sit out a year for that opportunity. Who knows? All right. Yeah. So let's say that I had told you, I'm going to pick a number that means nothing,

but let's say I had told you that the raised chances of winning a World Series in the next five years was 16%. Okay. Friedman leaves. I want your number now. And then Madden leaves. I want your number after that. Okay. Okay.

Post-Friedman, I'll say it falls from 16 to 12 and post Madden it falls from 12 to 10. Okay so I was 11 and 9. Okay yeah I figure in the next 5 years the

foundation of the team that would be winning the World Series in that time is already largely in place. The core that would take you to that World Series is probably already in the farm system or on the roster already. So there are things that AGM could do to supplement that core or keep that core in place. that core or keep that core in place. But I would guess that going from Friedman to presumably another smart, capable person would not move that needle all that much. And probably the manager moves it even less.

Although I could see the argument that once the core of the team is in place, maybe the manager sways things more than the general manager. But I'll stick with my numbers and does joe work for the dodgers next year uh 2015 or 2016 2015 i'll say i'll say no i mean it seems certain that he won't be managing the team in that uh friedman has kind of committed himself to that course both before and after madden opted out by saying things about don mattingly so i would say that the managing thing is not likely to happen and it's certainly possible that he could be a special special assistant to the gm or something for a year and then take over.

Although you wonder whether Mattingly would... Yeah, I can't imagine. Right. If you add Madden to the organization in almost any capacity, you're sort of sending a signal to Maddingly, or at least he will likely interpret it as one. So that would be tough. I mean, you'd basically be putting walking, I mean, dead duck status on, lame duck status on Mattingly at that point. So that would be perceived almost as forcing him out,

I would think. All right. And Madden says he'll continue to live in Tampa and quote, my wife Jay is talking about opening a boxing spin studio in Tampa. Love the place. Will Jay open a boxing spin studio or will she not? I don't think she will. What are the chances that she does? If I told you that the chances had been 62% that she was going to open a boxing spin studio in Tampa, what are they now? 25%. She was going to open a boxing spin studio in Tampa.

What are they now? 25%. I think 2%. Really? 2%, yeah. Yeah, you'd have to think that the spin studio would be more successful in Los Angeles. So I'm kind of interested in the impact on the Dodgers because since the Dodgers hired Friedman, or at least since the offseason started, they've lost two of their highest ranking front office executives to two guys who've been mentioned on many potential future GM lists.

And not only did they leave, but they went to division rivals. So DeJohn Watson, who was the Dodgers head of player development, went to the Diamondbacks. And now Logan White, who is the Dodgers scouting director, has left to join the Padres. So I wonder what that does, whether that offsets some of the benefit that they gain from adding Friedman. I mean, we've talked about how successful teams, it's tough to stay successful because as soon as you are successful, other teams want to hire the people who orchestrated your success. And so you lose your top ranking guys. And maybe these guys left because they harbored hopes of being GMs at some point. And once Friedman came in, it was clear that that wasn't going to happen anytime soon. Maybe they didn't want to work under a totally new regime in the same place. So for

whatever reason, they left, despite the fact that, as we've talked about, the outlook for the Dodgers is as good as any teams, certainly better than the Diamondbacks and the Padres, who are not currently winning teams. And yet they left. And I wonder what that does to have your director of player development and your pro scouting director go to division rivals, whether they're— I mean, we've talked about the impact of trading within the division and how maybe that is overblown. But I wonder if you lose your top-ranking people to division rivals, then now the Diamondbacks who have the Dodgers player development director

know everything about the Dodgers system. They might know the Dodgers system better than the Dodgers do right now. And you could say the same about Logan White, who's gotten tons of credit for Yasiel Puig and, you know, the Dodgers international signings and pro signings. He is now with the Padres who are sort of building their scouting powerhouse with Preller. And I wonder whether that affects their outlook at all. that affects their outlook at all. I mean, whether losing a top-ranking executive to a division rival hurts more than the alternative

than losing them to someone in a different league or a different division, or whether it even matters because you're probably not going to be trading within the division anyway, so maybe it doesn't matter that the Diamondbacks now know everything about the Dodgers system. Yeah, I wouldn't think that would matter at all. As on a sheer, I mean, just in the sense,

like if you had the choice between adding Freeman and losing those two guys or keeping those two guys and not adding Freeman, I don't know. We'll never know. But yeah, it does seem like maybe my gut says I'd rather have those two guys. But I don't, I mean, never know. But yeah, it does seem like maybe my gut says I'd rather have those two guys. But Watson left before Friedman got there, right?

And so there's no reason to think that was related. And White's been interviewed everywhere. So even if you don't promote, if you hire somebody else, or if you just keep, then maybe White leaves anyway. So it's not as though that's an easy math problem to do anyway. The variables might not have anything to do with each other whatsoever. But, yeah, I mean, the Logan White news, which just happened very recently, like an hour ago, is a huge coup. And if, I don't know, there's been some big moves, haven't there?

There's been a very active front office. That's right, yeah. Brian Minniti, the Nationals assistant GM, left, stepped down, and took an equivalent position, kind of. It's not something, we don't see managers do what Madden has done all that often, and we don't really see that with front office executives usually either, that they just leave and take an equivalent position with another team. It seems like often their contract is up and they go somewhere

or they get a promotion somewhere else, but not often just the lateral move. But yeah, Manitti went from the Nationals to the Diamondbacks. And the only other thing that maybe we should mention briefly that's happened that we haven't discussed is the Miguel Cabrera surgery, which turned out to be more serious than expected. So everyone knew there was something up with his ankle. And he had surgery last Wednesday, and he got those bone spurs removed from his right ankle, but he also had a stress fracture to a bone in his foot. And this was

more serious than anticipated. Dombrowski said, it's worse than what we ever would have anticipated. We were surprised. We did not know there was a stress fracture in there. And so now he is going to be off his foot and off his ankle for three months, which means that he will be evaluated a few weeks before the start of spring training. Possibly his opening day status is now in jeopardy. possibly his opening day status is now in jeopardy. But whether or not this affects his 2015 performance, this is the sort of thing that you have to factor in when you're making that decision, as Detroit has the last couple off seasons,

about whether to extend a guy before you have to. And we saw how that worked out with Justin Verlander, that you sign him, extend him two years before he would have been a free agent, and suddenly he is diminished. He is no longer a Cy Young caliber pitcher, but you were locked into a Cy Young caliber contract. And now it's sort of the same situation with Cabrera, where they signed him to his extension, coming off back-to-back MVP awards, and they paid him to continue to be a most valuable player, essentially. two excellent years and now he has this injury to deal with which kind of goes along with the expectation that maybe he doesn't have the best body type to age well or he's just getting to the age where players generally head downhill a little bit and so if you had waited with him either till next year which is when he would have been a free agent, or if you just signed him to an extension now.

If the Tigers had waited a year and negotiated with him now, I wonder what they would have saved. Presumably something, right? They probably would have paid less for Cabrera now over the next several years, or maybe they would have paid the same per year but not had to guarantee him as long a contract something like that anyway this is this is the risk when you do that why you better get some sort of discount if you are going to extend someone way before you have to i wonder what we yeah we should go back and listen to what we said i think that's what we said

i'm trying to yeah we thought that there was a there was no way that they there was yeah there was very little possibility for saving money and a huge possibility for right losing money by going ahead and doing this yeah uh brian uh byron buxton by the way left a game with a wrist injury today as well okay well it. Another thing that one might have talked about. Unfortunate. Okay, so as I said, I am headed back to Kansas City, which means that

even though no one made that Twitter account we suggested that its sole purpose would be to announce when we are going to put up an episode in the morning instead of at night, that will probably be the case on Wednesday, since I'll be at the ballpark late tonight, Tuesday. So we will have a show for you one way or another.

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