Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 576: Martin to Toronto and the Atlanta-St. Louis Swap

Episode Date: November 18, 2014

Ben and Sam banter about being blindsided by trades, then discuss Toronto’s Russell Martin signing and the Jason Heyward-Shelby Miller deal.

But if you ever tell me goodbye, I'll be down and you'll hear me cry. I need you more than anybody else has needed anyone before. More than anybody else has needed anyone before. I need you. I need you. I need you. I need you. I need you. Good morning and welcome to episode 576 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Prospectus presented by The Play Index at BaseballReference.com. I am Ben Lindberg of Grantland, joined by Sam Miller of Baseball Prospectus. Hello. Hi.

So we are here on a Tuesday, unscheduled bonus podcast this week in response to a couple big transactions that happened on Monday that were unanticipated and were more fun because they were unanticipated, I would say. and were more fun because they were unanticipated, I would say. And that was my first takeaway from the day, I think. We will talk a bit about the Russell Martin signing with the Blue Jays and probably more about the Cardinals-Braves trade involving Jason Hayward and Shelby Miller and others. But the fun thing, the extra fun thing about the

latter move, at least, was that it came completely out of the blue. It took everyone by surprise. It was reported by the team Twitter accounts, not the media. The media were scooped by team press releases, essentially. And I think this is my preferred method for finding out about things, which we talked about last offseason. And I said that I'd be perfectly happy if we found out about transactions when the team told us about them. told us about them. And you still need journalists to do journalism and to dig into stories and find out things that teams don't want to tell us that we wouldn't know about otherwise. That's still a very valuable role. But the news breaking is not so valuable, or at least, I don't know, it might be that there could be Unintended consequences

In the world without news Breaking that maybe We wouldn't find out about some things that we Currently find out about but If we could just skip the whole Lead up to everything like The Stanton news Still as we are speaking now

Has not officially been reported but it's been going on for several days now where the terms leak out or the news that there has been an agreement or they're close to an agreement. And then the opt out comes out and then the no trade comes out and incremental reports from anonymous sources eventually build up until someone is confident saying that the deal is official. And and then eventually the team confirms it. And this process goes on for days so that by the time it actually happens, it's it's old news already. Whereas this just dropped like a bomb in the morning on Twitter. There was no hint that anything was happening. And the end result is the same. We know what happens. It doesn't matter if Rosenthal or Haven or whoever had it

or if we found out about it straight from the source. So this is great. I love it. I think that it's better for each move if there's no lead up. However, the lead up is also fun. Like ideally there would be just as many rumors, but all the moves would somehow come out of nowhere and we would never figure out this pattern.

Yeah. Because it is definitely true that it's more fun to imagine, it's more fun to process a move when you haven't had three days of kind of percolating. But on the other hand, there is something nice about all the extra information, even if it's flawed information, all the extra information you get based on rumors of moves that never happened, it gives you a lot better sense of how valuable a player might be or it gives you, you know, it spurs you to think about different clubs' rosters

and where players fit. And you have to, in a sense, process like 10 times as many moves. And that probably helps your brain get smarter. But yeah, for enjoyment, this was pretty enjoyable. I don't think, I don't know, I don't think the moves exist for our enjoyment, though. No. I think the game does. Yeah.

A little. A little. Yeah, well, at this time of year, this is the closest we have. I wonder why this one made it. In a sense,

all teams would like to keep all of their trades unrumored, unannounced, until they do it. Yet, they never do. So I wonder if this one just got lucky or if there was extra priority to keeping it secret or if the trade itself actually happened over the course of 20 minutes. Yeah, maybe it developed extra quickly.

And it's probably easier to do when there's no free agent involved or there's no trade clause involved because you don't need to get the agents involved and the players involved necessarily before it happens. I mean, theoretically, you want to tell them that it happened before everyone else finds out, but you cut down on the distribution so there are fewer potential leaks

so maybe that's why but yeah i i enjoyed it i i wouldn't mind if all of the excellent reporters who devote an incredible amount of time and effort and energy to being the first to break whatever the transaction of the day is. If they were able to slow down, get some sleep, get off Twitter for more than two hours at a time and devote their energy to some other interesting story. Because we will find out about the moves one way or another, no matter what. Even if it's just opening day, the teams show up and we see who's on the lineup card. Uh-huh. That would be exciting. That would make it difficult for you to edit the annual.

Yeah, but it would definitely be the most exciting. That would be great. You literally don't know who's on the team until they emerge from the dugout. That would be awesome. That would be incredible every day. I mean, I guess you'd find that in spring training. But pitchers and catchers reporting to spring training is currently the most anticlimactic moment of the baseball schedule. Under this system, it would be the most exciting moment of the baseball schedule.

People would make the pilgrimage down there just to see who reports. I think I've fixed baseball. I think so. Okay. So we can start with Martin maybe because there's probably less to say. I don't know how much there is to say about it. He's a pretty good catcher. Are you writing about it?

He's one of your guys. This is one of your beats. Yeah, he's kind of one. I'm not. I wrote about Stanton, and then Jonah came back from vacation and took the stuff that happened today while I was out, and I was happy to have him do that. So I am not writing about it, but it seems like, I guess the surprising thing maybe is just that it's the Blue Jays.

I mean, that it's not the Dodgers and the Cubs, that it's not one of those teams. They seemed, they were kind of rumored to be the favorites. They seemed like the teams that needed him a lot and also had lots of money and everything but you could probably say most of the same things about the blue jays he's a he's a sizable upgrade over downer navarro and evidently they are they're planning to give it another go it hasn't gone so well for them the last couple years but this is a positive step for them. And it seems like it's roughly what you would expect Martin to make. I mean, just, I don't know, maybe the fact that he got five years, maybe, maybe four years was kind of the consensus for what he would get,

I would say. But as far as the average annual value, it seems pretty fair, pretty close to what we would have expected, I guess. I mean, Russell Martin's offense, I think, is nothing like what it was last year. He's a slightly above league average hitter probably and more above league average for a catcher. And he's also a good defender and a good leader

to the extent that we can tell that that's true. So he's a good player. He's worth some wins. How much of his 82 million dollars is Framing related would you guess If this were If everybody was exactly as

Smart and had the same priorities In way of looking at the game As they do now but this Happened in a world where pitch framing Was never measured at least publicly I bet he doesn't get the fifth year. That's it? You think it's the same four years, 64? Yeah, I mean, maybe you knock a million or two off there, I don't know.

But a catcher coming off a really, really, really strong offensive season, even if it was not really a... I mean, it was 460 plate appearances, and it was out of line with what he's done before. But coming off that season and having good traditional defensive ratings or reputation and all the off-the-field value that he is attributed with. I don't know. I would say that he would still get fairly close to that. Maybe he'd get 13-4 or something. By baseball references, War, he is the 10th best catcher ever for ages 30 and 31,

having nothing to do with framing. This is framing unrelated. Better than Yadier Molina over the past two years. Same ages. It's true that it's weird too because Molina doesn't have

Martin wasn't seen as very good before two years ago. For a couple years, he was just sort of hanging around average. But Molina wasn't really before a year before that either. He had the defensive reputation, but he

didn't bat very well. It seems reasonable. Yeah, better than Yvonne Rodriguez at it seems reasonable. Better than Yvonne Rodriguez at 30 and 31. Better than everybody. Better than almost everybody. He was a 5 point something win player according to every type of

win value stat and none of those stats includes framing. He is traditionally one of the best at that. I think he would have gotten something not too distant from that, but maybe one less year, just because framing seems to be a skill that ages well or barely ages at all. And of course we know that he will be in the best shape of his life

when he reports to spring training. So that maybe allays some concerns about his aging and catcher's aging at this stage of a career. Number two on this list, by the way. This list, he's 10th, and six of the nine guys ahead of him are Hall of Famers. But number two is Darren Dalton. He's not a Hall of Famer. No.

As far as I can tell. No. So is there any chance at all that Russell Martin is a Hall of Famer? I mean, he's obviously not right now, but he started his career early. He was very good early on. but he started his career early. He was very good early on. And, you know, was a, I guess, wow,

I'm actually shocked by this, that last year was his first MVP vote. He seemed like... 2013, you mean? Yeah. He got a 24th place vote. I mean, in 2000, how did he, like in 2007, he won the Gold Glove and the Silver Slugger Award. And he didn't get an MVP vote.

Which is pretty amazing, right? Not a playoff team, I guess. Not a playoff team, I guess. So anyway, he's at 31 more, and the bar is a lot lower for a catcher. I mean, he'd have to do a lot in his second decade. And so I guess anybody, if you assume that they're going to be just as good in their 30s as they were in their 20s, they start to look a lot better. So it's probably unrealistic.

But if anyone was going to do it, it'd be the guy who gets into better shape every single year. Yeah, it's an absurd question. He's not it. single year yeah yeah it's an absurd question he's not um yeah so it sounds like the the blue jays are are rumored to be interested in lots of other high profile people and of course they've been trying to sign a pitcher for a while now a couple off seasons now but i guess if you can't get a pitcher or if you haven't gotten a pitcher yet russell martin is the closest thing to a pitcher who is a position player in a sense and that he

will make all your pictures better and navarro is kind of on the opposite end of the framing spectrum so that should be a sizable upgrade even if offensively it's not as huge as it might look based on last year's stats. So that's Russell Martin. Does it surprise you that the Cubs allowed themselves to be outbid? Yeah, or the Dodgers, who, yeah, I don't know which one surprises me more. I mean, the Dodgers might plausibly, the Dodgers, even before this, were talking about how much they, you know, they value what Ellis brings. Yeah.

And they might plausibly say that they're just not looking for a catcher and you're wrong to accuse us of such. The Cubs clearly, though, were looking for a catcher. And you could say it's surprising that Martin got the fifth year and that the Blue Jays gave it to him, but still sort of got the feeling that this might be a place where the Cubs would draw a line and say, no one's passing us on this guy.

We're going to get him. I'm surprised they didn't. Yeah, I sort of am too. I'm sure they had a chance to. I'm sure they were offered the opportunity to bid higher. Maybe not. Maybe Martin just wanted to go to Canada. That's right.

Maybe so. He was using the Cubs all along. That could be. Okay Canada. That's right. Maybe so. He was using the Cubs all along. That could be. Okay. So that's Martin. Okie doke. And the other move, which you wrote about, so you've got a leg up on me here. So this is a fun one.

It's kind of fun that it happened on the day that the Stanton extension became quasi-confirmed because Stanton has not given him quite the same defensive ratings that the other systems do. last few years, which surprises people because obviously Stanton is the bat first guy and Hayward is the glove first guy, although both of them are kind of good at everything to some extent. And so yeah, so if these guys are equivalent players, even if they arrive at the value in different ways, and while this deal was happening, Stanton was getting signed to the biggest contract ever. That kind of gives you an indication of how good Hayward is and how good the player that the Cardinals just got was. Do you, though, think that they are equal? No.

I can kind of buy that they have been equal or close. I would, if I had to choose one for this year and probably for all future years, given that they are roughly the same age, I would probably go with Stanton. How come? with Stanton. How come? Just the aging curves, I guess, for defense being a thing that seems to decline right away from what we know. And so Hayward's greatest skill is probably already declining or will be soon, whereas Stanton, you could imagine him being at the same level of offensive production or close to it for the next several seasons. So probably that would sway me. I actually wrote that as well in my analysis of it.

I said that I made the same point, I actually wrote that as well in my analysis of it. I said that I made the same point, but I'm not sure that that holds up logically. Like I said it, I'm not taking it back, I'm not editing it, but it's true that both of them will decline defensively because all players basically do. And it's true that both of them will probably, well, at least theoretically, they're going into their primes as hitters. So does it matter if, like, let's say Hayward is a plus 20 defender and a plus 20 hitter, and let's say Hayward, hypothetically, is a plus 40 hitter and a neutral fielder. is a plus 40 hitter and a neutral fielder,

if they each gained 10 runs of offense and lost 10 runs of defense based on some aging curve for offense and defense, that's the same, right? Yeah, maybe it's proportional. Yeah, maybe it's proportional is one possibility. I guess you could even say that maybe Hayward has some more young player skills, whereas Stward has defense and a little more speed because he doesn't really hit for a higher average,

but he makes more contact, that kind of thing. I don't know. Conditioning-wise, they're both probably standouts in that respect, particularly Stanton. So I don't know whether one of them has a skill set that historically H is better or not yeah and it's not as though you have neither one is going to probably play himself off of the defensive spectrum for a very long time although it's you know more likely that Stanton it's more likely that basically it's more likely that uh guess, that Stanton's a very good athlete.

But based on what we're talking about, it's maybe more likely that Stanton would be just physically unable to play right field. Whereas Hayward's not going to become physically unable to hit in a lineup. In other words, there's just a greater chance that Stanton's drop-off would be of a fall-off-a-cliff kind of roster problem sort of way. But it probably doesn't matter. The other thing is that you could argue that the difference is not nearly as big as... I mean, Stanton is a good defender by warp, by fielding runs above average,

the baseball prospectus defensive metric. There's like three runs of difference per year between them that like in his career, Hayward's a plus 55 defender and stands like a plus 39 defender. And I think Hayward actually has played a bit more. So, uh, I mean, what didn't stanton was stanton did he win the gold glove this year uh i don't know a finalist can't say i paid the closest attention uh finalist uh and i thought he was he looked great this year i was that was the thing that made me most encouraged about his turnaround earlier this year,

is that he looked like such a great defender. He even ran a bunch this year. He was like 13 for 14 in steel attempts or something. So, and they've each had some intermittent injury issues. They've even both had fractured faces after getting hit by pitches. But this is not a choice that the Cardinals had to make today. They did not have to choose between Hayward and Stanton. Although it's fun to talk about, they did not have the option of acquiring

Stanton. Or who knows, maybe they did. But it would have cost more. So they got Hayward. Of course, you know, once we got to the point where people were okay with talking about the Cardinals and right field field just from a boring baseball perspective and not from the Oscar Tavares perspective. Everyone wondered what the Cardinals would do, whether they would promote Steven Piscotty or do something else or rearrange some of their other current outfielders. And I don't know whether

anyone suggested that they trade for Jason Hayward, but in retrospect, that is about the best possible thing they could have done to improve themselves for this year. And who knows whether it will be any more than this year. I would guess just based on the fact that the Braves traded him. I mean, a lot of people were wondering why the Braves didn't make more of an effort to resign him. There were kind of semi-conflicting statements after the trade from Hayward and from John Hart, where Hayward said, I wanted our next conversation to be about me possibly being in Atlanta for a long time. And that conversation never came about.

And then Hart essentially said the opposite, that Hayward wasn't interested in a long-term extension unless the dollars were beyond where the club wanted to go. So just the fact that the Braves didn't extend Hayward last winter when they were extending everyone on the team kind of gave you the feeling that he was not going to be a Brave beyond this year, at least. And so rather than wait till midseason, they just did the deed now. And they got rid of him. And they got some pitching back, which is also what they needed. Although whether it's the pitching that they needed is perhaps debatable. Do you see this as in any way a punting of 2015? the sense of optimism around them before the season has turned somewhat pessimistic in that they had that second half where they fell out of the race and then they fired their GM and still

haven't technically hired a new one. And, and then now trading Hayward sort of seems like, and they've made some statements in recent days maybe laying the groundwork for this move where they kind of talked about like if they could get whether they considered themselves contenders this season or not dependent on whether they could get pitching and i guess they they got pitching here so i guess they consider themselves contenders i I would think that they do. I mean, it would be a weird trajectory to go from winning 96 games or whatever it was in 2013 to locking up most of their young productive core, which was greeted last winter as a sign that they were going to be perennial contenders, that they were set for years, that they almost

couldn't be bad for a while because they had just locked up Simmons and Freeman and all these guys who should be productive for a while. And then to go from that to punting on any number of seasons would be sort of strange. So I don't think that's what this is. I don't know. There were rumors about Justin Upton possibly being traded earlier today. I don't know whether those went anywhere or will go anywhere. But right now, unless there are subsequent moves made, I would say that they are still in it.

Yeah. So on the one hand, Miller is a, you you know kind of good fit for their depth chart he I don't know it depends on what you think of Evan Gattis as a catcher and his ability to stay behind the plate and and also Christian Bethan Court's uh kind of projection as a as a hitter but you could argue that they traded from depth a little bit uh in that they have this Gattis who was just kind of projection as a hitter. But you could argue that they traded from depth a little bit in that they have this Gattis who is just kind of hanging around and is maybe, depending on your assessment of his defense, better suited for left field than catcher,

and that they filled a hole. So that makes sense to me. The idea that you need to upgrade your rotation because it's the weak spot though i mean the player the player who comes in is not better than the player who goes out it's usually not much of an upgrade um so i don't know is it maybe there's just a little bit too much talk of categories in that explanation for my liking. But it is true. I mean, they had basically three guys in their rotation,

and you can't win with three guys in your rotation. And it's probably easier to envision adding some sort of complementary bat this offseason than adding a complimentary starting pitcher. So I don't know. It seems fine to me. It doesn't seem like a give up at all. And it's got, I don't know, it's like it's a nice little kind of semi-bluff, right? You don't give up next year.

Shelly Miller could be really good. He could be exactly what you need to stabilize the middle or back of your rotation. You might find that Evan Gattis plays adequately in left field and Justin Upton's a really good defender in right and that you end up not losing all that much there than you would have. And that it works out okay. And it definitely has a lot more upside in the long term for them. The fact that Jordan Walden was kind of thrown in is sort of odd. Unless they thought that he was close to a non-tenor candidate. Or the Cardinals just simply demanded it. But it feels kind of weird that they would just give up a pretty good reliever

who's not that expensive if they're also looking at next year. It sort of feels like maybe they would have found something else to throw in than Walden. But maybe it was an arbitration thing and they just thought Walden was too annoying. so you wrote about Miller and his Sisyphean efforts to develop a second pitch would you say that there has been

any progress toward an actually effective one I don't think there's been progress I think that there in fact it's I would be more pessimistic now than I was two years ago, because he's had two more years to develop one. He's tried a bunch of things.

None of them has really worked. It seems like the best, the most promising thing is a sinker, which is the least helpful thing that you could add. Like, yeah, it'd be nice if he had a sinker, but it's not really what he needs to give batters a really different look um and so to see him particularly to see him just give up on the change up this year uh in the second half uh is pretty strong is a pretty strong statement uh and so i don't really know that I expect.

It's hard to count on anything. On the other hand, pitchers are just constantly adding pitches. It's not easy exactly, but it happens. It happens early in guys' careers. It happens in the middle of their careers. It happens late in their careers. It's really never too late to just have a good day with your pitching coach and realize that this particular grip or this particular pitch or this particular arm slot or whatever is something you can work with.

And it happens all the time. And I do think that Shelby Miller at this point has demonstrated that he is not far off. He is still not far off. He has shown the ability to hold up to a major league workload, to throw his fastball past major league batters, to more or less keep his command with his fastball. He does a lot of the things that you would consider tests that a pitcher needs to pass once he gets to the major league level. He's done all those things. pitcher needs to pass once he gets to the major league level. He's done all those things. He's still one adjustment away, at least, from being really good. And two years have passed in his

quest to make that adjustment. He probably won't make that adjustment, but it's really close. He's still really close. And do you have the prospect staff opinion on Tyrell Jenkins, the pitcher that the Braves also got in the deal? He has a bunch of qualities that make him still an enticing prospect, such as a great body, good velocity, prospect pedigree, lots of things to like, but he hasn't really developed the extra pitches needed to envision him as a starter yet, and he's still kind of, to some degree, coming back from the missed developmental time. It seems to me that it's a ceiling as a reliever and probably relatively likely that that's

his role. You are a fount of prospect knowledge. I guess so. Especially after you edit the prospects, the submissions. You remember my story about meeting Josh Tomlin? You were doing the story on Philip Umber. On Philip Umber in some nowhere place in Texas or something. Yeah, exactly.

So I was watching Philip Umber work out in some guy's gym in a warehouse in Texas or something. Yeah, exactly. So it was, I was watching Philip Umber work out in some like, some guy's gym in a warehouse in Texas. And it was a bunch of high school kids and Philip Umber and Josh Tomlin. And in the corner, Tyrell Jenkins. So you've had eyes on Tyrell Jenkins. It was his first day. It was his first day in the gym. He looked uncomfortable.

It's just like not wiping off the machines or anything. Just looked kind of tired. Okay. So then are we just calling this a win-win? We don't have to call it anything. But if we were going to call it something. I think that this is one I call a win-win. I actually like it, and I don't...

Normally you like these because it's so obvious that one team needs to compete this year and one team needs to compete in 2017. Or it's that one team has two second basemen and no catchers, and one team has two catchers and no second basemen. And this is not either one of those particularly. It's a little bit of the latter one, but it's not really i just like it i think that it's uh as as i put it um it feels like the braves got a good return and it feels like the cardinals didn't give up much like i don't know how those two things can be true again that's kind of how

this deal feels to me. Yeah, I don't know. Maybe it's because of their respective needs. Yeah, yeah, I guess so. Anyway, it'll be interesting to see what happens with Hayward, whether the big exciting power season that we've been hoping to see since he kind of had it in 2012. It'll be interesting to see whether perhaps that surfaces again. It'll be interesting to see

whether he is more amenable to an extension with the Cardinals than he was with the Braves, or whether they are more amenable to it than the Braves were, all these things will hold my interest at some point in the coming season. And they held my interest today. So thanks to three GMs for spoiling our day off, forcing us to podcast. It was fun. Yeah. Okay. So please support our sponsor by going to baseballreference.com,

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