Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 651: How Extensions Lost Their Intrigue

Episode Date: April 7, 2015

Ben and Sam banter about pace and time of game and then discuss why the structures of player extensions haven’t evolved.

Good morning and welcome to episode 651 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectus. I'm Sam Miller. I'm Ben Lindberg. Hello, Ben. Of Grantland. Of Grantland. Hello. Presented by Playindex.

Uh-huh. Baseball reference. Exactly. Hello. In my mind. How are you? Okay. All right.

Hang on. I've got to set a timer. All right. Okay? Okay. All right. Hang on. I've got to set a timer. All right. Okay. Okay. Was that counting down to the end of the episode? It is counting down. You allotted a certain amount of time?

No, I did not. Okay. It's for my French press. All right. So, Ben. Yeah. Did you see the Peter Elwood's tweets last night about the times of games? I didn't.

So did you hear anything about the times of games? I don't think so. All right, so the games yesterday, he tweeted this before the A's and the Giants, and the Giants game was the longest of the day, and the A's game was short, pretty quick. Pretty quick game, speedy game. So these are the times of the day and the A's game was short, pretty quick. Pretty quick game, speedy game. So these are the times of yesterday's games. 2.33, 2.30, 2.59, 2.30, 3 on the dot, 3.01, 3.01, 2.35, 2.36, 2.50, 2.30, 3.04. One game, it ended up being two with the Giants, longer than three hours and one minute.

And something like six or seven that were 235 or shorter or 236 or shorter. And another fact that Peter brought us along the same lines because your first response is, well, sure, it's all aces pitching. The average game time yesterday was two minutes, two hours and 48 minutes. The average time of game on opening day a year earlier was three hours and eight minutes. 20 minutes difference. They cut 20 minutes already. Rob Manfred, man. He's going straight to the Hall of Fame.

Well, maybe. What do you think? Yeah, what do you think about that? the hall of fame uh well maybe what do you think yeah what do you think about that i guess there's no no point at which it's too early to start looking for trends huh my mind goes in that direction too i was looking at the fact that what uh six of those 15 games were shutouts also although that's aces it's aces also and it's early in the season, low scoring also. So I don't, I don't know.

I wonder whether there was ever a day during last season when all the games were that, that quick on average. I would guess yes. Would you really? I think so. I wouldn't, I wouldn't necessarily conclude. Would you really? I think so.

I wouldn't necessarily conclude. I would certainly not conclude that this is any sort of trend because I was watching those games and it looked basically the same to me. I didn't get this feeling that people were sprinting everywhere or anything like that. So I wouldn't conclude there was any trend to write about yet. However, those are really short game times. Like, that's a strikingly quick slate of games. I mean, that's really striking.

Isn't it really striking to you? Yeah, it seems like it. I don't know. When we did our, we always do our show early in the year where we talk about whether things are real or not. Like a week or two into the season and you read out some scoring change or something. And I'm supposed to guess whether it's real or not. And it seems like often it's not real.

And that's after more than one day. So I don't know. Yeah. You would think though, I than one day. So I don't know. Yeah, you would think, though, I mean, some things, I don't know. So if it happened again today, well, I guess today's not a full slate of games, but if it happened again tomorrow, I honestly would feel comfortable. To me, pace of game over the course of 40 or so games would actually probably be something I would think would stabilize pretty quickly. So, I don't know.

If it happened exactly the same way on Wednesday, I might allow a trend piece. I wonder... Maybe not Wednesday. I don't know, maybe. I mean, if it were this striking, because to me, this is pretty extreme. It feels pretty extreme to me.

The other thing, and let me note, again, I don't think there was anything particularly notable about yesterday on its own. Even if the opening days in 2014 with their aces were longer, that doesn't mean that they were played to so little offense as there was yesterday. And Zach Levine tweeted, noted, also before the Giants game, which ruined this, but only slightly, that there was only one game all day before the Giants in which both teams scored three runs. And the Giants and Diamondbacks both scored four. That was the only game all day that both teams scored four or more, which is also amazing. The other game that had broken

the three or more barrier was a 6-3 game, so that wasn't exactly a blowout. And I don't believe any game, oh yeah, I guess the White Sox and the Royals was 11 total runs. That was the only game that had more than 10 total runs. And so, yeah, sure, the opening day starters were pitching last year too, but there was very little offense yesterday. It was striking how little offense there was. And you might then, besides the obvious effects that that has on pace, on the amount of time it takes to play a game,

you might also note that even though there wasn't a lot of offense scored yesterday there also weren't a lot of close games uh and close games bring pitching changes but it was you know there were four shutouts i think uh out of uh you know 14 games uh and so those don't tend to have pitching changes and there was a 6-1 game and there was a 10-1 game. Five shutouts, I think, and the Sunday night shutout also. So you just didn't have a lot of the mid-eating, you know, lefty-righty split pitching changes to go through. So I wouldn't take one day seriously. Well, I just went to—

Four days, I'll take four seriously. Well, I just went to... Four days, I'll take four, seriously. Uh-huh. I just went to look and see whether the pace, the time between pitches had changed, because that's one of the areas that they were confident, or that they were trying to reduce, and I see that Dave Cameron has already done a post on pitcher pace in a one-game sample. His publishing pace is faster than yours yeah he's got you on pace of publish i guess so so he found uh that starting pitcher pace was down half a second from last year and reliever pace was down about a second and a half from last year which i you know i don't know i don't know whether that tells us anything either it was uh about the same as it was in 2013

so one game sample i don't know whether it's representative or not yeah it would only be about a minute a game too uh yeah he well he said uh he said three minutes a game something like that so so if there is a reduction of 20 minutes in a game then i don't know what it would be coming from aside from coming back from break on time it would have to be something else a half a second for starters and a second and a half for relievers so if there are 80 batters in a game and say 50 of those are the starters that's 25 seconds and if 30 of them are relievers so if there are 80 batters in a game and say 50 of those are the starters that's 25 seconds and if 30 of them are relievers that's a minute 45 seconds and so that would that seems like uh it should only be one minute but i don't know he said 4 000 pitches thrown yesterday

reduction of 48 minutes or a little over three minutes per game. It's duh. Per pitch, not per batter. Sam, idiot. Yeah, right. Sam's an idiot. So, okay. So we just talked for 10 minutes about inconclusive trends in time of game and pace of game after a single day.

Good to know that we have our eye on everything. Yeah, alright. Let's each step out of the batter's box for a minute. Batting gloves. I'm going to get a new bat. Why don't you walk around the mound seven times? Yeah, I should

maybe mention that Ryan Webb was designated for assignment just because he's a thing that we track on this show. But if Ryan Webb can get designated for assignment and Matt Albers' velocity is down, things seem bad for Webb and Alders, our guys who are pursuing the elusive save after many, many games finished. I think Buddy Carlisle is an optimistic note for them. I think Buddy Carlisle is an optimistic note for them.

Buddy Carlisle, the 37-year-old pitcher who got his first career save yesterday in Mets opening day because Henry Mejia came down with an injury while he was warming up. And so Buddy Carlisle came in at age 37 and saved his first game. So maybe that's how it'll happen for Webb or Albers. Yeah, I guess. I mean, I might see that same information and conclude that the world is unjust. That's one way to look at it. I mean, if you're looking around

and Buddy Carlisle's getting saves and you're not, it tells you where you are in the hierarchy. Buddy Carlisle only had 27 games finished before that. It's like, I mean, really, it's you where you are in the hierarchy. I thought Carlisle only had 27 games finished before that. It's like, I mean, really, it's like if you're getting picked. I mean, if you're doing, you know, pick up basketball in fifth grade, and you know, you're worried, you're not sure that you're going to be picked high, you're worried that you might get, you sort of have an idea where you place, and you know it's not high. You know it's pretty low. You know you're on the bubble. But there is that one kid who gets picked ahead of you where you really reassess what you're doing

with recess. And you realize that the world sees him that way and it sees you that way. And you're maybe going to go play butts up. So I don't know. I'm not sure that I'm finding optimism in Buddy Carlisle getting a save. Okay. All right. Who would? Why would anybody get optimism from Buddy Carlisle getting a save? Trying to look on the bright side. I know. This has gone too far, Ben. We're trying to draw emotions out of Buddy Carlisle getting a save. You're trying to draw

happy joy emotions and I'm just folding it into my depressed morning world view. It's Buddy Carlisle getting a save. Why are we emoting over this? I don't know.

It's probably the last time. Now I want to get Riley and Ian to record an entire album about Buddy Carlisle's save. Alright. What's the topic? Extensions. The off-season in Extensions.

It's a good thing that we didn't talk about this yesterday because there was another extension. There sure was. Remind me who it was. Rick Porcello. Rick Porcello, that's right. He doesn't count. Pre-free agency extensions are not interesting.

They're just an extension of free agency. If you're within a year or two of free agency, your extension is not part of the trend, in my opinion. He's just a guy who signed. All right. The extensions that are interesting are the ones that come really early. And so by my count, I'm going to send you, let's see, I'll send you what I think is a filtered list from the MLB Trade Rumors extension tracker. It's an extremely valuable resource for writers.

Do you use that very often? Do you find yourself using that very often? I try not to write about extensions often, but when I have to write about extensions, yes, I find myself using it. It appears that Rick Porcello has made this list. myself using it. It appears that Rick Porcello has made this list. Rick Porcello is in there because I, yeah, that's, pay no attention to the filters. Okay. We're going to, just ignore it. You're going to have to do some filtering on your

own. MLB, Trade Rumors Extension Tracker can filter only so far. I'm going to require you to also be self-aware filtering human. So we're talking about the pre-arb extensions here. And there were one, two, three, four, five, six. There were six that I can count. Christian Jelic, Adam Eaton, Brian Dozier, Juan Ligares, Yordano Ventura, Corey Kluber. And Dozier's didn't buy out a free agent here, so we probably would just throw that one out. Or maybe we'll still talk about that. But you have those five, which seems a little light to me. Maybe it's that so many guys have signed extensions in the previous years that there's just nobody

else left to sign. I don't think that's quite right. And maybe it's that more are coming this month. Maybe April is extension month. I don't think that's quite right. And maybe it's that more are coming this month. Maybe April is extension month. I don't know. But five seems a little light to me. Does it seem light to you? Does it feel like there was less extension writing that you were trying to avoid this off season? In my current role, I very rarely have to write about an extension. So I didn't have to worry about that very much. Carlos Carrasco's not here. He's not supposed to be here, right?

He might just not have put pen on paper. It happened recently. Yeah, I don't know. Maybe, maybe light. Hard to say. Okay, do you have a favorite of these? Kluber, Ventura, Lagaras, Eaton, Jelic. If you want, you can throw Masarocco and Seager in.

I mean, they're not pre-arb, but they're still poor. Like, they're just one year of arb. It's close enough. We can include them. So, yeah, we'll include Masarocco and Seager. Do you have a favorite? Just eyeballing these. Not necessarily remembering how far along these guys are,

although this does say what their service time is. I guess, so let's see. So Kluber was at two years and 74 days of service, and this was a five-year extension, so that bought out how many free agent years? Well, there's two uh there's two club options and so if the club options are picked up it buys out three free agent years but it also gets more expensive brings the total up as it is i think i kind of like the eaton one five five years 23.5 and he is two years and 30 days of service time um seager just seemed fine to me at the time didn't didn't

really seem like a notable bargain. Seemed like about what Kyle Seeger should make. I guess I'll say I like Eaton. Okay. Do you have a least favorite? No. I hate extensions. Why do you hate extensions, Ben?

I'm not interested in them. I'm interested in the fact that they are signed, but not that interested in the dollars. No, of course not. But you're interested in the fact that they are signed, and if they started to be really bad, or if they started to be especially good, or if they started to be really bad or if they started to be especially good or if they started to get especially long or if they started to disappear those would be things that would be interesting to you right probably yeah none of these looks terrible to me well isn't that i mean that's kind of the point right like It seems to me that these extensions have gotten to

be so predictable in a lot of ways. They all look exactly alike for the most part. Sometimes you'll get one that has slightly odd qualities to their options and sometimes you'll get one where you go, oh wow, he got paid as much as this other guy and I think this other guy is slightly better than him. That's not as good an extension. And that's about as far as you can go with these, right? Like this has become the most predictable part of baseball, which is weird because it used to not be.

It used to be interesting and kind of exciting to see certain GMs lock up young players. And then it was sort of going in somewhat weird ways when the Padres and Brewers were signing guys who weren't even seen as that good to long extensions. But basically, everybody hits this point and signs a contract just like somebody else signed at the same age it's not everybody obviously there we can talk about people who haven't signed but so you're you're describing my apathy about extensions pretty well that's what i'm saying like i won't argue with that this thing that i remember a couple years ago when i wrote about the 20-year extension and whether we would ever see a 20-year extension.

And I looked at what seemed to be the trend of extensions at the time was that they were getting younger. Players were signing younger. More players were signing even younger. And they were getting more common for players who weren't star level, and they were moving from being just the teams that were low payroll to being all the teams. Pretty much every team at that point, or most teams at that point, had signed or were starting to sign these long pre-arb extensions.

And I sort of was optimistic that this would be a place where these extensions would get ever more creative as teams leveraged their leverage, financial leverage over the player, and that we would start seeing absurdly long or aggressive extensions. I wanted to see high A players signing away 14 years of their life for $17 million. Because that would be good. If you're in high A, you should probably take the $14 million or $17 million or whatever. I wanted to see a 20 year extension and all that. Instead, I think what has happened is that the extension conversation has gotten so predictable, the negotiation has gotten so predictable. These guys just, oh well, I'm ready to sign an extension, we're ready to sign you to an extension. Who's a

comp for you? What deal did he sign? We'll sign you to that deal." Because of that, there's not really the same sense of urgency for players in a way. Let me explain what I mean. These extensions originally worked, and to some degree still work, but originally worked on this principle that the club had lots of money and lots of assets and lots of basically stocks. They were invested in 25 players at the major league level and 200 more at the minor league level. And the risk of exposure on any one player for them wasn't that great. And so if they sign you to a $40 million deal over six years and it went belly up, that would suck for them.

But they're a billion dollar company, they can handle that. Whereas the player only has one asset, himself, his own skills and his own career, and only one chance to capitalize on it. And if things go badly for him, he's working for his dad's landscaping company for the rest of his life and ordering the medium instead of the large. And so you have this real imbalance in power in the negotiations. And so particularly, as I wrote about in the 20-year extension article, you would see these particularly for players who it seemed didn't have a first big payday.

Like if a guy, once a guy hit arbitration, for instance, he was kind of out of dad's landscape company risk. And if you were Alex Gordon and had signed a $6 million signing bonus out of college, you were probably out of landscaping risk. And so you really, clubs though, had to take advantage of that window where the players only made a few hundred thousand or maybe a couple million in his career.

And so you use that in the negotiations and you say, well, we want to give you financial freedom and the player wants financial freedom. And you say, well, we're not going to give you as much as you're worth, we're taking on all this risk and everybody's happy. So that worked. Except the problem is that I was then thinking that the club, with all this leverage, could then keep on sort of pushing further and further to the extremes and say, well, if you want financial security now for year five, we'll give it to you. But what about year 15? We'll give you that too. And you just keep on going further out

while compensating further for the risk that the club is taking on. But the problem is that players no longer see this as, I have, I think, no longer see this as, I have no money, I might be exposed. It's now that the extension itself, the first one, the first payday that you get from your extension is so baked in and routine that now a club can't say you have no leverage signed for 15 years or you have no leverage signed for 12 years or you have no leverage signed for eight years. The player can just go, well, give me the four-year extension then. I'll take the four-year one. I'll take the one that everybody else has signed. And so they do get their first payday without going that far out. And so they still

hit free agency. Does this make sense? Does what I'm saying make sense? So you're saying that teams have almost robbed themselves of the ability to come up with these really creative extensions by establishing a precedent for less creative extensions that the players would opt for if they could choose. Exactly. That's what I'm saying. Exactly. They've given players back the power. These deals are still good for the club, so it's fine that they sign them. But in signing these deals that are kind of good for them, they are then eliminating the possibility of signing

a deal that is super excellent, super awesome, great for them. Like the really extravagantly long extension that is heavily discounted is kind of off the table because players don't want to give up their first free agency. They don't want to hit free agency when they're 37 or whatever. And so, yeah, the clubs have just sort of taken like a pretty good thing. They've established it as a pretty good thing in precedent and taken away their ability to really get the fun extension that I was hoping to see. That's my hypothesis.

You could still theoretically do one of the really early ones because there's no precedent for the really early ones. So you could get a guy who is very early in his professional career and try to extend him then. You still could get the high A guy, that's true. But that hasn't happened. And that hasn't happened. I would like that to happen too.

That's probably more complicated. There's probably complicated reasons that doesn't happen. There might be complicated reasons involving player development and, I don't know, competition among players. They already, minor leaguers already hate the guy with the draft pick with the big bonus uh because they think he gets all the chances and they don't uh so then if you started giving him extensions for seven years that might be tricky i mean they're there those are a little more complicated but yes it's true you could do that um and sure

i'd like to see them do that uh but i don't know, I think the 20-year extension is off the table. Too bad. Basically, the 20-year extension only works for the club if the club has extreme leverage and is able to take on a ton of risk because of this leverage and get it discounted. They just don't have leverage for year eight and beyond anymore since year five to seven are already just sort of presumed to be along this established extension path.

So, yeah. So, anyway, you're right. You put it better than I did. So, I think the 20-year extension dream is over. I'm calling it into it, is what I'm saying. So I guess it's still potentially interesting if a team doesn't sign extensions like we talked about during the

Nationals preview podcast. Seems like the Nationals haven't done as many extensions as you might have expected the Nationals to do. So that's still a potentially interesting aspect of extensions. Otherwise, I'm out on extensions. Yeah.

Yeah, there are some players who are sort of notably unextended, I guess, at this point. And most of them do seem to be nationals. Like Rendon and Harper are probably the two pre-arb guys. I don't know if Harper's still pre-arb. Did Harper win his thing? No. So I guess Harper and Rendon are both pre-arb.

And they're probably the two best players in baseball at that level who aren't extended. So, yeah. All right. Extensions. Okay. do you have a favorite and least favorite of these extensions that you asked me about i guess that i would say none of them really is that exciting to me uh they're they're kind of a boring group there's they don't fluctuate anymore uh nobody even got three options I like the ones that have like seven options I guess I thought that

Yelich, I didn't love the Yelich one as much and I guess I liked I could see liking the Yelich one too maybe I'll just pick Yelich for this I don't know I could see liking the Jelic one too. Maybe I'll just pick Jelic for this. I don't know. I don't know.

Jelic is probably the best player of them all. So it's hard to complain about locking him up. Extensions just aren't satisfying. That's so awful. You picked them to be a podcast topic i picked extensions as a genre as a as a as a cultural trend as a new york times think piece you can't eyeball them and necessarily say whether they're good or not the way that you can with a free agent because you have to you have to factor in all this other stuff and look up the comps and try to estimate what they would have made in arbitration which is not the

most riveting subject either so you know what's interesting to me slightly interesting to me is that kluber and ventura basically signed the same deal. Now, it's not quite the same because Kluber has a year more of service time, so the money in his is a little higher because it buys out one more year of free agency. So he does get paid more. But basically, you could see that they were working from a very similar framework. And Kluber and Ventura are both very good pitchers, but they're almost exact opposites of each other. One is an elite prospect who's like 22 years old and has a huge part of his forecast involves knowing his pedigree, knowing what a prospect he was, knowing how hard he

throws, forecasting growth and all these things. And he's also a little guy. And then Corey Kluber is 27-ish, 27. He was a total non-prospect. He came out of nowhere. But he's also light years better than Ventura was last year as a pitcher right now. And so these are two completely different pitchers. If you walked into the room, picture right now. These are two completely different pictures. If you walked into the room, you'd think you'd have to do vastly different research to decide how much to pay each one of them. Yet, they basically end up in more or less the same contract. Not only that, but more or less the same contract that Adam Eaton gets. And more or less the same

contract that Juan Ligaris gets. It's like, oh, you're good? Well, here's the extension. Here's the one. They only made one. I don't know. It feels like a drugstore

where you go in and they just ask if you're sick. They don't know. It feels like, I don't know, it just feels like a drugstore where you go in and they just ask if you're sick. They don't ask what you're sick with. They just ask if you're sick. And if you're sick, you get this thing. You get medicine. Like my child, like my four-year-old's view of the world of medicine. It's like you're sick, you get medicine. There's no distinction between sicknesses. There's no distinction between medicines. You just, you get this extension. That's kind of how it feels. And that's no distinction between sicknesses. There's no distinction between medicines. You get this extension. That's kind of how it feels. And that's why you hate writing about it, among other things.

Yep. The Nationals and Harper settled that grievance, by the way. So no one technically lost it. Did you watch it? Wait, so did he technically get Super 2 status? Oh, he signed. It doesn't matter. He signed it. He's like not involved in that.

He gets separate considerations. Okay. And did you watch any more of the K-Zone ESPN overlay yesterday? No. I got like 15 tweets from people supporting my contention that the screen is brighter in the K zone area in relation to the rest of the screen, which made me a little more confident. Restored some of my faith in my sanity that everyone evidently sees it like that. Yeah. All right.

All right. Okay. So we will be back tomorrow. All right. Okay. So we will be back tomorrow. If you are listening to this today, Tuesday, you can still get us emails for tomorrow at podcast at baseballperspectives.com.

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