Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 666: The Josh Hamilton Trade

Episode Date: April 28, 2015

Ben and Sam banter about Salvador Perez, Erik Kratz, and emergency catchers and then discuss Josh Hamilton’s return to Texas.

Maybe my love could fly over the ocean. Maybe my heart should try to leave him alone. All that I really know is that he's going too far from Texas, too close to home. Good morning and welcome to episode 666 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives. Brought to you by The Play Index at BaseballReference.com. I'm Sam Miller with Ben Lindberg. Hi, Ben. Hello. How are you? Quite well. Excellent. I used The Play Index today, but I forget why. Anyway, good. You're doing well, huh?

Yeah. All right. Anything new? Well, do you remember at the end of last year when we were doing Eric Kratz watch to see when Eric Kratz would play? And the answer was never. Because Salvador Perez set the record

for most innings caught in a season, including postseason. And Eric Kratz didn't start a game in September, I don't think. He was on the roster the whole time. He got into three games, but he didn't start one. And then he and Salvador Perez both went on that exhibition trip to Japan, and we were joking about whether Eric Kratz would play over there or whether he was just going for the sightseeing and so far this year i was kind of curious to see how often eric kratz would play whether yost would ease back on salvador perez

a little bit so far kratz has started one game yeah he has gotten into three he has caught a total of nine innings uh to perez's 153 and two-thirds that's heading into Monday night's game. So if we were to... So he's caught essentially an 18th of the Royals' innings to this point. Kratz has not counting extra innings. I'm sure they've had some extra inning games, so really he's caught less, but that would mean he'd catch about nine games this year. Perez would set another all-time record.

Yeah, well, the thing that I loved is that I actually forgot to mention this, but I was watching the game that he started, as a lot of people were, because it was the Scott Casimir, it was the feud game, you know, it was the fight game. I wasn't watching it, I was following it, I should say. Anyway, it was that game, and he was in that game, and he got pulled from that game. So you'll remember, wasn't it Perez who was there when Herrera threw the pitch? I think so.

As I recall, I remember at some point noticing that Kratz was there because he was involved in something. He was yelling or somebody was yelling or something. And then later in the game as i recall it was perez who was holding back uh lori when herrera hit him and so yeah he was actually pulled from that i'm he he did enter two games oh for that because pinch running because dyson pinch ran for herrera uh for i mean for perez that is the way that he gets in is somebody needs to pinch run for Perez. That is the way that he gets in, is somebody needs to pinch run both instances and both times in the ninth inning he entered. So once he left. So what

do you think about this, Ben? I mean, doesn't this seem, I mean, catchers can't stand this, right? Catchers, I don't mean they can't stand it, but I mean, they physically can't stand this burden that is being placed on Perez, can they? Didn't we all watch what it did to Perez at the end of the year? Yeah, or at least it certainly seemed like there was a connection there. I mean, there are guys who just have terrible second halves for no apparent reason, not playing time related. And so maybe we were just thinking it was playing time related

because he was playing more than anyone else and also awful in the second half with no plate discipline but it i mean it certainly seemed that way there was a study i think in the most recent hardball times annual that looked at iron man catchers and it seemed like guys who got used a ton in one season tended to get used a ton often, which is maybe a managerial thing as much as it is a player-specific thing. And it seemed to show that the Ironman catchers, the guys who caught tons of games in a single season, didn't decline as much. Like, there was a clear pattern of catchers declining more than other positions in the

second half. But the guys who tended to catch a lot every year didn't really show that same pattern like they they actually maintain their performance more or less and maybe it's just that guys who don't slump when they're fatigued in the second half get to keep playing but Perez did slump in the second half and he got to keep playing anyway so it'll be interesting to see whether maybe it's just an early season thing and yost thinks that if he can ride him hard now and then give him breaks progressively as the season goes on then he can avoid what happened last year

but it's uh looks like it's the same story i wonder who their emergency catcher is i i just feel like i wonder if in 10 years or something the way that who their emergency catcher is. I just feel like, I wonder if in 10 years or something, the way that you manage your catcher's workload will just be part of what every smart team does. And that anytime you're up by, that you treat catchers catching the same way that you treat pitchers in leverage situations. You don't want to waste your good pitchers in low leverage. So you don't bring your closer out when you're up by four in the ninth inning, or you don't bring your setup man out when you're up by six in the seventh inning or whatever. I wonder if it would get to the point where catchers would get pulled from games

where the win probability exceeds 96% or something. But the problem is I think everybody's terrified of not having any catcher. So having a good emergency catcher is probably a good start. I would love to see somebody compile every team's emergency catcher, put it in a list, send it to me. Don't publish it, just send it to me. You'll publish it as a similar article. What? That is a whole black page.

The implication is very disgusting there um yeah and he's had knee surgery too not like serious knee surgery meniscus knee surgery but still he missed uh 70 games or something that was 2012 And he's had concussions and contusions and all kinds of other minor nagging injuries. So it'll be interesting. I wonder if emergency catchers have become extinct. Now, maybe now I need to do this. Maybe now nobody, nobody do this anymore. Nobody ever write about emergency catchers ever again. I might write something someday. I wonder if the emergency catcher has been squeezed out by the 13-man bullpen as well. Because really, you're only going to have three or maybe four guys on your bench at any given moment. And I guess your emergency catcher could be a starter at another position and then could just move over. But

the odds are pretty low that one of those three or four certainly is, especially since one is a catcher. So now you're down to two or three who are non-catchers on your bench. The odds that one of those two or three is going to have any catching experience whatsoever. But maybe you don't need catching experience. Maybe you just need to work on it three times a year in the cages or something like that. But I bring this up because I'm looking at the Royals and trying to figure out who their emergency catcher would be. And you know it's not going to be Hosmer, and you know it's not going to be Gordon, probably.

Although Gordon might be the guy that you would pick as most likely to be good at it or skilled at it, but you're not going to probably put your stars there and risk a broken thumb. So let's just take Gordon and Hosmer off the table. And, oh, well, yeah. And it's not going to be Kane because he didn't play baseball growing up, right? And it's not going to be Dyson because he didn't really, I don't think, play that much baseball either.

I might be mixing up my stories. Of course, it's not going to be a left-handed thrower either now that you mention it uh a couple of years ago i think chris getz was the emergency catcher so it could just be your your middle infielder your utility guy who uh doesn't do other things so maybe it's orlando kalik's day yeah so ch So Chris Getz was, you know this, did you Google or? I did. Yeah. And did he ever, let's see, he never caught a single game in the minors.

So there was no, there was no experience at all. Little league. He was a little league catcher. Somebody wrote about who their emergency catcher was, huh? Uh-huh. Disobeyed your order three years before you issued it i remember mike benjamin being an emergency catcher uh in my life growing up and i i vaguely remember the giants i if i'm remembering this right the giants emergency catcher for a little bit was

felix rodriguez who was a pitcher he was a reliever which is tricky because you might use him and then he'd be out of the game but also tricky tricky because I imagine that pitchers aren't generally the emergency catcher, but I think he was a converted catcher. I think that's why that was. Mitch Meyer was the Royals emergency catcher for a while. So I think it's often just the guy who has to be emergency everything. Yeah. I wonder what goes into that job. I'm going to, yeah, I'm back to not wanting to do this. I do want to do this. I do want to write about this, but I'm never going to.

So somebody with sources, write a piece about what it means to be an emergency catcher. At what point does your heart rate go up in a game? Do you look forward to it or are you in dread? And, of course, they're all going to say, oh, I'm in dread, but are they really in dread or are they you look forward to it or are you in dread? And of course they're all going to say, oh I'm in dread, but are they really in dread or are they really looking forward to it? You have to push because they're... Strap a heart rate monitor on them. Yes, we'll do that.

Okay. Yeah, all right. Ask them, yeah, all right. Anyway, ask if they have their own glove. Do they have their own glove? Do they travel with it? Mm-hmm. And help? You're doing all the work for someone who's going to do this good editor over here all right that's all that's it for today that's it for banter oh but there's some more episode left all right so let's talk about josh hamilton

okay you wrote about josh hamilton i did which is nice because you know all the details um I did. ish percent of people that I know are perfectly fine vilifying the angels in this situation. And I am 99% sure that I am also comfortable vilifying the angels in this situation. But there is a 1% chance that Josh Hamilton actually did other things that we don't know about and that totally justify their behavior. And so it does feel weird to say with complete confidence what a horrible organization Artie Moreno is running or whatever without allowing that we don't technically know. On the other hand, I do feel like their behavior so far suggests that if they had another bullet, they'd have fired it. Like you don't get the feeling that they were like really respectful of Josh Hamilton's privacy in this situation and are holding something back. So most likely, are we comfortable vilifying the Angels?

I think so. Or yeah, whether it's vilifying or just saying that they acted stupidly or something. Yeah, I think so. I don't know. Based on what's been reported, Pedro Moura wrote an article about this, about Moreno and how the Angels players were fine with Hamilton and you know Socia and DiPoto probably would have

been fine with having Hamilton back and it seemed to him that Moreno was the one driving this so and Moreno seemed to have just seemed to take personal affront at this preexisting condition that came up again, which is puzzling unless there's really something more to it that we don't know. Like, I don't know whether he was just like, like he, cause there was the whole story about how, like he spoke to Hamilton when he was kind of courting him and he really liked him. And I don't know, he read his book about coming back from the brink and everything and believed in his story. And maybe he feels let down or something, like personally let down because Hamilton told him that he would, you know, stay clean and he didn't.

But if that's the case, that seems like a silly way to think about it. Like he broke a promise to Moreno or something. Clearly, it's a more serious pre-existing issue. So if that's what it is, then I don't have a defense of it. I guess there's always the possibility that there's something more to it that we don't know, but I can't think of what it would be. Yeah. I mean, Moreno really, I mean, this is probably the biggest owner blunder, this whole thing from, from the first time you ever heard Hamilton's name to now is probably the biggest ownership blunder in almost a century. Right. I mean, it was Moreno who wanted to sign Hamilton, even though I don't think that

the angels front office was really like that into it. But you know, if you get a, if your owner is saying you can either have Josh Hamilton or you can have nothing, I guess you take Josh Hamilton. I mean, I don't, I would say yes too, but that was a, by all accounts for the most part, I think that was basically Artie Moreno wanting to sign that player for what seemed to be more than most everybody wanted uh thought that josh hamilton was worth particularly because he had this pre-existing condition that seemed like crass or not was probably worth a pretty good discount uh to what he should get paid as free agent agent. And even aside from that, I mean, just like I wrote an article a few weeks before the

Angels signed him, just kind of looking at statistically how it seemed like he would age and whether he'd be a good bet. And that's without factoring any kind of relapse risk into it. He still seemed like not the guy that you would want to sign long term for that amount of money. So the other stuff just made it even riskier. But that's a bad owner move. You don't want your owner to come in and screw up your plan. But if the bad owner move is giving you more money, maybe you live with it. It hurt the team, but you live with it. It's just some surplus dollars lost or whatever. But then to bungle this from every step along the way, based on what we know, to not only have this sort of weird personal reaction to things that

makes you throw away a pretty good ball player that is, uh, while saving almost no money on him is, is already a huge bungle. I mean, it seems like, again, he is not on the same page as his front office and on field staff and doing things that are widely considered to be making the team worse, but to do it in such an aggressively unlikable way, a way that hurts, that dramatically hurts Hamilton's trade value, if you want to call it that, that limits what he can do, to arguably, I don't know, I guess it probably isn't a risk, but to do things that are shady and borderline, maybe not legal, leaking some of this stuff, if that is the case, to alienate almost every baseball fan in the country by

beating the villain in this situation, it's like three ways he's doing horrible ownership things. This is sort of the answer to how bad can an owner hurt his team. This is it. This turned from, I mean, the Angels went into that offseason with some needs. And instead of filling those needs, they signed, for no real particularly great reason, they signed what turned out to be maybe the worst free agent contract in major league history and it is the worst largely because of the actions that they took after i mean that's about as bad as you can bungle something right yeah not since the diamond backs and justin upton maybe have we seen a team so baldly decrease its own leverage with a player

just like people asking moreno if he'd be back with the team and him saying well I wouldn't say that and and yeah yeah it was very clear that he was not wanted so I don't know how much of a market was out there for Hamilton or would have been out there for Hamilton there was one report that he rejected a deal that would have sent him to a national league team because he wanted to go back to Texas so I don't know whether that would have been better terms for the Angels than they ended up getting which is essentially nothing but but yeah it was not handled well in any any aspect even if like even ifilton did something that we don't know about that would change how we think about this they still handled it wrong from a pr perspective like there's no

hint that that's the case we're not we're only saying that maybe that's the case because we are excessively cautious about these things so there's no no way toize. From a PR standpoint and from a trade value standpoint. I mean, there's just like that the day that they that what the that the ruling was that he hadn't violated the drug policies and the angels released a flurry of scathing comments about Hamilton and about the process. We talked about like, what could they possibly gain? What do you gain out of this? I guess if you're an angels employee, you gain the favor of your boss who wants to see a guy run down in public. But what do the angels gain at all from running a guy down in public? I can't figure out how any of the otherwise smart people involved in this situation

managed to do things that had no possible profit motive, like nothing possible. Nothing, right? There is no dollar or win to be gained in any of those actions, is there? I don't think so. Maybe declaring, I mean deciding internally that you have to trade the guy because he just can't be trusted or he's a risk or whatever, or you're hurt, fine. If you have to make that decision, fine. But all the stuff in between, it just is like, I don't know, it's the, it's the, I guess it's interesting because we sometimes criticize the teams that seem too

robotic. Their front offices seem too robotic. But this is the flip side. If you are like a, I don't know, a 14-year-old having your first crush, that's not very good either. Like when you get your heart broken and you go TP their mom's house, that's also not good. And that seems to be what the angels are here, they just behaved irrationally. It's crazy. It's weird to watch it. It feels like it's been a while since we've really seen a team lose it like this. Yeah, and just purely on a

wins and losses level, and obviously there are many more layers to this story than that, but the Angels could use Josh Hamilton. He would make them significantly better. They're a team right now whose playoff odds are under 50-50, I think.

Somewhere close to that. But yeah, they are... Well, BP has them at 62%, 47% to win the division. Fangrass is the lower. Whatever, they're basically even odds to make the playoffs. And they have the worst DHs in the league, I think, in the majors, actually, just based on projections. Like CJ Krohn and Efren Navarro is not really an award-winning DH combo. So if you replace Navarro with Hamilton and platoon those two guys, that's pretty good.

They've also had like the worst left fielders so far, but they would probably be better. Like Matt Joyce is probably just about as good as Hamilton at this point. And he hits from the same side of the plate, but just even if you DH Hamilton, I would think that's worth a win or two to you over the rest of the year. And even as diminished as he is and for a team in the Angels' position, in a very unsettled division, a win or two would be pretty important. And they're barely saving any money here. The Rangers are paying like $7 million of this or something. And I guess Hamilton is maybe renegotiating it a little because of the income tax difference.

And so the Angels are getting a cut there. But it's not a difference- amount of money really and it's a potentially difference making amount of wins that they are forgoing so to a division rival incidentally yeah i mean at at this point they're not a rival in the short term i don't think, but maybe over the next couple of years could be. But yeah, and the Rangers, I mean, a lot of my article about this was kind of about the parallels between the Rangers and Hamilton. Like ever since those two parted ways, they have been among the, you know, saddest stories in baseball. you know saddest stories in baseball i mean different sorts of sad but uh the rangers in 2012 were coming off two consecutive pennants they won 93 games they made the playoffs technically hamilton hit 43 home runs was you know a superstar there were some signs of decline and

he was about to turn 32 and everything but he was more or less at the top of his game. They were both close to the top of their game. And since then, Hamilton has, you know, had injuries and underperformance and relapse and the Rangers have totally tanked with injuries also. And they are just sort of both afterthoughts very, very quickly. they are just sort of both afterthoughts very very quickly like two years after they were high profile prominent player and team they are now last place giveaway for free type players and teams so in that sense they are uh kind of right for each other right now in that like the rangers just need someone who's decent they need a DH, or I guess they have Fielder at DH, but they need a left fielder as bad as the Angels need a DH.

They have Jake Smolenski out there and Ryan Rua, who's injured. So they need Hamilton because they have fallen very far, and Hamilton needs them because he has fallen far also. So there's kind of a parallel there. I guess Hamilton will be better there just because of the ballpark and, you know, Angel Stadium is a bad ballpark for a left-handed hitter. And Globe Life, I guess is what it's called now, is better, although maybe not quite what it was when Hamilton was still there. So let me ask you this. I'm not going to make you talk about how good at baseball he'll be

because we don't know and we never know. But what is Josh Hamilton's future at this point? You know the details of his buyout a little bit, do you? I don't know the details. Okay, so what we know is that he has a buyout or he has an opt-out in 2016 that comes with a buyout. Yeah, because otherwise there's no way that he would exercise it because he's got like $32.5 million due to him that year. So presumably he could opt out and get like half or something like that. opt out and get like half or something like that.

Yeah, right. So I guess he would get a big chunk of it and then the team would save something on it. I don't know exactly what the scenario is because he'd have to think that he could then sign a multi-year deal, right? Because otherwise it still wouldn't be worth it to him if the buyout were not equal to what he would make anyway. Well, how much do you think this affects his free agent market in two years? I mean, does Josh Hamilton still get offers? I mean, I guess what I'm saying is, is this only the

Angels freaking out over this thing? Do you think that the other 29 teams see the Angels and just think, completely irrational. You know, I'd take him. You know, he's obviously not the ball player he was. But as a still, you know, roughly close to average-ish outfielder with maybe some upside, does he have a market? Does he have a career? Does his career keep going beyond two or three years from now, do you think?

I think it could i mean that he could have remained a ranger if not for the relapse that he had in 2012 he he had a relapse in january 2012 and at that point daniels was negotiating with hamilton's agent on an extension and hamilton had said the month or a month before that he wanted to stay with the Rangers. He was entering his walk year. He wanted to sign an extension before opening day. I don't know that it would have happened if not for that incident. Maybe, maybe the Rangers wouldn't have done it anyway. But at that point, I guess he was coming off a not so great year, but his plate discipline hadn't completely fallen apart yet. That was the weird thing in 2012 where his plate discipline just totally fell apart and he was like blaming it on quitting chewing tobacco or drinking or consuming too much caffeine.

There were some sort of strange explanations and that stuff made you worried about how he would age. But that wasn't so much a concern, I don't think, in early 2012. So they agreed to table those talks on the extension as soon as that relapse occurred. So if that hadn't happened, maybe he would have been a Ranger this whole time. And I don't know whether things would have been different. Like, it seems like going back toas is probably a better situation for him i mean they had this whole sort of support system and infrastructure surrounding him to try to keep him clean i don't know to what extent that moved with him to anaheim i'm sure some of it did and

he had two relapses while he was in texas maybe as serious as this latest one, I don't know. But it's not like it was totally smooth sailing while he was there. And, you know, it's a stressful situation for him, which increases the risk for anyone who has the kind of problems he has. I mean, he's going through a divorce, he's selling his house, he's moving cities, even if it's back to a city he used to live in. He's playing for a new team. Everyone who's watching him knows this, you know, thing that happened to him that was supposed to be a secret that wasn't supposed to get out. He's rehabbing from an injury. So there's a lot of pressure and scrutiny on him. But, I mean, if he came back and was, you know, an above average hitter again, I think he could continue to get jobs as long as that's the case.

I don't think he could get a long-term deal, but I would see a team going year to year with him. Okay, yeah. So he's still got a career. Good. The only reason I ask is that I feel like there was a consensus that, well, there was, I don't know, maybe it was popular that he not be

suspended. There was a feeling that suspension is the wrong way to handle this, that discipline is sort of the wrong way to look at this thing. And that, you know, Hamilton is a guy who has a known condition and that he needed help more than he needed to be locked up. And that made sense. That's not the same as saying that a team, any individual team is necessarily going to want to deal with that. And so you could imagine that maybe the average GM with a good heart would say, yeah, I don't think he should be suspended, but I also am not touching him at this point. And we don't really know the answer to that.

We don't know the answer to any of this. We don't know any of the details. It's three relapses is all. And so I kind of, I hope that Hamilton has a good career. I enjoy watching Hamilton play. I enjoy watching Hamilton play. Even when he's horrible, he is still extremely captivating to watch be bad. I don't know that there is a more captivating

player to watch struggle on the field. You know what I mean? Like when he's bad, he is fascinatingly bad. And when he's good, he's fascinatingly good. I mean, he's amazing. And so I kind of hope that Hamilton plays for another 13 years. And I don't really know what it is right now. Like this whole thing has been so weird. I don't really know what it is right now. This whole thing has been so weird. I don't know where it leaves him. So hopefully he has some good years and then more good years and then he has some good years. Yeah, and it doesn't seem like anyone's really worried about him

being a bad influence or a corrosive presence or anything like that. All of these incidents are personal things that he went through, but it wasn't like he got anyone else in trouble his teammates seem to like him doesn't seem like anyone is worried about his his clubhouse you know contribution it's just kind of his his own personal struggle and whether he'll be prepared to play so worst case you just kind of you of give him a small little deal where if something goes wrong, you don't have much to lose financially. And you don't really worry about bringing him into the team's mix, or at least I haven't seen much concern about that. Do you know when he gets back healthy?

Do you know what the schedule is? I don't. No, it wasn't really clear to me. He's still rehabbing in both ways, right? And I guess they're going to send him to extended spring or something like that and see how he is. I don't know. Like he was getting booed down the stretch in his last year there. He was getting booed in his last game, getting booed down the stretch. And then he made that comment after he left about Dallas not being a baseball town. And of course, he took the money to go to a division rival, which is always something fans get up in arms about. So he was not popular. He got booed a lot when he came back to Texas on road trips. But I imagine that circumstances have changed enough that he will be warmly received, right?

Like, just out of sympathy, out of he's an upgrade over Smolenski, just that alone. My guess is that what will happen is that this will be very controversial in Texas among hot take people and sports talk people and newspaper letter writers and all those sorts of things. People will debate it at their dinner tables and some people will say, he's horrible, he bad mouthed us, they'll say horrible things about him personally. Other people will say, no, he's great, we love him, redemption, etc. So this will be a controversial debate in Texas. And then for his first few games, the supporters will kind of have a louder voice and more passion behind their opinions than the haters.

And so the reception in his first few games will be very kind and supportive. And as long as he isn't horrible, I think that that will hold. I would give him probably to the end of one homestand if he, by some chances, is horrible and goes hitless before the boos start. He's also, I mean, he's not like the highly paid star who's expected to perform either. So there's not that weight of expectations on him he is like the rangers are getting him for almost literally nothing like the yeah the the wording of the deal is that the i guess the rangers are sending cash or that the angels traded him for cash considerations but essentially the rangers are giving up nothing so

i don't know that the average fan, though, really processes that. They do know he is getting paid a lot. And whether it's coming from their GM or not is probably somewhat relevant and probably relevant to some fans. But also, people like to boo. People don't like people. That's what I find. There's a lot of just people don't like people.

That is the opposite of a Barbra Streisand song. Done? Oh, very done. Okay. All right. Send us emails for later this week at podcast at baseballprospectus.com. Rate, review, subscribe to the show on iTunes. Support our sponsor, the Play Index at baseballreference.com. Use the coupon code BP when you subscribe, and join the Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectivelywild. We will be back tomorrow. Everyone in the Facebook group has been talking for days

about what we're going to do for episode 666. I don't know. I wasn't going to do anything. We're grown-ups. Episode 420, I could see. Sure. 666 isn't even the number. That's a mistranslation.