Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 697: The David Price Trade Revisited

Episode Date: June 22, 2015

Ben and Sam banter about Tim Lincecum and a fateful Jose Tabata hit by pitch, then discuss how the 2014 David Price deal looks in retrospect for the Rays.

Hindsight brings me down Keeps me on the ground Though I'm never proud I wouldn't dare if you were there Think we've got enough Feels like giving up Feels like not enough We need to come and we still love

Good morning and welcome to episode 697 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Prospectus, brought to you by the Play Index at BaseballReference.com. I'm Sam Miller with Ben Lindberg of Grantland. Hi, Ben. Hi. How are you? Okay. Okay.

You made your radio debut since our last show. Yeah, I did. I called a game. Went pretty well from what the people in the Facebook group said. Unfortunately, I couldn't hear it because I was in the dugout, but it sounds like it'll be archived and available soon. There will be a link in the Facebook group. Yeah, the first couple innings were fairly normal,

and then you sort of start to lose your breath a little. It's like, I don't know, it's like swimming in, like if you fell out of a cruise ship and you had to tread water until someone came to save you, and the first few minutes you'd just be chilling, out of a cruise ship and you had to like tread water until someone came to save you. And the first, you know, few minutes you'd just be like chilling, but then like one wave would splash up and get in your mouth and then you'd sort of start sinking and then you'd spend the next seven innings basically desperately gasping for air. It was a little of that. I think the quality of

my performance went down and thank goodness the quality of Theo Fightmaster's performance went up as I struggled. So it was fun and a little bit disorienting and dizzying. Dizzying is probably the word that I would use the most. Any ads for plumbers or pipefitters? No, we had a set of four ads that we would play. So I didn't have to. I i didn't have to i didn't get to read any sponsorships or anything unfortunately i should have you know if i did if i thought ahead i would have made a few up didn't mention the play index i didn't i should have now that you mention it yeah but it was fun and i hope nobody listens to it okay i mean it's fine that people listen to it it's good that people listen to it's good that people listen to it

during the game because they want to know who won the game but as a as i i look in my career it's not canon is i guess what i would say it's like expanded universe it's like it's like animated star wars right it just doesn't really count and oh i mean i don't want it to count well new star wars cartoons are canon i hate to inform you no yeah star wars rebels it's canon did not know that they completely wiped out the old expanded universe so they kind of started over anyway all right yeah a couple things to get out of the way. On, I think, May 24th, I think, or around there, about a quarter of the way through the season, we noted that Tim Lincecum had an ERA. I was going to bring this up, too.

Two and a quarter runs better than Kershaw. Kershaw was at 4.3. Timmy was at about two flat. This was a quarter of the way through the season, and we wondered, well, I mean, obviously Kershaw would outpitch him and was better and will be better, but what were the odds that he would be able to make up that much ground in the rest of the season? And I don't remember, did we put odds on how likely it was that Linscombe would finish with a better ERA, or did we just... We both thought he wouldn't, right? Uh-huh.

I don't know if we put odds on it. Well, it took less than a month. Yeah. And it is now more than a half a run difference in favor of Kershaw. And Lincecum is in danger of losing his rotation spot. He frankly should have been even at the time that we were talking about it. So, yeah, since then they've each made six starts. And let's see, in those six starts, Lenscombe has an ERA of seven.

And, oh, sorry, Kershaw's only made five starts, and he has an ERA of 1.56, and that did it. Well, maybe he should talk to his dad again. We need something for the opposite of a fun fact, like an inconvenient fact, like a fact that just isn't, that you know it doesn't reflect anything. You have to acknowledge it, but it's not like nobody takes any joy from it. And Tim Linscombe having a weirdly luck-inflated ERA and Kershaw having an unlucky inflated ERA and creating the scenario that we talked about had to be mentioned.

But it wasn't really impressive. Like, nothing about it was impressive. And we were just waiting for it to – I mean, it was very unfun. It was just like, okay, let's wait for this one to regress. We're talking about it. But there's nothing cool about it. We need a phrase for that, but I guess we don't need a phrase for that. No, I didn't think about it.

There's no phrase needed. All right. Number two, a few people have asked me, at least, what my take is on getting hit by a pitch to break up a perfect game in the ninth and or bunting to break up a perfect game in the ninth, and or bunting to break up a perfect game in the ninth, and or using a replay review, as the Pirates might plausibly have done against Max Scherzer, I think. Or maybe they might not have, but it was hypothetical.

And the guy bunting to break up a perfect game or a no-hitter has been controversial for some time. Who was it? Was it like Bob Brinley or somebody who was so mad because somebody did that to one of his pitchers about 15 years ago? Yeah, that sounds right. And ever since then, it's been somewhat controversial. And I think that controversial, a lot of times we say controversial, but I think this is genuinely controversial because a lot of people think that it's absurd to not let a guy button, to have any kind of unwritten rule in that sort of situation. And so without getting into whether or not Tabata leaned in or simply couldn't get out of the way,

whether that was an innocent hit by pitch, I'm curious, what is your take on each of those three scenarios in a 6-0 game? Well, leaning in for a hit by pitch is never okay, I don't think. I mean, it's against the rules, right? Well, yeah, but you, I mean, it doesn't get called, and I'm sure you have spoken fondly about a player or two who has used that to his OBP advantage. Maybe. I speak fondly of players who get hit a lot.

I don't know whether that's why they get hit a lot. But it depends partially on the state of the game. If it's 6-0 or whatever as it was in that game, then it's probably worse than if it's 1-0 or 2-0, and if you really need base runners and base runners are important. I would say leaning in to get hit by a pitch would be, that'd probably be even against my unwritten rules. Okay.

Just because, partially because it's against the written rules. There's kind of a correlation there. The others, replay review, I mean, yeah, if it were 1-0, fine. If it were 6-0, I don't know. I feel like I'd be inconsistent if I had a problem with it, because I do want calls to be correct, and changing an out to a hit can have an impact on a player's stats and career and earning power and everything. That stuff is important. So I don't know.

I can't really condemn that, I don't think. All right. So my feeling is that you can do whatever you want to win. But if you have changed your behavior to act in a way that you would not have acted if the guy was throwing a one-hitter, you're a jerk. And it is not your job to get in the way of a perfect game, in my opinion. It is your job to get in the way of a victory for the other team. And so certainly if you've determined that you need base runners and you do the best, you know, the best way you can to get base runners, that's fine. But there aren't a lot of six nothing bunts in the ninth inning of games typically.

It's not the first strategy you think of. And, you know, your chances of getting on the base probably aren't that much stronger. And so it just feels like you are specifically going after. It's like, you know, you're not supposed to play for your own stats. And it feels like you shouldn't be playing to get in the way of another guy's stats either. You know, you should be playing basically to win. And so when it's a, and this, I don't know where the line is, but obviously if it's a 1-0 game, you do whatever you can to win

because you're thinking about winning. If it's a 15-0 game, then you play a different way. But generally speaking, I would say that the bunt in the ninth to break up a no-hitter or a perfect game, if it is just to break it up, is bad, is against unprincipled. if it is just to break it up is against is is bad is against it might be so if you're if you're d gordon and you actually might bunt in that situation normally then it's okay i i if i were d gordon i would probably somewhat slightly err on the side of not bunting in that situation because you know maybe appearances matter and i don't know i'm trying i could look up to see how

often d gordon has bunted i can use the play index in fact and i'll work on that and i think i can You know, maybe appearances matter. And I don't know. I could look up to see how often Dee Gordon has punted. I can use the play index, in fact, and I'll work on that. And I think I can figure that out. So let's see. Career, Dee Gordon, plate appearances. I'm going to look up all of his plate appearances using play index. And then I'm going to say innings 8 and nine and 10 plus. And I'm going to say the score is down by four or more.

And I'm going to see how many times he has bunted in that situation. He has 60 plate appearances in such a situation and he has never bunted. All right. So it would be against his typical way of playing baseball to bunt in that situation and so therefore i would consider that lousy yeah sure i agree with that now the hit by pitch i'm gonna take i'm gonna go with it. I'm saying okay. Even if it's intentional? You're intentionally trying to or not trying not to? I think that even if you're sort of intentionally trying to not get out of the way, that's to me no different.

The way the game is played, the way the rules are enforced, that to me is no different than letting the pitcher throw you four balls. And one of the great tensions of a perfect game, as opposed to a no-hitter, which I don't like, a perfect game has incredibly small margins. And every time the pitcher throws, you know that, well, he could miss by just inches and lose it. Because it's not just that a ball has to be hit safely, but you can't have an error by anybody. You can't have a called strike three and the guy reaches on a passed ball. You can't have a walk, and obviously you can't have a hit by pitch. And so the tension of knowing that this is very, very, very slim margins is part of what makes a perfect game so much fun. And so I would not put any extra pressure on a guy to avoid pitches than he

normally would, just as I wouldn't yell at him for taking a close pitch on 3-2. So I'm fine with getting hit by a pitch. Now, there is a level of diving out that can get extreme and that even in a typical situation does bother me. And I think, come on, call that. But I think it's up to the umpires to call it and i i have only some fraction of the same hostility toward the hitter who takes advantage of it but if you stick your elbow out into the strike zone i i again i would expect it to get called i think that it needs to get called and i i'm more mad at umpires who don't call it ever. Yeah. All right. Replay review. I've seen teams do reviews in the ninth inning of games that have nine run margins.

And I find that to be distasteful. Generally speaking, I just think, what a waste. But I also understand that you're sticking up for your players. You're protecting their stats and their careers. You're, you know, you're not, you don't want to turn the game into a farce where nobody cares if runs score or hits are made. And so it's more my own kind of annoyance at the tedium, but I don't actually have a real objection to it. I'm not mad at a manager for doing it. And so by that standard, I guess I also would expect a replay review in a perfect game.

And look, hey, if the guy's safe, the guy's safe. I don't know why a guy needs to have a perfect game on a technicality. The manager didn't overrule a poor call that removed a hit would dilute the achievement or should dilute the achievement. So review, 100% in favor. Now I've come around to definitely review a close call, close play.

Yeah, I think that's right. And did you have any thoughts about Tabata specifically? It looked to me like it was intentional, but I've never faced a pitcher of that quality. I probably have never faced a slider. My guess is that in my 16 seasons over 10 years of playing baseball that I never saw a single slider. Even a bad one like that?

Yeah. I don't think that anybody I ever faced threw a slider. You know, curveballs. We all threw curveballs. But I don't think that anybody I ever faced threw a slider. I, you know, curveballs, we all threw curveballs, but I don't think I ever saw a slider. So it would be nuts for me to say what it's like to have a kind of a slider that backs up and stays inside and it's 87 miles an hour and the guy normally throws 95 and all that. So I can't say that it was intentional,

but it kind of looked like it to me. Yeah. Oh, there were, I asked Rob McEwen at BP to run a query, and there were something like 250 pitches in that precise location, like within a square inch of that pitch in the whole PitchFX era since 2008. That was the first one to result in a hit-by-pitch. There were lots of guys who swung at those. There were lots of balls.

I don't think there were strikes, but it was a rare place to have a hit-by-pitch. Maybe more common than the overall strike zone, just because there aren't hit-by-pitch. Maybe more common than, you know, the overall strike zone, just because there aren't hit-by-pitches down the middle of the plate, but it was still a fairly uncommon place to get hit by a pitch. But his explanation about just waiting to see if the slider would break over the plate, as you would think it would, it sort of never broke the way that you would think it would break, and some former

and current pitchers supported that explanation and scherzer said he didn't blame him so i don't know it wasn't it wasn't egregious yeah absolutely absolutely absolutely hot response to a hot take. No doubt, Ben. No doubt. All right. Anything else? I don't think so. So let's talk about, not for too long, but let's talk about the David Price trade. Not the one that just happened. It didn't.

There isn't David. Everybody who's like frantically running the Twitter right now. What did I miss? I mean the one a year ago yeah so the rays traded david price to detroit uh in a three-way deal the rays got the former prospect disappointing infielder nicky and they got the prospect uh the infield prospect willie adamez adamez been practicing all day asked six people how to pronounce it got 15 literally like seriously i asked i asked three people and got about eight or nine answers. This was like nine kids by eight wives, you know, kind of a thing. Like everybody gave me different answers. No baseball reference pronunciation guide?

No, although somebody did send me a baseball reference pronunciation guide for a different player who has the same last name, Christian. And it is Adamas, Adamas, and that seems to be right. Okay. All right. So anyway, irrelevant to the value of the trade. So this trade, the David Price trade, was for, what, two years before it was made? It was probably talked about, discussed, waited for. The timing of it was always debated.

It was never quite clear when the optimal time to trade David Price was. R.J. Anderson wrote about this in his Rays essay for the 2014 annual. And what he kind of wrote about is that basically there's three clocks that are running against the Rays in a situation like this. Every day that he gets closer to free agency, he costs them more. His salary is going up. He returns his new team less because he'll be on his new team for less time. And it becomes more obvious that the Rays have to trade him because they're probably not going to let him go to free agency. So they lose leverage with every day too. And so you basically have these three clocks that are all working against

the Rays every day they wait. On the other hand, as long as they have him, they have him and he gets to pitch for them. And he pitched at times very brilliantly for them. And they finally traded him probably a I think, a little later maybe than I was expecting them to. And so they got this package that at the time was criticized, I think, for being surprisingly safe. They were getting two guys who were either major league ready or in the majors, and then a prospect who was the

upside play but even for a even for an 18 year old prospect representing the upside in the deal he's not a guy with like a clear carrying tool uh he was at shortstop but nobody really thought he was likely to stay there and so you're probably talking about a third baseman without really any elite uh tool to uh to to suggest superstardom although he remains 19 and very good and um could swing the deal um smiley had about two years of service time and therefore was about to start getting in ray's world expensive and so you sort of had the feeling that well they would only get maybe two years out of him before they had to trade him, although they would get players back when they did trade him.

And he has since had shoulder injuries. And you could argue that even though he was very good for the Rays for the dozen or so starts that he made for them over the course of two partial seasons, they might never get another good start out of him the way that shoulder injuries go and the way that pitching goes. And then Franklin was, I mean, Franklin was a super curious case at the time because he had completely evaporated from a very good prospect to a guy who was sitting in AAA,

even though he was obviously too old to be in AAA. And the Mariners had been sitting on him as an obvious trade asset as the trade value just sunk and sunk and sunk. And since he's joined the race, he hasn't really done anything. And he has been hurt. And I'm going to pull up his stats real quick. This year, finally healthy. He's played 26 games for the race. He year, finally healthy. He's played 26 games

for the Rays. He's hitting 143. And he's basically 24 years old and this isn't a direct comparison because he was never quite the prospect, but Brandon Wood's career line, 186, 225, 289. Nick Franklin's

204, 279, 344. Wow, Brandon Wood was so bad nick franklin is like twice as good as him he's hitting 204 in his career so anyway uh it was a deal that arguably that well that some people had objections to at the time uh yeah it was kind of i don't remember we talked about it right i don't think i wrote about it i was underwhelmed as I recall, but the, the, like the criticism of it was they didn't get, you know, a top 10 prospect. They didn't get some blue chip guy with super tools or whatever. They didn't get one of those people who makes prospect followers excited. one of those people who makes prospect followers excited. And then the defense of the deal was, yeah, they didn't get one of those guys, but look at projections and expected value of these guys. And David Price is already making a lot of money.

So even though he's really good, his surplus value isn't all that high. And they got a couple young guys and at least one of them is under team control for a while and you know like maybe they're both average players but having an average player for six years or something is you know is just as good as getting a prospect who is a couple years away and isn't proven yet and these guys are ready right now and it was sort of like a backlash against the prospect centric nature of trade analysis yeah i did write about it and i'm skimming what i wrote at the time and it's not really easy to sum up but um i mean one of the things that was notable about the trade

is that it really, I don't know, I think it gave credibility to the Rays' claim at the time. The Rays were very poor last year. They were, you know, in like fourth or fifth place at the time. And the Rays, somebody in the Rays' front office said, I think we're one of the best teams in the American League, period, even though they were, you they were doing very poor. And so that was on July 7th of last year, and that was Joe Maddon who said that. going to be credible this year and they didn't want to basically do the long range trade where

they got a package of five lottery tickets of various returns uh and and uh built for 2017 they were playing for 2015 and 2016 and so you could say that the results have justified that to some degree uh that they are competitive this year. They're in first place at the moment, right? Yep. So they're in first place in the moment. They, in a world where Smiley's shoulder didn't burn up, which, I mean, nobody knew that was going to happen. There was no real good reason to expect it.

He would be probably a very good number two or three starter for them. And he would give them an extremely credible rotation going into a possible postseason. And you could say that getting him for 2015 and 2016, two years they expect to be good, credible contenders, was a pretty good return. A dollar that you have today is worth more than a dollar in 2018, and they got a lot of return back for him. I don't know that you can really blame them for it being his shoulder and not David Price's shoulder that blew up. No, just the usual pitchers shoulders are more likely to blow up than a position players but i don't know that there was any specific risk risk with smiley and after they

got smiley there was the story about how they told him that he should start pitching higher in the zone based on the analysis they had done and and he pitched incredibly well for them after they acquired him last year. Yeah. And then, um, and so I don't know. I mean, this is, uh,

this was, uh, uh, a safe return, which we don't like generally. Like when we reply to, when we react to these things, I think that the tendency is to probably overvalue prospects and to get overly excited by these hot names that we can project a

lot onto and smiley was a guy who was you know a fourth or fifth starter in detroit it seemed like like literally he was their fourth or fifth starter not that he pitched like a fourth or fifth starter um and uh and so it felt like sort of weird that you have this guy i mean it kind of was like the david price situation was a little bit like the Johan Santana situation where for two years you get all these kind of fake trades that you're trying to figure out, okay, well, what would it take to get David Price? And from the other 29 teams' perspective over those two years, you're thinking, well, what would it take? I mean, geez, it would take an incredible package. It would take this prospect and this prospect. And so you start to price in this idea that you're going to get these really exciting names that we don't know anything about and we can project superstardom on. But that wasn't the

trend at the time. That's not really what a lot of teams did last offseason. That was a little bit of what was notable, or last trade deadline, I should say. A little bit of what was notable about last trade deadline is that teams were not getting prospects back. They were getting major league ready guys, pre-arb guys, or established young players back in return, guys who could help them immediately. And we were debating whether that was because the prospects weren't available and they had to consent to taking uh joe kelly instead and to taking uh you know drew smiley instead and and all that or if it was that the teams that were selling didn't want those prospects back,

that they really all saw themselves as competitive, wanted to compete in 2015. I guess we still don't really know which it was. No, but it has been borne out at least that they were all projected to contend this year or to be close enough that they could convince themselves that they could contend, regardless of how it's actually gone. The teams that did that last year, like the Red Sox or the Rays or whoever, are entered this year with teams that people thought could compete or weren't so far away from competing.

So you would think that it was reasonable to think at the time that they could contend in 2015? Yeah, I didn't think that their outlook for 2015 and 2016 was great. I wouldn't have said they weren't contenders by any means. And I think Pakoda had them either, I think, tied for first going into this year with the group that they had even after trading zobrist in the offseason um but it didn't it felt to me like one of their weaker contending years like i think they were projected for 85 or 86 so they weren't protected to be great um so what i wrote my conclusion was what has always made the rays excellence look so effortless is that they were good in the present and they had the parts to be good in the future, so they just needed to build that bridge. It was almost a

self-sustaining cycle, turning the good present into the good future and building the bridge over the overlap. This trade, though, if not quite a win-now trade, is a lot of effort for the bridge. It doesn't do much for the future unless Smiley or Franklin turn out to achieve much more than we currently think of as their ceilings. The next couple years might very well be the last hurrah for this Tampa Bay run. We had to know that they couldn't be good every year forever. The Red Sox can't even manage that. This trade kicks that can down the road a little, but the day is coming, and Nick Franklin and Drew Smiley aren't the type of players who will keep it away.

For that reason, this is the first raised trade in quite some time that didn't feel fun. And I think I sort of stick with that. quite some time that didn't feel fun. And I think I sort of stick with that. This was a trade that did a little bit to move the needle in their favor in 2015 and 2016, but not by a lot. And it seems like, unless there was just no package of prospects available, at the expense of 2017 and 2018. And what we haven't seen really from the Rays is, since they haven't had to, is what a full rebuild looks like for the Rays. They've had, since 2008 when they got good, they've been consistently good. They've had some years that were better than others, but before last year they hadn't really had to ever rebuild and when the red socks need to rebuild

they've got 70 million dollars that they can spend on free agents and they can usually you know they've got some key assets that they can trade at the deadline and they as they've shown they can do it quickly they can do it in a hurry and the giants kind of the same way uh what we haven't seen is whether the rays have the sort of resources. Just like I'm back in New York. Sirens in Sonoma. What we haven't seen is whether the Rays have the resources to do a rebuild, and so that's why I'm kind of dreading the day that they hit mediocrity because I don't know whether the Rays are going to be any more skilled

at rebuilding with their budget than the Astros and the Cubs were. And, I mean, certainly the Astros and the Cubs, you can say, oh, it's worked great, look at how, the Astros and the Cubs were. And I mean, certainly the Astros and the Cubs, you can say, oh, it's worked great. Look at how good the Astros and the Cubs are. But it's miserable watching that. Like, I hate seeing teams have to do that. I hate seeing teams go through that. I hate seeing teams choose to do it, even though it's rational to do it. And I sort of feel like I don't want to see the Rays go through that. I want to think the Rays are above that and can be better than that. And this kind of puts them in a little bit of a hole going forward because they had their best asset in many years,

and they turned it into a pitcher who might never be good again, a quad A infielder who might never be good ever, and a 19-year-old third baseman who might have an average hit or average offensive career. Yeah, they were my pick for a surprise team this year. I was compelled to pick a surprise team, so I picked the Rays just because I thought they had good pitching theoretically if those guys actually were healthy, if Matt Moore was healthy and the guys who were kind of hurt in spring could come back

and be healthy for most of the year, then they would be good. And that kind of has happened, kind of hasn't, but they've, I guess, been a surprise team. But I wasn't super high on them either. been a surprise team, but I wasn't super high on them either. And yeah, they proved not to be especially adept at the draft. For a while, it seemed like maybe they were, but they had all those high picks. And since they haven't had those high picks, they haven't been very good in the draft. And that's part of the reason why they are not one of the best teams in baseball anymore or were not expected to be and i wonder whether they could even do the astros cubs style thing

if they wanted to in their market and with their financial concerns and and their sort of tenuous fan base as it is with the with the cubs there was no question that Cubs fans would come back when the Cubs were good again and probably continue to come while the Cubs were bad because it's Wrigley Field and it's the Cubs and that's what happens. And in Houston, it's a big place and it's a big market and there wasn't really any concern that the Astros wouldn't survive that. There was some trepidation that maybe they would harm their fan base long-term by being so bad for a few years, but there was a sense that they had enough resources to draw on

that they could get through that. But with the Rays, who are barely scraping along as it is, I wonder whether a few years of being terrible would just kill them or sentence them to definitely moving. Not that they draw that well when they're winning or draw that much better when they're winning because of where the ballpark is. So maybe it wouldn't matter. Maybe they would just continue to draw not many fans.

I don't know. But I agree that it would be unpleasant to watch that happen. And yeah, I guess they could have gotten more, but what are we saying? The strategy wasn't bad, right? The idea behind going for guys who were theoretically ready to contribute right away, that was sound based on what we've seen so far this season.

A couple of productive guys would have been helpful would have been exactly what they needed and smiley has been hurt and franklin has been bad so you could say that they chose the specific players unwisely or got unlucky with it but we can't necessarily say that yeah they should have gone for the the top 20 prospect assuming that person was even available yeah uh well uh given that all of the top 20 prospects are currently in the pages right it's a little different uh but yeah i i know i i don't quite know where i don't quite know i mean i look this was not a trade that many people liked at the time. It is a trade that has turned out to be quite bad because of circumstances.

And yet, I don't know what I'm against. I guess you could say that they picked the wrong time. That if they had traded him maybe six months earlier, then maybe they would have been able to get a little bit of both and get even more. I don't know if that's true. I mean, you have to assume that the Rays were definitely, well, you do have to assume, probably it's safe to assume the Rays were more in tune with the trade offers for David Price than I am. Probably.

We did do that whole article of gaming out hypothetical trade talks for david price did we really yeah there was a big bp staff post i was the gm i think i was andrew friedman and i fielded offers from 10 teams or something represented by bp writers the package i picked was probably better than what they got uh-huh by the way it's it doesn't i the the one thing is that addison russell was traded for jeff samarja just last i mean at the same time and so i mean you just looking at those two returns like one a better pitcher brought back i don't know. The Addison-Russell thing sort of screws up all the calibration, right?

A little bit? Yes, it does. Because nobody would be complaining remotely if they had Addison-Russell right now. And they would be a better team today. Like, not just in the future, but they would be a better team today. They would have been a better team maybe on opening day if they hadison russell instead of smiley um so that makes it a little harder to say they couldn't have done better uh and that they had to uh i mean the cubs also saw themselves as contenders this year although slightly more uh slightly slightly

hedged but they also saw themselves as contenders this year and they went ahead and got addison russell they didn't ask the a's for a package of major league-ready AAA guys or anything like that. So who'd you end up taking for— Although Samarja was making $5.3 million last year, and Price was making $14 million, and Price is now making almost $20 million, and Samarja is making under 10. So, I mean, clearly David Price is much better than Jeff Samarja, but he's also making much more than Jeff Samarja. So that sort of saps the, eats into the difference a little bit.

You accepted. You took Jock Peterson, Zach Lee, and Chris Anderson. I did pretty well. That's pretty good. I mean, to be fair, you were playing the guy who replaced the guy who got fired. So it's not surprising that Andrew Friedman beat Ed Colletti in that deal. I mean, HR agrees with you. There were like two or three offers I was seriously considering.

It's hard to read as we go, but let's see. Pirates offered Tyler Glasnow, Josh Bell, Nick Kingham, and Jonathan Schwind, which is a heck of a package, although wouldn't have helped you this year. The Marlins offered Andrew Heaney, Jake Marisnyk, Justin Nicolino, Anthony Descalfani, Adam Conley, and Colby Suggs for Price and Zobris and Cesar Ramos. Not that this necessarily has anything to do with the actual offers that were available to the Rays, but those were the kinds of offers that people at the time thought that they could get for David Price. And, you know, a guy like Jack Peterson, who has been much better, I think, than anyone expected Jack Peterson to be immediately, but was still a highly regarded

prospect who was major league ready. And that was the kind of guy that if the Rays had gotten him, even not knowing that he would just be a superstar from day one, essentially, people would have said, okay, that's the kind of guy that they should have gotten for David Price. Yeah, you expected, I mean, even under this scenario, what you expected was the exact same return, but all the guys a year earlier. You expected Drew Smiley when he had one year of service time instead of two. You expected Nick Franklin when he was a prospect instead of a bust. Pretty much, right? Yeah.

And that's what they got. I mean, that's what made it curious is that it felt like they were a year late on both of those guys. Cardinals, fake Cardinals offered Matt Adams, Stephen Piscotty, and Joe Kelly. That would, you'd take that. I mean, you certainly would take that over the, again, these are fictional. But you would, you'd take that. I mean, my point is that you'd take almost all these over. Like our estimates, when we did the, let's see, I did this exact same exercise for.

You did it for Samarja, right? Jake Peavy. Oh, yeah. Someone did it for Samarja. And I felt like the, and then, did someone do it for Samarja, right? Jake Peavy. Oh, yeah. Someone did it for Samarja. And I felt like the... Did someone do it for Samarja? And then Paul Sporer did it for somebody. Who was that for? Anyway. And I remember in both of those really feeling like, well, there were

teams that were high, there were teams that were low, but it felt pretty realistic. And so either we all badly misjudged here the trade market for David Price, which is possible. He's more expensive. The money was a factor. And there's probably some perception versus results difference for Price, as we've talked about on this podcast. some perception versus results difference for price as we've talked about on this podcast he had while he is a great pitcher uh and he puts up incredible fips he also hasn't been super good

at suppressing runs in his career uh or in the last few years before this year which is to say that his era plus was always like pretty good but not superstar and he was in the hitters park pitchers park uh but anyway the point is that almost all these would be considered high returns relative to what they got. Cubs offer Jorge Soler, Ars Mendi Alcantara, and Paul Blackburn. Indians, Tyler Naquin. Naquin? Naquin?

I should have asked somebody to pronounce it. Ronnie Rodriguez, Sean Armstrong, Dace Emei, Keim. Horrible idea. I was guessing that wasn Keim. Horrible idea. I was guessing that wasn't right. Horrible idea. At least in that one, you also mocked the name as not being real. Okay. And then Blue Jays offered Aaron Sanchez, Sean Nolan, Franklin Barreto, and Mitch Ney.

So they basically offered probably better than the return that the A's got for Josh Donaldson, or close to the return that the A's got for Josh Donaldson, who had two years of service time and is like a top six player in baseball. So again, all fake offers, but also all high, all higher than this. Yeah. Okay. So we got through this episode without even talking about the Diamondbacks trade. Wait, mine was actually, I was Jerry DePoto in this exercise, and I made a much lower offer.

I offered you Tyler Skaggs, Hank Conger, and Nate Smith, and then begrudgingly threw in Cam Bedrosian for Price and Eric Bedard. And so, in fact, I should go back and talk to myself because I was way low. Yeah. But that might have just been an acknowledgment that I was the Angels GM. It might have been like a commentary on my farm system. Right. Angels don't have prospects. Right.

Yeah. Okay. All right. So that's it for today send us emails podcast at baseball prospectus.com join the facebook group facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild where you will be able to find although not necessarily listen to sam miller's radio debut at some point probably today. And you can support the sponsor of the show, The Play Index, by going to baseballreference.com using the coupon code BP and getting the discounted price of $30 on a one-year subscription.

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