Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 708: The Cueto and Tulo Trades

Episode Date: July 28, 2015

Ben and Sam banter about an Elvis Andrus glove toss, an odd triple play, and A-Rod, then discuss the Johnny Cueto and Troy Tulowitzki trades.

Good morning and welcome to episode 708 of Effectively Wild, the once-in-future daily podcast of Baseball Perspectives, presented by the Play Index at BaseballReference.com. I am Ben Lindberg of Grantland, joined by Sam Miller of Baseball Perspectives. Hello. Hey, how are you? I'm sleepy because the trade broke at an inopportune time. Okay.

For you and for Mr. Troy Tulewitzki. Yeah, that's true. He didn't know. I didn't know. No one told us. We both had a right to know. Yeah. You were both unhappy about it.

We were. We were. So before we talk about trades, we have a few things to discuss. One, did you see Ellis Andrews throwing a glove at a ball no i did not well that happened so that was the thing that we talked about not too long ago there was a listener email about why players don't do that more often or ever and we concluded that they probably shouldn't ever do that because there are penalties associated with it that would if it worked it would not work if it worked there would be a stiffer penalty

and you'd be in an even worse situation than if you hadn't tried to throw your glove so he did it he threw his glove it was pretty close i would say i think he was probably a little late on the throw, but it was definitely online, and Jeff Bannister was not pleased about this throw. He said, my reaction is that I don't think that's the way we want to play it. I think it was a momentary lapse of awareness. It's only the second time I've seen it in my career. I don't think you will see it happen again here. So that's sad. The Rangers won't be doing it again he didn't say what the first time was i'd like to know what the first time was but it was a nice little attempt so we can add that to the list of improbable things that we've talked about that have happened after we talked about them I was thinking it was going to be something much less obvious.

No, it was exactly what we were talking about. One of our stompers does this in batting practice. No penalty in batting practice. No, but all the same, nobody else does. And I'm told this is kind of perceived as being fairly amateurish. And I've been thinking about talking to him about it. Because there's a little eye rolling. Although, now it's been a while and I think the eye rolling has stopped.

And now I think it's just like, oh, that's what he does. Maybe he'll listen to the podcast and then you won't have to talk to him no none of our none of our stompers care for our content that is one thing we have learned that's true i don't blame them um okay what else 3-6-2 triple play. Did you see that? I always feel like I'm doing a Jay Leno monologue when I have these weird stories from baseball and I ask you if you saw them.

So you did not see this? No, that 3-6-2 doesn't seem that weird to me, though. That actually seems fairly normal, right? Like, that's an easy one. It's a ground ball to first. First baseman steps on the bag, takes the force off, throws to the shortstop covering second, who puts down the tag on the runner going to second,

and the guy on third who did not break on the play because it was right at the first baseman who would have been thrown out at home, he decides that once he sees a complicated play developing, he's going to go, and then he gets thrown out by a split second. Am I pretty much right? Sort of. It was a little odder than that.

I think this exact thing that happened I read had only happened once before. It was weirder than you were saying. There were two runners on third base, and then it was like 3der than you were saying there were two runners on third base and then it was like three six two but it was more like three six two gravity like someone just fell and there was just a spontaneous collapse that played a part you can see it i sent it to you but you once gave me the scoring for a strange triple play and asked me to describe how it happened, and I was totally off. So I wanted to do the same to you.

It's ugly and it's embarrassing, but oh, so fun to watch. All right. Air ball. The tumble. And now he's talking on the run down. That's a smart play on his part. Hold on.

It is completely different. Oh, my different. Oh my goodness. Oh. And then. Take it. So the fact that it is 3-6-2 is like the least interesting part of this, right? Because the 3-6-2 that I described would make a lot of sense. This is 3-6-2.

But, I mean, the real question is has there ever been a play – well, there probably has been. But has there ever been a play in which the catcher held onto the ball for so long? Like in a live play? Because he gets the ball, and then, well, and the second baseman doesn't do anything, or the shortstop doesn't do anything. He has no role except he's a middleman.

He doesn't get any outs. It might as well have just tipped off his glove for his role in this. But then the catcher spends a very long time with the ball, and yeah, that's a weird play. That is a very weird play that feels like should should have more numbers in it yeah so it was i guess it was the fact that it was the catcher directly recording two outs mike mike zanino was the catcher this was a mariners blue jays game so yeah the fact that zanino recorded two outs unassisted was weird um yeah and so that that i guess is the the easiest way to describe why it was weird and i think that specific way

in which it was weird was made at the second time that had ever happened according to the the saber triple play database which i didn't know was a thing until this there was one other time that this happened in 1955 in a game between the orioles and kansas city a's so weird triple play wait when you say it happened the exact what the catcher recording to out himself i guess it was the same yeah so it says it scored as there were men on second and third on this play and it scored as three six two two so i think it's the same the same sequence oh well there's a lot of baseball games so strange things will happen every 60 years or so.

If there were runners on second and third, this was runners on first and third. True. That explains how the shortstop got involved with it, but it's not clear how a shortstop would have been involved if the runners started on second and third. Yes, it's true. All right, well, this has been another edition Of our long running segment Of Ben and Sam watch videos that no one else can see Although you can see them

If you're at a computer I'll link to them in the Facebook group And you can go watch them And Alex Rodriguez turned 40 And he hit a home run So he is now at 678 homers So you must be feeling pretty good About your bet with Andy McCullough.

How many does he have this year then? 24. No kidding. Yeah. So let's see. Nobody had ever hit enough homers from age 39 on. I want to see what the record is for most homers from 40 on in Pumptu Play Index

and see if he's in range of getting to where it's more realistic. Alright, so age 40 onward most career home runs is 72. Ooh, that's a long ways.

So 763 minus 72 is 691. So he would need 13 more homers this year, which would be doable, but a lot. Still a lot. But yeah. No, I mean, well, we're going to talk about players in a minute, players being traded. And just anybody who thinks that we're good at this or we're talking

like we're predicting things that we know i mean mark tashara and a rod are both having their best years since like 2008 and they were both like given up you know left for for dead so what you know really what do we know very very very little yeah a rod's stats right now his weighted runs created plus or whatever is identical to his 2003 season with the rangers when he won an mvp award yeah and that's kind of a fun fact that lies like all fun facts because he was a short stop when he won that award and also that was not nearly his best offensive season, so it's not like he's hitting as well as he ever has either. But still, that was a long time ago.

He was much younger then, and he is doing the same thing that he was doing then. His OPS Plus is considerably higher than his career OPS Plus. Yeah. Which is not necessarily one that lies. That's just a fact. Yeah. He's actually outperforming his career average. Yeah.

I wanted to talk about real quick. I wanted to make sure everybody is aware that Baseball Perspectives put together digital magazines for each of the four Hall of Famers. Oh, yes. That were just inducted. And these are basically there for sale through the Baseball Perspectives app. So you can go get them. If you're a person who wants to read Baseball Perspectives but has been intimidated by the year-long commitment of subscription, for instance,

this is a very good way of getting a Baseball Perspectives portion that is perhaps sized more to your appetite. And we would enjoy it if you read it. I wrote a piece about John Smoltz and how he provides the template for a Hall of Fame pitcher in the post-300 win era. Of course, someone will win 300 wins. I'm not saying that nobody is going to win 300 wins. Again, I'm not that guy. They will. However, it used to be basically that 250 was what got you in. And now we see that in the way that starting pitchers are used, it's much more likely that we'll see a lot of guys who don't get 250 make the Hall of Fame. John Smoltz is one

of them. And for a lot of reasons, he provides the template for how a career is likely to go for a Hall of Fame pitcher. And so I wrote that and Craig Goldstein edited that magazine. And so anyway, they're for sale at the, do I pronounce this iOS or iOS? iOS, right? You're giving yourself away as an old school phone user. Yeah, iOS. as an old school phone user yeah, iOS so you can go to the iOS app store and Google Play, they're $3.99 each and we're A

I hope that you enjoy them and B I'm interested to see what the response will be to this sort of product so there's a bunch of new stuff a bunch of great writers, a bunch of great BP writers and some writers from outside BP as well as some of our archived content on each of these guys. And it's a great way to celebrate their careers. So please do that.

I like that unintentional appetite pun. Very good. I don't know what the pun is. It's an app. Appetite. Appetite. Got it. Yeah. Got it got it okay so there were a bunch of trades there will be a bunch more trades i'm sure in the next few days but maybe maybe some of the big deals were gotten out of the way early and i don't know which ones we're going to touch on, but we will probably touch on the two biggest ones,

which would be Johnny Cueto to the Royals and the one that broke last night, Troy Tulewitzki to the Toronto Blue Jays. And I would say that up until the Tulewitzki trade, all of the trades that had happened made sense in a in a different way than the tulitsky trade did they were your typical team that needs something team that has a weak spot trades for something from another team to fill that weak spot so the astros traded for scott casimir and people had been saying since april that the astros really needed a starter and maybe they needed a starter a little less after they called up Lance McCullers and Vincent Velasquez but and got Scott Feldman back but still they could have used a starter it wasn't totally unanticipatable that they would get a starter and same with the Royals in a sense in that the Royals obvious weakness was their starting rotation they not only

didn't have an ace they you could argue didn't really have an above average starter they sent Jordano Ventura down briefly to AAA until Jason Vargas got hurt and then it's a bunch of guys who've kind of been off and on and okay and Edinson volquez and denny duffy and jeremy guthrie and that was the royals rotation and somehow they had the best record in the american league anyway and a very comfortable division lead and so they didn't really need to make a big move in a sense i mean they they had very strong playoff odds even though projection systems continue to think that they're not quite as good as they have been for a year now. But they didn't have to make a move to make the playoffs necessarily, and we're not used to seeing the Royals be buyers. Joe Sheehan wrote about that.

Rani Jazarili wrote about that for Grantland. Just the history of Royals trading for players at the deadline is like backup first baseman and middle relievers for the most part. They've never really landed the big guy at the deadline. So in that sense, it's new and strange, but it totally made sense in that the Royals needed a starter. Cueto's the best starter available. His skill set seems to work really well with the Royals defense, and it makes the Royals really, really good. I don't know if there's anything else that you want to say about that. It makes them slightly more likely to make the playoffs,

but not that much more because they were quite likely to make it anyway. But it certainly helps them in the postseason where now they have an ace And you don't necessarily Need an ace to win in the postseason But it helps And they along with the Rays Have been the team that has used Their bullpen the most this year And for a good reason

For a different reason really than the Rays have The Rays is more about a Times through the order effect And not having starters go deep into games. And maybe there's an aspect of that with the Royals also, but I think it's more a response to the strengths and weaknesses of their roster in that they have a pretty lousy starting rotation and a really excellent bullpen. And so they've wanted to get more out of the latter and less out of the former. But you could imagine that eventually catching up to the team and backfiring or making the

relievers exhausted by the time October rolls around. So now you've got Cueto who goes deep into games and takes a little bit of load off the bullpen. And that's that. And I just talked about the Cueto trade without talking about the red side of it at all, which is consistent with our past. Is there a story behind Cueto's second and third to last starts where he didn't pitch well? Like, was there anything happening there? There were concerns about Hamels and Cueto because they had had a couple of weak starts in a row. and Cueto because they had had a couple of weak starts in a row. And I don't think there was a story with Hamels. His velocity was down in the start right before his no-hitter. And so people were sort of worried about that, but it totally bounced back in his no-hitter and he had better

stuff than he's had all year. I don't think there was a similar story with Cueto. He had a brief bout of elbow soreness earlier in the year, but he had like 10 straight great starts after that. So I don't think that was a concern at that point. So no, other than some speculation about the trade deadline pressure getting to him or something, I don't think there was any more concrete concern. So do you think it's conceivable? I don't know. Probably TV drives all this stuff more than anything else.

But this is the second straight year that the Royals are going to go to the postseason. They're going to, you know, they went to the World Series last year. They might be the World Series favorites in the AL this year. Maybe. I'm not sure going into it and attendance is up considerably their fifth in attendance in the american league this year presumably quite possibly they'll be even higher than that next year is it conceivable that the royals just aren't a small market team anymore that they were a small market team because

they were in a fairly small market and they were losing for 20 years. But that in fact, they're more like, I don't know, like the Brewers or even kind of maybe the Mariners, where going forward, they just are a normal or the twins maybe, where they're a normal team that when they win, they can carry $130 million payrolls. Is it conceivable that that's the Royals going forward? You'd think that any team could do that now right the brewers are still small market i'd still call them small market the brewers are in a small market but they've always had a a famously supportive market like it's it's a market that i don't know maybe they're like there's no you know beaches or whatever so maybe they just go to baseball games.

But they draw really well, and they have good TV ratings, better than the size of their market. But yeah, I mean, Brewers are that way, but then other teams are not that way. The Rays, for instance, they could win the World Series, and they would finish next year 14th in the AL in attendance. And that's probably not an exaggeration. indians don't seem to do well regardless and the a's don't seem to do well regardless and so there are small market teams yeah i'm not sure

the royals are one though yeah that that makes sense and they they spent some more money this year not maybe as much as people were expecting Because they lost Butler And Shields and then there was some Speculation that they would Spend that money and also Spend money that they'd gotten From the postseason run last year And they didn't go crazy

But they spent enough that people Weren't upset about it But they spent weirdly I didn't think their moves were particularly good Over the winter And they worked out okay Alex Rios hasn't He's been bad and hurt

But Morales and Volquez have been fine You know nothing special But worth the money Ed has kind of been special You think? I mean look He's been considerably better than Jon Lester and Jeff Samarja, who were two of the big off-season starting pitching acquisitions.

And he's been considerably better than James Shields, who was another big off-season pitching acquisition. I mean, honestly, seriously, name an offseason pitching acquisition that was better than him. Has he been better than all those guys without accounting for Royals defense or with accounting for Royals defense? Well, that gets a little trickier,

but he's been better than Shields without accounting for Royals defense. And let me see. He's been a little worse than Samarja and worse than Lester. Yeah. Royals defense forgives a lot of sins. But yeah. Okay.

Good move. It's a fine move. All right. Still don't want him starting game two of a series, don't we? Yeah. Never will. Well, he was basically at the point of being the game one starter before this trade so this trade was probably pretty important so even after adding

cueto let's see where the playoff odds have them as far as expected winning percentages can i tell you something real quick that's amazing? You know we're in the high strikeout era, obviously. Yes. But we're also in a low walk era. And Edison Volquez currently leads the American League in walks with 47. He's walked 3.4 per nine. Wow, that's the highest walk rate?

Well, it's not the highest walk rate. Oh, okay. He leads in cumulative walks. While walking 3.4 per night, which when I was growing up, pretty good walk rate. Yeah. Like I'm going to see in 2000, I'm going to see 1997. In 1997, the American League's walk rate was 3.5 per night. Things have changed. Mm-hmm.

Okay. league's walk rate was 3.5 per nine things have changed okay so and as for the reds returned it seemed adequate it seemed fine i don't think there was a lot of consternation about them not getting enough i don't think people were blown away they got a couple guys who were hardly on the radar coming into the year, John Lamb and Cody Reed, and they were two guys who have sort of upped their stock considerably this year in particular. They sort of got three potential starting pitcher prospects, most of whom are close to ready right now. So that seems like a pretty decent return for a guy that everyone knew they sort of had to trade or probably would trade and who is a two or three month rental and who doesn't bring back a draft pick when he leaves.

or three-month rental and who doesn't bring back a draft pick when he leaves. So seemed like they did fine given those restrictions. Brandon Finnegan, I guess, is the headliner. Maybe he'll end up as a reliever. So there's no stud. Maybe it's sort of like the David Price return in that there's no one top prospect, but there are a bunch of guys who should be pretty good right now or soon. And if it's like the David Price return, then that's a good thing for the Royals because David Price had a whole other year coming after the trade deadline, and Cueto does not. There's only one pitcher in baseball currently qualified for the ERA title with four walks per nine. Who's that? Tyson Ross.

And then the next number two, you have to drop down to 386 per nine, and he probably won't end up qualifying for the ERA title, Ryan Vogelsang. And nobody else over 3.7. What a world. Until Carlos Rodon gets enough innings. Yeah, that is kind of... All right. Anything else about Cueto? Royals?

Reds? Yeah. One thing about Royals. Okay. This is totally off topic, but I was... In 2000, there were 25 pitchers who walked four per nine and qualified for the ERA title. 25! Well, I guess maybe it would be less dramatic if you used

Walk percentage Yeah Probably it would be I wanted We talked about Ned Colletti and the Cortez burning boats And you might recall that Colletti told the story

To his team about how Cortez had burnt His ships to motivate his men And then a couple years later told the story Again only team about how Cortez had burnt his ships to motivate his men. And then a couple years later, he told the story again, only now it was Alexander the Great. And also, he completely misunderstood how it was going to motivate. Or at least he represented that he completely misunderstood how it was going to motivate the guys. He said that they were going to take the other guys' boats. Okay. the guys. He said it was that they were going to take the other guys' boats. Well, anyway, Andy McCullough came through. He sent me a piece that he wrote in spring training this year that I missed at the time that has the baseball anecdote of the 2015 season. I guess

it was the 2014 season, but the best baseball anecdote of the year. This is why Andy is the best. There's no doubt that Andy is the best because of this story. I'm going to just read, okay? Okay. At one point in the middle of September, Raul Abanez told the team a story of Hernan Cortez's assault on Mexico. Cortez instructed his troops to set their ships ablaze upon arrival so that they lacked an option for escape well done raul labanez nailed it nailed it okay this is a story about jeremy guthrie though not around the money quote the idea was not only do you want to take the championship but you want to burn the boats so no one can come and grab us from behind guthrie said like you want to totally finish somebody off okay guthrie completely

guthrie thinks that they're burning the other guy's boats i think he is even worse than ned colletti missed the point of this i like you want to so that no one can grab us from behind we can't have boats so that no one can grab us from behind. Makes no sense. I'm pretty sure he thinks that they burned the other guy's boats, which is not a particularly interesting story in history. If they did, lots of burning of other people's boats, I'm sure.

Anyway, so Guthrie wanted to deliver a literal interpretation. Before the AL wildcard game, he stopped at a hobby lobby and bought four wooden boats. Oh, I remember this. Yeah. He intended to procure 11 in all, one for each victory required for the title. During the postgame celebration, he wanted the designated player of the game to nail a boat to a board and set it ablaze.

After the team's frenetic victory over Oakland, Guthrie assigned the task to sal perez a hail of champagne and beer interrupted the ceremony guthrie soon scuttled his plans scuttled his plans scuttling being a nautical clever it could have been great he said but no one cared and so i threw the things away two guys asked are we going to keep doing the boat thing? No, the boat thing sucked. It's the anecdote that keeps on giving. Oh, my gosh. So that no one can come from behind you. I wonder what other possible interpretations of this story there are.

I've just learned one more than I would have guessed. Yeah. Okay. So trades. So, yeah. I've just learned one more than I would have guessed Yeah Okay so trades So yeah so share your interpretations Of Hernan Cortez Yes So it's I guess it's Interesting in that the Reds will Probably trade more people now Aroldis Chapman might be going somewhere

That would be interesting to see him go somewhere Maybe Todd Frazier Will go somewhere although I think Chockity has said interesting to see him go somewhere maybe todd frazier will go somewhere although i think jockety has said he probably wouldn't go somewhere maybe joey vato will go somewhere who knows who will go somewhere any red is on the table now because they might as well if they're going to trade quite oh they might as well just do the whole thing yep okay so we can probably skip over some of the minor moves. I don't know if there's anything you want to say about either Casimir

or the Mets trading for Tyler Clippard and Juan Uribe. No, there's not. Yeah. Those seem like cases where the Mets... Ben, there's nothing I want to say about the Blue Jays trading for Toynto Lewicki, but... Yeah, you're going to have to. So, yeah, those other moves are cases of the Mets not having a third baseman

and not really having a setup man, and so they got those things. And that's kind of the story of those trades. And got the A's to pick up money. Yeah. Although they, I guess, gave up a decent prospect for a couple months of a reliever who is not pitching

quite as well as he used to. Yeah, but that's probably the point, right? They gave up the prospect so that the A's would take on money. It's more of the Mets being unable to actually do the things a team can do because they don't have money and or the ability to spend it speaking of which the troy

tulitsky trade which the mets had been connected to forever it was uh an obvious case of a good fit it would have been of a piece with all these other other trades if the Mets had gotten Troy Tulewitzki fine. He's long been rumored to possibly end up there, although evidently he didn't want to end up there, but it would have made sense. It would have surprised us because the Mets would have actually spent money, but it wouldn't have surprised us because of the player and the fit with the team. Whereas the actual trade with the Blue Jays kind of came out of nowhere. The Blue Jays have the best hitting team in the American League and one of the weaker pitching teams in the major leagues. And so all of the speculation was that the Blue Jays would trade for a pitcher. That's kind of been their thing for the last couple years that they needed to trade for a

pitcher and kept failing to trade for pitchers and coming close to trading for pitchers and so they upgraded an area where they were already strong not just offensively where they're as strong as anyone but shortstop where they had a serviceable one. Jose Reyes is pretty bad defensively at this point, I would say, but he's still an adequate hitter for a shortstop. He's overall probably an average shortstop or so. So they upgraded at a position where they didn't necessarily need an upgrade and they got more hitting, which is not the thing that anyone expected them to do. And they traded some pretty good players for that pitching.

Maybe not their top prospect. They didn't trade Daniel Norris. But they did trade some pretty good guys, some pretty promising guys. Three right-handed pitchers all in their early 20s, all of whom throw hard, a couple of whom are ground ball guys. They traded them to the Rockies. That's evidently the Rockies type of pitcher now. So what was your reaction to this?

That we would have to probably postpone the podcast until the morning while you wrote about it? Yeah. It wasn't nearly as shocking to me. I mean, I've seen stunning, the word stunning in almost every article about this. And I guess that in the sense that if you'd asked me to guess what day, time, and to whom and for what Troy Tulewitzki would be traded, I probably would have got a different day, a different time, a different team, and a different return.

Yeah. So there was none of this that I predicted, but it feels normal enough to me. Well, he is a guy who has had trade rumors surrounding him for three years. I went back and looked at the earliest Troy Tulewitzki mentioned trade rumor story in an MLB trade rumors post, and it was over three. It was like the fall of 2012, which was less than two years after the six-year extension he signed that

he said at the time would make him a Rocky forever. And a couple years after that, the trade rumors started. And for a while, they were really for most of the time, they were someone would ask the Rockies if they were going to trade Troy Tolowitzky, and they'd say no. And that would be the end of it. And then there'd be another round of identical non-rumor rumors shortly after that. And they seem to have quieted down a bit, at least compared to how loud they were this winter. And so it's not a shock to see Tulecki traded, I don't think. But the Blue Jays would not have been high on my list of likely destinations, destinations just because it was not their need exactly. But that said, it makes them better. It makes them better now. It makes them better for the next couple of years. So they traded Jeff

Hoffman, who is one of their top prospects. He's maybe a top 20, top 30 prospect at this point, although every prospect has been promoted this year already. So it's kind of a thinner crop than it usually would be now. So he's a guy who was possibly going to be a top overall draft pick, but he had to have Tommy John surgery. He's come back from that now, and he's had pretty good results, and his old stuff seems to be mostly back. So that's awesome he's

i think he is one of the most polarizing prospects top prospects out there though right now and i don't know if this says i mean if you're the blue jays i'd give up anything that was asked for for troy to lewiski um and so i don't know if this says anything but it's if if the blue jays are on the low end of him, that would be significant information. Yeah. And the other guys, they gave up Miguel Castro, who was in the major leagues briefly earlier this year.

He's 20. They rushed him up along with every other pitching prospect they had, and he didn't last very long. And he's possibly a future reliever. last very long, and he's possibly a future reliever. And then there is a third guy who is not nearly of the same caliber, Jesus Tinoco, and he's sort of in the same hard-throwing, 20-year-old, tall guy mold. Maybe the most surprising aspect of the trade, well, maybe not once you know that it's the Blue Jays, but just in terms of the usual template for deadline trades, is that Jose Reyes went back to the Rockies. And the only shortstop who's being paid more than Troy Tulewitzki right now is Jose Reyes. salary dump, sort of, in which the team that was dumping the salary actually took on a guy who was

making more salary, just not for as long a period. So that was strange because all the reports sort of portrayed it as the Rockies shed $50 million in financial obligations by trading Tulewitzki and Latroy Hawkins. And Latroy Hawkins is like a million of that because he was being paid about half the MLB average for his one-year deal this year. And then the rest of that is basically years that Tulewitzki has signed that Reyes is not. So it's sort of deceptive in that sense. It's not exactly like they're shedding money. They're choosing not to pay money that they would have had to pay in 2018 and 2019 and 2020. than that because Reyes is probably not worth his contract, whereas Tulewitzki is probably worth more than his contract, or at least you could make that case. So in terms of actual surplus value that they received or surplus financial value, it's probably considerably less than $50 million.

And then they got the prospects. And then there is the expectation that they'll trade Jose Reyes over the next few days or over the next month, maybe, because he's a guy who could probably pass through waivers. And the reports have said that they don't have a deal lined up for Reyes. And if that's the case, then it's pretty risky to take on Hosiris because he doesn't really have value at this point, I don't think. He's fine, but I wouldn't say that he's worth more than he's making, and he's probably worth less than he's making. So theoretically, it would be hard to trade him for anything of value without kicking cash in. And at that point, you're sort of offsetting the value of whatever you're getting back with the cash that you're spending. Although I guess there's

something to be said for just having a player that you can peg cash to to get prospects back, because you can't just directly buy prospects. You can't go to a team and say, we'll give you $40 million for your prospect. That won't work. It won't be approved by the league. It won't be approved by the team. But if you do a salary dump, then you have a player, and he's just kind of a carcass to you that you can ship to this other team,

and they'll give you a prospect back if you spend some money. So there's that, I suppose. if you spend some money. So there's that, I suppose. In your mind, is there a greater than 50% chance that Jose Reyes is playing for the Yankees at some point in the next nine months? Probably not. But there's a good chance.

There's as good a chance that he'll play for them as for anyone else. He's not going to play for the Mets. So, Troy Tulewitzki, if you'd asked me at the beginning of the year who the best player in baseball is on a per-plate appearance basis, I would have said Mike Trout. And if you'd asked me who the second best was, I would have said either Troy Tulewitzki or Buster Posey. And so Matt Trueblood at the beginning of the year wrote a piece for us about why the Rockies shouldn't trade him and maybe why they should and maybe why they shouldn't and ultimately why they shouldn't in his mind

because he's too good for what his perceived value was that basically because he doesn't stay healthy you wouldn't and because he was owed so much money teams would be too skittish to give you really what he's worth in that he basically needed a healthy year, a healthy productive year to reestablish his value. And as long as he didn't show great decline to basically take some of the overall salary commitment off of what you'd be trading for. And so he has basically been healthy this year. And the amount of money he's owed is now in eight figures down from nine. He'll get five years and $89 million. And I guess on the other hand, he hasn't been the best player, the second best player in baseball on a per plate appearance basis this year at all. He's had one of his lesser seasons.

per plate appearance basis this year at all he's had you know one of his lesser seasons uh and he is a year older and perhaps a year closer to eventually shifting positions if it gets to that so do you think that this return that they got would have seemed because everybody thinks that the return they got is underwhelming right pretty much yeah well i think part of that was it's by choice right it's not this isn't there's probably a perception as there often is in these cases that they didn't do as well as they could have that that like a bunch of dopes they went and took the wrong offer that's probably a perception yeah but but do you feel like his trade value is any greater than it was three months ago do you feel like they trade value is any greater than it was three months ago? Do you feel like they could have gotten more if they traded him in the offseason?

Well, there's obviously a point at which they could have gotten more for him during the period of trade Tulewiczki trade rumors. If they had traded him when people first started suggesting that they should trade him, In retrospect, that probably would have been a good idea, right? Because in the last two plus seasons since those rumors started, he has been the most valuable shortstop in baseball. But the Rockies have gone 182 and 239 over that time. And Tuchelitzky has gotten, and he's had a down year. And the Rockies have managed to draw fans throughout this period. They've been fifth in NL attendance in each of the last three seasons,

and maybe that doesn't happen if they trade Tulewitzki, because if you trade Tulewitzki, then you might as well trade Carlos Gonzalez, which it sounds like they might start to do, start to explore the possibility of. And so maybe if you do that, they don't draw the fifth most fans in the National League each of the three past years. And maybe financially, it makes sense for them to have held on to them. But just purely on what they could have gotten back for Troy Tulitsky, yeah, they could have gotten more for Troy Tulitsky. Okay, So do we consider that a botch then? Is this a botch?

This is not a front office. This is not an ownership group in particular. I don't think we have a great read on their front office yet. No. This is not a organization that has seemed to have great front offices at any point since 1993. And it is an ownership group that, as David Roth talked about when he came on in our preseason series, having written the BP essay, is not an ownership group that seems to be the ownership group you would choose for your team,

for your franchise. So do we consider this a... Why am I blanking on the word? What is that word that Rob Nye wrote in his book? You know, he had that book about... Blunder. Is this a uh why am i blanking on the word what is that word that rob nye wrote in his book you know he had that book about blunder is this a blunder is this uh disaster or is this just a slightly underwhelming move yeah i don't think it rises or sinks to that level i think there was there was a fun hour or two last night where it seemed like it did because there were some initial reports that suggested that the Blue Jays hadn't given up a top prospect. And if that had been the case, then yes, I could say

that this was definitely a blunder. As it is, every little bit of news that trickled out and every prospect that it turned out was included made this look more reasonable. I think a lot of it probably depends on what happens with Reyes. If they have a deal lined up for Reyes, and there have been a bunch of reports saying that they didn't, but if they do, or if they manage to find one, and they can flip him for something useful and either get out from under his contract or get prospects back or something, then I think this would probably look okay. If they can't do that and they're stuck with him or they have to eat the whole contract or they don't get anything good back, then it's not so great. I agree. I think that Reyes is not going to be a problem for them. I think that they

will fairly quickly trade him for something useful or various things useful, or at least not pay him any monies. And once you, if that happens, then you're looking at a deal that probably basically fits the format of what you were looking for in this deal. A lot of salary relief, a definite high ceiling guy, in this deal, a lot of salary relief, a definite high ceiling guy, and a couple of live arms. You could imagine getting more, but this doesn't feel like a particularly controversial return if Reyes ends up being no burden to them. Yeah, I think I'd agree with that. I mean, is the Tulitsky contract one that you would want to be rid of? I was just going to ask you that.

So it's 5 and 89 after this year, right? Yeah. Assuming that the option doesn't get picked up. Right. And absolutely not. I mean, you would definitely sign him for 5 and 89 without question. Now, that's the point, though, is that assuming, again, assuming, let's consider Jose Reyes to be a wash. Let's say that they can flip him to the Yankees tomorrow if they want to, and the Yankees will take his salary.

I don't know if that's true, but let's say that's true, okay? Okay. So then you've got them getting rid of a contract that's pretty favorable for a great player who is otherwise not available, and getting the prospects they got in return back. And again, I think that you can decide that they got a little bit light return and wanting a little bit more than they got. Because I think that Tulewitzki probably, if he signed a five-year deal this offseason, would probably be in line for, I mean, certainly 125.

And I don't know if he would get $150,000, but I would give him $150,000. Dan Szymborski ran his Zips projections for what Tulitsky would be worth over the rest of his contract, and he had him as being a surplus value of $40 million over the rest of the deal. So he would produce $40 million more than he will be paid, essentially.

Right. So that would be 5 in 130. Plus you get the benefit of the option just in case he doesn't decline at all. Then you've got him in the last year for what's effectively like $9 million or something like that. So yeah, and probably if you believe that superstars are actually worth a win from a, you know, superstars worth a little bit more than a win from an average guy, you might even think that Dan's numbers are instructive, but undershoot him by a little bit, because you just can't get a Tulewitzki. There aren't aren't it's not like the market for tulowitzkis is not particularly um lubricated you get you get one shot right and dan also had reyes's contract as a 20 million

dollar deficit he'd be worth 20 million dollars less than he's going to be paid and that kind of diminishes the return that the Rockies got. I suspect that that's both true and in a market sense, not quite. I think that I would believe that. And I would also bet that somebody would overpay for Jose Reyes on what is effectively a very short contract. Yeah. And it's possible that maybe the Rockies think and have reason to think that this is not just an off year and it's not just Tulewitzki maybe being bored playing for a bad team or getting off to a slow start or something.

He had a terrible May and then he hit really well in June and he's on an 0 for 20 streak right now but I mean he might finish the season super hot and Tulowitzky-ish but it could be you know could be the beginning of a decline could be a guy who has a long injury history and now he's moving to the Rogers Center where there's hard turf for at least the next few seasons. And maybe that doesn't bode well for him. And he's been chasing a lot. He's been less selective and he's been walking less and striking out more and hitting for less power.

And so there are some worrisome signs there. It's only half a season, but this is kind of the first time that we've seen him be healthy and not be really great also, which is sort of scary. Maybe even scarier than if he had been hurt. I don't know because we've seen him be hurt plenty, but we haven't really seen him just be pretty good and not hurt before, though it's always possible that he is hiding some sort of injury. So there are reasons to be worried about him and think that maybe he won't age quite as well as the projections think he will. Maybe the Blue Jays will still make a trade for pitching. Maybe the Rockies will now make other trades in the coming days. I wrote about it, so you can go read what I wrote about

it if you want to hear more so last year when we did the trade deadline stuff um most trades as we you know have talked about in the past most trades don't actually move your world series odds all that much right for a variety of reasons in most trades one percent is even like a pretty big move would you guess that this improves the blue jays playoff odds by more, World Series odds by more than 1%? Probably not, because just based on the projections for the rest of this season, he was only projected to be about a win better than Reyes over the last two months or so, and the Blue Jays were

less than 50% chances to make the playoffs, and maybe like a one in four to win the division or something like that so I wouldn't think that adding one win on top of that would really move it that much yeah but based on the BP long-term projections I've seen he is projected to be six wins better than Reyes over the next two seasons. So this isn't just a 2015 move. It's also a move with the next couple seasons in mind, and Buje should still have a contending team next year, and Tulewitzki will help them do that. And by the time his contract possibly starts to be onerous in the way that Reyes's is now, they'll have a bunch of guys coming off the books. Dickey and Burley and Batista and Encarnacion, all those guys' contracts expire

by 2016 or so, so they will have plenty of payroll room. They just might not have a whole lot of prospects left. It's a bold move. It's the second time that Anthopolis has acquired one of the best players in baseball on the left side of the infield in a span of eight months or so. So that's interesting. He can't seem to get a pitcher, but he keeps acquiring really, really good position players and their lineup is scary. This is at most, at most at most at best the fourth most stunning deal of alexanthopolis career at best and like a clear tier separation in my mind between the first three in this one vernon wells vernon wells josh donaldson and marlins fire sale yeah Yeah. Okay. Well, he gives us plenty to discuss. So we will do some unspecified number of podcasts for the rest of this week. We'll talk about whatever trades happen.

We might answer questions if you send them to podcast at baseballperspectives.com. You can discuss the deals among yourselves at facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild. Rate, review, and subscribe to the podcast to be alerted when we record one and support our sponsor the play index at baseball reference dot com use the coupon code bp when you do to get the discounted price of thirty dollars on one year subscription we'll be back soon