Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 710: Hamels, Latos, and Gomez, Oh My

Episode Date: July 30, 2015

Ben and Sam discuss a wild Wednesday night on the trade market, covering a three-team involving involving the Dodgers, Braves, and Marlins, the Cole Hamels deal, and the Mets’ almost-trade for Carlos Gomez.

Since it cost a lot to win And even more to lose You and me bound to spend some time Wondering what to choose It goes to show you don't ever know Watch each card you play And make it slow Wait until that diesel car rides Good morning and welcome to episode 710 of Effectively Wild,

the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives, presented by the Play Index at BaseballReference.com. I'm Ben Lindberg of Grantland, joined by Sam Miller of Baseball Perspectives. Hello. Hey, how are you? I'm all right. How are you?

Pretty good. Okay. So we're doing another podcast, and we have lots of things to talk about. Anything to talk about before we talk about trades? Yeah. Andy McCullough came through and confirmed, answered the question, and he says, and I have no reason to doubt him, I take him at his word, though it is a convenient answer for him,

he confirms that he did use scuttled intentionally as a nautical term when writing about the plans to reenact Cortez's burning of the ships. Reenact? Enact. Enact the legend. Enact the never actually happened. Right. You can't reenact a thing that didn't happen. So, yes, so he says scuttled was intentional. I will note that if you simply search right now for Carlos Gomez and scuttled,

search right now for Carlos Gomez and scuttled, you will see many, many, many non-nautical uses of the word scuttled to describe what has happened to that trade, the Mets arranged Carlos Gomez trade. So

scuttled is a natural word to use when such a thing gets scrapped. So I'll just note that. But, I mean, I don't know. Andy doesn't seem like a liar. It's possible that he's falsely implanted this memory in his brain and he actually thinks that he did come up with this clever usage.

It's possible. But I theorize that it was intentional. And I think it was intentional. Deadspin, we know now that the trade was scuttled over the Mets' concerns over Gomez's hip. Maybe Carlos Gomez is a boat. Maybe that's why the trade wasn't completed. The x-rays revealed you are a boat. Yes.

So that was one of the strange events in an eventful Wednesday trade deadline night. Wilmer Flores and Zach Wheeler were reportedly traded to the Brewers for Carlos Gomez. And then the trade was called off. And it wasn't. Sandy Alderson said that social media got ahead of The actual transaction He didn't deny that that Was the deal or that there had been Some sort of deal in place

But it hadn't been finalized and There were reportedly medical Concerns about Gomez's hip Although Gomez's agent Denied that there's ever been a problem with Gomez's hip. So it's a strange thing. I don't know. Maybe more will come out or maybe we won't find out what happened. But would have been an interesting deal, was an interesting non-deal. Flores got very emotional on the field. And that was a moment that we don't typically see a player

showing that much emotion on the field after being traded, mostly because players who have been traded are not on the field. And so the Mets took a lot of criticism for leaving him out there. Although, as it turned out, there was no trade. So although you would think that if someone was going to tell him that he had been traded, that you would then want him out of the game, not only to preserve the deal and ensure that he didn't suddenly get hurt and break it off, but because he couldn't have been playing the best defense that he possibly could at that moment with those emotions running through him. But it was interesting to see that he cared that much because he

hasn't exactly been embraced by Mets fans because he's been asked to do something that he probably shouldn't have been asked to do play shortstop but he's been with the mets for a third of his life roughly almost since he was a teenager and so maybe he hates milwaukee also is another thing because of the lack of peaches that you once said that it had i'm curious if you think that there is anything in a medical that could be used to justify breaking off the trade uh for a guy who has played like 60 of the last 61 games at a high level yeah it's i mean it's not a seven-year deal no it's not it's not a two-month rental and it's a very right and it's's what he signed for this year and next year.

Exactly. Yeah, I don't know. What would the alternative be? I mean, the initial assumption was that it was Zach Wheeler because he had Tommy John surgery and he's coming back from that. And it would seem like there could be more problems with him. But if it was Gomez, I don't know what it would be for Gomez. What's the alternative that the Wilpons suddenly realized they couldn't actually afford it and they wanted to get out of it?

Plausible. Yeah. Although it's a very reasonable deal. He's signed to a contract that doesn't pay him what he's worth although he still makes a lot more than wilmer flores and zach wheeler so it's still salary but i i don't know i mean with a pitcher i could see it more oh yeah sure right you know like you see like a fraying ligament or something and it hasn't actually hurt the pitcher or he's pitched through it or it hasn't affected him yet but with carlos gomez a pretty durable position player i i don't know what it would be i guess i guess there

could be a like a hip labrum issue that hasn't manifested itself yet but could but hard to understand it's a weird one i mean in fairness in fairness to the Mets, Gomez did complain of some sort of troublesome right hip issue in June that he played through and his stolen bases are down and his defensive stats are down. So even though whatever it was, wasn't serious enough to keep him off the field, it might be serious enough that you wouldn't want to give up Zach Wheeler for him. But there were two major trades that did happen yesterday and and Gomez it sounds like might still go somewhere to some team that doesn't mind his medicals but wait wait wait real quick yeah the other half of that will the Mets get someone now who isn't Gomez whose medicals they

don't mind yeah I I don't know we we uh we mocked the orioles for not doing things because of medicals right or we we talked about that was it grant balfour right yes grant balfour was one of them and then he has been terrible right and weren't people saying like wasn't there an idea that that was the players wouldn't trust the orioles now and yes that yeah that didn't happen because they had a deal in principle and then it was called off because of something in the medical yeah so i at least the mets have have tried seemingly it seemed like they were about to kind of kick their mets reputation because they went and got Uribe and Klippard and then if they had gotten Gomez too then you really couldn't have said that they were just doing

the Mets thing where they just didn't go for it or they didn't be aggressive because of the Wilpons money and that sort of thing they were very close to kicking that or to making that sort of snark irrelevant or obsolete for the moment and then maybe now it's back on because of will merforez and because of calling off the gomez deal so i don't know clearly they're trying clearly sandy alderson is trying being willing yeah being willing to trade zach wheeler you know being being this publicly willing to trade willing to trade zach wheeler will get you a lot of phone calls and uh and uh you know it's i i look these people are much more complicated than the two sentence narratives we have of of them in our heads but uh the dodgers uh love of tommy pitchers, the way that they're, I don't know, maybe the Braves and Marlins trade and getting Alex Wood makes this somewhat less necessary now.

But you could sort of actually start to put together a kind of plausible Yaziel Puig rumor if you wanted to. Yeah, that'd be fun. Puig in New York. It would be super fun. So, okay, so we can talk about that Dodgers deal, which we briefly talked about yesterday, and I kind of shrugged and we talked about it in two minutes because at the time it was not all that interesting.

It was a two-player deal in which Matt Latos was going from the Marlins to the Dodgers and it looked like the Dodgers had just sort of used money to pick up a bad contract, which in a sense is still what they did, but they made the deal much better. They turned it into a three-team deal. For a while, it seemed like it was falling apart like the Gomez deal did later. But in the end, it was a three-team deal. So the Dodgers ended up getting Leitos and Michael Morse, as we knew. But the Braves got involved, and the Dodgers also acquired Alex Wood and Jose Peraza,

who's a pretty real prospect, and Jim Johnson and Luis Avilan, and the Braves got Hector Oliveira from the Dodgers, the middle infielder or infielder that the Dodgers signed for a lot of money just over this past offseason, as well as Paco Rodriguez and Zach Bird and a competitive balance pick. And then the Marlins ended up with three of the least famous people in the deal, Jeff Brigham, Victor Araujo, and Kevin Guzman. Oh, but Ben. Yes. They got the most famous people in the deal.

They got Benjamin Franklin and Andrew Jackson. Yes, they got cash. So this is the Marlins being the Marlins again, right? Going from reloading and loading over a winter to unloading during the season. It's a less pronounced version of what they did the offseason after the big Jose Reyes trade and everything, sort of. They traded for Latos just this past winter,

and then their season didn't go so well, and Stanton is hurt, and they're out of it, and so they have now unloaded the guy that they loaded, and Morse also, and they've got money now that they didn't have before. So for the Marlins, it's just kind of Marlins. I don't know whether it's like punchline Marlins it's just kind of Marlins I don't know whether it's Like punchline Marlins Because it's not as if

They were playing well and then They gave up they weren't Playing well they were out of it so In that sense you You would recommend that they trade Matt Latos now there's no real reason For them to hold on to Matt Latos but It is another example Of yo-yoing Marlins from competition to sale, which is kind of their entire history.

And what the Braves got back, or what the Dodgers got back, seems much better, much more impressive than it was yesterday. Yesterday, it was fine. They got a cheaper starting pitcher They had been rumored Connected to all of the best pitchers on the market And still are, by the way, this morning As we record, Bob Nightingale tweeted MLB executives are absolutely convinced

That David Price will wind up with the Dodgers So they might not be done The executives are absolutely convinced that David Price will wind up with the Dodgers, so they might not be done. But this is maybe a deal that more fits the Dodgers' way of operating that we have seen so far since their new front office came in, which is not necessarily signing or trading for the most expensive, highest profile person, but going kind of not cheap, but using their money in maybe a more efficient way. So Oliveira is the guy that they just signed this offseason for $62.5 million, and they outbid the Braves for him the Braves wanted him at the time and so the Dodgers used that money to acquire him and then made him into a trade ship and traded him to the team that had not had enough money to sign him and in exchange for that, they got Wood, who has been really good.

And he is not David Price, obviously, but he is a lefty who has been very effective. And he's also had Tommy John surgery and he's got scary looking mechanics. And so that kind of fits into the the dodgers pattern of acquiring injured guys or high risk guys and you know hoping that they maybe are better at preventing them from getting hurt than other teams would be which we haven't necessarily seen the evidence for yet but would right now at least and for the short term is a very effective not expensive starting pitcher and Peraza entered the season as a top 50 prospect probably and maybe has headed down since then but he's still been a 21 year old in AAA and the Dodgers have lots of middle infield

prospects so I don't know whether he ends up playing for the Dodgers have lots of middle infield prospects, so I don't know whether he ends up playing for the Dodgers or going somewhere else, but certainly a good person to have. So between Wood and Latos, who has been better and looked better lately, this is a pretty big upgrade for money and a guy who until recently was money so they didn't make themselves any worse right now and they got a bunch of good players a few things in there uh peraza's probably has actually gotten better since preseason. He was consensus top 50 on the midseason lists and is now up around like 30 on some of them. We had him at baseball prospectus 45th. So super legit prospect.

I mean, that's 20 guys were promoted and are no longer on the prospect list. So maybe he just hung around and moved up as other people moved off but yeah he's a guy says a guy who has never been on a list no i've never been impressed oh it's just it's so easy to get on a top 50 you just wait for everybody else all you have to do is wait for everybody else to get older and then you just somehow like what just don't get older no he's older too he had to keep moving sure okay yeah uh the marlins uh if there's anything interesting in it it's just that i mean if there's anything distinctly marlins about it it's that they kind of i don't know we'll'll probably talk about this, but they didn't do what the Phillies did, which is the Phillies took on some money.

They didn't make getting rid of money the entire point. And they took on some money in the Cole Hamels deal so that they could get actual talent back. They had veterans, and they said, well, we don't need these veterans, what can we get for them? How about talent? And the Marlins said well we have these veterans that we don't have any use for, what can we get for them? How about

money? And so it's just that's what the Marlins do and that's probably why it fits into a Marlins narrative. I mean they had Latos and they said the best thing that we can do with Latos um is make sure Mike Morris never sits uh on our on our couches again um now the the thing that's amazing about the Dodgers first of all this trade is a lot of ways, this reminds you of that day, the Jimmy Rollins, you know. Winter meetings.

Right, exactly. Where it's like you're, okay, so you get, like this trade is like feels nine levels more complicated than anybody else's trades. Mm-hmm. And so you just have to applaud them like i don't even know like it takes me a long time figuring out who's who who else is getting anything yeah because it's like the brains like this is this is an sat question diagram this trade

and it's pretty impressive that i don't know it's it's impressive it's not necessarily impressive but it's fun and it kind of adds to the perception that this is a front office that that does everything uh with um like a kind of an extra layer of thought to it they didn't just say oh we can get latos what do we need to do to get Latos? They're like, okay, well, we can get Latos, and this is an opportunity to engage in discussions about other players and figure out who else we can bring into this. And it's very, like, Moneyball, didn't Moneyball kind of make a thing about how Billy Bean was always in

these three-team trades? He was always insinuating himself into these three-team trades? Yeah. And those were incredibly simple compared to this. Right? Yeah. Anyway, I'll note that. But anyway, the other thing that's amazing about this

is that this is a huge trade with like 50 players and a top 50 prospect and like many named players and pre-R players. I mean, is Shelby Miller a good comp for Alex Wood in terms of when he was traded? Yeah, not bad. I mean, he's been more effective probably, but is maybe riskier, but age-wise and control-wise sure he's a he's a tremendous asset

if you had found out yesterday morning or maybe not yesterday morning because the noise at the deadline is just so great but if you woke up one day and there was a rumor that the Braves were actively shopping Alex Wood like that could carry a news cycle that's like he's a big deal and uh and he just comes out of nowhere and they get him. Anyway, my point is that in all of this, I have not really seen anybody do the reckoning or care how much money this costs the Dodgers. Money is a complete non-factor. I don't know if they're spending more or less in these deals. I don't know if they shed money. I don't know if they gain money. I don't know if it's $300 million. I don't know if it's spending more or less in these deals. I don't know if they shed money. I don't know if they gain money.

I don't know if it's $300 million. I don't know if it's $4 million. It's just like whatever, money, money. It doesn't really matter. And so we know this about the Dodgers. They have a way of spending money carelessly that nobody else can really get away with at this point in time. But what we also know is that money in baseball is not a totally fluid currency it is uh it is not like having cash in america it is more like having i don't know

what it is but it's more like having let's say it's more like having um like uh i don't know, cash, maybe cash in prison or something where you can't really spend it on anything. And so these other thing, like the other proxy currencies develop and what they have done, knowing that you can't just go to the Braves and say we'll give you $70 million for Alex Wood because we think his surplus value is X and we want him and so we'll pay you cash. That's not allowed.

You can't just go buy Jose Peraza. Also not allowed. So they have money, but they're not actually allowed to go spend that money on anything they want. And the things that they want are not actually always available for money. And they had this i don't know if it was intentional or not but if it was it's like one of the most genius moves they basically got olivera for to be like uh energy potential like like he is just this he is this thing that they got to sign and they got to legally sink 30 million dollars of value into him that they can then trade because that's the bonus right he's worth roughly 60 million dollars as a signee and that's why they paid him roughly 60 million dollars but half of that because of the international signing rules half of that came in

the form of or not because the international signing rules half of that came in the form of or not because the international signing rules they just gave him a bonus they just gave him a bonus yeah right anyway so they give him this bonus and then they uh and then they just trade that that surplus 30 million dollars as though it's money like they're basically giving the braves a 30 million dollar discount on the play they wanted right yeah and i, they may have liked him as a player too, but I'm sure they didn't think he'd be a bust. But yeah, he was a guy that they could do this with. Yeah.

So anyway, it's like they're finding ways to turn their money into other things and then turn those other things into players. It's like one extra step you have to do. Yeah. And Oliveira is 30. Yeah. He was, I mean, he was signed as an established veteran guy out of Cuba, and he is close to Major League ready, I suppose.

I mean, he's in AAA this season in only 20 games or so across three minor league levels. He's hit.350 with, you know,.392 on base,.493 slugging. He's had pretty good plate discipline. I mean, he might be able to... Close to major league ready? He's close to declining. That too, yeah.

I mean, right, he is not a project, like one of the young players that you signed from Cuba and put him in the minors for a while and hope he develops. He is ready to start contributing now to the extent that he'll ever be. But yeah, 30 years old, he is not really a long-term asset. And so they got a whole lot out of him and so hector olivero would be playing in the majors for like 27 20 probably 2019 right now so maybe he'll be playing for the braves very shortly but but yeah not not really at a high level for that long, most likely. So now the Dodgers, I mean, rumors about price notwithstanding,

Dodgers have a pretty good-looking rotation right now. I mean, not only the one-two punch of Clayton Kershaw and Zach Greinke, which is better than any other team's one-two punch, but also Brett Anderson and Zach Lee and Mike Bolsinger, who's been a really good find for them, who was probably a stats-based signing, and Latos and Wood. So seven guys, five or six of them, pretty reliable.

Yeah, we've had this conversation before, though. What? About the Dodgers. About what? Their rotation and how many? About how they have eight guys. They're incredibly deep, but basically it's the top two. And then everybody else is flawed.

I mean, it's two great guys. Everybody else is fine. It's fine. It's not like they're not gonna be the 2010 phillies though right i mean it's it's fine they have two great pitchers and then they also have debt yeah it's exactly where they were before the start of the 2013 season and the 2014 season yeah so but not this year this year they did not have that. This year they went a different way,

and we wondered how they were going to survive it when inevitably a couple of pitchers got hurt. And this is how they survived it, by signing Hector Oliveira. Not bad. So if they sign Price, that seems like it would be less of a Dodgers, a distinctive Dodgers deal If they just trade Urias or Seager or some

Really highly respected Prospect for A rental ace If that happens, that wouldn't really Fit into the kind of Dodgers Mold that we're talking about So we'll see Whether that actually happens. If they add

David Price to a rotation with Kershaw and Cranky, that's not fair. But even as it is, they seem to have made a major upgrade without giving up really anything that was helping them win today. So that's a heck of a move. And probably kind of depressing for Giants fans. The Giants had moved within half a game of them. It's not depressing. It shouldn't be depressing for Giants fans. The situation as it is, is that the Dodgers have been doing this.

We all knew that they were going to keep doing this. This is how they have acted since they had new ownership. So all baseball fans know that this is what the Dodgers represent. And in the meantime, since the Dodgers have begun doing this, the Giants won two World Series. It is particularly fun to beat the Dodgers when they do this. And you have a, I don't know, I think that you always have a sense that whether the Dodgers made this trade or not, you'd have a sense that they were the powerhouse to worry about at all times

because they have the resources. So I would say that this doesn't particularly change anything. And if the Dodgers win the World Series, then the Dodgers win the World Series. All right. I don't think it's – this is not like the Rays in 2009 watching the Red Sox and the Yankees reload. These are two different teams that have had two different ways of building their rosters, and one of the teams has had much more success than the other. Okay.

Can we just say one real quick thing? Sure. Jim Johnson, how unfair is it to Billy Bean that he gets Jim Johnson, it's like seen as sort of a strange Billy Bean move, it completely blows up. We'll probably be talking about the time that Billy Bean screwed up and signed Jim Johnson.

He trades him for nothing. And now Jim Johnson is just exactly what he always was. And like, how do you even do baseball? He's exactly what he was. There's just this one year. His ERAs.

267, 2499 294 7 225 it's like seven like it's not like he had a 4.15 era it's not like you know two balls nestled into the corner and cost him three run it's like he went from being one of the best relievers in baseball to being the worst to being really good again for no reason. And you gave up stuff to get him. It's almost like the A's as a whole this year. Just outscoring everyone and losing tons of games anyway. Yeah. Someone should write a book about that.

All right. Someone should write a book about that. All right. So the other interesting trade that happened last night was the Cole Hamels trade from the Phillies to the Rangers. Another deal with lots of players involved, although this is a more typical sale for prospects and cash relief. prospects and cash relief, although maybe not quite as much cash relief as one would have expected because, as you said, the Phillies prioritized getting talent back, and they did get talent back. And so the Rangers, I mean, I guess the most interesting aspect of the trade is that Hamels went to the Rangers, and I would think there wouldn't be a long list of teams in the Rangers position in the current year that made a deal like the Hamels deal. The Rangers are 48-52 right now. Their playoff odds are single digits.

So this isn't really a 2015 move. If Hamels is great for the rest of the year and they happen to go on a crazy run, wonderful. But this is more of a deal that's oriented toward the future when the Rangers have Yu Darvish back. And Hamels would be a strong number two behind that. And then there are young guys and Martin Perez is back and Gigi Gonzalez. And then there are young guys, and Martin Perez is back, and Gigi Gonzalez, and they'd have a fairly strong rotation top to bottom going into next year, assuming Darvish doesn't have setbacks. So that's what this is pointed toward. This is done with that in mind. And that's interesting, right? That's not usually the case that the guy who is one of the best players available at the deadline

goes to a team that's thinking about the next year and the year beyond that. But then again, I guess Hamels isn't the typical pitcher who gets traded at the deadline because he's signed for a while at a fairly reasonable rate. He's both those things, though. He is essentially... How many years is it? He's signed, I think, for four more years. Let me see.

So he's... Putting aside this year, he's Cole Hamels for four years. Signed it at a not unreasonable price. And that's great. If Cole Hamels were a free agent this year... Three more years plus a team option. Every team in baseball would sign him for what he's owed And that's great. Like if Cole Hamels were a free agent this year. Three more years plus a team option. Okay.

Every team in baseball would sign him for what he's owed and for a great deal more than what he's owed. He has a great acquisition starting November 1st for the Rangers, right? He is on top of that roughly Brandon Finnegan and the rest of the return for Johnny Cueto. Like he is roughly that much more valuable to another team than he is to the Rangers. And so it is odd just that the Rangers essentially aren't getting that. They're not getting a Johnny Cueto package's worth of value because they're not going to be using Hamels in October this year.

And so they value him that much more than everybody else, right? Or they just had more that they could deal from. Yeah. And there will be starting pitchers available on the free agent market this year. It's not like there wouldn't have been options and there may be enough of them that you think you could get a decent deal on one somewhere, but they wanted to take care of that now. And Amos seems like a really good bet. He's been around for a while.

He's 31, but he has pitched at a high level. He is still pitching at a high level, and he hasn't had injury problems. He's been durable. He's been extremely consistent. He's never really had maybe that one season that everyone goes crazy about. When I wrote about him earlier this week at Grantland, I mentioned that he is working on his 10th season with a fit between three and four, 10th consecutive season with a fit between three and four, and at least 100 innings pitched. And there are only five guys who've ever done that. And that's using baseball prospectus as fit, by the way,

which includes hit batters with walks. But there are only five guys who've ever done that. And four of them are Hall of Famers, not high profile hall of famers they're like early wind and people from early baseball history and warren spawn but it's a it's kind of a cole hamelsy stat because he's been really good for a long time but hasn't had a just crazy season where he was the best pitcher in baseball but that that's fine. And, you know, he kind of fits the profile of a guy who'll age pretty well as far as what he throws and so seems like a solid long-term bet. And that is valuable for the Rangers,

who've had an incredible number of injuries over the past couple years that have really sabotaged their seasons. And so the guys that they got back, so it's a long list, Jake Dyckman, Matt Harrison, Nick Williams, Jorge Alfaro, Jake Thompson, Gerard Eikhoff, and Alec Asher. Harrison is in there for contract reasons. So the Phillies took on Matt Harrison, essentially, and then paid another, what, nine or 10 million of Hamels' deal. So the Phillies ended up paying for about half of the contracts they took on, which is a pretty hefty amount. And, you know, Harrison came back recently, obviously has had serious injuries.

Maybe he makes the Phillies' current, you you know worst rotation ever slightly more palatable without hamels in that he could eat some innings but or he could get hurt again but the real headliners are williams and alfaro and uh and those guys are are regarded as good prospects. They've also been high-risk prospects. I would say that Williams before this year looked like the Ruben Rivera type of prospect that we were talking about last week where Brian Cashman said that today Ruben Rivera wouldn't have been such a big prospect

because we're smarter now and we know the things that lead to success and and nick williams had you know last year uh he had like a 30 strikeout rate between high a and double a he never walked he walked like four percent of the time and scouts like his tools and and you know he has power and he's 21 so there were things to like but it was really hard to find precedence for a prospect with his sort of plate discipline at those levels that actually turned into anything but this year he's kind of corrected that so in double a he has struck out only 18.6 percent of the time and walked 7.7 percent of the time so and he's done that despite continuing to hit home runs he's got 13 homers and 415 plate appearances so that's interesting i guess he is he's sort of a win for

the scouts in a sense in that they thought that he would develop when the projection systems couldn't really find a comparable for him. And now the stats like him better because of what he's doing. But he has sort of remade himself without losing the things that people liked about him. So he has now maybe made himself into a slightly lower risk prospect. Jorge Alfaro is maybe still pretty high risk in that not only is he hurt and out for the rest of the season, but he kind of has the Nick Williams-esque plate discipline numbers now. So in AA this year, he struck out 29.5 percent of the time

he walked 4.3 percent of the time he's also a catcher who is regarded as a good defensive catcher with a good arm so that's a little more encouraging than an outfielder but those are two real prospects that we've heard the names of many times and then there were a bunch of lesser known prospects who add some more value so the Phillies did fine like all of the holding on to Hamels and why are they holding on to Hamels and Ruben Amaro's crazy and he's asking for every team's top prospect and all of that and you know clearly he didn't insist on the's top prospect and all of that. And, you know, clearly he didn't insist on the Rangers' top prospect. Joey Gallo's not in the deal. Gonzalez is not in the deal.

So he didn't get that guy. But he got good guys that are regarded as a pretty good package. And the Phillies were willing to spend money to get talent back, which is what you would hope that a team like the Phillies would do. So on the whole, probably a deal that makes sense for both sides. I think, well, definitely, yeah, it's a great deal for the Phillies, I think. And it makes me think that we should probably never, ever, ever criticize a GM

for not having traded a player yet. And I'm not sure if that's true or not. I mean, like the equivalent situation with Justin Upton turned out not good for the Diamondbacks when we knew Justin Upton was on the trading block for a long time. And they didn't trade him, and it sort of looked bad and wondered why wouldn't they get anything from him.

And then they ended up getting not that much for him. But yeah, I mean, Amaro was mocked a lot for a thing that he probably shouldn't have been mocked for. And at the end of it, it turned out really good for him. I think that that return was good. And I don't know if you would, I'm not sure. There was a lot of mockery about what he was asking for when we sort of knew specific names. But do you think that if, let's say that this trade, let's say he had gone to Texas and

asked for this trade and texas had said no thanks and then somehow that got leaked yeah would twitter have mocked this trade proposal would they have said up there goes amaro again i don't think so i think no if it had been you know gallo and gonzalez and al faro or something, but I don't think so. This is about right. Yeah, this feels about right. Diekmann going to Texas, by the way. Oh, right, yes.

He got lumped into the... Yes, sorry, reliever, Phillies reliever, former Phillies reliever. And at the same time, there are rumors, which maybe now have come to nothing, but there were rumors that the Blue Jays were talking to the Rangers about Giovanni Gallardo. So even as they were trading for one solid number two type starter, they were talking about trading away another. Oh my gosh, you just put Giovanni Gallardo and Cole Hamels in the same category? They're in that number two starter category, I would say, but at opposite ends of it.

I think that, I don't know. I think maybe I like more Cole. Maybe I like Cole Hamels more than you do. I like Cole Hamels. So just curious. Let's say that Cole Hamels were a free agent at the end of this year, as Johnny Cueto is, as Matt Latos is. Let's say that Cueto is 100. What percentage of a return would you expect Hamels to get relative to Cueto for a two and a half month rental? And what percentage do you think Latos would get if you had gone for an actual package of talent instead of just dumping Mike Morse?

Okay, so we're not saying how big their deals, free agent deals are? No, no, no. No? No, we're saying, I'm trying, I basically just want to get a sense of how valuable you think Cole Hamels is relative to Cueto. Okay, so we couldn't say they're free agent deals, right?

Like what percentage of the money that they'll get this offseason? I guess, but then you're talking about things like age and long-term value, and now we're into years instead of money, which is how these things always hinge on years. I mean, I just want to know an estimate. Okay, I'm just going to think an estimate is yeah i'm just okay i'm just gonna i'm gonna think of it as a free agent deal but i'll say the percentage of the value i i'll say hamels would get 90 of cueto yeah because yeah he he hasn't been as effective over the last several years but probably a little less risky less worrisome physically a little bit older

but but yeah he's he's pretty close i would say and latos 40 of quato yeah good sounds about right so so you get what i'm saying about how the how hamels is basically you're trading for two things. You're trading for a Cueto and you're trading for Cole Hamels, right? Does what I was saying make any sense? I'm not sure if I've made that clear. All right. Remake it. All right. So for the Rangers, they get Hamels from November 1st onward.

They also get him from now until November 1st. So if you break those into two acquisitions, then everybody who traded for Hamels would get November 1st onward, but only some teams would really get from now until November 1st. Because if the Marlins had traded for him, for instance, from now until November 1st would be completely pointless. You get zero value out of it, other than having a nice guy around. And the Rangers are at that end. They basically are going to get no value out of it. And that, Hamels from now to November 1st, is a very valuable asset. It's so valuable that it is roughly 90% of what the Royals gave up to get Johnny Cueto.

And that was a big package. And so it's just that Texas has basically paid that size premium to get Hamels from November 1st onward. And so probably that means that they like Hamels more, or they think they need him more, or maybe it means they have more room in their budget, and maybe it means that they have more prospect surplus they can trade for. prospect surplus they can trade for but just to think that texas would get hamels puts their i don't want to say overpay because that sounds pejorative but their ability to pay more than anybody else in perspective and so that that's probably a way of thinking about this package relative to what everybody else was willing to give up. Tom Hodricourt of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel tweets, The more details I get on Nix Gomez trade, the more it sounds as if it became more a financial matter than a medical matter.

And Gomez is only signed for, what, $9 million next year or something? $9 million. That's not a lot of money for Carlos Gomez. By the way, Jake Deichman has crazy stats. Oh, yeah. He's phenomenal. He hasn't been great this year. He also has a crazy...

You should spend a long time looking at how he throws a baseball. He also has a crazy, you should spend a long time looking at how he throws a baseball. It's like, it is like Chris Sale doing the Monty Python funny silly walk sketch. That, like, he throws so weird. So he, over the past two years, or, you know, one plus seasons, which is over 100 innings for him has a 115 era minus which means his era has been 15 percent worse than the league average after adjusting for park and everything and he has a 78 fit minus which means that his fit has been you know 22 percent better than the league average over the same span He has struck out over 30% of batters

And walked 12% of batters So that's 12.5k per 9 in like a 5 walks per 9 And he has a high ground ball rate So this year he's got an over 50 percent ground ball rate and he also over that almost two season span has a 369 babbit so he has crazy stats he strikes out everyone walks everyone gets grounders and gives up a ton of hits. Interesting. I want to show you one of my favorite GIFs that I've made. This is a GIF of Jake Diekmann throwing an intentional ball, but the GIF plays backwards. But the GIF plays backwards.

Okay, I'm watching. That's weird looking. It is weird looking. Okay. Anyway, so stare at that for a while. I will link to that weird looking GIF in the Facebook group. All right. And meanwhile, the Cardinals got a billion dollar TV deal while

all this other stuff was happening. Good for them. Good for the Cardinals, everyone. Feels good for the Cardinals. I get it. They traded for Brandon Moss, too. All right. So that's it. Emails, podcast at baseballperspectives.com. Maybe we'll be able to do an email show sometime soon, or

depending on trades, maybe not. And Facebook group, Facebook.com slash groups slash Effectively Wild. You can support our sponsor, the Play Index. Use the coupon code BP. Get the discounted price of $30 on a one-year subscription. We'll be back soon.