Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 77: The Teams in the Winter Spending Sweet Spot

Episode Date: November 6, 2012

Ben and Sam discuss which teams might benefit most from adding a few wins this winter.

No, Ben! No! Good morning, and welcome to episode 77 of Effectively Wild, the Baseball Prospectus Daily Podcast. In New York, I am Ben Lindberg, and in Long Beach, California, he is Sam Miller. I don't hear any crickets, and I haven't heard crickets in ages. Are they still with us? There are a few. The neighbors still have them more than I do. I'm not exactly sure why that is, although I have stepped on many.

Intentionally? Yes. Oh, wow. sure why that is although i have stepped on many intentionally yes oh wow crickets are great because uh crickets are almost impossible to step on with the first step they're incredibly quick uh but then after their first leap away they're like okay that's cool now and they just stay there and so you can just sort of very calmly go over and and um and over and get rid of them with the second one. This is a side to you I've never suspected. I wonder. There are probably people who aren't going to like me as much now. I don't think I've ever killed a cricket.

I've killed many other insects, but no crickets. Maybe because I live in an apartment and there aren't any. maybe because I live in an apartment and there aren't any. So we said on yesterday's episode that we would be doing a listener email show on Wednesday, which was true, and we will be doing one on Wednesday. And we have a couple questions lined up and a couple guests lined up, although you are still welcome to submit your questions and comments to podcast at baseballprospectus.com. Maybe we'll read them and talk about them, or maybe we'll just laugh about them privately.

But we do have another listener email that we want to talk about today that we didn't want to throw into the listener email show because it probably would have been a really, really long show or we would have had to skimp on this one. So we're just going to talk about this one now. So it's from listener Mike and people should probably start telling us where they are or something or what their Twitter handles are or something like that. So we can feel like more of a community. But Mike says, gentlemen, your show has become my favorite

baseball related podcast for its lack of fluff and smart insights. It takes balls slash brains to mostly issue playoff predictions. You are an essential part of my morning shower routine. So hearing that you'll be keeping the daily schedule makes me very pleased. How does it make you feel to know that people listen to us in the shower? Well, I mean, I assume that everybody who listens to us does take showers. And so to me, it's not really that notable. Okay.

Well, I'm glad we can be part of such an intimate routine. Mike goes on, as for a topic, I'd like to see something to the effect of tipping point teams for free agents. to the effect of tipping point teams for free agents. What I mean is teams who fall into that 85 to 90 win range due to a weakness or two that could be addressed via free agency, or competitive teams that are aging and could fall out of the 85 to 90 range if they don't do something this offseason. When all is said and done, I guess I'm looking for a top five list of teams in need of free agency, and then your guys' suggestions

of how they could fill those voids, considering salary and the degree of impact their signing would have to have. For what it's worth, Mike. I like that. Wow. I like that sign-off. So what Mike is really asking us to do here is make predictions, but he's cleverly disguised it as something else, I think.

So we both thought this would be interesting to talk about. So I guess maybe we're really trying to predict which teams will finish in this range. And there were six teams in that range in 2012. Two of them, the Tigers and the Cardinals, made the playoffs. The other four did not. So this is kind of the line of demarcation where you pretty much have to be in that range to make the playoffs with a few exceptions. So wins when you're in that range are worth more. You have more incentive to add wins to your team because they pay off in cool ways like playoff berths

that you wouldn't have otherwise had. So you're willing to spend more than you might have maybe otherwise. So I guess, no, you wouldn't. I don't know. I'm kind of, you're probably sick of hearing me say this, but I'm kind of against that premise. I think that that idea has maybe become a little bit outdated. The sort of maybe the level of prognosticative precision that we have is so low that we don't. I mean, it seems to me way beyond my power to say a team is between 85 and 90.

And I've kind of moved on to this sort of idea that I haven't really fleshed out that there are no windows anymore, that everybody's window is every year with a very few exceptions. Like the Astros, I would say, are an exception. And there might be one or two other teams that are exceptions, but otherwise I kind of think that every team should be trying to improve every year, including this year. But anyway, maybe that's just my way of saying that I might accidentally stray from this topic a little bit. I might not, though. I really don't know what I'm going to say. I know that I'm going to make a mistake, and we'll have a correction or omission or error to report tomorrow.

Well, I picked five teams in the spirit of playing along and enriching Mike's shower on Tuesday morning. So I came up with the Rays, which this is a team who was in that range this year. They won 90 games, actually, in that range this year. They won 91 games, or they won 90 games, actually. And just sort of expect them to be in the same sort of range.

And I don't know exactly what they'll do, but they won't sign a starting pitcher via free agency. That is a pretty safe bet, as I don't think Andrew Friedman has ever done that. So it seems like they are a team that might add someone like an Ichiro or a Napoli or a Euclid or someone of that sort, maybe a Melky and or possibly trade some pitching for an outfielder or someone to replace BJ Upton. There have been a bunch of rumors about Helixson and Shields and trading starting pitching for other things is something that the Rays have done before.

I like how you added an article to each of those names as though they might get Melky or they might just get a Melky. They might get just a Melky, you know, a Melky type, you know, like a guy who's coming off of a big five or six win year and was going to win the batting title but then was disrupted by steroids and now can be had for a bargain, that kind of guy, a Melky. It's a good market for Melkies. Can I just note real quick that Jerry Krasnick did his annual off-season polling

of the GMs today, and one of the questions he asked was how many years and how much money will Melky get in free agency? And one executive said one year, $2 million. Wow. Which seems, considering that Bartolo Colon got, I think, twice that, that seems like maybe optimistic. Yes, or pessimistic. Yeah, depending on your perspective.

Yeah. The other teams I have, I have the Brewers as one of these teams. And I probably wouldn't have included the Brewers, but I was talking to Jack Moore earlier, and Jack Moore directed me to something that Jack Moore wrote about the Brewers and about how they had a really historically awful bullpen and that teams that have had historically awful bullpens have tended to improve quite a bit the following year. Brewers won 83 games in 2012 and I sort of they lost uh Granke for half a season or they won't have him uh at all and they won't have Randy Wolfe and probably they won't have Markham and so I wasn't really expecting big things but Jack found that that teams with bullpens that bad improved by an average of 13 wins the following season. I don't think they'll do that, but I think that they could improve enough to get themselves into that range.

And it seems like they are mostly interested, as you would expect, in relievers and some starters. So I could see them going for, I don't know, a Guthrie. A Guthrie. If I could jump on this topic as well, I wrote about the Orioles and how they had, much to their success was due to their good bullpen and similarly found that essentially there's no correlation from year to year in team bullpen strength.

And partly that might be because teams tend to respond and make adjustments to their bullpen if they have extremely good or extremely bad years. But I think that it's I described it as the most fleeting way to win. If you're winning behind your bullpen, you essentially are giving all those runs back before the next season starts because those are just almost random runs that you've saved and i think it's sort of the same uh with the brewers they i i mean i i don't know that they need to do anything i i look at the bullpen of the brewers and i don't see something that is sort of structurally broken personally um and uh i i just i think i said something similar with the Angels. I said that it's the easiest thing to fix

because you basically just have to close your eyes, spin around three times and it's fixed and that might be the case with the Brewers as well. Krasnick, when he asked who was going to get Josh Hamilton, the Brewers, surprisingly to me, were the most popular. There have been a bunch of rumors linking them. I think because their hitting coach, Johnny Nairn, is Hamilton's former accountability buddy.

And so there's a tie between those two. That's really not their weakness, though. I guess maybe if you don't think that Aoki is for real, maybe it is. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, they moved Corey Hart from the outfield because they had too many outfielders. Yeah, there was a Doug Melvin quote about how they have the connection with Naren, but they don't have a connection with the U.S. Bank or something that they can afford Hamilton. So that, I don't know, that seems kind of unlikely.

Anyway, another team I have on my list of 85 to 90 win teams, and maybe this is a bit optimistic, but I feel like maybe you would be just as optimistic, is the Padres. Yeah, I like the Padres. but I think it's conceivable that the NL West might be slightly worse than the average division next year possibly, and they might not need 85 to 90. I mean, for practical purposes, maybe 83 to 87 is just as relevant. Yeah, I mean, they were 42 and 33 in the second half, and they've got a great farm system and some stuff on the way and and i don't think they're they're a team that i'm including on here because i think they'll

finish in that range where maybe uh spending via free agency would be helpful um but not because i think they need free agents one of the most uh or than most teams. I mean, I think they will probably sign a starter of some sort. That seems to be what they're interested in. They've been linked to Dan Heron. So I could see them going for someone like Heron or Markham or one of those Petco reclamation project types. This seems to me that they could really use a second baseman. Well, you couldn't get by without one of those.

Figuratively. Yeah, you could. And there's not a lot of second basemen out there. Yeah, which I guess sort of takes me to my next team, the A's, who need infielders, more specifically on the left side of the infield. They don't have a shortstop really at all right now, and their third baseman is Josh Donaldson. So they kind of need some help over there, but that is an area that is particularly weak in this winter's free agent class. And the plan is that Sizemore is going to move to second? I think so, and I guess Weeks will be in the picture there too.

Yeah, if Weeks were to somehow revive his career, that would allow them to move Sizemore back. So they obviously have a ton of pitching, and maybe they'll trade some of it for an infielder. They also have a ton of outfielders. Yes. And maybe they'll trade some of that for an infielder. Or maybe they'll trade some of the outfielders for pitching and then trade some of the pitching for third baseman

and then trade the third baseman for prospects. Okay. Yes, that could be true. Do you think they will realistically be somewhere in that range? I didn't know how much you felt they would backslide after the surprising season that they had. The A's? Yes.

Well, they're certainly one of the 27 teams that I think are capable of winning 85 games next year. I mean, I don't I generally probably haven't quite accepted the A's as an AL West powerhouse. My guess is that they would still be a third place team and that they might be. And I'm sorry to everybody who has a stake in the A's, but might be a distant third place team. Everybody who has a stake in the A's but might be a distant third place team. But, yeah, I mean, they're certainly capable of making the postseason. And what do they lose?

I mean, what do they lose? They lose McCarthy, but McCarthy didn't pitch that much for them last year. They lose maybe two months of Steve and Drew, the two months that they had. They get back Sizemore. They'll have Norris up for a full year instead of Suzuki. So they're basically bringing back the same team. I don't know that I would count on their rotation. As we talked about, young rotation doesn't necessarily mean certain growth, and I would maybe have some concerns about that.

Yeah, so they won, what, like 94, I think. So, yeah, I have them declining a little bit, but not a lot. And then my last team that I pretty much arbitrarily picked, I felt like maybe the AL West team that goes after Granke but doesn't get him. So I would lean towards the Rangers. And I don't know whether I'm being too pessimistic about the Rangers, but they are losing some things, most notably Josh Hamilton probably and Mike Napoli. So I don't know.

Maybe I'm being pessimistic about the Rangers. But if they do not get Granke and he goes back to the angels, I could see them maybe falling into that range. Yeah. Uh, yeah. Okay. Yeah. So who do you, wait, who do you want them to get though? Who's your, uh, man, who's, who's the guy that pushes them over the top? Um, I don't know. Maybe Upton.

Upton? I don't know who pushes them over the top, but I can see them getting Upton. Yeah. What are they going to do with their middle infield glut? Yeah, I read some speculation that maybe the a's would trade for andrews somehow oh i bet they would yeah i bet they'd be happy to do that take a lot but i bet they'd trade for profar too yes i'm sure they would uh that'd be an interesting trade i could see something like that trade some of their pitching or something yeah i think i could see that too

um well i'm gonna just i'll just say i uh my five are all of yours except for the rangers and uh i will add the angels obviously because that's are better than that yeah and because the angels are the team that i know how to talk about a little bit better than everybody else. I was probably influenced by your article from about a month ago that I think persuaded me that the Angels are better than this, even though they kind of have two starters right now. Yeah, the Angels are such an interesting team because they had the best offense, I would say, in baseball and the best defense in baseball. And that's a really astounding thing to pull off. I mean, I haven't looked to see if anybody else has done it. But to do that, to get nine position players, or I guess eight if you subtract the DH,

but to get nine position players who are both premium hitters and premium defenders is pretty spectacular. That's quite an achievement. And so then you're left with the pitching. And they're in sort of a paradoxical state where they let Heron and Santana go. And so now they have this huge hole in their rotation. But Santana and Heron were the problems last year. And so in a way, it's actually, they're in a great spot because it seems hard to replace two pitchers who are kind of as famous as those guys and who are also

making quite a bit of money. But neither one really set any kind of standard that would be hard to replace. And so to me, it seems like they are in a great position because I would think that getting two pitchers to eat innings and produce a sub-4 ERA in that park with that defense should be pretty manageable. And if you pair that with the offense and the defense, all of a sudden, I mean, their pitching was supposed to be their strength last year and it isn't anymore. I don't think they're that far away though, from getting their pitching back in place. And I don't really know that they necessarily need cranky to do it. Although cranky is the best available. They could get them. Sure.

Go ahead. But, um, yeah, I think that they are probably the team, if we're using the phrase that he used that are kind of on a tipping point going into this offseason, I think that the Angels are the team that is most able to go from 85 to 95 wins this offseason without spending $400 million on players. Okay. Are we done? Did we, do you feel, I mean, do you feel satisfied that we answered that question? I think so. I don't know that those were the five teams that most need free agents, but I think they could conceivably be the five teams that fall into that range at which you could say that a team most needs those marginal wins. Well, there's no – I mean the team that won the most games last year was 98 with the Nationals, then the Reds. I don't think either of those teams is like a dynastic powerhouse. And then after that, you drop down to I think 94. So there really isn't a bulletproof team out there. I think every team at this point needs free agents. And particularly

when you kind of factor in the added value of winning the division and not the wild card, every team that is competitive could use free agents this offseason. I think that we did a pretty good job of nailing some teams that could use free agents. Do you think that his shower is over? Yes, I was just thinking that we should probably wrap up because we're going to make him late for work. He's wasting water. Yes, yes he is.

And you probably have some crickets to kill. So we will cut this short and we'll be back on Wednesday with a couple guests who will talk while we listen, which will be wonderful.