Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 780: Good Pitchers Go West

Episode Date: December 7, 2015

Ben and Sam banter about David Price and Ryan Madson and discuss the Zack Greinke and Jeff Samardzija signings.

And I miss you, I'm going back home to the west coast. I wish you would have put yourself in my suitcase. I love you, standing all alone in a black coat. I miss you, I'm going back home to the west coast. Good morning and welcome to episode 780 of Effectively Wild, I'm going back home to the west coast Hello. How are you? I feel like a fan of good pitching in the NL West. It means I feel good because every good pitcher now pitches in the NL West. So, Ben. Yeah. Ryan Manson. Three years, $22 million. Big score for me. Let's see. I guess we can real quick do that. Granke was a big hit for me. Manson was a bigger hit for you. Well, it wasn't a bigger hit, but relative to the round, big hit for you.

And then, what, I took a hit on somebody, didn't I? Samarja. Yeah, we're talking about the Jim Bowden opposition contract draft. They don't need to know what we're talking about. No, sure. Samarja, big, big hit. That's a ludicrous deal. Well, maybe we'll talk about it. I don't think we will.

No? this deal well maybe we'll talk about it uh i don't think we will no it's i mean it's i'm mostly look my analysis is mostly that it hurts me in a game that we're playing that's so my point has been made yeah uh all right so ryan manson three years 22 million dollars rich hill one we're leading with ryansen Cranky signed No no no This is banter Rich Hill one year Six million dollars

Now Rich Hill I get it I get it I get that Rich Hill hasn't been pitching In the majors very much For a long time But neither had Ryan Madsen Ryan Madsen missed all of three years. And then he came back and he threw 63 innings and now he's getting $22 million.

Rich Hill came back and threw 29 innings, which is half as many as a starter as a starter and is only getting $6 million. And, uh, I can't make sense of this. So I want to ask you a question. From the same team. Yes, same team, yes.

I want to ask you a question. Who will throw more innings under their current contract with the Oakland Athletics, Rich Hill or Ryan Manson? You asked Twitter this question. I did, although I don't think that I was clear enough. I think probably some people thought I just meant this question. I did, although I don't think that I was clear enough. I think probably some people thought I just meant this year. Uh-huh. So over the, oh, well, okay.

So Hill was signed for one year. One year. And Madsen was signed for three. Yeah. And, okay. So I'll say that, I'll say Madsen just because longer deal and chance that Billy Bean trades Rich Hill. No chance that he trades Ryan Madsen just because longer deal and chance that Billy Bean trades Rich Hill.

No chance that he trades Ryan Madsen. I guess maybe not. Maybe, but. I mean, Rich, Ryan Madsen, if he's healthy, if he's healthy for three years, he'll get 190 innings. And that's if he's healthy for three years. So you're now, of course, you're not betting on Rich Hill to throw 190 innings.

But if he threw 100, do you think the over-under on Madsen for a three-year deal is over 100 at this point? That wouldn't be a bad place to put it, probably. Yeah. Well, anyway, any thoughts about the Ryan Madsen deal? I didn't really think of it in Rich Hill terms. But you think of every contract in terms of how many Rich Hills it is. Hill terms, but you think of every contract in terms of how many Rich Hills it is. But I guess it makes sense because they're both pitchers who were signed by the A's with sort of spotty recent track records. Well, and one got what I, you know, what seems to me like a nice little bargain

contract. And the other one got what seems like a pretty expensive contract. I mean, it wasn't that long ago, I guess Brandon League was worse too, but it wasn't that long ago that Brandon League got the same exact deal, right? Wasn't that 3-22 as well? Yeah. And it was considered like Pete Colletti. Yeah. League hadn't really been that good though, right? Yeah.

Well, I think that's probably fair. Yeah, they're not great comparisons for, yeah, three years, $22.5 million, the exact same deal. League, as I recall, had closer sheen, and that was part of why we assumed it was an overpay. He had been, his peripherals had plummeted in Seattle. The Dodgers got him at the deadline, and then he was very good after the deadline. And so they signed him after basically 27 really good innings for them. And he'd been an all-star the year before, but, you know, that doesn't necessarily mean anything.

I don't know. I mean, yeah. Funny, the MLB trade rumors post about the Madsen signing sort of equates the Rich Hill and Madsen deals and says it seems like it's part of a consistent strategy that the A's signed both of these guys because they're coming off these sort of anomalous seasons for them and that the A's, and I'm quoting, might feel that skepticism about players in situations like Hills or Madsen presents them with opportunities that they might not otherwise have to sign talented pitchers but you're right it doesn't seem like if this is the madsen discount

doesn't seem like much of one right i mean it's the the rich hill thing immediately brought to mind bartolo cologne who had been in you know germany a year earlier and was essentially out of the game. And then they signed him after he demonstrated that he could pitch in the majors again for one year. And then they took that leap, right? And then Scott Casimir, same thing. He had been out of baseball, then bad in Sugar Land. And then he pitched one year in the majors to prove he could pitch in Major League Baseball.

And they took that leap. And Rich Hill now, same thing basically although a smaller even smaller glimpse but they took that leap but in all those cases fairly short deals definitely below average prices for their position and manson's not really that and manson dale feels weird to me i don't know maybe manson's just maybe he's not a risk i don't really know i don't know what his injuries like I don't know. Maybe Madsen's just, maybe he's not a risk. I don't really know. I don't know what his injuries, like, I don't really know what injury risks are. You know, like, not all three-year absences, I guess, are equal. Maybe he had a good one of those. Like, one of the ones that makes him really fresh, ready to go, fired up. It's like Larry David's good Hodgkins thing.

This is the good three-year gap. Oh, yeah. All right. On to, well, I want to talk about David Price. Really? Yeah. Did you read the Alex Spear piece, the TikTok of how they recruited him? No.

Oh, really? Nope. Oh, I would have expected you would have. Nah. These are the kind of articles that normally we read and we almost always find things to talk about. Well, Alex is excellent, but I did not read that. All right, I'm going to tell you a few things from it. Okay.

First of all, before I get to that, I saw a rumor today that Mike Leak is intrigued by the idea of pitching near his home. And when we talked about how most guys uh where the city is probably doesn't matter that much because they're not there that much i did think about how i guess probably most players leave the city like most players don't hang around in the offseason and they probably prefer it that way they probably don't get recognized as much they can feel like they're separated from their job a lot more so it's interesting to see that Leak would be intrigued by the idea of pitching near zone, because now he's kind of stuck at work all year round, if you think about it. All right, let me see. What did I notice about this article? The thing that I noticed the

most, first of all, mostly I'm just going to talk about one thing. Price's initial list, Price wrote out a list of teams that he would like to play for and there were 11 teams on this list and uh the 11 teams included the cardinals cubs dodgers giants and nationals so those are basically the five good national league teams minus the pirates in the in the vets yeah right. Right? Cardinals, Cubs, Dodgers, Giants, Nationals. Do those five fit any? Other than being good teams, do they fit anything to you? They're rich.

They're the five rich teams in the NL, basically. They're the five good teams in the NL. Pretty simple, right? Yeah, sure. Six AL teams. Red Sox, Royals, Twins, Blue Jays, Rays, and Tigers. Now, Blue Jays, Rays, and Tigers are his three former teams, so let's put them off to the side.

Red Sox, Royals, Twins. So not the Angels, not the Astros, not the Yankees, and not the White Sox but yes the Royals and Twins which feels interesting because Royals and Twins aren't two teams that you would think of I guess other than

well maybe there's some nice pitching parks here but again like no Angels which is interesting I wonder why no Angels no Yankees is interesting, right? Yeah, sure. Very interesting. The Yankees aren't on there.

No Astros is interesting. Anyway, that's just to set up what I'm getting to. He had big market teams on there, so it's not like he had his heart set on playing in the Midwest or something. Indeed. All right, so now here we go. This is from the conversation that they were having. Seriously, you mock the avocado thing and then listen to what made David Price want to play for Boston, 60 million more than the third place bid the cubs had offered yeah but all right so here we go the deal you never want to just say that's the reason so you always have to come up with a

non-financial reason so here we go the socks were particularly intrigued by mckinnis frequent mention of price's interest in staying in the american league with the possibility of becoming the first pitcher since the 1973 advent of the dh to reach the hall of fame while spending the entirety of his career in the junior circuit quote the amount he talked about the importance of the american lean to David stood out, said Hazen. And then here's a quote from Price. My main goal every year is to win the World Series, but my goal before I sign my professional contract is to go to the Hall of Fame.

And to do that while spending your entire career in the American League is pretty special. I'm not sure how many times it's been done it's something i want to be a part of it's like a movement why i don't know like i guess because it's like he did it with the greatest degree of difficulty, like he had to face the DH. I mean, I guess if David Price's Hall of Fame candidate comes up someday, that might be something that people would mention in his favor. Like he didn't get to face pitchers, but it's not something i would have thought of no it's not is it no and then also

why did why were half of the teams on his list in the national league then i don't know how much could he have really wanted to be a part of it yeah exactly uh which doesn't he like hitting doesn't i know right the date right the day before I think it was Gammon said that somebody close to him said that he was, I think he said something like he was really intent on playing in the NL because he loved hitting so much. I'm going to check to see if I can find this real quick. It was like the day he was traded to Toronto. I think he was going to play an interleague game in an NL park, and he was disappointed that he

didn't get to hit and he tweeted something about how he was going to take batting practice anyway or something regardless of what happened with the trade so yeah price x teammates think that the NL will be among factors more important than money. Huh. Little did they know it was the opposite. It was the opposite. That he could make the Hall of Fame while spending his whole career in the AL, which he doesn't know how many people have done that before,

but he'd like to be a part of that. You didn't even know. You didn't even know he was going to be the first one. He doesn't even know it's a thing. He's like, he just wants to join all the illustrious AL only Hall of Famers. Seems like it must be a good group. Wants to be a part of it. I cannot believe this, man.

That's really strange. Maybe they were just really reaching for a reason why he wanted to be. You have to tell every team something, I guess. Like everywhere you go to be shown around the city and talked to about how this is the greatest place to play. You have to make it seem like you're interested so that you'll get money from that team. And this was the best he could come up with for why he wanted to play in Boston. I don't know. I don't know either.

Oh, my goodness. There was another thing in there about how they realized that it was just going to be too hard to trade for an ace and that Blake Sweetheart was seen as a secondary piece and it just reinforced my notion that rich teams now are the only ones that are going to be able to keep their prospects. Alright.

Okay, so Zach Granke. So Price got seven years, $217 million. Granke gets $6 and $206.5 million? Yeah, no217 million. Granke gets $6 and $206.5 million. Yeah, no opt-out.

No opt-out. Ignore the opt-out. Ignore the opt-out just for a second. I just want to ask you a question. Okay. So say you and Granke agree to this deal, six years and $206.5 million. He agreed to this deal, six years and $206.5 million. And then he, at the last second, says, hey, you want to go seven? I'll give you a deal on the seventh.

What would the price be that you would want the seventh year? Half done. 25? 25. So you're basically saying that he's making like 34 and a half or whatever it is i mean not taking into account the deferred stuff so you're you know that's uh i guess i would go lower just to see if he really wants to do it uh but i mean he's he's getting 34 and a half based on the idea that he's going to be good now, and then the deal will be awful by the end, right? I mean, like, are you telling me that if right now—

This doesn't seem realistic. Let me ask you right now. Wait, wait, wait. Let me say—okay, so Granke has signed for the next six years. Let's say he called up the Dodgers and said, I'm signed through 2021, but I am looking to lock down 2022 right now. Would you like to sign me for a one-year deal in 2022 right now? You think the Dodgers would offer him 25?

You think any team would? You think any team would lock down 2022 Granke for $25 million? No. Okay. So let's try this again. Yeah, I don't know. It doesn't seem realistic that a player would, once he gets the idea in his head that he is a $34.5 million a year player, that he would then agree to what he would see as a salary cut beyond that.

I guess what I'm asking is who paid more. The Red Sox have a greater total commitment to price, but they get one extra year of price. The Dodgers will have less commitment. I mean, the Diamondbacks will have less commitment, but will get one fewer year. Who will make more between them? I mean, again, there's factors.

The opt-out and the deferred money change these things. And the Diamondbacks give up a better draft pick. The Red Sox don't give up a pick because price was traded so there's that too yeah uh so fine fair enough price we'll just say price got got paid more but i am kind of curious to know what that seventh year because it's always hard to figure out the the extra year versus the higher average annual value i don't feel like we ever have really cracked that yeah toward the toward the back end of these deals by the way zach cranky do you remember the story about how what you you will remember the story and you will find it very quickly that i don't remember the story so correct me as i tell this story but the story about how cranky when he was uh negotiating with the dodgers he

wanted to like talk about their draft picks and like he was he's like really into being a gm and he was like quizzing them on their gming or something like that yeah i don't remember the exact details but yeah he's i mean he has that i think deserved reputation as yeah who cares about these things and about GMing especially. Like he wants to be a GM. And isn't it kind of funny that he then signed with the guy who at the time was probably considered the 29th best GM. And then now has signed with a guy who is probably considered the 30th best. Maybe it's like Lloyd McClendon taking that AAA job with the Tigers.

That King Brad Osmond is going to be fired. He wants to be next in line. That's why he opted out with the Dodgers. Yeah, he knew he was never going to get the GM job in that front office. Does it change your mind about Dave Stewart at all that Zach Granke looked him in the eye and decided this guy was going to lead the Diamondbacks somewhere? I mean, Granke's smart. Yeah, right.

Not really. No. All right right so now on to the the meat zach cranky signed with the diamondbacks for six years 206.5 million dollars some of that money was deferred and there's no opt-out tell me about this deal ben it was a surprise because it seemed like a certainty that he was going to the dodgers or the giants right up until the last minute it was dod Dodgers or Giants, Dodgers or Giants. And he went to a different NOS team and an NOS team that has a new TV deal like most other teams and therefore has more money to spend, but hasn't had payrolls in the upper tier. And this is going to take them into a higher tier and has been kind of just hovering around 500 for years now. And so this seems like the move that could possibly take them from 500 to, you know, 87 wins or something, which nowadays is enough to have some hope. So it was kind of

a lot of money if you just look at Zach Greinke as a pitcher and as lots of people have pointed out he is maybe the most well-rounded pitcher in baseball or has been the last couple years he's been one of the best hitters he's been one of the best fielders he's been one of the best base runner holders so put all of that together and if you do the the dollars per war calculation that everyone does it comes out to look somewhat reasonable. So the Diamondbacks right now have got to have the most top-heavy roster we've seen of a pretty good team in quite some time, right? They basically have two MVP candidates, a Cy Young candidate, and nothing else. Is this a risky way to go into it, or do we not get too hung up on roster balance especially in on december 6th you're talking about pollock and goldschmidt yeah well they do have a fair amount of

youngish cheapish productive talent still under contract for 2016 i mean goldschmidt obviously is i mean one of the reasons why this works for them, maybe why they can afford to do this. It is kind of putting a lot of their dollars in one player, but they do have Goldschmidt signed to the excellent Goldschmidt deal and they have Pollock cheap and Patrick Corbin and some other guys who aren't expensive yet. And so at least for next year, it seems like this should work financially for them. And if they could make it back to the playoffs after a run of extended mediocrity, then maybe that helps them in terms of sales and ticket prices for the next year. And then maybe that makes it easier as those other guys go into arbitration and make more money.

So there's enough, I guess, and maybe they aren't done yet. Maybe they'll add Mike Leak or someone else. And maybe the fact that it is top heavy means it's easier to improve the rest of the roster. That Goldschmidt extension is crazy. It's so good. Super good. And it's also crazy kind of in retrospect to look back and see how aggressive it was i mean he wasn't ever uh seen as a as a real prospect he had one year essentially of a pretty good season

for a first baseman but i mean like that was like that was that was that was guts yeah right there kevin towers cowboy oh that was Towers, huh? Yeah. Yeah. I wonder what we wrote about that at the time. Not enough praise. Yeah, probably not enough praise. All right.

So the Dodgers get outbid for a player that this is like this was this year's version of the it makes so much sense there's no way anyone will outbid them kind of uh situation and then they get outbid and it has been pointed out by i think jeff passon recently that and probably lots of other people that while the dodgers were we think of this dodgers ownership group as being you know insane because they carry 300 million dollar payrolls and because they took uh you know carl Crawford that one time. And that's true. That has always been true. It still is true that they have an awful lot of money. But

all those fun facts about how the Dodgers had spent more money on their payroll four years down in the future than 27 other teams were spending next year. You remember that genre fun fact they're kind of coming to an end they don't actually have much money committed beyond

2018 they are in a way maybe almost starting to look like a team that is doing frugal things and they don't seem like a team that has any limit to what they can spend. So are they being too concerned about their payroll, about maxing out? Is there, I guess, are they overthinking this? Yeah, I mean, I don't know. Maybe it's hard to break your old habits, your small market habits. Friedman in Tampa Bay never signed free agent pitchers. I mean, he signed Roberto Hernandez, I think, was maybe the biggest free agent pitcher he signed.

Free agent starters in particular. He never signed any free agent anything. I think he signed two relievers to multi-year deals in his entire tenure, and they were, I think, two-year deals. The biggest free agent signing that he made was uh james looney no it was james looney cesspit his family barbecue recently dug that one up james looney at 22 million dollars so he didn't really sign it but i mean that that's the race that's not necessarily friedman right that was they haven't signed anybody since he

left either they can't afford to right yeah so now he can and but I wonder how easy it is to just flip that switch if you were with the Rays and you talked yourself into these deals being bad maybe it's just sort of intellectually distasteful to make what you know is a bad dollars per war signing, even though you have all the dollars and you can afford to make inefficient deals. But I don't know. I mean, he was always someone who used prospects or traded young players for better young players. And that was maybe a function of what he had to do. and maybe that's what he's trying to do again because the Dodgers have built one of the best farm systems in baseball, and maybe they're about to use that to add a Roldis Chapman potentially.

So, yeah, I don't know why you would not sign a deal. If you were the Dodgers and you're trying to win, I guess it's just, you know, if you figure we'll trade some prospects for a role as Chapman and then we'll sign Hisashi Iwakuma, which the Dodgers also did, adding him to a, on a three-year deal. We don't know the terms of it yet, I don't think, but maybe you just add those things together and you figure that Iwakuma plus Chapman equals Granke and you minimize your long-term risk because Iwakuma is three years and Chapman's one year and that doesn't add up to how long you think Granke alone is signed for. So you could just kind of say whatever where the Dodgers will

sign the best free agent every year and what are you going to do about it? So you could do that, but maybe that's no fun. So according to Kotz, opening day payroll in 2015 was $271 million. This year they have currently spent, not counting Iwakuma, they've committed $175 million this year and then $141 next year and then $99 in 2018. And then by by 2019 they're down to 38 million dollars and really that 38 million dollars is misleading it's all essentially it's all kershaw and kershaw has an opt-out before 2019 and so um there's a couple of there's a couple of ways you could look at this one is that they can't actually spend 270 million dollars a is that they can't actually spend $270 million a year, that they can't even spend $200 million a year. Maybe this was an illusion. This was

trying to make a splash for the first half decade while you got all your business in order and focused on building a sustainable team, knowing you had to do what you had to do, but knowing also that you couldn't possibly maintain it. And then, in fact, they're going to settle in as like a $200 million team. I mean, the Yankees also, what is the Yankees payroll right now? Like, it's around $200, right? A little more than $200? Yeah, it was this year.

And it's not like the, I mean, you know, the Yankees are as rich as you can be. And they haven't decided to go $400 and $500 and $600 million either. So that's one possibility. decided to go 400 and 500 and 600 million so that's one possibility another is that it's conceivable that they're looking to put themselves in a position at some point to get under the luxury tax because the longer you're over the luxury tax the more expensive it gets and maybe they don't want to lose sight of that possibility they want to at least kind of be in a position where if they have to, they can get there without torpedoing everything as the Yankees seem to have done.

And thirdly, maybe they're just setting it up. Maybe they look at Granke and don't see enough of a reason to commit all that money right now when they see Strasburg coming a year later, or they see Harper coming two years later, or they see the need to re-sign Kershaw after 2018, or they see, when does, let's see, Trout is 2019, I think. No, Trout's further than that. Trout might be 2020. I don't remember. Stanton has the opt-out at some point.

So maybe they are just figuring that they are around 2019 2020 they don't want to have a whole bunch of bad contracts that they feel like right now they can get through the next three years as one of the top teams in baseball uh and that um 2019 is sort of in a way a new window and they want to have as much roster space as possible at that point. Maybe. Yeah, that could be. I mean, that implies that there is some limit, but they have action as if there is a limit. There has to be some limit, right? Yeah, I would think so.

I mean, even if it's just ownership saying we want to make more money. So, therefore, we could afford it, but we don't want to. I don't know. Trout is after 2020 2020 so that's a ways stanton i figure out when is stanton's opt out five years from now following 2020 i don't know it's uh it's just you go into this thinking wow it's sure gonna be one heck of a bidding war between the red sox and the dodgers and the yankees and then like the yankees you never hear from the red sox go get a guy and and the Dodgers aren't even in on him.

And then the Dodgers let their ace, you know, one of their aces go. It never goes according to what you expect. No, it doesn't. And, I mean, you could, like, we are giving Granke a lot of credit for his non-pitching contributions. And probably it would be wise to expect those to regress a little bit just i mean he's a 32 year old pitcher i don't know how much you count on him to keep being an excellent hitter i don't know in the past i think nate silver found that pitchers decline more steeply as hitters than than most players do just because they don't put much

work into it and therefore when their reactions go they don't really compensate with anything but that's probably not the case for granky who clearly cares a lot about his hitting and puts a lot of work into it and fielding is another thing that we say that declines quickly, but he seems to be getting better at it. So I don't know. And I kind of wonder, I mean, are we giving him too much credit for being smart? Like we like him a lot. And so we want him to think that we want to think that a smart pitcher can just sort of will himself not to decline. And then everyone makes the Maddox comp.

But, I mean, Maddox, when he, I don't know, are we overrating old Maddox? Old Maddox was, you know, good for an old pitcher. But he wasn't one of the, he wasn't someone you would want to pay to be one of the best paid pitchers in baseball. I mean, Maddox's last great season was 2001 i guess and he was i mean you know he was 35 he was 35 the thing about it is ben the thing about it and by the way he had a better year the next year so that was 36 the thing about maddox is that if you get his ages 32 to 37 seasons then then, yeah, he's really awesome. Like, he aged very well from 32 to 37. But, like, maybe...

Like, it's not like he's exactly the same as Granky or anything like that. Maybe Granky just ages two years faster. And if you just shift it two years later, then it's not as good, right? Like, you could still age pretty well, but it's not like he's You could still age pretty well, but it's not like he's going to be a perfect match

even if he is a match for him. Even if it makes perfect sense to compare the two, which I'm not sure it does. I think it does. Maddox is one of those comps that nobody can possibly live up to. You shouldn't do that.

But all the same, I don't know. You're thinking about probably later Maddox, like 37, 38, 39, 40, where he's a smart, savvy pitcher, a little bit above average. I mean, Maddox hung around a long time as a guy who was pretty good for an old pitcher. He was always good for an old pitcher yeah he was always good for an old pitcher but no longer great but uh for a pitcher pitcher however uh however uh the years that granky steel covered are mostly under the great pitcher i wrote about aging curve for hitters too for pitchers hitting and i'm trying to i'm skimming it and trying to point is with the cranky I mean he seems to be getting better with age he's coming off his best season and you can

come up with all kind of reasons why that might be and he's raising his release point and he's throwing his change up harder and he's doing all these seemingly smart things and we know he's smart and he reads our articles and we're flattered by that and so we want him to do well and want to think that he can do well and maybe he can i mean i probably would bet on him to do better than someone who has the same talent but doesn't have those qualities i just i wonder if it's really as powerful as we think, if he is such an outlier intellectually that he can overcome the decline that comes for everyone. It's amazing how he's just gotten this reputation

over the last three years for being immune to FIP, that he's like a FIP outlier. And he's so smart that, of course, he's cracked FIP. You don't even have to think about his FIP. Like, what do you mean he has a 2-7-6 FIP? He's smart. He had a 1 FIP outlier. He's so smart that, of course, he's cracked FIP. You don't even have to think about his FIP. What do you mean he has a 276 FIP? He's smart. He had a 166 ERA. He cares if he has a 220 BABIT.

That's who he is now. Exactly. That's who he is now. I feel like that's just sort of accepted that you can't even argue against that at this point with Granke. And yet, career, FIP, 331. Career, ERA, 3-3-5. Like, maybe, I don't know, maybe he did crack it exactly between 2012 and 2013. Maybe going to the Dodgers did it.

Maybe, who knows? But, I don't know. I don't know. The thing about it is that I didn't really love the first one the first deal and uh and that turned out really well for the Dodgers yeah it's fine I mean the other thing is that there is real value to the diamond to the Diamondbacks and his not going to the Dodgers or the Giants right because this isn't a typical case where you don't know where a guy's going to go and it's 30 teams are in it and you're not really going to make a bet that he's going to

go to your division rival. This was like a certainty that he was going to the Dodgers or the Giants. And those are the two teams that the Diamondbacks are going to be competing with for the next several years. And so to ensure that, I mean, they have saved themselves the cost of facing Granke, you know, whatever, three times a year or something, four times a year. They're going to face someone worse than Granke in those games. And they have deprived their division rivals of Granke for the years. So, I mean, that's a real benefit.

If you think it's a good deal, though though if you think this is a terrible deal then you're depriving your rivals of having a terrible deal on their books so you still do have to answer the question of whether it's a good deal and whether the diamondbacks are a good team that is going to benefit from this. Yeah, but it might have been a smaller deal if the Diamondbacks hadn't given it to him. I mean, maybe the Dodgers would have signed him for less or the Giants would have signed him for less. I don't know. We don't know how much bigger than the next best offer this was. You would think they must have outbid the competition, so he would have gone to the Dodgers or the Giants on a smaller deal. That is true. What were we making fun of the Diamondbacks about earlier this year? We were making fun of them for thinking they were good, right?

Oh, well, there was Tony La Russa's comment that he would be heartbroken if the Diamondbacks didn't finish 500 or go 500, and they didn't. It wasn't that. Stuart saying that they view themselves as the old school team or something. No, I think it was specifically that they were talking about how they were in it. They weren't going to trade anybody because they were in it.

And we were mocking their thinking they were in it. That was a long time ago though. And they weren't. They were not in it. No, but now they're in it. They're in it. Yeah, they are in it. It's true. They're in it. Yeah. They are in it. It's true.

They're in it. Welcome to it. Having Paul Goldschmidt and AJ Pollock on your team making a combined, you know, $11 million or whatever, it's like Trout. It's like having Trout. You can pretty much go for it at that point. Just knowing that. That's all you got to know.

You got Trout? Go for it. Uh-huh. You got Pollock and Goldschmidt? Go for it, too. Yeah, might as well. You might as well. Okay.

So we're done with Cranky. All right. Two minutes on Jeff Samarja. Oh, jeez. Unless you want to talk about it longer tomorrow. You can take shorter Samarja segment now, or you can take longer Samarja segment tomorrow. Or you could hang up on me. Do the quick Samarja segment now or you can take longer Sardomarja segment tomorrow or you could hang up on me. Do the quick Samarja segment. Okay so the Giants signed Samarja for 90 million dollars over

five years and this was notable because Samarja is coming off his worst year and frankly a bad year. I think we can say it was a bad year and maybe there was some bad luck going on and it was a second half collapse and he was out of it. And maybe he was disappointed about not being traded and all these other factors. But bad year and a guy who has been a below average pitcher over the course of his career. Well, kind of. It is kind of. I of. Samarj is a tricky one too because sort of like BJ Upton was two years ago, I think it's fair to say

there's a big disagreement over how good he actually is. Not just about how good he will be or how much talent is in that arm or whether he looks like an ace or not, but actually how good has he been? Because if you go to fan graphs, you see a guy who in his four years as a starter has produced 12 wins, 12 war,

which is definitely above average, which is close to a reliable all-star. If you go to baseball prospectus and you look at how he's done in his four years as a starter, you get nine wins, which is about average, just about an average pitcher average starting pitcher and if you go to baseball reference and you look at his war over those four years you get 4.9 which means that he is essentially you know bad he's bad he's a bad pitcher and and if you

look at his era plus if you look at all the starters over the last four years and you rank them by era plus he is in the bottom half he's in like the 30th percentile among starters with at least 400 innings over the last four years and over the course of four years i think that you would probably agree that the uh that the balance of evidence tilts from fit to era and that samarja's inability to prevent runs from scoring against him looks to be a pretty serious failure in his skill level. Now, that's not to say that he hasn't had some good years. It's not to say that he doesn't do some things.

But the dude allows a lot of runs. He allows a lot of runs. I mean, in the last three years years he has allowed 160 more runs than zach rinke which is a lot more runs yeah and he's making a lot less money but still yeah yeah no no no i know i'm just it's a lot of runs though yeah and yeah i mean he, he's, it's kind of crazy because he's like, the reason I took the under on him is that he is a guy who it seemed like a year ago had a lot of value and then had a horrible year. And I would have thought, well, he should, he should take a short, short deal, rebuild his, uh, his value. Uh, and the horrible year, I don't know how much the horrible year cost him. How much would he have made last year? he he had an extension yeah five year 85 million extension in the middle of

2014 yeah so and then he had three good months after that yeah and he turned that extension down right so so yeah it cost him something but not that that much. No. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. Look, I think we had him 23rd or something like that in our free agent rankings. It's, you know, depending on what everybody else gets, it sure looks like they tried to sign a number two starter who probably pitches like a number three most of the time and is going to be 31, showing signs of physical deterioration and cost of traffic.

So, you know, not a great deal, doesn't seem to me. No. I mean, I don't know. The idea that he has more left somehow seems sort of far-fetched to me at this point. I mean, he's about to turn 31 and and yeah i mean he was late to baseball and he maybe doesn't have as many innings on his arm because he was a reliever for a while and he's been healthy so there's that and he's always thrown hard although maybe slightly less hard lately and he has the opposite of the usual don cooper narrative like the idea that don cooper screwed him up i know it's the opposite of the usual Don Cooper narrative Like the idea that Don Cooper screwed him up

I know, isn't that great? It's the opposite of the Don Cooper story Isn't that wonderful? I love that I love that all he has to do is get away from Don Cooper Yeah, right Just gotta get him out of the clutches of terrible pitching coach Don Cooper Who just didn't understand him So, I don't know

I guess that could be true for individual pitchers but but if you're betting on a guy to get better because he's getting away from Don Cooper I don't know we had him 20th on our free agent rankings and so I'm just going to start naming names and then you tell me will they make more than 90 million dollars as free agents okay I'm gonna go I'm just going number 19, number 18, all the way up, okay? Okay. Azdrubal Cabrera. No.

Daniel Murphy. No. Howard Kendrick. No. Colby Rasmus. No. Denard Spann. Nope.

John Lackey. Nope. Right? Like, John Lackey. Matt Wieters took the qualifying offer. No. Ian Desmond. Nope. Dexter F Desmond. Nope.

Dexter Fowler. Nope. Benzo Brist. Probably not. Jordan Zimmerman. So you have to go all the way to number nine. He bleeps 11 spots, basically. And, you know, maybe our free agent rankings were wrong.

But we weren't saying that two days ago, so it seems weird to say it now. Okay. So we did our Samarja segment. And tomorrow there will be more moves to talk about, or we'll talk about ones we didn't talk about. How this podcast works, you can send us emails at podcast at baseballprospectus.com. Join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild. Rate, review, subscribe to the show on iTunes,

and support our sponsor, the Play index at baseballreference.com use the coupon code bp get the discounted price of 30 on a one-year subscription we'll be back tomorrow