Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 782: Shelby Miller Madness, and a Zobrist-Castro Comparison

Episode Date: December 9, 2015

Ben and Sam discuss the Shelby Miller trade between the Diamondbacks and Braves, and the Cubs’ Starlin Castro trade and Ben Zobrist signing.

If it's you I need, I've got to play the levy. Got to play, cause your love's too heavy on me. And it's much too, much too bad. Hello, and welcome to episode 782 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from baseball perspectives, presented by the Play Index at BaseballReference.com. I'm Pat Lindberg of FiveThirtyEight, joined by the crystal clear sounding Sam Miller of Baseball Perspectives. Hello. Hey, how are you? People are impressed by the resonance of your voice with our new recording method. It's a whole new Sam Miller.

Yeah, I don't care about such things. Okay. So we are recording a little later than usual today, but that's okay because for every minute we delay, another move is made. I am not really sure where to begin or what we want to focus on. I'm open to focusing on whatever you want to focus on. There's a particular move that... That is... No way. As of then, no way am I letting you get away with making your topic,

what do you want to talk about? No way. We have so many choices. Not going to do that, Ben. You tell me what to talk about. Your day. Well, shall we start with the Shelby Miller trait? It's almost old news by now wait what have i missed uh the shelby miller trade is the last thing i heard about i think mariners traded

for adam lind yeah okay so the shelby miller trade is the last thing that i heard about cubs signed ben zobrist that was before shelby. All right. So we'll do Shelby Miller. All right. So obviously this was the usual Diamondbacks trade that provoked a very strong reaction. Usually it's the same sort of reaction. And it was in this case. Also, the Diamondbacks, I will set the stage for the two listeners who listen to our podcast without paying attention to Winter Meetings news.

The Diamondbacks traded their top prospect, maybe a top 25-ish prospect in baseball and the number one 2015 draft pick, Dansby Swanson, as well as Ender Inciarte, who's a pretty good defensive outfielder who can get on base sometimes, and right-handed pitching prospect Aaron Blair to the Braves, who are dealing yet another young, productive, under-team control player, in this case, Shelby Miller, as well as left-handed reliever prospect Gabe Spire, who's been traded in a few different trades now. So this obviously caught everyone's attention because, A, the Diamondbacks are making lots of moves. They just got Zach Greinke. Now they have Shelby Miller. They have a real rotation now. They started the offseason with one of the worst rotations.

Now it's probably a top tier, top third rotation in baseball, perhaps. And obviously this also caught everyone's eye because the Diamondbacks traded their number one draft pick from June. Not their number one, the number one. The number one. Their number one. The number one. Yeah. Their number one and the number one from June, which if you're keeping track of the calendar, was less than six months ago that they did that.

By the way, Ben. Yes. I apologize to you and Adam Lind. I guess I didn't realize how good he was this year. He's a stud. Could have used him on the Stompers. Sure, absolutely. I don't even know who's on the Mariners anymore.

Maybe we'll just save that first. You want to do a draft? Draft players you think are on the Mariners and whoever gets the most wins. I think I could pretty much get it. I think I know the man. I bet I could name 20 Mariners right now. That'd probably be a bad segment. That'd be one of our worst drafts, I think.

could name 20 mariners right now that'd probably be a bad segment that'd be one of our worst drafts i think maybe second only to the drafting bryce harper and mike trout future years draft which was not not very well received for good reason so we maybe we'll just do a different episode on the the mariners rebuild because that seems like a separate topic but But on the Miller trade, I mean, the fact that the Diamondbacks traded the number one draft pick, and we've seen them trade their top draft picks often. The Braves now have the Diamondbacks' number one draft pick from the past three years, I think, in their system. Wow. So, and we've seen them trade, you know, like they traded Trevor Bauer. Yeah, they traded Trevor Bauer.

They did. That was the right guess. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Yeah, they traded Trevor Bauer and he was a top prospect at the time. I think it's safe to say that he has been disappointing. He has looked good at times,

but has been inconsistent. Certainly hasn't turned into a top of the rotation guy or anything, although he still strikes people out and still might. And last year or earlier this year, they traded Tukey Toussaint, who was their number one pick in 2014. We talked about it at the time. There was a whole justification of that trade, which suggested that the Diamondbacks were valuing him at an amount equivalent to his signing bonus, as if he was only worth what they had paid to get him, even though draftees are obviously depressed by the draft system. They are worth far more than they signed for, but the timebacks made it sound as if they valued him as much as they paid for him, which was a very simplistic and incorrect way to look at it. On the other hand, Toussaint, since he went to

the Braves, has not made them look dumb. It's just 10 starts this year, second half of this year. But he walked six guys per nine innings and had almost six ERA in A ball. So the guys that the Divebacks have traded haven't necessarily made them look terrible, even though they looked terrible at the time for the most part. And I did do a thing a few years ago, actually, when the Will Myers trade happened and looked at top 10 prospects who were traded before making their major league debuts. Those guys on the whole panned out about half as well as top 10 prospects who were not traded before making their major league debuts. As we've talked about before, when a team trades a player, it's a bad sign or it can be. Studies have shown that teams seem to have some insight into their own players. So when they trade

one, it might be a bad sign. But to make that determination in less than six months when Swanson, at least I think the public perception of him has not changed. He hasn't necessarily raised his stock since the draft, but he hasn't lowered it either. And to do that for a guy like Miller, who is good, but is sort of, I don't know, one of those like deceptive team control guys, and that he doesn't really have that much pre-arbitration time left and pre-arb time is a lot different from arb time. So it seems like a high price to pay. Yeah.

And then also to throw in Jayco to Reezy too, really. It's just, it's incredible. How much, Dave Cameron comped this to the Eric Bedard trade. The first thing I thought was the James Shields trade, mainly because I wanted to steal myself from perhaps too obviously saying all the exact same words that I said at that point. But did it bring to mind either of those or any other precedent in your mind? I thought of the Will Myers trade just because he was traded so early on as a highly regarded prospect which is rare so it reminded me of that well the reaction i mean it seems to me that like the reaction is very similar that you have your yeah you have your your unnamed front office guys

calling it the worst trade in the history of baseball for instance that's similar in both cases you have a team that i think i don't know maybe it's not so much the case with the diamondbacks as with the royals uh i guess i don't know if anybody's arguing that the diamondbacks window isn't now the way that there was some of that argument with the royals but it certainly the it shortens the window considerably uh and there's also the i think that the the main reason that i thought of it is that during the will myers james shields trade uh discussions uh i think we talked about how um the the crazy thing was that it didn't seem to necessarily make the royals better even that year

that they they had they had given away a lot of future value. And you could look at Will Myers over Jeff Francor by projections, and it was a bigger gap than James Shields over whoever he was replacing. And of course, that trade turned out to be so much more complex than that. And there were things that we didn't anticipate. There were maybe things we didn't know. We didn't know, for instance, that Wade Davis was going to be used as a reliever. And certainly we didn't know that he was going to become the most valuable player in that deal. But a lot of the same kind of ways of looking at the trade, I think with the, in the Diamondbacks case, you can make a case that you know ender ncr day is

actually a valuable a very valuable player and that taking him out of next year's team take so much of the value in the present day away from the diamondbacks that uh you're you're not getting even much of a boost in the immediate future while obviously giving away a guy who could be an all-star seven years from now. And Blair is also a guy who's kind of close. He's, as I understand it, kind of a high floor guy who is knocking on the door and could have provided innings and perhaps given that rotation depth. and could have provided innings and perhaps given that rotation depth. Anyways, if not necessarily a number two starter, but then the other part of this is whether Shelby Miller is a number two starter,

whether Shelby Miller is the kind of player that you target when you have a package like this to trade. And that's maybe one of the sort of more surprising things that they went from conversations about Jose Fernandez to acquiring Shelby Miller. And, you know, for obviously for different packages than they were trying to get Jose Fernandez for. But it's it feels like a big drop down just in terms of quality. I mean, how many pitchers do you think are better than Shelby Miller

in the majors right now? How many starters? Off the top of my head, I'll say 35. I don't I mean, I don't know. But off the top of my head, I was 35 yeah i don't i mean i don't know but off the top of my head i was going to say like 60 you know he's he's a guy who to me is good it's debatable whether he's even better than i'm giving him credit for matt trueblood uh wrote about um about the trade and you know i think brought up a an interesting point not one that can be resolved, but there's a big clash between his

DRA, which is essentially the best way of describing how well he pitched last year, how much of the credit he gets for his performance last year, which was very good. He had a very good DRA compared to his CFIP, which is probably the best way to predict how well he's going to pitch in the future. And his CFIP is not very good. And basically what that means is that he doesn't strike out a lot of guys. His peripherals aren't that great. He had a very successful year last year, partly because of, you know, basically because of BABIP

and not BABIP that can be tied directly to his team defense or his ballpark or anything like that. And so you, you know, you want to give him some credit for that, but without knowing exactly how much credit to give to him. And normally with the normal pitcher, we would say that CFIP is a better indication of how well he's going to pitch going forward. And by that measure, he's kind of an average pitcher, a little bit better. Uh, but, uh, as Matt kind of made the case, there's also the possibility that he is a pitcher who has kind of unlocked this little mini trend in pitching of throwing. Okay. I'm going to try to express this correctly, but I'm going to, I'll just, I'll just read it rather than bungle. By the way, while I look this up and read it,

you were talking about the Diamondbacks' last three first-round picks being on the Braves now, and technically Blair was their second first-round pick, and so it would be cooler if he had been their first first-round pick that year. But when I was in college one year, my fantasy team was not doing that well and i was sick of fantasy for that year and i didn't want to spend any more time caring and so i decided i was going to give myself a challenge in the middle of the year and that challenge was not to win oh i didn't care about winning but my challenge was to get every giant and see if i could do it. Like it was just, it was like a skills challenge. Like,

could I manage to turn this roster into a much worse roster, but within the very narrow restrictions, could I convince somebody to trade me Barry Bonds? Like, what do I have to do to get somebody to trade me Barry Bonds? And so I spent a long time trying to, not a long time, but a week or two trying to do this. And finally everybody in the league kicked me out. And I was thinking, well, you mentioned that, and I thought it'd be fun for the Braves to just try to get as many. Like, they could get Stryker Trahan right now, probably. They could definitely go get Barrett Lukes from the Cubs. They could do it.

I think they could go. Now, Bauer's the next tough one. They might have some trouble getting Bauer. All right, so let's see. Let me find Granke's name here. This is similar to the phenomenon. They might have some trouble getting back. All right. So let's see. Let me find Granke's name here. This is similar to the phenomenon. I'm going to just read now. This is similar to the phenomenon I observed in studying Zach Granke's evolution

when he signed with Arizona. Moving multiple pitches into the arm slot and velocity band naturally inhibited by a pitcher's primary fastball can help him out pitch his peripheral numbers. It's something about getting hitters to make contact, but on the wrong parts of the bat or a hair off their natural timing. So instead of thinking, oh, well, you know, you're going to throw a 68 mile an hour curve ball and a 94 mile an hour fastball, which will upset the hitter's timing in one way. Instead, you're going to you're going to try to throw like a 94 mile an hour fastball and

then like a kind of a hour fastball and then like a kind of a breaking pitch that is close to that velocity so that it's harder to identify, so that it's not simply a matter of identifying it or waiting on it. It's actually can be, you know, like a 91 mile an hour cutter, for instance, has that benefit. Or if, you know, hard worth and slider would have that benefit. It's a pitch that is closer to your fastball speed. And so the hitter, it's harder for the hitter to pick up the different pitch type, as well as the fact that it's harder. He has less time to pick up that it's a different pitch type. And so while it's not going to diverge by three feet from where he immediately thinks it's going to go, like a big curve ball would, it is going to diverge by some number of inches.

And so he'll make contact, but bad contact. So that is a way of saying that, like I'm not necessarily saying that that is Miller's thing. I'm saying that there are various ways that you can still imagine a pitcher being able to out pitch his peripherals. So he also started throwing something other than a four seam fastball

he did he started relying on that positive change yeah exactly and so yeah he's not the pitcher that he was when he came up in 2013 when he was what like 85% fastballs at one point in various starts yep so where were we going with this Shelby Miller

ace not ace number two not number two uh i personally am like i don't know like if i i shelby miller or john lackey still miller right i think okay close but close yeah okay so let's let's call it close and and that just sort of sets an idea of what we're talking about i mean it's not that any team could have gone out and gotten John Lackey for $16 million a year over two years. I mean, who knows what kind of pitch the Cubs made to him to convince him to take that deal. But, you know, you've got one pitcher who's only costing you $16 million. Then you have another pitcher who's going to cost you a little less than that but a prospect who by you know standard prospect valuations is like what 40 or 50 million dollars worth of value and then you've got ncr day who's pre-arb and is a you know a couple or few win

player on his own and then you've got you know blair who's gonna contribute to the major league so uh that's the case for why it's a big haul for a pitcher who's not a franchise difference maker. Yeah. There's really no way to make the math work out in Arizona's favor unless the only math you're interested in is 2016 wins. And even then it's maybe not as big as an upgrade as you would want given what they gave up. I'd be curious to know how Arizona's opinion of Swanson has changed over the last six months. Yeah. I'd really love to know.

Me too. I mean, have they soured on him? Are they down on him? Or do they still think he's a number one draft talent and they still were willing to give him up? I'd love to know that. I would too. He hit well.

He was in A ball. He hit well. He was in A ball. He hit well. I haven't heard anyone say that he was bad, that scouts were down on him or anything about the way that he went about being good in low A ball. So he's still slated for somewhere around 25 on the still provisional BP top 101. So it's still a very significant asset unless they have decided they don't like him for some reason, maybe some reason

like the reason that they used with Bauer or with Justin Upton or all the other people they've traded over the years. Yeah, I also would love that. This would be, uh, if I had maybe one instance to use a, uh, you know, truth serum, truth serum this year, it might be like, I would really love to see six months of their reports, actually a year of their reports, because it's not as though they woke up on draft day and thought, okay, who's available? Let's figure this out. Like they spent months on this. Like they knew, like I sat next to Dave Stewart at a college game, watching him scout a potential number one pick in February. I think February, could it have been February? Do they play college ball in February? And so he spent not, by the way, he does not,

he is not telling this story. He does not know that I sat next to him. This is not like rubbing elbows with Dave. Grant Brisby was on the other side of me, so that shows you how easy it was to get in. But yeah, I mean, they clearly had a very developed relationship with him in their heads even before they drafted him. And he also wasn't like a slam dunk number one pick. Like this was not a year where like the gap between one and two was so big that, well,

you just have to take the guy, you know, like they chose him. They went through months of thinking about the most important decision in their franchises, immediate or long-term future and chose him. And then six months later, they trade him. And yeah, you're right. It is very curious. It would be very interesting to know how much this reflects their insight into him. Maybe he came in and immediately said, I just don't like you, Dave.

But probably not. It probably is not that at all no and you pretty much have to believe that your number one overall pick is going to be a superstar or at least that he is a lot to be a really good player because you're just not going to use that pick on any other type of player and granted i guess this draft year there wasn't just a sure thing superstar and there were a few guys who were mentioned in the same sentences and same breaths when people were talking about potential number one picks so it's not like he was head and shoulders above everyone else or that he was some kind of Strasburg Harper type talent but still to use that pick on a player, you have to love that player. You have to

think that he is going to make you look smart and he's going to be the centerpiece of your winning team a few years down the road. And then to turn around and trade him in six months is just shocking. Yeah. I mean, there's a, there's a scenario where he is a, you know, I don't know how low he could have fallen, but there's this, maybe there's a scenario where he is a, you know, I don't know how low he could have fallen, but maybe there's a scenario that he, you know, his parents had him a year earlier and he's, you know, drafted ninth overall in 2014 or something like that. that big number one overall gold star next time it's now it's interesting from a prospect a process perspective that the diamondbacks would trade the guy they chose six months earlier when they had the whole world to choose from so it's still interesting interesting question it's interesting to know what they're doing what they're thinking but as far as like in a vacuum the talent of the players involved i don't like i would, I would guess just based on,

uh, you know, preparing for this draft, reading about this draft as it was happening and reading about and having edited other drafts. I would guess that he's just totally off the top of my head, but like a 25th percentile, number one, overall pick ish. And so it may, it's maybe not quite exactly the same as trading you know bryce harper would have been or something like that but he still is number one overall pick you know ben uh we have a uh we have a sort of a policy of an unofficial policy on this podcast that we do not engage in the uh criticism of a trade that he that a gm should have been able to do better yeah uh if a guy, if a GM spends a

lot of time shopping a player around and the best he can get is the best he can get, but he's still, you know, the reasons for trading the player are obvious. We do not say it just seems like he should have been able to do better. We assume that he did his due diligence and did as well as was offered. And then a trade like this happens and you think, well, maybe he should have done better. You know, maybe like when you see a trade like this, you realize that if you've got an asset, you really only need to find the right GM on the right day. And there might actually be, like there might always be the potential for something absurd. It's like somebody told me once that your 401k only needs to be valuable one day of your life. You know, it only needs to, The stock market only needs to be high one day of your life, the day you cash out, right? And so maybe we should be more aggressive about saying if that's all there is for a player that you're trying to trade,

you should hang on to him even longer because next week maybe Dave Stewart wants him. Yeah, well, I guess they called the Marlins. We don't know who else they called. What did you think about the – we didn't get to see the whole package, but what did you think about the Marlins trade offer, what they were talking about for Fernandez? Was it Corey Seager, Jack Peterson? No, no, no.

I'm talking about the – Urias. No, I'm talking about the – I think the Dod Dodgers one they asked for Seager and Urias but no I'm talking about the Diamondbacks apparently were engaged in a discussion that centered around Corbin and Swanson and others for Fernandez what would you think of that if we don't know the others but what's your first reaction to Corbin and Swanson for Fernandez I think I kind of like it more yeah than the one they made I I think I would too I mean I mean Corbin is I don't know if if uh if you had Miller as your 60th or 65th where where's Corbin probably not that different right i mean yeah close

i think corbin's better than miller and but not not by a ton but i think corbin like i'd probably would put corbin around 35th off the top of my head off you know off the top of my head yeah and fernandez i mean fernandez health obviously complicates things but you know who was it that we talked when was it the tommy john avoidance draft when we talked about how uh having tj makes you you know risky unreliable until you're back on the mound and then it seems like once you've established your health again that in fact then you're you're almost you know like then then it's actually a good indicator for at least four or five years until that thing wears off right yeah and And so Fernandez came back, he was healthy. He had a 2.2 FIP or whatever. And in, on an inning by inning basis, Fernandez is the second best pitcher in baseball

to me. And so then the only question is how many innings does he have and how risky is he? And somewhat more risky and somewhat fewer innings. So I wouldn't say he's the second most valuable pitcher in baseball, but awfully close. I'm not, I'm not sure there's five guys I would rather have for the next three years than him. And I'm not sure there are two. Yeah, maybe not. No. So yes, we don't know if that was a deal that they definitely could have done if they had decided to. But my initial reaction was that, yeah, I kind of like that one better maybe it's just kind of a simplistic like getting back the best player in the trade sort of analysis which is not always the right way to look at it but in that case when the best player is that good yeah maybe and plus he's I guess he's I mean, Miller's 25, Fernandez is 23, and I guess they're at about the same arbitration point.

So the salary isn't really a consideration there. But can I ask you, I want to ask you the question that we talked about yesterday about whether the Royals' success, how much credit the Royals' success gets for the mini trend of teams trying to get two super duper elite closer aces yeah do you think that the royals success post shields trade is a factor in this at all making it more acceptable to deal your prospects i that maybe he read andy mccullough's uh essay in last year BP Annual. Right, about how prospects are crap or whatever. Yeah, I don't think so. And do you think that the A.J. Preller, Rick Hahn experiences

of last offseason have entered Dave Stewart's mind at all? I would think so. I was just thinking about that because I'm looking at the roster page of the Diamondbacks right now, and rotation sure looks a lot better, but I would say about half of the lineup is players that I could not write a BP annual comment about without extensive research. I mean, it's Socrates Brito and Phil Gosselin and Jake Lamb and Peter O'Brien. And I'm not saying all these people are bad at baseball. I'm just saying I could stand with a little more research before I weigh in on exactly how good they are.

So you have, as we've mentioned, a couple MVP candidates in Pollock and Goldschmidt, but after that, it's not so impressive. And it kind of makes you think of the White Sox and the Padres last year not having infields when they made a bunch of other flashy moves that seemed like they would make them better. And yet they still didn't have infields on opening day. And I'm not sure if the diamondbacks are quite at that point and obviously it's the beginning of december they could still do things the top story on mlb trade rumors right now is that the diamondbacks and rangers are discussing

potential pitching trades so they may do more but i don't know if it's, I mean, if you're going to sign Zach Granke and trade your number one draft pick from this year, I don't know. You'd want a little more certainty. Like, I don't know if you look at this roster and think that this team is the favorite in the NOS. Well, you definitely don't think that. I don't even know if you think it's the second place team in the US. Right, that's the question. The question is whether it's the second best team in the US and or whether it's at the same tier as the Giants, Pirates, Cardinals,

and maybe Mets, the teams that you would sort of think are your primary wildcard competition. Although, of course, we know that the primary wildcard competition is going to be you know two of those teams and two teams that we don't see coming whatsoever and the diamondbacks are better than those two teams that we don't see coming whatsoever so they could always be that team but uh yeah i mean it's it's always hard to imagine you know a floor in the nl west that's lower than you know 91 for the champion.

The Dodgers are just going to keep that. It's always going to take a pretty good season, and it might be that, I don't know. The Dodgers are an interesting team because they've underperformed more or less what I expected from them three years in a row, and yet they still seem really strong. They still seem like they're the team to beat at any given time. It's like the Tigers for a few years.

It is similar to the Tigers, except that it's similar to the Tigers in that, yes, they have not been the dominant runaway with the division team that I expected. But they're also a little different from the Tigers because they have, they have, you know, they have no weak spots. Like the Tigers, you said that because they had a good major league roster and no competition. The Dodgers have a good major league roster and like a great system,

a system that is both ready to contribute as well as provide lots of assets to trade from. And they have unlimited financial resources, presumably still, to upgrade and to reload. And if they want to, to go take on a bunch of good player, bad contract guys at the deadline or in the waiver period. And it just sort of seems like the Dodgers not only, you know, should be good enough to win 95 games without trying like the Tigers always felt like, but it also felt like, well, if everything goes wrong and they're only on pace to win 85, they can adjust. Like they've got like a second gear that they haven't necessarily had to use. And so I'm almost certainly, based on the past three years, I should probably reconsider the invincibility of the Dodgers. But still, of all the divisions in baseball, you'd rather be in the West than the NL Central.

And that's probably it, right? Yeah. sure that i uh think that the central will produce more wins from their champion than the dodgers will or than the nls will so that's kind of close too so but what does that have to do with anything what the diamond bags aren't going to try they ought to try i guess but uh by the way the uh the fernandez deal apparently might have had you know that might have been on the table was Swanson was basically these three guys and then Corbin and Brandon Drury, who's also like a mid-tier prospect,

like not a big national prospect, but in the middle to near top of their system. So that's a lot too. That is a lot. I mean lot too. That is a lot. I mean, yeah, that is a lot. I'm not saying they should have taken that. I'm not saying they should have taken that. Yeah.

I don't know what they should have taken. This one feels, it's hard to say something all that nice about this one, except nice to see people trying. Yep. The Cubs were evidently second in the Shelby Miller sweepstakes, and they were asked about Chris Bryant, and they were willing to include Jorge Soler. And the Braves went with Swanson over Soler, I guess, is the implication. I don't know. I can draw that conclusion. There are other people involved, but that's interesting. They were asked about Bryant. I guess you can ask about anyone.

I will. One last thing. This is very condescending. Maybe I'll ask you to edit this out because it's so condescending. But I am somewhat impressed that Dave Stewart does not use wins as a way of assessing pitcher quality. I'm a little surprised, especially because Dave Stewart, he won a lot of games as a major leaguer.

And it's to his benefit mentally to think of himself as a winner. I wrote a condescending tweet last night about how this was his bid to be the Sabermetric GM, trading for a 6-17 starter. You think he promised this trade to Granke before he signed Granke? Do you think Granke was all like, yeah. You think Granke would have okayed this one? I'm wondering. Do you?

I don't know. Granke signed for six years, so that's Swanson territory. I know, but every player wants to go for it this year. That's true. I mean, when Greinke was with the Royals, he didn't want to stay because it was going to be a long time until those prospects were around, and I suppose he could have thought the same thing about Swanson. But I don't know.

That would make me downgrade my opinion of Zach Greinke's front office abilities. Well, yeah. Anything about the Cubs stuff before we end? So, Bruce Steele was above Bowdoin, but maybe a little bit lower than I liked, but I'm still making those gains. God, that was above Bowdoin?

Wow. Bowdoin? Wow. Umbris Steele and the rumored Chris Davis offer, I think you are almost mathematically eliminated from Bowdoin competition unless Ian Kennedy ends up having to pay a team to pitch for it. Davis was yours? Yeah. Dang it, I was rooting for Davis. Whoops. Are you surprised that Starling Castro didn't bring back more?

A little bit. Only a little bit only a little yeah i mean i guess he's a he's a name and it's kind of incredible that he's still 25 he's 25 he's he's uh he's owed for basically 40 over the next four years more or less with a team option at the end that uh would be an easy pickup if he turned into you know an above average consistent above average player um and he'll only be 30 so that's not hard to imagine uh and he is a name you think he's just a name to you he's just a name well he ended the season excellently the last couple months in the playoffs, but he was pretty terrible before then and had a terrible 2013, so he is seen as up and down.

He has been up and down, and he's a second baseman now, so I guess the offense is slightly less appealing, but seemed like a pretty good pickup for the Yankees, I would think. I like Warren, and Warren seems like maybe the type of guy who'll be better for the Cubs than he was with the Yankees, because maybe they'll end up using him in a real rotation spot and going from the AL East to the NL, and not saying he's going to be an Arrieta or anything But he could be a solid starter for them I would think So yeah, maybe slightly surprised

I like Warren You like Warren, huh? So take Warren out of it Just curious Would you rather have Zobrist for the next four years Or Castro for the next four years? And take the 16 or 18 or whatever extra million dollars Just forget about that too Who would you rather have over the next four years And take the 16 or 18 or whatever Extra million dollars just forget about that too Who would you rather have over the next four years

Zobrist Really late 30s Zobrist over 27 Year old Starlin Castro I think so really I don't know Zobrist I mean Zobrist is a little scary because His defense declined Last year or at least the numbers

Say it did. I mean, he hit when he came back from the knee injury. He was classic Zobrist offensively, but the defense and the base running decline, that's a little scary just because defense and versatility has been such a big part of the Ben Zobrist story. And if he can't do that anymore, then he's not special, but he's, I mean,

even if he can't, even if he's just like, I mean, even if he's just a decent fielder, below average fielder, if he keeps hitting, he'll be better than Daniel Murphy. Yeah.

But dude, he's, I mean, that's, that's also a thing that you're asking a lot for a guy who's 30. I mean, next year, sure, I take Zobris, but over four years, he's going to be 35, 36, 37, 38. Those are not years that you project a lot of offensive stability

from most guys, and maybe Zobris is not most guys because he's, I don't know, I don't even know why you would say that why he wouldn't be most guys but I mean he's smart I guess I don't know I don't know is he smart I honestly have no idea if he's smart Joe Maddon likes him so he seems smart yeah uh but I mean I I don't know yeah it's I don't know I mean, I don't know. Yeah, it's, I don't know. Really?

I take, just if you take all the other factors out of it, I think I would bet on Castro over the next four years. I suppose, but he's, I mean. It also is much more likely that, is it? It seems much more, it seems more likely that Castro is a star for four years. Probably. It's more likely you get 20 wins out of Castro. Well, I say it's more likely you get 20 wins out of Castro than you get 20 wins out of Zobrist. Except for over the last four years, including the decline year, last year, Zobrist produced 18. Now, again, he's older, and you wouldn't expect him to just keep that exact level of performance

even without seeing the decline last year. You wouldn't expect him to keep seeing that level. So I see the argument. I see where you're coming from. Kasker's been replacement level two of the last three seasons, and his best season was four years ago. The question is, if you're talking about a four-year outlook, how much better does a guy have to be for you to pick the 35-year-old

over the 25-year-old? And I think that that's probably historically, I think that the answer is a lot, like a whole lot. And maybe Zobrist is that much better. And maybe Zobrist just fits better. They have, you know know the Cubs obviously put a huge value on versatility Joe Maddon puts a huge value on versatility Zobrist does have that for now at least and um maybe they figure we have so many you know good infielders and so many good

everythings that uh we mostly need Zobrist for this year to be the key, to be the push us over the top part for this year. And then beyond that, they're going to be so good, they don't even need to be pushed over the top. I don't know. And I'm not saying they should have kept Castro instead of Zobrist either. But then, of course, Warren is also a factor. So you like Warren.

I do. Yeah. Yankees have, well, I was going to say that they haven't developed like a top level starting pitcher for a while, but they have now in Severino. And I don't know, maybe you could make the case that the Yankees could have just used Ref Snyder and Ackley at second base. And maybe that wouldn't have been so different from what castro is projected to do anyway but yankees have done a bunch of these trades for like

back of the rotation bullpen type swing man guys like shane green and david phelps and vidal nunio so they've at least managed to develop some starters who were good enough to get traded for something. I do think the Zobris deal is a very good deal. I think even if I like him less than Castro over the next four years, I think that $56 million is a great deal and less than I would have thought he would get, particularly less than I would have thought he would get before I read Bowdoin. And I think it's a very good signing. And so Patrick Sullivan tweeted, Pure speculation, Theo et al. selling a great story. Those Lackey and Zobristils are crazy team friendly.

So basically he's saying that something about being on the Cubs right now, this team, this group, this manager, this GM, this city, this World Series drought, all of that is contributing to basically him getting two very good veterans to come be part of something for much less than their worth, theoretically, on the open market. Do both of these moves strike you as suspiciously below market? Well, it didn't work with the creative David Price contract offer of 7-161. I would think, I mean, maybe with Lackey because he's older and was considering retiring anyway and would want to win. But if anything, I would suspect that the Madden factor had more to do with Zobris than the Cubs factor. Zobris did just win a World Series, although not for the Cubs. I don't know. I kind of buy it.

I think that's a valuable part of the pitch. They both do seem low to me. They both seem, not only do they seem low to me, but they seem like deals that were going to be available to these guys if they had waited another two weeks. And so the fact that they signed them without really, to me, any danger of getting Kyle Loesch or Kendry's Morales or anything like that, it seems to me that something was appealing on the side

about the situation. But I like Patrick, pure speculation. Okay, so sorry to snub Adam Lind today, but we'll probably do a Mariners episode sometime soon when the dust settles. And we'll do emails one of these days once the winter meetings leave us alone for a while. So you can send us some at podcast at baseballperspectives.com.

Could be as soon as tomorrow. And you can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild rate and review and subscribe to the show on iTunes and support our sponsor, the play index at baseball reference.com. Use the coupon code BP when you subscribe to get the discounted price of $30 on a one-year subscription. Talk to you tomorrow.