Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 809: The 2016 Minor League Free Agent Draft

Episode Date: February 2, 2016

For the third consecutive year, Ben and Sam draft the 20 minor league free agents they hope will earn the most major league playing time in 2016.

That's why I love the unknown, love the unknown, he said he loves the unknown. That's why I love the unknown, I love the unknown, he said he loves the unknown. Because I love the unknown, I love the unknown, he said he loves the unknown. Good morning and welcome to episode 809 of Effectively Wild, a daily podcast from Baseball Prospectus, brought to you by the Play Index at baseballreference.com. I'm Sam Miller, along with Ben Lindberg of FiveThirtyEight. Hi, Ben.

Hello. So, Ben. Yes. FiveThirtyEight. Yeah. Who won Iowa? Do you know? Too early to call. Oh, okay. All38. Yeah. Who won Iowa? Do you know? Too early to call.

Oh, okay. All right. Anything to talk about? Just a quick update on some of the banter from yesterday's show. I brought up the TV show Billions and the scene from the most recent episode where Damien Lewis's character makes a comparison between one of his traders and former Yankees utility man Brian Doyle. And he says that Brian Doyle had a lifetime 168 batting average. He, in fact, had a 161 batting average.

And we puzzled over how that happened, how 168 got into the show when it was actually 161. got into the show when it was actually 161. As a number of people pointed out after the episode yesterday, Brian Doyle's batting average on balls in play is 168. So if you go to Fangraphs, for instance, and you're maybe just glancing at the page, and maybe you don't know the difference between BABIP and batting average, you could very easily conclude that Brian Doyle's lifetime average was 168. So I think this probably supports your theory that this was a mistake on the writer's part, or maybe some production assistant who the writer's told to go look up Brian Doyle's career average and did it carelessly. It is um that this lines up and the babbitt comes before average on this on the fangrass page yes page and i doubt that this uh matters but uh technically the world

series average uh would also still be correct because he did not strike out or hit any home runs in the world series so his uh babbitt also would but i don't think i think that's just however i'm not totally convinced i think it's a compelling case but if you don't know enough to distinguish between those two i doubt you're going directly to fan gap graphs intentionally and um you know as everybody who's ever searched anything knows baseball reference, would be the first result on most players. Yes. Baseball reference sort of hides BABIP, or it's kind of hard to find. Oh, yeah, you certainly wouldn't accidentally take the BABIP on a baseball reference page. Now, that said, Brian Doyle, if you search him, you don't get his baseball reference page.

There's another Brian Doyle who is a, quote, Canadian writer whose children's books have been adapted into both movies and plays. Many of his stories are drawn from his experiences growing up in Ottawa and vicinity. And so he actually takes the first page of Google. And so if you Googled Brian Doyle, you might not get it. And so then you could imagine a research assistant maybe Googling Brian Doyle stats or something like that. Now, that's still not like I don't see if I have Fangraphs at the very bottom of the first page of results here, you'd get Baseball Reference, Wikipedia, Almanac, MLB.com and ESPN as options first. as options first, but you could imagine that there is a search in which Fangraphs is the first result, or at least is plausibly high up. Yeah.

Yeah, I'm trying to... It strengthens the case. Oh, it definitely does. It's not conclusive. I would say that's exactly right. It strengthens the case and is not conclusive. Okay. It's also possible that maybe a mobile search might be more likely to lead to Fangus, or maybe it's possible that the person who was in charge of this does know that it is between BABIP and batting average

and simply glanced too quickly, or that something about the way that he was looking at it on his mobile phone made it difficult to read. Maybe it involved scrolling and not being able to see the header anymore. So many possibilities. He saw what looked like a plausible batting average, and he took it. He just took it and ran. Yep. I would say, yeah, I'd say that now that I think about those possibilities, I'm feeling pretty, at least 50% confident that this is the answer.

I still hope the truth will come to light someday, but this is the best theory we have. Okay. All right. I want to correct someday, but this is the best theory we have. Okay. All right. I want to correct. Yesterday on this show, we stated that Michael Brantley was one of only three players last year with more walks than strikeouts. He was actually one of only three left-handed hitters. In addition, there were two right-handers and a switch hitter who also did this, so there are actually six. You might not think that it matters whether he batted left-handed for the relevance of that fun fact, and I would agree.

Okay. But I assume that's why we have the wrong thing. Sometimes you leave a filter on, as you know. Yep. All right. So, Ben, there's a quote that I think about a lot by Andy Warhol, where he says, once is usually enough, either once only or every day. If you do something once, it's exciting. And if you do it every day, it's exciting. But if you do it, say twice or just almost every day, it's not good anymore.

That really resonates with me. The idea that if you have, you know, if there's a sandwich you like and you have it six times, well, you're never going to like it as much as you did the first time. And it's probably keeping you from exploring the rest of the world. And really, when you start repeating things, then they all become less memorable and you won't remember any of those individual sandwiches. And you can make the case that you should really, if you have a sandwich you like, you should really only have it once, unless you're going to do it every day, in which case, then the ritualistic

aspects of our brain start to kick in. And it starts to have greater significance, greater value in your life, because you will look back and see that it was a large part of your life. And that's kind of like what baseball is, right? Every day. And we have done the minor league free agent draft two years. We're going to do it a third time this year. And I and we have done the minor league free agent draft two years uh we're going to do it a third time this year and i think we have to decide after this whether this is going to be an annual thing or whether this was going to be a trilogy that we are now closing out today yeah well this is the rubber game because we each have one victory exactly so we have to decide was this a series between us a championship series in minor league free agents or are we going to decide, was this a series between us, a championship series in minor league free agents, or are we going to do it forever?

And by year 38, it'll be one of those traditions that they write about, like the fantasy league that the local newspaper writes about because they've been drafting every year since 1976 or whatever. So I imagine you will vote end it. Is that right? Do you want to vote for end it? It's a lot of homework you yeah you hate it i think i like the exercise but i hate the preparation whereas you just don't do any preparation that is true so should we say that the winner gets to decide whether we continue like this will be the rubber match and then next year whether it goes on will determine will be determined

by who won okay all right sure all right first uh first draft we've had with stakes so we're drafting minor league free agents should we define what a minor league free agent if you can if we can't it's not easy i have no idea what a minor league free agent is i know that there's a list of them and i know that i look at it and wonder how that guy qualifies it's usually players who've basically been minor leaguers for six years and are not on a 40-man. That's the majority of them. And I guess, I don't know how a guy like John Axford last year gets on because we think of him as a major leaguer. But I guess if you end the season in the minors or if you've spent, I don't know.

Go ahead, try. There are exceptions and loopholes and fine print, and we'd have to read it from a rule book somewhere. But yeah, I mean, your basic broad definition covers most of these guys. They're just guys who've been floating around for years, and maybe they have a little bit of major league service time, but they've mostly been in the minors, and they get to be free agents after a certain amount of time so that teams can't just keep a minor leaguer in their system forever and not use him. Eventually he

gets the chance to be free and sign somewhere else. And by the way, I'm going to save your emails. This is not the same as signed a minor league contract. So there are lots of guys who've signed minor league contracts who are not minor league free agents. So when we don't pick Joaquin Arias, don't email us. They're different things. And again, we're not good at defining what the differences are, but they are different things.

Right. And fortunately, Baseball America puts out a giant list of all of these guys that it gets from Major League Baseball. So we will link to that list so you can follow along, play along at home in the podcast post at BP and also in the Facebook group. Hundreds of players, many in each organization. So it's a giant list to cull. And many of these are players we haven't heard of, or we've heard of them, but we couldn't tell you one thing about them other than that they're baseball players. And so I dive into this and try to find players. The point of the minor league free agent draft is to draft minor league free agents who will be major leaguers in the upcoming season. And so the one

of us with the most combined plate appearances and total batters faced wins this competition. Regardless of how well they play. Yes, they could be terrible. it's just all about playing time major league playing time to me the point of the minor league draft is to remember a lot of names that i haven't thought about for a long time the great thing about minor league free agent lists is that it is probably the most exclusive list possible that includes pete cosma donovan tate and oral hershizer's kid like they're like you could make a list with those three on it, but it would be a lot bigger list.

Like, this is a worlds colliding. This is basically a high school reunion where you go back and you're, you know, you see. Except no one's a success. Right. Well, but they were some worse. Yeah. I mean, a lot of these guys were successes.

They're successful guys on here, and there might be a couple of future successes on here. They're all success. They're all more. Try to get one of them to blurb your book, and you'll see how much more successful than you they are. Probably. Right?

I'm not sure there's anyone on this list I would want to blurb our book. I'm not sure there's anyone on this list who would blurb your book. So, which I guess just means that success is a matter of perspective. Vic Black. I think Vic Black would blurb your book. So, which I guess just means that success is a matter of perspective. Vic Black, I think Vic Black would blurb your book. He might, but would you want him to? So, it's really, it's slim pickings. It's needle in a haystack search. There was an article by Carson Sistoli, who loves minor league free agents. He found that about 1% of minor league free agents produce at least half a win above replacement in the following season. So almost none of these guys go on to be good, but some of

them do go on to get plate appearances and face batters, and that's all we care about. And so the first year we did this, you won. It was a pretty pretty solid victory you got a combined 353 plate appearances and total batters faced i got only 93 your big earner was steven tollison and mine was reed brignac tollison pitched too by the way yeah right so that's the caliber of name that we're going after here and we both did considerably better in our second attempt at this. I don't know whether that has anything to do with our skill. I think it mostly has to do with John Axford. Yeah, well, we both did much better.

I ended up with 629 combined, and you ended up with 560. And we both got several players. The big earner of the draft was John Axford, who was for some reason a minor league free agent. And I had the first pick for whatever reason. For whatever reason is you flipped a coin and won the coin flip. Right. Well, that's valid. Or did I give it to you?

There was a period where I was letting you pick first all the time. Yeah. That might have been the end of that. That might have actually brought in the coin flip era. Yeah. That might have been the end of that. That might have actually brought in the coin flip era. Yeah.

So John Exford ended up facing 250 batters, and so that was big. That made the difference between us. He had already been named the closer. Yeah. But, I mean, we did pretty well other than that. There were five other, six other players who got at least 100 plate appearances or total batter's face. Jonathan Herrera, Clayton Richard, Raphael Betancourt, Pat Vendetti was on this list. David Ardsma, Rodamis Liz.

And so we have more hits. Half the players that we picked last year appeared in the majors which uh there i mean there was a period during the first time we did this where it was like july and i think one player had made the majors and it sort of felt like the strategy here might be to just get one plate appearance to go prices right on it and you'd win and uh last year we got i mean we had a 50 hit rate which is not bad that's i think that's pretty good yeah and the fun it. We had six the first year combined. At least for us. I don't know whether it's fun for anyone else. But you just get these little news bulletins on some day in the season where you recognize a name from the minor league free agent draft.

And you feel a sense of accomplishment. And you care about this news that otherwise you wouldn't have even noticed. And it's a nice little thing to keep us interested throughout a long season. So here we go again. Okie doke. Let's flip. Okay. All right.

I'm going to – why don't you go – you call it, and then I'm going to go into another room and flip it. You know what? You can just call it while I'm – I'm going to walk away now and flip a coin, and I want you to just call it while I'm going to walk away now and flip a coin, and I want you to just call it into the void, okay? Okay. And then I'll come back and tell you,

and then the listeners will know whether you cheated. All right. All right, I'll be back. Okay. Going with tails. All right. It was tails. I picked tails.

All right. Did you know it was tails when when it landed i did guess tails oh okay well we'll see i guess we won't see we'll take your word for it i mean i'm only one for two since you've been testing me so that's about right all right so you pick first okay i will say that this list i don't know whether you had this thought as you read it. There's no Axford on this list. There's no Axford, but it's deep. It's deep. I guess it's deep.

There weren't even really a lot of names that I was surprised to see there, like guys with a lot of major league time who I didn't think would be minor league free agents. They all sort of seemed like people think would be minor league free agents. They all sort of seemed like people who would be minor league free agents. So I did some research. I guess I will start with Emilio Bonifacio. Okay. And I'm picking Emilio Bonifacio because he has been in the major leagues every year for the last nine years, which is a long time. Obviously, previous major league experience, always something you look for in a minor league free agent draftee. He is only 30, even though he has all that service time.

He plays a bunch of positions. He signed a major league deal, and he signed a major league deal and he signed a major league deal with the Braves and the Braves will probably be bad and need a backup at one position or another and when they do Emilio Bonifacio will be waiting yeah that's solid that's uh that's a solid pick he was uh he was on my list and um you know he it's only 68 plate appearances, but he hit 450 in AAA last year. That's pretty good. But that's what he does.

He hits 450? Well, in 68 plate appearances, he always hits 450, and then he gets more. He's the guy who he's hitting 450 through 68 plate appearances and somehow 220 through 70. Like it all crumbles all at once. Like this is – you don't know this because I wrote this in an email, but I'm going to make this comparison for the second time in two days. He's like – his batting average is like Dorian Gray.

It just all to ash right away. He's played six positions professionally. He's played some short. It just all to ash right away. He's played six positions professionally. He's played some short. He can play second and third. He played center a little bit last year. So you can always plug in Emilio Bonifacio. I hope that the Braves will.

That's solid. He hit 167 with a 390 OPS last year, which is less solid. And he has been sub-replacement level the last two years. But I think that's a good pick. Thank you. All right, I'm going to go in a slightly different direction than that. And I'm going to choose Dion Viciato. Okay. And Viciato, the reason I like him is one, he was an everyday player just one full year ago. He didn't play in the majors last year, but the year before that, he batted 600 times. And the year before that, 500. And the year before that, 500. I mean, he was a regular very recently and he puts up some pretty stats. He's not a very good player. He's a horrible defender.

He has a Pedro Feliz type of slash line, very low on base percentage. But he has some right-handed pop, and you know how that is in today's game. So scarce. And he's only 27 this year. I love an age 27 season. And he played – it's not like he was bad last – like he played in AAA last year, and he hit 287, 348, 450, which is, you know, it's a good line, particularly because he wasn't in one of the crazy PCL parks. And so, you know, he's a guy who I think, it's just hard, It's really hard for me to imagine him not playing unless there's a,

some sort of injury that I've, that I've overlooked. He also, so yeah, he hasn't signed. That's the biggest thing is that he hasn't signed in. He's essentially a DH or bench bat with no particular positional value right now. And there are a couple of those guys still around and those guys seem to be more plentiful every year. But I, I just have, I, don't – like if V-C-8-0,

if we were doing home runs instead of plate appearances, I would also pick V-C-8-0. Like I bet V-C-8-0 hits eight home runs this year. Whatever number of plate appearances it takes him to get there, he'll do it. Okay. I love a 27. I mean, it's rare to see a guy with 1,800 career plate appearances make this list before he turns 27.

That's a very rare opportunity here. Yeah, that's true. All right. With my second pick, I'm going to take Hak-Joo Lee, who was a former top prospect. He was on top 100 lists three years running. Those years were a couple years ago, but he was a top prospect. He had an injury. He came back last year and he played for the Rays in AAA and was not great, but he is a shortstop, and he's 25, and he was signed by the Giants. I'm banking on the up-the-middle guy with the former prospect pedigree.

Yeah. Wasn't your first pick two years ago Reid Brignac? I think so. It's pretty much the same exact thing. Yeah. A former top-raise infield prospect. Yeah, yeah, that's true. Yeah, Brignac had been a big leaguer.

But the same organization, same position, same kind of basic story. Do you know, could you tell me anything about his defense? I can in just a second. If he was, if it turns out, if he's a wizard, then I could see this being a good pick. If he's not a wizard, it's hard to, I mean, you know. good pick if he's not a wizard it's hard to i mean you know he's a negative six fielding runs above average in both 2014 and 2015 and a sub 600 ops over the past two years in triple a did he have an annual comment this year i can't imagine he did let me say he had comments every

year from 2009 to 2015 sure the last one about was about his recovery from his gruesome knee injury and how he lost several steps off his plus speed and how he's quite likely a lost cause yeah we did not we didn't mention him unless unless he somehow unless he'd already moved to the giants but i doubt that let's see here did he even get a line out that's not a great organization for him to be in either true oh he is oh he got a line up what is it a former top prospect hawk ju lee is just looking for the opportunity to remain in professional baseball scouting scouting may be the only viable alternative you do not get credit for played appearances scouted.

Still, if you can get someone who's in the annual, that's something. Yeah, that's true. Relevant. Yeah. All right. For my second pick, I'm going to go with Pete Cosma. Okay. And partly that's because he played in the majors last year. That goes a long

way. He's only 28, which helps. He is still, I presume, has a reputation as a good glove man. And so you could imagine him hanging around as the emergency shortstop for any number of teams if it gets there but i particularly like that the yankees signed him and as you recall from last year one of my strategies is to get the yankees minor league free agents based on one article that was written one time by kylie mcdaniel about how the yankees use their relative wealth over the rest of the league to sign the best minor league free agents for some tens of thousands more than other minor league free agents tend to get. And so I believe that if you're looking for the best minor league free agents,

the Yankees have already told you. Kind of like how if you want to open a business, there was a time where if you wanted to open like a business, there was a little piece of wisdom that you should just go to where the Starbucks was because they were seen as having the best like kind of neighborhood scouting algorithms. Like they were the masters of finding the right block. And I don't know if that's still true because now they're everywhere, but I feel like the Yankees have already done my homework for me and I'm not going to ignore that. All right. So Pete Cosma, by the way, also last year, the rare 152 batting average, 152 slugging percentage. So let's do a quick impromptu play index. He had 111 played appearances without an extra base hit.

And I'm going to see, I'm going to set at 100 played appearances with zero extra base hits. And I'm going to go by year to see how common this is. So Cosmo was the only player, is the only player since 2010 to do that. And one of only two players since 1995. It basically happened once in the 80s, once in the 90s. It did not happen between 2000 and 2009. Groselonic did it in 2010. And Cosmo did it last year. So we are talking about basically the third guy since the steroids era began or since the, you know, in the modern era, third guy in the modern era. Okay. And actually before that, uh, the only reason they was showing it more before that

is because pitchers used to get a hundred plate appearances. So pitcher, pitcher, pitcher, pitcher, pitcher. It happened like, uh uh it's happened uh a total of four times since 1975 including pete cosma doesn't totally shock me that pete cosma's the guy who did that the most played appearances in history uh seems to be duane anderson in 1973 with 144. And that looks like it holds up. That holds up all the way back to 1916. Okay. So if anybody's going to break old Dwayne's record, it's going to be Pete Cosma this year.

I hope not. All right. Good pick in the Reed-Breniak model. All right. My third pick is Rafael Ortega, who was signed by the Angels on a major league deal. He is an outfielder. He actually made his major league debut in 2012 as a 21-year-old

and played two games for the Rockies. Has not played in the majors since, but he played all of last season 131 games with the cardinals in triple a last year had respectable stats 367 on base and has a little speed and plays centerfield and supposedly is a pretty good centerfielder and the way his signing was reported was that he will be a guy who's competing for a fourth outfielder pinch runner sort of spot with the angels this year and doesn't have a ton of competition i guess he has to beat out guys like colin cowgill and efren navarro and he probably has better speed and defense than those guys. So Major League deal.

I'm going with Rafael Ortega. Yeah, that's a good under-the-radar pick. Thank you. I don't think I'd ever heard of him. I mean, I had heard of him, but I don't think I remembered having ever heard of him. Yeah. He also, Chris Mitchell at Fangraph did a a post on the best projected i

see this is not how i found him but i did come across this post and he just did like three hitters and three pitchers who projected well using his projection system for minor leaguers and no one projected well they all projected terribly but of the terrible people rafael or rafael ortega was the second best so stats sort of like him too all right good pick thanks i'm going to go with jim henderson all right and jim henderson is not quite john axford of course uh he wasn't a closer as recently, and he doesn't have a closer job, and he didn't pitch really at all last year. But he is a guy who has at points in his career been a high leverage reliever, a nearly all-star quality reliever, briefly. last year he had shoulder surgery and normally a reliever coming back from shoulder surgery is not a great bet, especially after all of his numbers completely collapsed. But I'm assuming that the numbers collapsing is just related to the shoulder surgery, that there's a chance that

he's fixed. And so what I, but what I really liked about him, because that is true of a lot of guys on this list. What I liked about him is this quote. The story begins with him worrying that his career might be over. He thought he'd have to work all off season to get some team to give him a minor league invite. And then I'm going to pick up the article. That is till the New York Mets show, by the way, till the New York Mets in the article, till the New York Mets, T-I-L-L, not until, not apostrophe T-I-L, not even T-I-L, till the New York Mets. That is till the New York Mets showed interest like lickety split. Quote, they emailed my agent a minute after free agency opened, which is a real thing.

That actually happens. Teams will email an agent a minute after free agency opens as a way of signaling that they are the team that is most interested in that that's where there's going to be an opportunity because a lot of with minor league free agents you're not giving them you're not probably going to win with your your contract offer you're going to win by showing them that you're the team that believes in them and that that's the best place for you to get reps, to get plate appearances and to face batters. And so you're really trying to convince them that you're not just a name on a long list, but you're the first name that popped out to them.

So they called him a minute after free agency opened on November 7th. They hammered out a deal, and Jim Henderson is going to go to spring training, looking for a job in the New York Mets bullpen. And I feel like the New York Mets bullpen has room for Jim Henderson. So I also, I did not call him a minute after this draft began, but I called him not too long after this draft began. Okay, sure.

Recognizable reliever name. Yep. Solid strategy. He's on the depth chart too, by the way. It's always good when you can get a guy who's already on. Pete Cosma, not on the Yankees depth chart, but Jim Henderson is on the Mets depth chart. He is the 11th reliever listed. Yeah, that's a nice little endorsement. Okay. All right. Fourth pick, Andori Acevedo, fourth pick and dory asavedo who is also a reliever right-handed reliever but has a somewhat interesting backstory he's a converted former third baseman and uh yeah i mean he he was

converted a while ago i guess it was a few years ago but he rose quickly. Last season, he was in the Yankees system. He started in high A, he went to double A, he finished in triple A, and he had a 2-5-9 ERA with, you know, not the greatest peripherals, but not bad peripherals. So he rose up quickly, seemed like the Yankees saw something in him, and his control issues, which were terrible in previous seasons, as maybe you would expect for a guy who was a third baseman, sort of went away. Like he was walking like 10 per nine, 8 per nine, 9 per nine in the previous few years.

And he only walked 3 per nine in 2015. So it seemed like he made some progress with his control woes and the cubs signed him to a major league deal and added to a major league deal major league deal and added him to their 40 man roster goodness gracious yeah good move good pick he's a 25 year old and yeah it seems like sort of a cub story just guy who's under the radar and had some reason why he wasn't good before, and now maybe he'll be good in the back of a bullpen at the end of the year. So you did kind of cheat a little telling the story of his control. He started the season in high A where he walked one batter in 19 innings.

Yeah. And then he moved up to double A and he walked 11 batters in 28 innings. And then he moved up to AAA, where he walked nine batters in 11 innings. So as he did move up, his walk rate got back to where it had been, more or less. Almost, yeah. Almost. It still, I would say it still represents progress, in that the previous year he walked 12 guys in 12 innings

and a ball and he walked 24 guys in 27 innings in low a ball. And yeah, I mean, he was walking like a guy per inning. So he's better. Good pick. Thanks. All right. I'm going to go with Casey Kochman. What?

Why not? He's still playing, huh? He sure is. Okay. He sure is. And one of the reasons that I'm going with Casey Kochman, who last played in the majors in 2013 for like six games, is that he he disappeared

for all of 2014 and most of 2013 and so it's not as though he's been uh kicking around as a you know as triple a roster filler and nobody wanted him he disappeared and i don't know why he probably so he's been out of baseball for some reason or another, and that's a positive thing? Because, Ben, because he came back last year. He played last year in AAA. And he did a Casey Kachman kind of batting line, I guess. He hit.290,.374,.426 in a neutral park environment.

And, you know, it makes sense that he wouldn't get that that wouldn't earn him a chance even though it might have been another organization because he was with the royals and the royals already have a left-handed hitting first baseman who's pretty much completely entrenched and they're a team that doesn't use their bench and you wouldn't really expect a guy like casey kotchman to even get a start a week or even a pinch hitting appearance a week if he were on the Royals. That's a terrible situation for him, but he did show that he could play still. He is left-handed batting, so that helps. He is slick fielding, so there's a definite defensive replacement potential. And he has signed a deal, I assume a minor league deal,

with the Toronto Blue Jays who are right-handed leaning. Not that he's going to like platoon with Edwin Encarnacion or anything like that, but they're right-handed leaning. And to me, Chris Colabello and Justin Smoke are both the sort of guys who were productive last year. And you could also imagine very easily not being productive at all this year. So it doesn't seem like it would be that unbelievably hard for him to get into, say, a semi platoon with Chris Colabello. I mean, it's I wouldn't necessarily expect him to get the full left-handed batters portion of a platoon.

But I mean, look, Chris Colabello is a guy who had essentially no track record of success until last year and had a very good year in 100 games, but so did Steve Pierce once. You know, like he's 31, he's going to be 32, he's right-handed. And if Justin Smoin smoke for some reason became not really an option you could imagine very easily casey kotchman starting half the time

with colabello in a platoon situation so i actually uh i like the move i like the signing i like my pick all right age 33 casey kotchman yeah it'll be a big year for him why did he miss says he presumably retired from baseball. Okay. Good. Well, that actually is good. Like, it's much better that he presumably retired than that he had, you know, some surgery that might still be lingering. He just rested.

And then he came back with the love of the game, rejuvenated. And this seems pick of the draft so far. Good job, Sam. Okay. Presumably retired. and uh this seems uh pick of the draft so far good job sam okay presumably retired like no one no one asked him i guess no one no one cared enough to find out where he was or even google yeah all right okay well then with my fifth pick, I will also take a former first round pick who has been signed by the Blue Jays and invited to spring training, Gio Meyer. Gio Meyer was a 21st overall pick in the 2009 draft, four picks ahead of Mike Trout, of course. And he was in the Astros system for a while and he was a prospect he was a top 100 guy at BP he was a top 75 guy at Baseball America that was several years ago but he still plays

shortstop and he was in AAA for a while he spent last season in double a he had a decent on base percentage according to bp's stats he also had a negative 12 fielding runs above average at shortstop though yeah so if he was playing short and you know at least he can handle the rest of the infield yeah and he is only 25 and former former top prospect who was highly regarded as a high school shortstop and the blue jays have had a lot of really terrible infielders get playing time over the last couple years and i'm just banking on that continuing i mean if ryan goins can play for the blue jays and muninori kawasaki can play for the blue jays, and Darwin Barney and Jonathan Diaz and just all of these pretty terrible players

can get playing time in the Blue Jays infield. I'm going to hope that Geo Meyer will make his Major League debut in 2016. Yeah, Goins and Barney are currently on the depth chart. Barney is on the depth chart at three positions. And Troy Tulewitzki, of course, if there's one thing you know about him, is that there's probably going to be starts for the guys below him on the depth chart. So I would bet that there are 500 plate appearances in this infield that are not currently on the depth chart,

which would include Meyer, you know, at least 500. And just those three positions, maybe not at least 500, but close to 500. I just don't know that I would bet on it being Meyer. I mean, we also know that the Blue Jays buy in bulk when it comes to this sort of waiver depth. And they probably have other guys that we're not even aware of. And they might still have other guys ahead of them and they might be picking up guys and Meyer seems like a little bit of a stretch to give those plate appearances to but he's in a good position right now that's a good setup for him and also uh who knows we know that he didn't do well as Giovanni Meyer but that's

right he's removed the Vonnie yeah all right uh let's see so that's four he's removed the Bonnie yeah all right let's see so that's four picks five for you four for me I'm going to go with Jarrett Groob you know Jarrett Groob I do not mean either that a real name Jarrett Groob uh jared grube uh this happened last year too uh jared jared grube 10th round pick in 2004 by the rockies has bounced around since then made his major league debut in 2014 with the angels uh one game of relief got two outs that was it that's his major league career he got he had two-thirds of

an inning in relief for the Angels at age 32. But last year, he was really one of the very best pitchers in the International League, which is AAA, for the Indians. He went 9-0 as a starter. He had a 2.26 ERA, which was something like the third or fourth best ERA by a starter. And, you know, anytime you look at these guys and you look at their minor league sets, some of them have good ERAs, and they almost inevitably struck out 5.5 per 9. Like, that is the story of the minor league free agent, 5.5 strikeouts per 9.

But Groob struck out 8 per 9. And the thing that he did, really really is he doesn't walk anybody hardly. And so he started the year in the Mexican League, and he walked six in 60 innings, struck out 50 and walked six in 60 innings. Then he got brought over to the International League with Cleveland and had four strikeouts per walk and a very good ERA. And so he's a guy who starts, presumably also then could relieve. The strikeout rate's not ridiculous. And it seems like there's some slight positive trend in his career. And it doesn't seem to me that unreasonable that he'd be, you know, any team's seventh starter at this point, maybe even higher, maybe even sixth or

fifth starter. So Jared Grubb, Jared Grubb, basically a way of putting this is Jared Grubb is probably the best, is the player on this list who did best last year. He had probably the most impressive performance of everybody on this list last year. Okay. So scouting the stat line. I am. Well, it's AAA too. I mean, you can scout the stat line, you know, pretty much at AAA. Yeah. All right.

Now I know a lot about Jerick Grubb. Okay. With my sixth pick, I am taking Buddy Bowman, possibly Bowman, who is a left-handed pitcher. He is listed at 5'10", which means he's probably not 5'10", although maybe that's unfair. There must be athletes who are actually 5'10", and aren't just faking. And he has spent the last few years in AAA.

He was drafted in 2009 by the Royals. He's been in the Royals system for his entire career, and he's had pretty good results in three seasons at AAA. He has a 3.04 ERA with a strikeout per inning and decent control. He's started 17 games over that time, although mostly out of the pen. He was death on left-handed hitters last year. Lefties hit 148, 225, 222 off of him. And he was signed by the Padres to a major league contract. So I'm hoping that getting out of the Royals system will be his ticket to the majors. Really good pick.

Gotta go with the lefty arms. Yeah, he's such a good pick that I might pick him in my relievers only league. Yeah. That's a good pick. How are you finding all these guys with major league contracts? I did research. It's true you did. That's why we're late today.

Yeah. Good pick. Very solid pick. I wish I had him. All right. I'm going to go with a friend of the podcast so you know who i'm gonna say jeff beliveau yeah it is jeff beliveau who was a traveling major league all-star not 18 months ago uh long time listeners remember uh that we were amused that he was who

the united states sent to i think japan japan for a all-star showcase uh along with a number of all-stars uh and uh somebody uh after that sent me a autographed postcard autographed by jeff bellovo uh a postcard of je Jeff Beliveau that he got at a fan fest. And I appreciated that and I still have it. So Beliveau was, you know, obviously good enough to get invited to the thing. Two years ago in 2014 with the Rays, he had a, you know, pretty long track record of being the kind of reliever that you'd think would make the majors someday. These are his strikeout per nine rates by level from age 21 on. So the,

sometimes this is triple a for six games. Sometimes it's, you know, a ball for 90, you know, 29 games, whatever. These are all them.

Okay. So I gots for nine, 13, five, 13, two, 10, nine,

13, six, 18, three, 12, six, 10, four,

10, nine, 12, six, 10, six. And then he made the majors with the Cubs, eight, seven, and, 4, 10, 9, 12, 6, 10, 6. And then he made the majors with the Cubs, 8, 7. And then back to AA, 22.5, 15.3, and then zero.

He's a regular Jarrett Grubb. Yeah. And then he made it to the majors finally in 2014. After all that, at age 27, struck out 13 per nine for the Rays. No, sorry, struck out 13 per nine for the raise uh no sorry struck out 13 per nine for their triple a team with a 1.5 era then made it to the raise struck out 10 and a half per nine with 2.62 era everything was good jeff bellovo would be you know a definite relievers only league pick and then last year he had labrum surgery uh just quietly slipping that in it's not quietly it's the premise of the draft man you know that

this is going to end with somebody having labrum surgery um but he uh he said some months ago that he'll be ready for spring training i don't know if i believe him but i don't need to believe him it's a minor league draft i only need a few of these guys to hit uh he signed a deal with the orioles um you know they're a team that's had some success with relievers. Let's do that. All right. With my seventh pick, I am going with another new Padres reliever, Cesar Vargas. And he's another major league contract on the Padres.

He's only 23. He's been major league contract on the Padres. He's only 23. He's been... 23? Yeah. He's been in the Yankees system, I guess, since he was signed at 16, probably. He's been there for his whole career. And he made it to AAA last year. He has done well at AA.

He, last year, spent most of the season at double a had a 2.79 era in 67 innings struck out almost the batter per inning with decent control and then made it up to triple a for a few games at the end of the year i guess he's 24 he just turned 24 at the end of December. So he's young and he's had some success and made it all the way to AAA and has a major league deal. And he's also a guy who showed up on Chris Mitchell's projections list as the best projected pitcher, which he's still projected to be pretty bad. But he's got enough results for me to trust him. Cesar Vargas. Of all the players you've picked, Emilio Bonifacio is the only one I wrote

down and I didn't put a ranking number on him. Yeah. Well, I didn't have Jarrett Grubb on my list. I didn't have Casey Kochman either. Actually, I don't think either of us has drafted anyone that the other person wanted yet. I wrote down 27 guys, and I'm pretty sure you haven't taken any of them yet. Actually, I had Jeff Bellow on my list just for old time's sake. All right. I'm going to take Clay Rapata. Okay. All right. I'm going to take Clay Rapata.

Okay. And Rapata is another guy who was actually really good last year in AAA and was, you know, like Kochman, always a good comp when you're drafting players is when you can start like Casey Kochman. Like Kochman, though, he was just in a situation where it just didn't make any sense at all. He was pitching. He was the Giants' triple-A depth as a loogie,

and they had Javi Lopez, who's the same guy, but better, and Jeremy Affeld, who's their secondary lefty. But in Sacramento, he did what he always does. He had a sub-3 ERA Pitched about an inning per appearance Yeah, that's surprising Because I was going to say One of the downsides of Clay Rapata Is that even if he spends the whole season in the majors

He might throw 30 innings Yeah, that's true He might get 120 But I'll take 120 In 2012 with the Yankees he got into 70 games and threw 38 in a third inning uh-huh yeah but he faced 155 batters though and i'll take that yeah but rapata who uh uh hasn't pitched in the major since 2013 nevertheless he has a um you know career career lefties have hit 1645, 231 against him,

which is essentially Javi Lopez. He's even worse against righties, although the sample is very small. But he's 35, which is old, except for in Randy Choate years. And you could imagine that it just takes the right moment, the right team giving him six innings to prove himself, and then he could stick there for the whole year. You're right, though, that the upside on Rapata is pretty low for that reason. But yeah, he is very similar to Javier Lopez in a lot of ways,

and it wouldn't surprise me if he were something of a late plumer. Anyway. Yeah, okay. All right. I'm going to take Trey Haley, who is a right-handed reliever signed by the Pirates. He is a hard thrower. He used to be a starter. He switched a few years ago and supposedly throws in the high nineties, but not good control and who knows maybe he'll be a a race erage retrieval and uh trey haley in let's see he is 25 years old and six four so big just power arm he pitched in triple a

for the indians double a and triple a for the indians last year had a 245 era anything else 55 innings anything else uh you mean i mean did he by chance walk 21 batters in 21 innings at triple a just he did just guessing he did do that yes he also struck out 22 um so yeah it's uh he's got some control issues there's a reason why he's a minor league free agent but former second round pick hard thrower going to ray searidge and got a major league contract got a major league contract how do you do it man i put my research time to good use he's also on the depth chart uh he is the 10th player listed on the pirates bullpen depth chart well that's good bullpens have like 13 people in them now that guy definitely

pitches all right not hailey yeah not 10th on their staff depth chart 10th on their bullpen depth chart okay trey haley all right i will take dion. Uh, if you're named Dion, I will sign you. Uh, Dion Diaz is a 27, he's going to be 27 year old, a reliever. Uh, and he was basically the best AAA reliever, uh, best reliever on this list last year, uh, by, you know, some basic standard, not that exciting measures like ERA. Um, you know, he's standard, not that exciting measures like ERA. You know, he's not, he's not great. He struck out eight per nine as peripherals aren't so special, but he didn't allow any home runs. He was extremely dominant in double A and still quite good in triple A with the Red Sox. And he has since signed with the Reds who are a terrible

team with a terrible bullpen. And you could very easily imagine almost anybody who pitched at AAA last year, particularly pitched well last year, getting 50, 60 innings in their bullpen right now. So that seems like an easy pick. He is not listed on the depth chart. Okay, well, I'm going to take a Reds reliever. And I don't know if he's on the depth chart okay well i'm gonna take a reds reliever and i don't know if he's on the draft and if he's on the depth chart or not but i think he's got a lot going for him he is blake wood is

blake wood on the reds depth chart he is he's uh right ninth okay so blake wood the story with blake wood is he is a guy who has been in the big leagues. He pitched in the big leagues 2010 to 2014, missing 2012, but he was with the Royals. He was with the Indians and he is a 30-year-old right-handed reliever, big guy, 6'5", 240, throws in the mid-90s, and did fairly well last year. At AAA last year, he pitched 58 and two-thirds innings for the Pirates, 353 ERA, struck out almost 11 per nine innings. So he definitely has some swing and miss stuff. The Reds are bad bad and He's been in the big leagues before They signed him to a major league contract And they have him on the depth chart

So Blake Wood That's a better Reds reliever than Mine They have almost the same peripherals Except that Blake Wood has a lot more strikeouts And Diaz has A much lower ERA Otherwise they're the same

Yeah he's got 99 Twitter followers And I'm gonna just read A brief selection of the Comments on the MLB trade rumors Post about the Reds signing Blake Wood This is starting from the top What a joke why Blake Wood Major League contract

I don't understand this Do they need relief help that bad Reclamation project to flip at the deadline i have no idea good grief to flip at the deadline yeah they got him to flip him at the deadline it's their plan to get great prospects back is signing blake wood yeah so lmb trade rumors commenters not impressed that was your last pick, right? That was my ninth pick, I believe. Was that really only your ninth? Sorry. Goodness gracious.

We're over an hour. Anthony Wrecker. Oh, I'm glad he was taken. He's too good looking to be in the minors. That's why I picked him. Good. Yeah. He's handsome.

Very handsome. Your pick. Okay. I mean, you know, he's a guy who plays every year. He's a standard backup catcher. He's on the Indians now. He signed with the Indians. And, you know, he doesn't hit in the majors, but he hits very well in AAA.

So at the very least, even if the Indians don't think he's a good hitter right now, they will undoubtedly be fooled when he hits in AAA. He always hits in AAA. He hit last year in triple a and uh those eyes yeah okay my last pick is jimon choy who is another angel and he was a rule five pick and the... I thought you were just mispronouncing Gene Machi. And the story in the LA Times about him was, angels

expect Rule 5 picks Diolos, Guerra, and G. Monchoy to make big league team. So if the angels expect him to make the big league team, I mean, they're the big league team. So they would know. So I'm going with what they said. And he got a major league deal. He's a first baseman, which is not great.

He's 24, and he also had a 50-game PED suspension in 2014. But he's battling for a bench spot. And he had pretty good numbers in 2015. I mean, he didn't play much, but when he played, he was good. He had 80 played appearances, mostly for the Mariners in AAA. And he had the 390 on base. He had batted 290. And he can play first base. He can play a little corner outfield. And I don't know, maybe Albert Pujols gets hurt and he gets some playing time. He's a switch hitter. So G-Mon Choi.

All right. Well, I thought about a few guys here. Thought about Melvin Mercedes, who has the benefit of being in the Tigers' bullpen still, but also didn't get called up last year to the Tigers' bullpen, which is the exact opposite thing. Thought about Carlos Peguero. Thought about Felipe Paulino, who still has fans somehow in the stat hit community, and I believe Patrick Dubuque made us put him in the annual even thought about kyle drabeck who is healthy now all the time like he manages to make it through every year but he's still not good thought about george kataris except he's behind buster posey

thought about carson blair but i will just make it simple and i'll choose gene munchie to complete that little joke. Gene Machi was horrible last year, but he got to keep pitching until the end. And you could very easily make the case that, well, no one's going to let Gene Machi pitch. He has a 5.12 ERA last year with lousy

peripherals. And he's an old guy who looks more and more like those two years in San Francisco where flukish, bad peripheral flashes in the pan. But to the end of the year, they let him keep pitching. Like a team, he was that bad for the Giants in the first half, and then a team went and got him and then let him pitch until the end. So if someone would let him pitch in September,

I don't know why they wouldn't let him pitch in April. And he does have some track record of success. It's probably shallow success. But gene munchie why not uh seems like seems like a safe bet to be pitching in the majors at some point this year okay that's all you can ask for there we go right mine's a much more like yours probably have especially after bonifacio i feel like yours have a combined well okay bonifacioacio has tons of playing time in the majors, and Blake Wood has some. And after that, you have like 50, maybe 50 played appearances

or batters faced in the majors combined. And I have almost all washed up or injured veterans. I have like eight guys who are essentially veterans. Definitely different strategies at work here. So hopefully that made this compelling. I'd love to know what the retention rate of listeners to this episode was. If you made it all the way, I hope you learned something. We learned a lot of the 10 players I picked. I'd probably heard of three of them this morning or could have told you anything about three of them.

And now I'm pulling for them. So John Chenier, the official stat keeper of Effectively Wild, hopefully will add this to the spreadsheet, the Google Doc, and the Facebook group of all of our ongoing and completed competitions. So you can always check in to see which guys we got. Hope you enjoyed this exercise as much as we did. Alright, so you can send us

emails. We'll probably do emails tomorrow, so send them to podcast at baseballperspectives.com. Join the Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild and rate and review and subscribe to the show. On iTunes, you can support our sponsor, The Play Index. Go to baseballreference.com

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