Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 874: The One-Month Winter-Move Mulligans

Episode Date: May 2, 2016

Ben and Sam banter about the Marlins’ failed Friday no-hitter attempt, then talk about which offseason transactions teams would already take back if they could.

Velasquez, he was effectively wild, let's put it that way. Walked four guys and pitched well, well enough to win. Baby, don't you let me down tomorrow Holding hands, we both abandon sorrow Oh, baby, don't you let me down tomorrow Oh, good chance to get away tomorrow Good morning and welcome to episode 874 of Effectively Wild, a daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives, brought to you by The Play Index and BaseballReference.com, and our supporters at Patreon. I'm Sam Miller, along with Ben Lindberg of FiveThirtyEight.com.

Hi, Ben. Hi. How are you? I'm more excited than you, apparently. Yeah? It's book release week. It is. I'm excited. I am excited. I am excited. Hi. How are you? More excited than you, apparently. Yeah. It's book release week. It is. I am excited.

Okay. You're saving it for the official release date, which is tomorrow. No, I'm not. This is you excited. Nope. I'm compartmentalizing my life, Ben. It doesn't have to come out in my intro to the 874th episode of our podcast. Well, our podcast and the book are very tightly intertwined.

Do you have any banter before we go? Well, since our latest Bryce Harper-Mike Trout showdown on episode 867, April 21st, Bryce Harper, who struck out four times on Sunday, is batting 188. So he has

turned back around the corner or maybe he has turned too many corners, and he has ended up in the wrong direction. Yeah, don't you feel stupid? Yep. We better do another one. Okay. Anything else? Well, I figured we could answer perhaps one listener email that was about something that happened this weekend, since it will never be relevant again. And it's a question from Max, and he says, I attended Friday night's Marlins Brewers game in Milwaukee,

a city known for its whiplash-cold lake, which according to Sam Miller, no one swims in. In the eighth inning, Don Madden... I don't even know that reference. That's such a deep cut that I have no idea what he's talking about I vaguely remember that one I think it might have been the avocado episode In the eighth inning, Don Mattingly made the decision to pull his starter after 116 pitches Up to that point, the young Adam Conley had thrown 7 2 3rds innings of no-hit baseball

Albeit with four walks But this isn't another no-hitter slash pull-the-pitcher debate What's interesting about Mattingly's decision is this albeit with four walks, but this isn't another no-hitter slash pull-the-pitcher debate. What's interesting about Mattingly's decision is this. The Marlins were up six runs, so Mattingly went with one of his mediocre pitchers, Jose Urena, 442 career FIP, 1.6 career WIP. In short, Mattingly treated it as if it were just another game with a six-run lead. He needed someone to soak up innings. He called the bullpen and asked for the sponge. The Marlins' bullpen wasn't 100% rested. Many of the top arms had been used the

previous night in a late game at Dodger Stadium. But looking at box scores over the past few days, the bullpen hadn't been taxed. There were options better than Urena. The Marlins' players certainly looked like they were ready to celebrate the no-hitter. They watched from the railing in the dugout. The bullpen pitchers sat peering out over the outfield wall. From those eager vantages, Does this signify the death of the no-hitter? I know you are not fans of the no-hitter, but if you were in Mattingly's position, would you treat a no-hitter in progress the same as any old game if you were staked to a comfortable lead? And of course, he means a combined no-hitter in progress. I'm watching right now the Braves, the last,

I think it's the last out of the Braves combined no-hitter in 1991, which is a game that Kent Merker started. And it is now Alejandro Peña in the final out and i want to see what the uh level of exuberance is the announcer's really into it the crowd's really into it the catch we got a fist pump yeah i would say the crowd is definitely into it the players are not uh-huh they're really treating this like it's a normal wow boy the broad that there's really a disconnect between the broadcast and the uh early 90s Braves fans too you do a whole episode on them Gwynn, National League's leading hitter and the pitch flung on fly ball deep left field Nixon back he's got it the-hitter and the Braves win!

They'll never go home tonight. The fans standing. So anyway, I was going to hypothes hypothesize that because sometime in the 90s i think it was in the 90s major league baseball declared that no hitter combined no hitters aren't real you used to be that you'd get credit for it like your name would be in the record books as having thrown a no hitter so when you were reading your uh baseball trivia book that you got for your birthday and they would ask you you know maybe that maybe it'd be a trivia question about how many pitchers had thrown no hitters in the 58 braves rotation or something like that you'd have to get the starters who weren't combined no hitters and so like that's how barrett that's how babe ruth for instance got his his no hitter as uh documented in episode 500

of this podcast but somewhere along the line they decided all sorts of things one is that what you it doesn't count as a no hitter if it's i think i think that well they wiped away a bunch i think it doesn't count as a no-hitter if you if it gets range shortened i think and maybe if you give up runs or or lose maybe you have to win i can't remember i don't remember what they did but the point is that the combined no-hitter used to be a thing like the game winning rbi and now it's not really a thing i don't know if that has anything to do with don mattingly i don't know if any of what i've just said is even true uh but it does feel like the combined no-hitter is much less cool than it used to be yeah and i think that's appealing too i think that's sort of fitting

too i mean one of the things that makes a no-hter impressive in this day and age is just like, oh, wow, a guy through nine innings. Like, like, like, that's enough. Like, you could lead the next day's game story with human being completes ninth inning of baseball game. And then like the nut graph would be no hits were allowed. And but so if you're, you know, if you're're if you're just doing like the six inning thing and then the bullpen comes in and shuts it down i i wouldn't celebrate it particularly uh now that said well two things that said that said two things one it is still surprising to me that don mattingly didn't bring in a better reliever if it were if it were 15 to nothing then i could see it almost looks like you're running up the score. But what was it, 6-1?

So you could definitely justify bringing in your A team. They had a six-run lead at the time. Okay. Two is that a couple weeks ago I was arguing that the Dodgers should have brought in Kenley Jansen if they were going to pull Ross Stripling out of his no-hitter. And I think that's a different situation. I think that it's not that you do that because the no-hitter means anything. It's that you do it as a show of respect to the guy that you're pulling. Maybe you can make the same case for Conley, although history was not going to remember Conley because it wasn't his first start.

And so it wasn't quite the same sacrifice that he was making in coming out of that game. I don't know. What do you think? Do you disagree with anything I said? No, I think if Max is right About the Marlins players looking excited I haven't verified that But if they were really into this Then that alone might be an argument For treating it more seriously

I mean, I don't know, maybe the team is down Because of Dee Gordon's suspension And suddenly this combined no-hitter Potential comes along And maybe you would just give it more Credence, just kind of as a chemistry down because of Dee Gordon's suspension, and suddenly this combined no-hitter potential comes along, and maybe you would just give it more credence, just kind of as a chemistry thing, more than anything else. But it doesn't mean much to me. I guess if you're the team that is being combined no-hit, it is almost as demoralizing as being no-hit by one person, but it's definitely not the same accomplishment because, yeah, I mean, a lot of the greatness of a no hitter, such as it is, and we're not

particularly into no hitters anyway, but a lot of the degree of difficulty comes from the fact that you are facing the same hitters four times and, you know, there's that penalty and you are tired. And if you can bring in a fresh reliever who hasn't seen any of these hitters before that day then it's significantly easier still unlikely but significantly easier so yeah maybe it's a another slight sign of erosion in respect for the no hitter i just watched the astros combined no hitter from 2003 in which Roy Oswalt had to leave the game with injury, and six pitchers combined. And similar, the announcers were fairly into this. The crowd was fairly loud, but the final out of the game was accompanied by a mere fist pump and high five,

no hugs, no arms in the air. Yeah. although six pitchers, it gets less special with each successive pitcher, right? I mean, I don't think that it's special to the relievers regardless. And so it gets less special for the starter, but the starter's out of the game by this point anyway. The starter's, by definition, not the guy on the mound making the last out. So I don't know that it does matter in determining how zestfully the final out should be celebrated. I will, just one last thing, note that a couple years ago, the Angels threw a combined no-hitter and lost to the Dodgers. They lost 1-0, Jared Weaver and Jose Arredondo

combined on the no hitter. And that achievement, which was a combined no hitter and a loss, did make it onto the airport collage of Angels achievements that we discussed in an episode back in February. Yeah. Okay. Just so you know. All right. Which may have been updated since then for all we know. Yeah. Okay. All right. On to the weekend. Yep. All right. So first off, just real quick, Rich Hill threw on Sunday for the A's. He had a very odd start. He went six innings, allowed two hits, two runs. However, he walked four and struck out four and i tell you what i definitely saw a box score earlier in the game where through five he had struck out two and walked five so that was a heck of a sixth inning yeah i'll give him credit for that really found his release point retroactively

yeah that's the i don't know strange that a a good quality start, not even a cheap quality start, two-hitter, has me a little bit more pessimistic. But I'm going to go all the way down to three and 39. Okay. So that's one million a year, but basically the same. He's now 10 starts into this thing that he's doing. And he has earned the contract already, right? I mean, he has already, if we're doing a dollars per war sort of calculation to figure out whether the one year and six million that the A's spent on him was justified.

I mean, he has already probably been worth a war, right? It depends on your war. And so I can't say, for instance, at baseball perspective, DRA requires, it's complicated, but you can't publish DRA too early in the season. You just can't do it because the numbers are still fluctuating. And so, like, we don't have a war for him. At baseball reference, he was at a.5 going into the start, so maybe call it.6. And then I would say that he hasn't justified it.

I'm not sure what the FIP-based war would give him, but he's pretty close. Yeah, FIP-based war. He was at 0.8 going into today, so he's probably just about there. All right, so I want to segue that into the topic today, which was recommended by a listener on Facebook. Do you have it in front of you? Yeah. The listener's name is Maxim Veilleux. And his suggestion was, let's say a 30-day money-back guarantee existed. Which teams would ask for a free agent contract refund? And it's kind of crazy to think that, well, I don't know, maybe we'll find out. But for instance, Jason Hayward signed a nine-year deal. And it's both crazy to think that we would reconsider that deal after 30 days. And yet, you know, depending on how he starts, it's kind of hard not to. I don't know if we'll say that for Hayward.

But I guess we're probably overreacting if we were to do that. I guess it's probably crazy. But the thing about it is that, you know, by definition, as it's been pointed out many times before, in most cases, if you sign a player as a free agent, the other 29 teams were not willing to offer him that much money. So even if we're not willing to go full winner's curse on this, you could conclude the margins are fairly small. And the difference between the guy at that, I mean, you probably had to be talked into that price for the guy. His agent probably really had to work you for a few nights of drinking

to get you to that price. And so if you are reconsidering that player really to any even moderate degree this early into it. It's probably not that much of an overreaction to say that you'd rather not have him to that contract, right? Yeah. It's not irresponsible. I guess I'm trying to justify maybe some of my answers, but it doesn't seem that irresponsible.

Like, I'm not saying that Zach Granke's terrible or he's not going to be a very good pitcher or that the team wouldn't love to have him. Spoiler, Zach Granke might terrible or he's not going to be a very good pitcher or that the team wouldn't love to have him. Spoiler, Zach Granke might come up in this. I'm just saying that it was already close. That's the nature of these. It was already close. And I can think lots of good things about Zach Granke and still think, well, yeah, but maybe at 180 and not at 207, right? That's not right. That's not, that doesn't seem bad. No.

All right. So Ben, first we're going to expand this, not just to free agents, but to any move of the off season. You're going to give me your number one return, number one exchange, number one, whatever we're calling it, mulligan. And then I'm going to give you my number one. And then I'm going to prod you on some that neither of us mentioned fair yes good go okay so it is tough to do this in a way that's compelling i guess because it's so obviously the the moves that were that we

were down on before anything happened before the season started we would be more inclined to say that teams should do over now i mean like if we didn't if we didn't like it on opening day then we're more likely to i mean i don't want to just say what we would have said at the time of the trade i'm not coming at it from that perspective to me i am granting them the position that they had the day that the ink tried that i i'm accepting accepting whatever thought processes, whatever evaluations that they used, and I'm now only adding to that relevant data that we have learned in the last month. It's still obvious, though. It was the worst move of the offseason, and it is the worst move of April on top of that.

Are we including Dee Gordon's five-year extension in the pool of possible moves? What is that even? Completed in January. Well, I don't think Dee Gordon's extension, I wouldn't take that back. I mean, look, they were going to pay Dee Gordon this year anyway. It's not like they were thinking about cutting Dee Gordon. And so they were already going to lose 80 games, even if this played out exactly the same, but with no extension. They were going to lose 80 games. I guess now you have 80 fewer days

of service time, so it might have pushed his free agency back slightly. But other than that, I'd still sign him for that deal. I still think he's going to be a very good ball player when he comes back. I still think he's going to be worth having. And I don't think the world's going to hold it against him any more than they hold it against Johnny Peralta or Nelson Cruz or infinity other guys. So no, I would, you can, if you want to take D Gordon, you can take D Gordon. Nah, I'm not taking him anyway. Someone, someone would mention it if we didn't mention it, but I'm not taking him. So I think that there are i think there are two candidates that are equally strong but they are both moves that were much maligned this offseason but i think that even if we are

sort of just granting that a move has to look worse than it did at the time that you know whatever the team was thinking you take that as a snapshot and it has to have changed significantly since then. I think even with that condition in place, probably the Vince Velasquez trade has a very strong argument. I think that there's, yeah, well, I didn't think you'd pick that. But yeah, there are two answers here. And that's definitely one of them. Was it much maligned? I know that we did an episode in which we were.

that's definitely one of them. Was it much maligned? I know that we did an episode in which we were... It was not the most maligned, but I think it was less maligned than it would have been probably a decade ago. But now that every team is trying to get a Super Bowl pen and Super Closers, I think it was less maligned, but there was definitely still a... Some maligning. A closer for a starter sort of backlash. Yeah. It probably was also less maligned than it would have been if, for instance, Dave Stewart had made it. Yes, perhaps.

But yeah, I, um, it, it really is sort of, I mean, look, there's,

there's two sides of this. One is that Ken Giles has, has underperformed. And I think that you can, I think you can do this conversation without buying into Ken Giles struggles at all. And, you know, I think that Ken Giles struggles are troubling. I'm not convinced. He's bad in spring training.

He's been bad in the season. He is not the closer, which we've talked about. There could be many reasons for that. But one could be that the Astros think he's worse now. Yeah. And so, yeah, so there are a lot of reasons to be worried, although he's still, you know, throwing very hard and striking out tons of guys. So yeah, it's not super scary, right? He is throwing just as hard as he did. He is striking out tons of guys

as he did. The walks are up a little bit. They're not like what you would consider trouble spot trouble zone for really he's not marbling. And it's basically four homers and a bad Babbitt, which is, you know, something. He had allowed three homers in 116 career innings, and now he's allowed four in 10 this year. And it just depends what your philosophy is on that. You know, clearly those baseballs were hit hard, and you don't get them back, and he's to blame for them being hit hard. But we also know

that home runs especially in small samples are one of the noisiest results and that if you were to look at xfip which the smaller the sample probably the more justified you would be in looking at something like xfip he still looks like a very good pitcher all right so that said it's hard to imagine that vince velasquez't be, at this point, a dominant reliever. Yes. And at the very worst, like if that is the very worst that you can imagine if he were still an Astro, then they didn't need to trade. They didn't need to make this trade.

They didn't need, I mean, Giles has more service time. He's going to be more expensive. And they lost Mark Appel in the the deal which maybe we don't know exactly how much they mind that but they lost thomas ashleman in the deal they lost a couple of other guys in the deal and so there's you know a a real cost to a what looks like a fairly obvious downgrade every gm in baseball right now with a well every gm in baseball right now would rather have Vince Velasquez than Ken Giles, right? Yes. And if you had a completely loaded rotation, maybe you even go 11 deep. Somehow, you ended up with 11 awesome starters, but you have a hole in your bullpen and you've got to

choose from one of those two. How many of the 30 are taking Velasquez? That's essentially the question that we asked On our off-season We did an analysis episode What percentage of Giles Would Velasquez be If you were just to make him a reliever I don't remember what percentages we said I feel like you chose Velasquez

I definitely thought he was going to be close I don't remember exactly what I said But I said said it would be a small difference, if any, I think. So, yeah, if you just had to choose between reliever Velasquez and Giles right now, and, you know, assuming you can, like, never make Velasquez a starter again, he's just locked in as a reliever forever. Sure. I think probably purely on talent, I would say probably still 20 take Giles. 20 take Giles. Okay.

All right. Yeah. It's a weird thing because right now, look, nobody's job is certain. And even if your ownership has a great deal of faith in you and sees what you're doing with the franchise and thinks that you've got a great process and all that. At some point you, you know, you need results and, you know, everybody's chair is at least a little bit wobbly and the Astros are eight and 17. We

have no idea what their owner's patience is with this. We have no idea how wobbly anybody in that front office's chair is, but it's this weird thing where in like it almost matters more how good Velasquez is well maybe it doesn't matter more but to a huge degree the security of Jeff Luna's job might be dependent on Vince Velasquez not being good which is weird yeah it's like it has nothing to do have totally diverged from what we expected for them this season since that trade. The Phillies are 15 and 10. The Astros are 8 and 17. It seems as if they've sort of swapped places as far as preseason expectations. where they're in a different league, they're in a different division, they're in totally different universes, ecosystems, and yet it's just got to be the worst thing in the world for your own feeling of job security to watch Jake Arrieta go out there every day and shove.

Anyway, yeah, I definitely think the Astros would take that one back if there was a 30-day money-back guarantee. Yep. However, Shelby Miller. Yes. That's next. So bad. So bad.

So bad. Shelby Miller now. I think I didn't choose that one just because it was probably the most maligned move of the offseason and more maligned than the Giles Velasquez deal. And so it had to get worse since then compared to the Velasquez-Giles trade to make this list. It did. But it did. He's thrown 23 innings. He has 19 strikeouts and 19 walks. He entered the start Sunday having

allowed three homers per nine. He had he might, he had that finger thing where you watched that. Did you see the, did you see that when it happened? You mean how he hits the mound with his hand when he's finishing? Yeah, exactly. So his, his follow through his, his finger scraped the mound a couple of times and it hurt his finger. And you watch that and you think, oh my gosh, did we just watch a career end? Like, can, cause what do you do if that, if that's happening? I don't know. I don't like now you're in your head, right? It either might happen again or you have to adjust to keep from happening again. I have no idea if

it's in his mind at all, but it's in mine every time he goes out there. And he's been, I mean, you know, this is one of those things where we all didn't like the trade because we thought that Shelby Miller was going to put up a 3.8 ERA. None of us saw him putting up an ERA, you know, approaching 10, which is what it is through six starts. And meanwhile, approaching 10, which is what it is through six starts. And meanwhile, part of the justification for trading Ender Enciarte, who in a vacuum projected to maybe be as valuable to a major league team as Shelby Miller did by war warp, was that, well, yeah, but they don't really need a center fielder because they had AJ Pollock. And now NCR Day has been injured for much of April as well. But they need a center fielder now.

And so that didn't work out. Like even if you were, if this trade were only about this year. And it were only about Miller versus NCR Day. I think you could have kind of made a case for NCR Day from the start. Although I don't think most people would. And frankly I probably wouldn't have either. I't really buy it but pretty close and now i think it's fairly obvious i mean if shelby miller were uh not shelby miller if he hadn't come at a great cost and if he didn't have a track record as as being fairly famous he would be he would be

optioned right now he would be being sent to triple a Yeah not to mention The other players in that deal yeah well Blair who went from The Diamondbacks to the Braves and has already made His big league debut and pitched a couple Times yes hasn't been great But better than a heck of A lot better than Shelby Miller yeah and

Dansby Swanson who was of course The number one pick and the big prospect Coming back to the Braves in that trade, was great at high A, which was a promotion from last season and has already been bumped up to double A. Is that right? Yes. Oh, my goodness. See, I didn't even know that last part. Yeah.

Yeah. So. I mean, you could make a case that, I mean, this was a trade that was for for the present right like miller's locked up for a few years but this was very much a our window is now we need this guy in our rotation we need a horse we need a postseason starter we need to send a message that we're in this we need it for now and you could make a case that the now year could be the worst of the whole deal like they could lose this they could lose year could be the worst of the whole deal. Like they could lose this, they could lose, they could miss the playoffs this year because of this deal.

Maybe. Yeah. I mean, it's, you know, it's early, obviously no team in the NL West is over 500 and Arizona is just a game and a half back and maybe Miller fixes his mechanical issues and is fine for the rest of the season. And it looks different in September. But, but yeah, I mean, it was a move that, uh,

everyone hated at the time. And if we had known what we know now, we would have amazingly hated it much, much more. So, yeah, I hate that. See,

I hate it when it works out this way though, because now we're all going to be so proud of ourselves for hating it at the time, but we did not see this coming. No, like were not on shelby miller's collapse and we'll like it was the same with josh hamilton where we were all so proud of ourselves for hating the josh hamilton deal but nobody saw josh hamilton being that bad and in fact we missed on josh hamilton and we missed on shelby miller by as much you know by actually a lot greater margin than we thought that dave stewart was missing on shelby miller yes like

wait like it beat us and us and dave stewart were like probably six six tenths of a run apart we're like this this guy thinks is a 3.2 era pitcher he's a 3.2 ERA pitcher. He's a 3.8 ERA pitcher. I'm very confident. I know baseball. And in fact, he's a, what is it now? A million. He's now a million ERA pitcher. He is now a 8.49. Went down today, Ben. Ben, it went down today. He went three and two thirds and allowed three runs all earned on four hits, four walks and improved his ERA. Not good. All right. So those are the obvious. All right. What's the case for getting your money back on Granke. He hasn't been very good. He's got a 5.5 ERA. He's got a 3.75. His strikeouts are down from his last two years. His walks are up a little. He's given up a bunch of home runs. He's getting babbitt to death. And he currently leads nationally in hits allowed and runs allowed. And, you know, just hasn't.

Look, he's got a 5.5 ERA. That's not that good, right? Here's the case for how good Cranky was. Even if you include those six very bad starts that I just described, over the last two years, he's got a 2.21 ERA, including those six. So you could make the case that that's not nearly enough to reimagine Zach Granke. The thing about the BABIP thing, which, you know, I don't think anybody's, particularly anybody who's qualified at the major league level

is going to continue to have a 353 Babbitt and Granke will get a lot better by doing nothing but part of what we were being sold on Granke for the last few years is that he was this guy who had the ability to out pitch his FIP he had done it four years in a row, and in particular last year, and he did it by such a margin that normally we would go, well, yeah, I mean, that's crazy. He'll never, you know, that's, there's a lot of luck in that, but because Granke's cerebral and odd, and because it was so much fun to watch how good he was, there were, I think there were a lot of people who were arguing that, in fact, this is something he can do, that he's, he's weird, that he's, you know, partly it's that he's thinking, and partly it's that he's discovered this trick of throwing a lot of pitches from the same tunnels, and they're of, you know, close enough velocity that you have a hard time picking up the differences out of his hand but they're different enough that you're always off and so granky doesn't just need to have strikeouts and walks in order to be in order to justify us buying into his dodgers years he also has to keep having low babbitts

and uh so there's i don't know i think there's maybe something a little extra damning about the fact that he's given up a ton of hits this year. Not that I think he's gotten worse, is that I think that some part of it really was an illusion. And that even 600 innings of a pretty cool magic trick doesn't change the fact that there's still no real such thing as magic. It's just an illusion. Yeah. So would you get your money back on Zach Granke? I don't think i've seen enough i don't know that i would have done that in the first place but if i had i don't think i'd have too much remorse right now okay justin upton i don't know what he did i don't know what he did today but he did have three hits uh however he did strike out and didn't

walk which okay all right so perhaps the ratio that you will be mentioning in a moment. He entered the game on Sunday hitting 221, 242, 326. He had a negative war, and he did have black ink, which is that he leads the American League with 38 strikeouts, and he has walked only three times. Both of those rates are way above his norm, his norms. He strikes out plenty, but he's not league leader type strikeout guy, and he's always had perfectly acceptable plate discipline.

And so both of these things really stick out. plate discipline. And so both of these things really stick out. He basically has the hitting line of the National League against Clayton Kershaw right now. So that's bad. Yes. Now, I don't know. He's a guy who signed for less, right, than people were expecting? Yeah, still six years and I think 133-ish million. Okay. So he, yeah, I mean, I don't know. There's no real way to, yeah, he had three hits, as you said, on Sunday. He had his second homer on Saturday. He had three hits on Friday. I'm asking you to make a decision about a guy based on 23 games, not three. I'm not that irresponsible. So just looking at the output so far, are you getting your money back on Jess Numpton? He was the name that came to mind

when I was looking for one of the big free agent moves as a candidate for this discussion. It is really hard, obviously, to find a month that moves the needle that much with these moves. I mean, when you are committing to a player For several years and over a hundred million dollars Obviously you're doing that Because the player has a long And impressive body of work And there's no reason to think he's

Going to turn into a pumpkin immediately And so it's really hard To do enough in a month To significantly change your mind about that So he is I, the closest of the big moves thus far for me, just because that is a pretty scary strikeout-to-walk ratio, 39 to 3. And, you know, strikeouts and walks are something that tend to become significant more quickly than other stats.

And so it's a little worrisome. I'm definitely more concerned than I would be if he had the same slash stats, but something closer to his normal strikeout-to-walk ratio. But it doesn't look like he's chasing a ton of terrible pitches or anything. I don't know why he would suddenly be bad. So it's still, it's tough. And the Tigers are 14 and 10. They're in second place in that.

You know, just the fact that they've had a pretty decent start kind of makes me like the move more. Because the whole idea was that they would get someone young and decent and try to contend right now while they still have enough talent around to do that And you know if they were off to Say Minnesota's start or something Then you could say that they had already Kind of squandered the prime year In their window that they were signing Upton for but they haven't done that yet So I think even Upton Doesn't rise to the level

Of wanting your money back And it didn't seem like too much money To spend on Justin Upton at the time. So no, probably still okay with the Justin Upton contract. I, uh, I'm okay with the Justin Upton contract, I think in, uh, by a little bit and I'm, I would get my money back on cranky by a little bit. I didn't give an answer on that. Okay. How about Howie Kendrick? Uh? Howie Kendrick has just, it's been miserable, man. He's hitting 151, 182, 151, which is the same number as his batting average. Lost playing time, right, to the resurgent Chase Utley?

He has lost playing time to the resurgent Chase Utley. He's not hit a ball for extra bases yet. He is at minus 8.8 war. And, you know, there's, he's a second baseman. There's always the talk about second baseman not aging well. His defensive metrics in particular have been in decline over recent years. But his bat has always been steady. And, in fact, not only has his bat been steady, but it's been, at least in my anecdotal awareness of Howie Kendrick, it's steady year to year.

It's never steady week to week, though. Like he is a guy I think of as very streaky. This might be an old, this might be a wrong assessment of him. But he's a guy I think of as very streaky and has his months and has his down months. At the end of the year, always puts together. And over the last five years, OPS pluses, actually, we'll just go his whole career, 108, 97, 104, 99. That's the first stage of his career, basically all in the same very tight range. And then the second stage of his career, beginning with his first all-star appearance, 126, 104, 118, 116, 108, very tight range right there.

And then this year, minus eight. So I guess it's a combination of the performance, the team's acting on it. It's always relevant whether the team uh makes a change and whether they're telling you that they believe it or whether they're hearing things from him or whether their coaches are seeing things in him or whether they know something about his health or whether they're um or if they're content to ignore it and let him play his way out of it and so if uh it's a combination of him losing playing time being this bad and also playing a position

where we're a little bit Primed to see a Decline like this in the 30s Yeah, well this is kind of the Opposite of the First moves we talked about in the show In that this seemed like a Good contract, like everyone Liked this contract at the time it was

Signed, right? He lingered Forever because of qualifying Offer issues, and then the Dodgers Ended up snapping them up He lingered forever because of qualifying offer issues And then the Dodgers ended up snapping him up for two years and $20 million Which seemed like a really great deal to get Howie Kendrick on So in that sense, this deal has, I guess, a greater distance to go To make me want to annul it Just because it seemed so reasonable at the time.

Remind me what he missed time with last season? Hamstring thigh. Right. And he was back. That was like August. It was August and September. Yeah, he came back at the very end of September and was, I think, periodically day to day after that.

But he missed a little more than a month. And let's see, he hit fairly normal Howie Kendrick numbers when he came back. He missed 18 days at the start of this season with a calf injury that I believe he suffered in spring training. I don't know whether that makes me more or less optimistic. I guess it fits the narrative of the second baseman who gets old all of a sudden and he's pulling muscles in his lower body left and right. And so I guess in that sense, it would make you more pessimistic, although maybe it makes you think that he wasn't fully recovered when he came back and that's why he wasn't hitting. he came back and that's why he wasn't hitting so i don't know i guess if we're applying the same standard that we did to the original moves and we're saying that no they only thought he was

worth 20 million in two years i mean i thought he would be worth more than that but no one else was willing to pay that at least with the qualifying offer and that's what the dodgers got him for and so if we assume that that's what they valued him at then maybe that is a pretty good case for uh for why you wouldn't want to do that deal again because it is only a two-year deal and so if he screws up a month of a two-year deal then that's a bigger percentage of the contract than if he were on a six-year deal or something so he has already you know ruined a 12th of the contract so yeah I mean I guess combined with the concern about the muscle strain and the fact that he's already lost some playing time, which means that if Utley keeps playing well, then maybe they didn't even need him. And maybe he'd have to do something really special to earn his starting job back. Then I guess he is a stronger case probably than upton or granky to me yeah i would agree i mean it's look it was a it was a sweet deal at the time and so i would still

sign howie kendrick for two years and 20 million dollars uh however if i'm not giving them extra credit for me liking the deal at the time uh yeah that's a this this seems like an easy one to kick to the curb yeah uh he had uh wow he uh he started the season with one for four one for four one for four one for four first four games of the year he went one for four with a single in all four and uh so i just used play index impromptu play index to find the longest streak of one for four with no extra base hits and uh i thought that he would be the longest going back to start a season no just at all going back to 2000 i would i thought he would be the longest and he's not in fact 18 players in that time have had at least five game stream streaks of going exactly one for four with no extra base hits and and mike avilas in 2010 six games in a row one for four i

wonder if he knew i don't know if he was aware of that uh all right let's quickly do two more um that are different than this one the orioles letting dexter fowler not sign with them um dexter fowler's been tremendous for the cubs so he would have signed the the deal that was reported at the time was three years and i think 35 million dollars and what happened i forget what happened they well the deal was reported but had never officially been agreed to and except wasn't seemed like wasn't like didn't some like i want to didn't fowler say it or like a teammate or something adam jones i think yeah intimated that he was going to sign this deal but he didn't sign the deal and the impression that he gave in his comments afterward

was that the orioles were making him pay too much for the qualifying offer for the draft pick that they would lose if they were to sign him. They were penalizing him too much in his opinion or his agent's opinion, and so he walked away. All right, so now – so they – who knows what happened. But he is now hitting.347,.474,.613 going into Sunday. He led all of baseball with that on-base percentage. going into Sunday. He led all of baseball with that on-base percentage. He already has 1.5 war, which means that by this time next month, he could already have a career high, if he merely continues to play out of his mind for another month, which probably won't happen.

Do you think that the Orioles are Vince Velasquez-ing right now, watching him and thinking every time he does something good, they're dodging their owner's texts? Well, I mean, I'm less convinced that, I mean, my opinion of Dexter Fowler has not changed the way that my opinion of Vince Velasquez has changed. I mean, Vince Velasquez has just looked so good, and his stuff seems so good that he now seems totally viable as a front of the rotation starter in a way that he didn't necessarily this offseason whereas Dexter Fowler is you know probably still Dexter Fowler I mean he's 30 years old he's been sort of the same guy for years now the samest guy like maybe the samest guy in all of baseball yeah and you know the fact that he has a 430 babbitt or whatever it is to start the season doesn't really change my opinion about Dexter Fowler I guess you know the fact that he has a 430 BABIP or whatever it is to start the season doesn't really change my opinion about Dexter Fowler.

I guess, you know, the fact that the Orioles are off to a pretty good start, stronger start than anyone expected. Maybe that makes them regret signing him more. I mean, I don't know if it depends on who who nixed that deal, who drove him away. nixed that deal who drove him away. Like if Peter Angelos was all for signing him and someone in the front office said not to, then I'd probably be ducking texts just because, but he has a 430 Babbitt. Might not work so well if you're texting your owner.

But it seemed silly at the time not to sign him. And so it seems even sillier now, but he's still the same Dexter Fowler probably. I always duck texts. So you don't have to walk that many times for me to duck texts. All right. Last one. Ian Kennedy.

Yeah. 2.77 ERA going into Sunday's start. He went five innings, allowed one run, struck out six in those five innings. He is basically like where he always is as far as walks and strikeouts uh and he's given up some home runs but he is generally pitched very well he's been the best pitcher in kansas city's rotation thus far uh are you ready to admit that you were wrong still seems like an awful lot for Ian Kennedy, but it seems like a lot less than it did a month ago.

Because the way that he's done it kind of reinforces, if someone who was going to support that deal for Kansas City would have said or did say at the time that he gave up a ton of homers and he's moving to Kauffman, not that Petco Park is a good place to hit homers, but he's moving to Kauffman. It's hard to hit homers there too. And the Royals have a great outfield and defense. And so his tendency to give up home runs won't be as pronounced there. And the way that he has done it thus far far his home run rate is down to a reasonable level

and he is sort of outperforming his fit in a uh kind of chris youngy way so yeah you kind of like now that it's happening you you kind of start to want to lump it into that royals category of moves that didn't seem like they would work out at the time, but then they got to the Royals and somehow defense and things magically made them work out. So yeah, but I mean, he hasn't really done anything that we wouldn't have expected him to do, right? Except that he has outperformed his FIP. His FIP is 3.89, which is more or less the same. Well, it's, you know, more or less the same as, I guess, his career FIP coming into this year.

And the fact that he has outperformed it maybe makes you think it's Royals defense or Kauffman or something. Yeah, a lot of everybody on the Royals is outperforming their FIP right now. In fact, they entered the day with a 4.17 FIP, 3.51 ERA. And there's all sorts of guys actually, like, um, Yordana Ventura has struck out 22 and walked 20 and yet he's having a pretty good year. And Chris Medlin has struck out 16 and walked 16. Uh, and he's not having a pretty good year, but compared, I mean, he has Shelby Miller's peripherals and has half of Shelby Miller's ERA, and nobody's talking about Chris Medlin at all,

so there's that, and Wade Davis has a, strangely, has had control problems and has a 2.82 FIP, which normally his FIP is down where his ERA is, around zero, but it's 2.82 this year, he hasn't allowed a run, so yeah, the Royals defense has been FIP breaking this year, which isn't all that surprising. So I guess if you could get your money back on betting against the Royals defense, you would, but otherwise no big change for Ian Kennedy. Yeah. All right. There's probably more that we could do, but the whole exercise is questionable. Well, all right. It's good that we acknowledge that after people are 50 minutes in. Can't get that time back now. No, no time back guarantee on this podcast. No. Okay. So that is it for today. You can support the podcast on Patreon

by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. Five heroic listeners who have done so, Jeff Reed, Chris Green, Matt Powell, James Santelli, and Rob Maines. Thank you. You can buy our book. The only rule is it has to work. It comes out tomorrow. If you are lucky enough to live near a bookseller that doesn't abide by on sale dates, you might be able to buy it right now. But tomorrow is the big day, which means that this is your last chance to pre-order on Amazon or Barnes & Noble. We'd love to have a big first week, and you can help us do that by buying the book now if you plan to buy it at some point. Feedback has been very encouraging so far, and I hope you'll all like it. It is, of course, the story of how Sam and I took over the baseball operations department of

an independent league team, the Sonoma Stompers, last summer and tried to do advanced baseball stat stuff while navigating the personalities that we encountered on the team. You can buy books autographed by both of us at StompersBaseball.com, but we will have a few events slash signings coming up in the next couple of weeks. You can find those on our website for the book, theonlyruleisithastowork.com, or if you want to save a couple words, theonlyruleis.com. The first thing coming up is in Manhattan this Thursday at the Corner Bookstore at 6 o'clock. It's on the Upper East Side, and I will be there and hope to see many of you there as well.

The website, by the way, has a ton of DVD extras for the book, photos and videos and stats, so I hope you'll all check it out after you read the book. There's video of every player and some of the pivotal moments from the season, so it should be fun to go watch those after you read about them. You can rate and review and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, and you can join the Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild, where I hope there will be a bunch of book discussion in the coming days. You can get the discounted price of $30 on a one-year subscription to the Play Index by going to

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I'm hoping I'll be wearing a Stompers polo, if the producer allows it. We will be back tomorrow, May 3rd, the day we've all been waiting for they took your life apart and call your failures on they were long done they won't know till tomorrow