Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 889: Three Aces in Distress

Episode Date: May 23, 2016

Ben and Sam banter about burning clubhouse belongings and banning intentional balls, then discuss the shaky starts to the season by Matt Harvey, Sonny Gray, and Dallas Keuchel....

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 You have torn it all apart, I'm watching it burn. Watching it burn. Good morning and welcome to episode 889 of Effectively Wild, a daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives, brought to you by the Play Index at Baseball Reference and all of our supporters at Patreon. I'm Sam Miller, along with Ben Lindberg of FiveThirtyEight. Hey Ben, how are you? All right.
Starting point is 00:00:30 What do you want to talk about? Well, before we dive into the meat of the episode, a listener named Lance posted a link in the Facebook group, wanted to see whether it falls into the taxonomy of burn the ships stories. So it's a story about Matt Harvey in Newsday. And it says, The Mets huddled on Friday to begin the daunting task of reassembling Matt Harvey's shattered confidence. Their options ran the gamut. Most were traditional, such as dispatching the embattled pitcher to the minors for a head-clearing sabbatical. A person briefed on the situation told Newsday.
Starting point is 00:01:04 Others were more radical Such as emptying Harvey's locker Assembling the belongings into a pile And setting them ablaze Some hoped that the gesture might symbolize A much-needed fresh start And that he could rise from the ashes So is this a burn the belongings?
Starting point is 00:01:21 Do you think it counts? Or is it completely different? Yeah, it's completely different there i don't think there are any analogous parts it's uh simply has one common uh common ingredient yes did i see also that bobby parnell did this to himself that that's what inspired this idea i don't know i think that i think that let, Fire Locker, setting those belongings on fire, which then Mets reliever Bobby Parnell did last season when he was struggling. Uh-huh.
Starting point is 00:01:51 All right, then. So it's a new genre. Yeah, I mean... Burning your belongings. Look, the thing about Burn Your Ships, which is so different than this, and I would argue so plainly evil, is that it is really a matter of management taking away all agency from the players or from the employees, and that it's really just a cruel ultimatum.
Starting point is 00:02:14 And this is a totally different thing. This would be perhaps, if Harvey did it himself and willingly, then it would be kind of a cathartic thing that would be perfectly fine and his own motivational tool. And if it was done to him, it would arguably be risky. It might not be a thing that he would like. But again, it's not like you're refusing to give him new uniform. I mean, that would be if you made him pitch nude, that might be very similar to a burn the ships.
Starting point is 00:02:48 Yeah. Kind of a thing. No. But this is more of a purify yourself in the fire. Yeah. A Targaryen gesture. I, yeah. Okay.
Starting point is 00:02:57 Yeah. All right. Is that it? Yep. Okay. I wanted to give a plug to an article on BP today. It's an interview with Rich Hill. Yes.
Starting point is 00:03:07 Done by Tim Britton, the great Red Sox beat writer who is reviving the Prospectus Q&A feature for us. And he got Rich Hill for the first one, which turned out to be not just satisfying to Rich Hill fans because Rich Hill's name is in it, but Rich Hill turns out to be very wise and really kind of interesting. And you learn a lot about a wise pitcher's mentality. And there is, I think that there is a tendency sometimes, which I think I roll my eyes a little bit at this tendency, to find out that a ballplayer has some interest in stats and then to like lionize him. And now he's our favorite player like now he's twitter loves him uh and i don't think that you know looking at brooks baseball is a moral act and so i don't i don't really get that excited to find out that uh that a player is
Starting point is 00:03:59 somewhat interested in this stuff however in this case this is a player that I already loved. And so then to find out that he's also wise and curious, I guess maybe curious more than wise, it would be a better word. Interested might be a good one, is gratifying. The other thing is that he refers to his DRA when he was in Cleveland, which predates DRA. And so that tells me that either he saw DRA and went and applied it to his career, which shows a tremendous amount of initiative, or in fact, he invented DRA before we did, which would be really impressive. And it's one of the two, so 50-50. Yeah, it's a very, very technical interview. He really goes in-depth on all the aspects of his performance
Starting point is 00:04:57 that you can look up in a machine that tracks that. So he seems to have really checked out all the information that's out there. Yeah. All right. Secondly, I wanted to just very quickly, very, very quickly mock a great tweet that I saw, which was insane, but amusing. All right. Next, I just want to very quickly mock a tweet. I don't want to be too malicious about it. So I'm not even going to say who did it because we could all make this tweet. I just, I like it. I like it because it reflects a certain way of watching the sport and kind of losing perspective in the most obvious way possible. But this tweet was from yesterday and it is, as ridiculous as Kershaw's 88 to 4 strikeout to walk ratio is,
Starting point is 00:05:46 to walk ratio is, Syndergaard's 75 to 9 K to walk ratio is just as ridiculous. I mean, all the numbers are worse. It's pretty much a direct comparison between comparable numbers, and they're all worse. So that's all. I enjoyed that. I've felt that way before, too. Yeah. That's all. I enjoyed that. I've felt that way before, too. Yeah. Well, there's a tendency always to want to anoint some other pitcher as the best. And we had our Cinderguard episode earlier this season.
Starting point is 00:06:15 And so, I don't know, it just gets kind of stale to say Clayton Kershaw's the best every single time. And yet that has been the case pretty consistently for years now. And so when someone else does something incredible, we are very quick to point out how incredible that is. But often Kershaw is doing exactly the same thing, if not something better. And he also has the track record of having done it much longer. It goes back to my claim that all fun facts are lies. They require lies because it's like the point that Jordan made, I think Jordan made on the Bonds fun fact episode. The greatest fun fact really would be Bonds hit more home runs than anybody in history, but there's just not that much you can do with it. And so what we do kind of do is we're trying to use numbers to strengthen this sort of hyperbole that we're using. And you can't just lay out a leaderboard, because that's boring, and you would just look at it and go, oh, some
Starting point is 00:07:11 guy's on top. That's impressive. Now I know who's best. You want it to be fun, and you want it to be hyperbolic, and so you sort of layer a few elements of color and or deception to it. And this is sort of like the problem of when your deception doesn't work. Like this is why you have to have a couple extra steps in a fun fact, like to turn it into like a magic trick.
Starting point is 00:07:38 Because otherwise then you just have two numbers and one is better than the other. And you can't really argue that the worst one is better. It's hard. It's really hard. I like the tweet. And you can't really argue that the worst one is better. It's hard. It's really hard. I like the tweet. All right, third thing. Do you have any strong feelings about the intentional walk rules change? I don't have very strong feelings.
Starting point is 00:07:55 I have sort of the same feelings that I had about the fake to third, throw to first being outlawed, which is that I was sort of fond of it and I liked that it worked very, very rarely, but did work occasionally and we got something fun out of it. But I haven't really missed it since
Starting point is 00:08:16 it was gone, so I feel sort of the same way about the intentional walk in that it feels sort of unnecessary. It's this weird part of the game's DNA that never really had to be there. We could have always just skipped this. It's almost automatic that it works the way it's intended to. I enjoy it just because of the extremely rare case where it backfires,
Starting point is 00:08:40 but also because I like the difference in styles of pitchers throwing intentional walks. I like that most of them will just lob it in there and just make sure they get it to the catcher's glove, but other guys will actually throw really hard and throw almost real pitches. So I like that there's a difference there. And I sort of like, I guess, that there's a crowd sort of like i guess that there's a crowd participation aspect to it in that you get the the booze and you give fans an opportunity to register their displeasure with this tactic which maybe just tells you that you should just eliminate it entirely from the game i don't know that it shouldn't even be an option because no one really likes that you can do this i don't think it shouldn't even be an option because no one really likes that you can do this, I don't think.
Starting point is 00:09:31 But otherwise, I don't care all that much. I mean, it's not a big time saver. So it's not going to affect anything either way in that respect. So I wasn't advocating that we get rid of it. But I also don't care that much. Yeah, when you're when you're editing an article for for length, you eventually get to the point where you're, uh, when you're editing an, uh, an article for, for length, um, you eventually get to the point where you're cutting what are called widows, which means that you've got like an eight or nine line paragraph. And if you can, if it ends with, you know, like the word gas is the, is, is its own line at the end. If you can just cut any word in the whole paragraph, then now you're going to cut a whole line, even though you don't have to cut, you know, seven words. You only have to cut one, right?
Starting point is 00:10:08 And there is a tendency when your editor comes back to you and goes, you know, this is great, but it's way too long. You've got to cut 145 lines, which is a lot of lines. You're like, oh, well, okay, I'll start with the widows. And you don't start with the widows. And you don't start with the widows. You start with the sections. You got to start with the sections. You only do the widows when you're at the very end of the process, because you're not going to find 145 widows. And this feels like a widow to me. If you really want to cut the length of games,
Starting point is 00:10:40 I just don't want to, I think I don't really want to hear 25 years of efforts to cut 45 seconds here and there You know either figure it out or accept it Accept the game the way it is I mean the minute that an Intentional walk takes is not only Only a minute but it's not a boring minute It's usually part of the exciting part
Starting point is 00:11:00 Of the inning right I guess less so if there's If it's the pitcher coming up and it's the number eight hitter. But a lot of times it happens in a rally. And as I wrote about for Jabba one time about why baseball is boring, what makes baseball boring, the aspects of it that are boring compared to the parts that aren't. Like a lot of the problem is that, well, the slower parts tend to be the boring parts. Like the commercials come at the boring parts. So they're not drawing out the suspense, for instance. They're just like the rally ends, now you're bored, and then here
Starting point is 00:11:36 comes two and a half minutes. And it's just too easy to turn the game off. And it's not like in, you know, football or basketball where the timeouts come when you're like really excited and it's a cliffhanger. And to me, an intentional walk usually comes in the rally. The rally is exciting. And if you're lengthening the amount of time you spend in rally mode, that doesn't seem too problematic to me. Anyway. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:11:59 All right. So, Ben, here's the topic. Okay. A few days ago, actually about 13 days ago, I did a chat on Baseball Perspectives. And somebody asked me, I forget the exact wording, but gave me three pitchers and said, which one of these are you betting against? And they were three struggling pitchers. They were Sonny Gray, Max Scherzer, and David Price. And so that night, I picked Sonny Gray. But that night, Max Scherzer, and David Price. And so that night, I picked Sonny Gray.
Starting point is 00:12:27 But that night, Max Scherzer struck out 20, and then he struck out 10 in six innings in his next start. So Max Scherzer is back. Nobody is any longer worried about Max Scherzer. David Price has been very good for two starts since then, and so nobody's worried about David Price. Sonny Gray got even messier and is now on the disabled list. And I wanted to sort of rephrase the question,
Starting point is 00:12:51 but with three new pitchers, or three with replacing those two. With Sonny Gray, Dallas Keuchel, and Matt Harvey, who have all had a lot written about them in the last few weeks, few days maybe, because it does feel like we're getting to that point in the season where you really start worrying about pitchers and even the small sample size caveaters start worrying about those pitchers. So we have three pitchers who were all exceptional last year. And what makes them all interesting to me is that they all had or were the subject
Starting point is 00:13:28 of very significant decisions, either late last year or over the offseason, that can now be looked at in totally different ways. Matt Harvey, of course, the decision was made to, I guess, let him overrule doctor's advice and keep pitching pretty much unskipped, pretty much unrestrained into the postseason and to go 30-ish, 38 innings, I think, over the doctor's recommended kind of soft cap. And now he's, of course, been horrible this year, and they're talking about burning his clothes. Dallas Keuchel, it's kind of unclear exactly what the extension talks were with him. But in August, it was reported that the Astros were discussing an extension with him. In November, there was some talk that they were discussing or going to discuss. And
Starting point is 00:14:26 then in January and February, it was reported that they had not discussed. So I think it's fair to say that there was some discussion about discussing. And if Dallas Keuchel had been intent, it seems like the Astros might have been a willing partner in discussions about locking him up long term. And now he's been terrible. And Sonny Gray was the rare Oakland Athletic who was declared untradeable, untouchable, more or less. Not those words exactly, but Billy Bean took the rare step of coming out and saying, I'm not trading Sonny Gray. And Sonny Gray has also been terrible.
Starting point is 00:15:02 And now he is on the disabled list with a strained trap. So, Ben, let me ask you a question. When you have a pitcher who's been tremendously worse than his established level of talent over the course of time that we're talking about, coming up on two months, give me your power rankings of top three things you look at to decide whether it's real and in what order you go. And it seems simplistic to say, but before I would even dive into the numbers and try to dissect it even further, I would just look at those two things, velocity of strike rate and walk rate. Because, you know, I mean, those are kind of the cornerstones of pitching success. And you can get most of the way to a pitcher's statistics with just those statistics. can get most of the way to a pitcher's statistics with just those statistics and they kind of point you toward deeper further investigation if a guy's walk rate is bad like sonny gray's has been compared to his past or dallas keichel's has been compared to his past then you can use that as a springboard to diagnose him further and say that his command is off or his location is off or his
Starting point is 00:16:25 mechanics are off or whatever it is but those are sort of the the surface level characteristics that you would start with and they would point you toward one thing or another does uh home run rate at this point mean a lot to you uh definitely less i mean it it might mean something, certainly, if all those guys are throwing meatballs and getting home runs hit. We know that in many cases that can be a little bit deceptive. And the home run to fly ball rate, which is elevated, sometimes that doesn't mean all that much or it comes back to what it normally was. So I wouldn't look at that first, but if a guy is struggling overall and he is also getting hit very hard, then that's something probably worth paying attention to. Maybe eventually you would use stat cast exit velocity as a proxy for how hard a guy is getting
Starting point is 00:17:20 hit. I mean, that is literally how hard he's getting hit we just probably need more time before i know exactly how much to make of that but that's something worth looking at also yeah i would go first i would look at velocity second i would look at fip and third i would look at probably overall strike rate uh although i also think that my, and before that I might actually go look at how he was pitching immediately before and to see whether there was any kind of trajectory toward this. And if I can basically broaden the sample size or, or expand the sample size of the period of struggle. So in all three of these pitchers cases, there's something that makes it, I would say notable, particularly notable, but they're different kinds of things. So Harvey is, his velocity is down. It's down quite a bit. It's down like
Starting point is 00:18:17 two miles an hour. And I don't know if I don't, I always, I always struggle with the scout quote, I don't know if, I don't, I always struggle with the scout quote, because as we've talked about, you can find a scout who will tell you anything if you don't mind throwing out 100 quotes from scouts who say, nah, he's fine, right? So we don't know how many scouts said he was fine before they found the scout who said, for instance, on Harvey, quote, there's no deception in his delivery. He's throwing across his body and the hitters are getting a good look at everything. There's no fear factor, no intimidation. Or the scout who said he's got a confidence problem. And in that case,
Starting point is 00:18:54 I don't even know if I would trust a scout who said he's got a confidence problem. It might just be that he's sad that he's getting hit. So there's a cause and effect thing there as well. But with Harvey, the velocity is down considerably. And to me, even if he's pitching well, then I would be scared. I think most of us are. I mean, we've been through this with Felix Hernandez, I think, recently, where Hernandez is getting outs. He isn't allowing runs. Hernandez is getting outs. He isn't allowing runs. And even before this year, when his FIP kind of collapsed, there was a persistent worry that Felix was no longer throwing as hard. And we went through
Starting point is 00:19:31 this with Jared Weaver for a long time, where his velocity was dropping and he was still getting outs, but it still felt like Cliff was coming in. There's a, I've noticed a real desire on the part of a lot of TV broadcasters to say that there's too much emphasis on velocity and assessing pitchers. And I think that sometimes they're saying that because they want to talk about how great a guy like Dallas Keuchel is who doesn't have to throw hard. And that's good. We can all get behind that. It is really fun when there's a pitcher who doesn't have to throw hard. And I don't think anybody disputes that We all know that there are a lot of ways to get outs
Starting point is 00:20:07 But sometimes I think That it's designed to Make us not worried about a pitcher who's throwing A lot less hard than he used to And it's just a fact that you should There's just really not any disputing it Can that pitcher reinvent himself Yeah it happens
Starting point is 00:20:23 Sometimes there are outliers There are guys it happens sometimes. There are outliers. There are guys who make it work. There are exceptions to every rule. But it's pretty much undeniable that it's better to throw hard than to not throw hard, especially if you aren't throwing hard because you no longer can throw hard and that it's not a choice that you're making for stylistic reasons. And normally, I mean, Mike Fast put the math on it. There's a pretty clear connection, a pretty clear correlation
Starting point is 00:20:52 between losing velocity and giving up more runs. And there are a lot more guys who we worry about and then they really do collapse than there are guys who, you know, Frank Tanana it and build long careers. I mean, the very fact that frank tanana comes up every single time frank tanana retired 27 years ago and we're still using frank tanana if frank tanana is your example was worse in his post velocity yeah that too like he he successfully reinvented himself and yet still was worse than he had been when he threw it really hard.
Starting point is 00:21:28 Yeah. And you might know better than I do. I don't know. And Doug Thorburn writes about this every year. The velocity movers, the guys who change velocity from one year to the next, he looks at them then the next year, which is good. I think that's an important thing to think about. Generally, there's not a lot of guys who bounce back in my kind of anecdotal sense of things. I don't know if you've ever looked at or if you're aware of any research about how often velo comes back, like how, I guess, how much velo fluctuates over two-month periods. If we should just assume that this is, for Matt Harvey, that this is just as likely to be a small sample fluke as anything else.
Starting point is 00:22:11 I assume it's not. I generally assume that he's throwing as hard as he can and that the body doesn't really add a lot more to it unless you were broken and get fixed. Yeah. I'm sure there are times when it does bounce back, but I would guess that the majority of the time when a pitcher loses velocity, it stays lost. Yeah. And so then you have Sonny Gray, who you pointed out the walks. There's also the home runs, which are, you know, double his career rate. And that's home runs are very prone to small sample problems, but all the same, you don't want to give up a ton of home runs are very prone to small sample problems but all the same you don't want to give up a ton of home runs obviously it's usually a bad sign but the other thing with sunny gray is
Starting point is 00:22:49 that there was some trajectory in a bad direction as the season went on particularly with the fit metrics uh and so he has not lost velocity i think that's really uh that he passes the first, I guess, test. He fails on FIP, but then he also was sort of, his FIP, his peripherals were not going in a great direction last year. And I think that there was some probably indication that he was not going to be a Cy Young candidate if he had kept pitching that way. That in no way suggests that he was going to fall off a cliff, as he has. And the funny thing is that of the three, his velocity hasn't gone down,
Starting point is 00:23:35 and yet he's the one who's injured. And so injuries affect players in different ways, and sometimes injuries are lingering and sometimes they're convenient and sometimes they're convenient and sometimes they're signs of something very worse. But for Sonny Gray, I would still say, I don't know, I'm not sure between those two, between the two we've talked about, who's more troubling to me. I guess I, I guess I would say that Harvey, so it, these are all really, the funny thing and the reason that maybe it's an interesting question is that the two pitchers that I've talked about, the way that these negative indicators have
Starting point is 00:24:11 affected their performance have kind of gone opposite of how you would think. Like Harvey is not throwing as hard as he used to. And that's clear and that's easy to see. And yet he's not injured that we know of. And his FIP is actually not bad. I mean, it's not good. It's not as good as it was. But if you looked away from the ERA and the record, he's the one that you would say, oh, he's pretty close.
Starting point is 00:24:35 You know, he's striking out. He's like, if he had four more strikeouts and four fewer walks, then basically his strikeout, his His fit would be the same as it was last year. And so he's the one that you would say there's least troubling about in the performance. And then Sonny Gray has the velocity still, but he's the one who's injured. And his is the fit that's really horrible. So there's not always a clear line between even these indicators and what you're expecting. So then Keiko, I don't know if anything about Keiko would have me exceptionally worried on the first three things that I glance at. What about you?
Starting point is 00:25:15 What's your take on Keiko right now? Well, the last time I looked, sort of everything was worrisome. His velocity was down. I believe it still is. And of course, it's April, so you have to be a little careful about looking at velocity in April because a lot of pitchers throw more slowly in April. But his was down almost two miles per hour also, right, compared to last season's full season or a mile and a half or so. So that's significant and maybe even more so in a case like his where he is not throwing very hard as it is. So when you're averaging 89, 90 and you lose a mile per hour, I would guess that probably hurts you more than it would if you're
Starting point is 00:26:00 going from 96 to 95 or something. So there's that, and there's also the walk rate is up too, and his pinpoint control from last season, from really the last couple seasons, is not there so much anymore. And he was just, you know, because of the kind of pitcher he is, obviously there were concerns About how well he would Hold up long term anyway In our Astros preview this year I think we asked whether there
Starting point is 00:26:32 Was any more reason to worry about Dallas Keuchel than there was about some other Cy Young winner with the same stats Or whether it was fair to ask That question. Asking that question Alone is a sign that We had some concerns just because he doesn't fit the typical profile for the best pitcher in a league. So much of his success was
Starting point is 00:26:52 predicated on this pinpoint command and being able to throw low and away and low and away and over the black repeatedly. And that seemed like it was just so perfectly calibrated for a season or two there that if you were to be off by a little bit, there just wouldn't be as much margin for error with a guy like that. And it seems like I think hitters have adjusted to him a little bit where he used to kind of come in and steal a strike and then go outside with the low and away pitches for the rest of the plate appearances, and there was nothing they could do. And I think now they're kind of jumping on those early pitches in the strike zone a little bit more,
Starting point is 00:27:32 and so he doesn't know quite how to counter-adjust to that. So I think it's a mix of all of those things, and because he's a guy who engendered some sort of concerns about how long he would be able to pitch at an elite level anyway. I think everyone is obviously more worried about him than probably both of the other guys in this conversation. Yeah, his velocity is down two miles an hour on the season, but it's only down one in May compared to last season. So how's the strike zone this year? I don't know. Yeah, you're wondering because he's a low strike guy who benefits from that. Yeah, and also partly because, you know, it's just sort of a rule of thumb that a sinker baller is
Starting point is 00:28:19 going to be prone to walks because you're basically throwing pitches outside the strike zone to you want them to hit pitches that are right at the edge or below you're almost never going to purposefully aim in the strike zone and last year he managed to have a really you know close to elite level walk rate which is a really hard thing very few sinker ballers managed to do that for very long yeah and i wonder if you have any insight into whether the strike zone was particularly kind to him as it was last year, or whether there's been any change in that this year. I don't, but I know that between his struggles and the report that MLB will likely be raising the bottom boundary of the strike zone as soon as next season. This is not a good year so far for Dallas Keuchel because you would think that that would perhaps hurt him
Starting point is 00:29:12 disproportionately. And I'm guessing that if MLB is pursuing that so aggressively that there hasn't been a big change in how strikes are called this season. I haven't seen any studies or anything, but I haven't seen any suggestions that the low strike that we've gotten used to over the last few years has changed this season. So coming into this season, I think that we might have put all three of those pitchers in the same kind of bucket. I don't know that I would have had a strong feeling about which was best or which was worse. So going forward this season, how do you rank them? And don't hold Gray's 15-day absence against him. Yeah, right.
Starting point is 00:29:54 Yeah, I mean, because there's so much data at our disposal, we can dig so deep into these guys and find things that seem worrisome. and find things that seem worrisome. So Jeff Sullivan did his Sonny Gray post earlier this month, and he found that he wasn't throwing the kind of breaking ball that he'd thrown before, and his breaking balls were all kind of jumbled together, and it seemed like maybe that was indicative of mechanical problems or perhaps health problems that were manifesting themselves in mechanical problems. So it did seem like there's something going on there. So I would probably rank them in order of how optimistic I am.
Starting point is 00:30:31 I'd say Harvey, Gray, Keichel. I agree. That's exactly how I would have them. Now, similar but different question. Rank the decisions that each of the relevant parties Made last year based on I guess how How much you still think it was the right
Starting point is 00:30:51 Decision versus how much They'll regret it so in the Mets Case we'll call it a shared decision between The Mets and Harvey in the Gray case we'll call it the A's decision not to Trade him and in the Keichel case we'll Call it the decision not to work out an extension With his team
Starting point is 00:31:07 So best decision first Okay Alright so best decision And we're talking about from the team's Perspective? No okay so Keichel is the player's perspective Gray is the team's perspective Harvey is a joint press release
Starting point is 00:31:23 Right okay Alright I would say in order of how good the decision was, I'd say Harvey first. I wouldn't draw a direct line between what's happening to him and last season. Maybe there is one, but I don't know that we can say that there is one. So I'd say that first, given that the Mets were in the playoffs in the World Series, that mattered. And then next, I would put Keichel next, I think. I have a hard time blaming him. You know, if you're a pitcher and you've had great success for a couple of years, and you have to put some faith in yourself and trust yourself to continue succeeding. And so I can't blame him for wanting to get one more year at that level and really, really cash in. So I won't fault
Starting point is 00:32:13 him too much for that. And then I'd put the A's making Gray untouchable or off limits or as close to that as a player can get. I guess I would put that last or worst just because if the a's are going to be a team that trades young talent and and they've always kind of been that team in the right situation then there's no reason to think that gray was immune to the reasons that you trade young pitching for it pitching doesn't last and weird things happen and pitchers fall off a cliff and you want to get the most value you can while those players are at their peak so i don't know that i would say it was a bad decision but it was the worst of the three okay sounds good disagree no not really i think that with probably more with keitel than with gray but but really for for either of the i
Starting point is 00:33:03 mean i think you're definitely right that the har decision is... There's the least reason to tie it to this year, and there's the most, you know, flags fly forever, right? And with Gray and Keichel, I think they both benefit from, you know, being pitchers where you don't have to be great for a long time to get paid or to cash out. You just have to be great at the right time. And, you know, Kaiku could basically go, you know, 6-28 this year. And yet if he has a pretty good year when he's a free agent in three years, you know, even a pretty good year, he'll get more than he would have made signing an extension. So, you know, he's not there yet. He's got to get pretty good again and he's got to not blow out his shoulder um but and you know i think the same with sunny gray if sunny gray gray comes back and uh throws a you know two
Starting point is 00:33:55 hit shutout in his first game back off the dl his trade value is probably virtually unchanged from where it was five months ago yeah but uh yeah i think that probably the A's had more to lose. I mean, Dallas Keiko was going to get extension money, right, which is already somewhat suppressed, whereas a Sonny Gray trade could have been franchise altering. I mean, for goodness sake, how much did the, I mean, if you do the trade tree for the Mark Mulder trade or really even the Dan Heron trade, it's like four moves in one stroke. Yeah. All right. All right, then.
Starting point is 00:34:35 That's it for today. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. dot com slash effectively wild. Today's five Patreon supporters are Sal Cacciatore, Sam Mann, John Coletti, Mark Volane, and someone who wants to be known as Head Zookeeper. Thanks, Head Zookeeper. You can buy our book, The Only Rule Is It Has To Work. I've run out of new ways to pitch the book, so just buy the thing. Go to theonlyruleisithastowork.com. There's a ton of information on there, reviews and interviews and excerpts that could convince you to buy it. And if you've already finished it, stats and photos and videos that you will want to check out. It's still the best-selling sports book on Amazon, and we hope that you will help it keep that status.
Starting point is 00:35:14 One book-related event to promote. On Sunday, June 19th, the Staten Island Yankees are having a Cibermetrics Day. I will be there on a panel with a lot of other great writers. There will be a bunch of fun events. I will be there on a panel with a lot of other great writers. There will be a bunch of fun events. I'll be signing books. There are tickets to the Stat Geek Picnic still available. They cost $30 each and they give you access to a 90-minute all-you-can-eat buffet of barbecue and ballpark food, plus the chance to talk to me and all the other writers in attendance. You can get tickets by going to siyanks.com slash sabermetrics
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