Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 912: Three Teams on the Buy-or-Sell Bubble

Episode Date: June 24, 2016

Ben and Sam discuss their fatalistic feelings concerning Noah Syndergaard, banter about fun facts and Fernando Abad, and talk about impending trade-deadline decisions for the White Sox, Yankees, and Pirates.

The pound is sinking, the peso's falling, the lira's reeling, I'm feeling quite appalling. The mark is holding, the franc is fading, the draft was very weak But everyone's still trading The market's falling, the storm's out And only the strong are smiling Good morning and welcome to episode 912 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives, presented by The Play Index at BaseballReference.com and our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of FiveThirtyEight,

joined by Sam Miller of Baseball Perspectives. Hello. Hey. What do you think the Mets should do with Noah Sindergaard, if anything? I don't want to be too fatalistic about his season, but it just is so, so, so scary. If I were a Mets fan, I would almost have gone from looking forward to each Cinderguard start to dreading each Cinderguard start. I think at the beginning of the season, I was on MLB Network and we were talking about how great Cinderguard was. And I said something about how he is great, but it feels like watching Icarus just as the wax in his wings starts to get softer. And, you know, then he gets himself to an MRI machine early in the year because he felt something.

And sure, it was purely precautionary and it didn't detect anything. And he came back and he's been fine. And then yesterday he got pulled from a start early because he was feeling something again. And Mets say it's nothing, no structural damage, just elbow discomfort, taking anti-inflammatories, and he's going to make his next start. That's what qualifies as good news, I guess. What qualifies as bad news is that it was the Mets saying it. Yeah, right. So the Mets do not have a track record of, I don't know, either being accurate or being honest about injuries

in their initial announcements. So the fact that they say there's no structural damage really can't reassure you very much because you could go back and look at stories about, say, Zach Wheeler last spring and see exactly the same thing. You know, Sandy Alderson saying, oh, we don't think it's serious. And then he has Tommy John surgery. And that was after he pitched through injury the previous season and then had a couple MRIs come back clean,

even though there was an issue there. And you could go back and look at Matt Harvey quotes. And, you know, he was experiencing discomfort for a while before he actually had the tear detected. So a clean MRI doesn't necessarily mean that there's no damage there. I was asking Jeff Passon about this earlier because he just wrote the book about elbow injuries, and I asked him whether the explanation that he has no structural damage actually passes the sniff test. And Jeff said, I mean, is the likelier culprit something underlying? Sure. But the idea of standalone injuries flaring up occasionally is well within the realm of possibility. I'm guessing there is damage in Cinderguard's elbow because there is

damage in everyone's elbow and because he throws a hundred. But if you're simply asking whether there's a scenario in which someone gets MRI'd, a procedure done almost precautionarily these days, or removed from a game multiple times without there being an acute issue. Yes, unlikely, but yes. And he pointed out as a comp, Giordano Ventura, who has, you know, had elbow issues, but hasn't had the big elbow issue. Not that that's especially encouraging, given how Ventura's career has gone. We can do an episode on what the Royals should be doing about Yordan Aventura. Yeah. So anyway, I don't know what you do because Syndergaard just, he throws 100 and if you throw 100, you're much more likely to get hurt, but you're also a really good pitcher in many cases.

And so the Mets are very much in it. They're, you know, a few games behind the Nationals in the division. They're a game or so back in the wildcard race. So obviously you wouldn't want to just shut Syndergaard down, especially because if there is some damage there, that might not repair it. So you might just be wasting whatever bullets he has left and you'll end up having to have him get surgery anyway and who knows you know maybe he'll be fine but I just don't know what I would do other than just keep running him out there

and crossing your fingers like do you tell him hey throw 97 instead of 99 do you just try to pull him early do you put him in the bullpen I just I don't know because you need every good Cinder guard start that you can get at this

Point but if you lose him for the rest of the Season then you're really in trouble Given all the other injuries they're dealing with Yeah the Icarus is an interesting Analogy because you know if You're actually dealing with Icarus You just be like hey Icarus fly A little lower just like you can keep

Flying by all means Keep flying but, fly a little lower. Just like you can keep flying. By all means, keep flying, but just like a little lower. And baseball, I don't know. I might be wrong about this. Maybe they're individual. Maybe they're different pitching staffs have different philosophies. But it seems like one of the sort of kind of semi-failures of the sport in the Tommy John era is that they have not really figured out a way to have 90% effort out there. And like with, like LeBron, for instance, as I understand it is sort of like the

master of keeping himself healthy and, you know, playing at, you know, something like 90% effort through the regular season, get to the playoffs. By which point, I, the dumb person who doesn't follow basketball at all, has seen a few tweets about how LeBron is older and is this the end of his eliteness and all that. And that's always in the regular season when the Cavs have lost three out of five and LeBron doesn't look quite so explosive and then the playoffs come and uh well sure enough he's been you know he's just been uh holding it in reserve and there just isn't really any equivalent of that in baseball there's i just remember that in uh in bp 10 years ago we just sort of uh talked about how you should just not be putting so much effort into, you know, throwing to the

number eight hitter with two outs and nobody on. Like if it were Christy Mathewson, that's when he'd be throwing at 85% effort or something like that. And Levon Hernandez was sort of seen as maybe being like that, that he could, he was always pitching at 90% effort, except when he really needed to. And that was seen as maybe the secret of his longevity. But maybe it's that number eight hitters are all too good these days. Maybe there's just too many guys who are one good swing away from being Zach Cozart or whatever. But there, you don't really see any evidence, particularly of guys not throwing with 100% effort pretty much all the time, or at least close to 100% effort.

You have Zach Granke not throwing sliders in some cases because he was afraid he'd get hurt if he threw too many sliders. So that's an example, but not many. And so you don't really have any kind of roadmap for how Noah Syndergaard could get through the regular season without really pushing his body as far as it has to go. Yeah. Well, we talked not long ago about the White Sox and how they seem to have fewer injuries than everyone else. Very consistently, fewest days lost to injury again this year. this year. And maybe Chris Sale is close to what we're talking about, right? Because Chris Sale has either lost or taken off a couple miles per hour this year. And he says it's intentional that he wanted to be more efficient and pitch to contact and go deeper into games. And as a result, he hasn't been quite as overpowering and as dominant as he has in the past, but he's still been excellent.

He's still a great, great, great pitcher. And if that is a conscious decision you can make, well, you'd rather have Chris Sale at his current effectiveness than Chris Sale pitching all out and then getting hurt. And I don't know whether that had anything to do with wanting to avoid injury. I don't know whether that is in any way related to the White Sox and their success at injury prevention. But I wonder if you could suggest something like that to Cinderguard and just say, it's working for Chris Sale. So hey, just throw 97 instead of throwing 99. And maybe you won't be quite as overpowering, but maybe you'll actually make it through the season. I don't know whether everyone can do that equally well. It seems like it would be a hard thing to do to go from max effort to close to max effort. Like it would be

easy to go to like 50% or 70% or something, but could you do 95%? Can you calibrate yourself that well that you could throw almost at your max, but not quite? Maybe these guys can. I don't know. He's so used to throwing as hard as he can possibly throw. Maybe it's a difficult adjustment to make, but man, I mean, it just, it's so, so scary. Just seems like every pitch could be the one. I wonder whether it's worth looking into the Chris Sale option. Yeah, and as you noted, the Mets are in a position where they can't particularly afford to have Noah Syndergaard 10% worse than he is. They're in a close race that might come down to the 5% extra effort on that one pitch. And that might also be the thing that causes his elbow to snap.

on that one pitch and that might also be the thing that causes his elbow to snap but the the reason that i think i would lean to do nothing and you know just hope if it breaks it doesn't splatter all over you is that there's also no real way of keeping him healthy like if you like say you decided that you were gonna i don't know move him to the bullpen for the next two months until you felt like he was stronger. No reason to think that's going to keep him healthier. You know, then if you, you know, move him to a six day, if you move. Fewer pitches. So, you know, maybe less wear and tear. But with less recovery time in between, relievers get Tommy John just as much as starters do.

Yeah. He'll probably be throwing even harder in the bullpen. Right. He probably would be throwing even harder in the bullpen. And so, exactly. So, it's not like I have a way to keep him healthy. I think you just keep having him pitch. And I mean, you sort of hope that if he gets, it's almost like if he's going to get hurt, you hope he gets hurt in the next two weeks so that you have that knowledge before the trade deadline. And so that if he has to have surgery, he's on a timetable where he could return by next postseason.

And that's really sad that we're thinking, well, maybe he'll be back for 2017 if he gets hurt. I mean, you don't want to concede that. But yeah, I think you just have to go. Yeah, right. Well, I hope we're not being overly alarmist, but it's kind of a— I mean, it's not just confirmation bias. It's actually worrisome.

It would be worrisome with anyone. But when we did our, whenever it was, opening week or podcast about whether Sinderkard is the best pitcher in baseball right now. I think you asked me whether I'd want him for one start or something, and I said, you know, right now or later in the season, because I just don't know whether you can trust that a guy who throws that hard will actually be there then. And that was before there was any actual reason to worry.

So it's scary. Hope for the best. All right. Fernando Abad got his first career save. He was semi-famous to Effectively Wild listeners because he was third on the list behind Ryan Webb and Matt Albers on the career games finished without a save leaderboard. A distant third, but still, that was his 288th career Major League appearance, and he got a save.

Not that distant. A four-out save. He wasn't that distant. 25 or so? Uh-huh. Okay, right. But I guess that's a little hope. Never really did get there.

That's why it's such a hard record to chase. Just when you start paying attention to the hitting streak is when it usually ends, and it's usually halfway to DiMaggio. So that's what happened to Abad. But even better, bigger than him getting knocked out of the Webb-Albers chase, though, is that Abad also had a mention in a recent— Actually, I don't know if I mentioned it when we talked about the article, but he had a mention in the Closer usage, the State of the Closer article that I wrote about two weeks ago. Because the twins had just kicked Kevin Jepsen out of the Closer role for ineffectiveness.

They said that they were going with matchups with Brandon Kinsler and Fernando Abad, who are basically the two very definitions of journeymen relievers. And that seemed really exciting. But as I sort of said quite boldly, I thought that they might mean it right then, but that idea would not last. That whoever got the first save would probably end up getting all the saves, unless that guy was really terrible, and then the other guy would get all the saves. And yet, Kinsler got three, and then when the matchups made sense, Abad came in and he actually got the saves.

So we are now two-plus weeks into closer-by matchup experiment, and apparently they're still doing it, and both pitchers are pitching well. All right, and what do you think of the genre of fun fact that is something about a pitcher having X straight starts of something innings and no more than X hits? I know you've mentioned at times that these are just cleaner if you can just kind of hide the innings minimum at the end. I'm thinking of this fun fact from Mike Wilner, the Blue Jays radio play-by-play guy about Marco Estrada from earlier this week. Marco Estrada is the first pitcher in MLB history with 11 straight starts of at least six innings and no more than five hits ever. And there was a

similar one that Mark Simon pointed out to me about Michael Fulmer earlier in the year, something about, you know, four straight starts of six innings and no more than three hits, something in that genre. So the reason why I'm questioning it is, I mean, it lies a little bit in that there may have been pitchers doing this. Maybe the reason why it's impressive is that starters don't go that deep into games anymore. And so in the past, you had fewer opportunities for this sort of start streak because guys would go seven, eight, nine,

and it's hard to give up three hits or whatever in nine innings, but people would actually pitch complete games, whereas now you go six and it's a good start and you get taken out of the game. And so you can allow no more than six hits or whatever, and it's not so impressive on a per inning basis, but it's kind of an era effect to this fun fact genre. the guy asking Tommy Lasorda what his opinion was of Kingman's performance. And I was trying to decide whether to answer in the style of Tommy Lasorda.

And in thinking about that, I sort of missed the question. So it was fun facts where it's X plus innings with no more than X runs or no more than X hits. Yes. And you're suggesting that because many more of these types of outings. Yeah, no, it's a terrible stat. Many, yeah, because, well, yeah, I don't know if you said this explicitly, but it used to be that if you had, if it's six innings in one run, it used to be that you'd go a seventh if you'd allowed one run. Almost by definition, or an eighth or a ninth. And you had many chances to lose that start. It was almost like blown quality starts.

Baseball prospectus used to have, in assessing managers, they would have blown quality starts where a pitcher had a quality start through six, but was left in longer and lost the quality start. And I forget whether BP used that as a sign of, well, it was basically the shortness of a manager's leash, I guess. But also a little bit of a way of noting how a pitcher would pitch. And yeah, it's a terrible stat. It's a terrible fun fact for that reason. I agree. Okay. It's a terrible fun fact for that reason.

I agree. Okay. No, terrible in the sense that, like, terrible for me hearing it because I immediately disregard it. I don't. All fun facts have lies. And so if you can get away with it, by all means, get away with it. I think you, in my opinion, you have to do a better job camouflaging it than that. By the way, I don't think enough was made of before today, James Shields had three starts with the White Sox. And I looked to see if anybody, it seemed like such an obvious fun fact that I thought it would have taken the world over.

But James Shields had allowed more runs as a White Sox this year than Clayton Kershaw had as a Dodger. And I'm surprised I had not seen that. Yeah, there was one in, Jeff Sullivan wrote about James Shields recently. And he said, this could be a whole post of fun facts. The numbers are that extraordinary. So he used Arrieta instead. He said, over his last four starts, Shields has allowed a total of 32 runs. Jake Arrieta has allowed a total of 32 runs Jake Arrieta Has allowed a total of 32 runs over his Last 30 starts covering more than 200 innings this one was good Shields since his last game with San Diego

Has yielded a 1441 OPS Barry Bonds in 2004 1422 1421 No no no it's 1421 It's 1421 but if you Actually add the OVP and the slugging together Then it's 1422 but Because of. It's 1421. It's 1421, but if you actually add the OVP and the slugging together, then it's 1422. But because of rounding, it's 1421. Okay. Jeff wrote 1411.

Yeah, he's wrong. Just flat out wrong. And that's why he'll never be able to steal my bicycle. All right. Yeah, well, actually, that's a good segue, the second segue in Effectively Wild history into the topic for today. By the way, I got it backwards. It's 1421 if you add his displayed OBP and his displayed slugging, but his OPS itself is actually 1422, which also reminds me of – I can't remember if this came up in the episode 762, but this is the weirdest Barry Bonds fun fact. And it was that Barry Bonds OPS in the first half of that season was 1421. Oh yeah. And his OPS in the second half was 1421, but his OPS for the season was 1422. Yeah. It's already a great fun fact. The idea that you would have a 1421 OPS in both halves, like that's a, that's a heck of a, anyway, consistency. Go ahead. Yeah. All right. So the segue is that the White Sox actually, since we started talking just now, have lost another game started by James Shields. This was

actually by far Shields' best start for them. He went five and he only gave up three runs, which is miles better than any start he's had in a while, although he walked four and struck out three. So they just lost to the Red Sox on a walk- the 10th and This is kind of the week when Trade rumors have really Picked up and started swirling we're Still a ways away from the August 1st deadline of course but We've seen some trades

Happen early in July In recent years I mean The White Sox made their James Shields trade Already which it turns out Was the new white flag trade of 2016 was trading for James Shields. So there are three teams, I think, that are kind of in this range where no one's sure whether they will buy or sell. And there have been many, many rumors swirling around those teams in the last few days. So I wanted to just do a quick rundown of them.

And they're kind of the three teams that have chances and were expected to possibly contend or weren't seen as out of it on opening day. But their playoff odds coming into Thursday were all sub 20%. And they are the White Sox, the Yankees, and the Pirates. The Pirates and the White Sox have already lost on Thursday and so their odds will go down a little bit more but the Yankees were at 11.1%, the White Sox were just under 20 at 19% and the Pirates were way down at 5.5% coming into the day. And so I think each of them has different reasons to sell or to not sell. In the Yankees case, it seems hard to imagine them actually winning this division. Seems like the Blue Jays and the Red Sox were expected to be much better coming into the year

The Orioles have been much much better It's hard to envision the Yankees overtaking All of those teams But they are the Yankees Historically they haven't been sellers And no one expects the Yankees to sell And maybe there's some fallout with the fan base If they sell

Although people said that about the Yankees Not signing any free agents And we just had an offseason where the Yankees not signing any free agents, and we just had an offseason where the Yankees didn't sign any free agents, so you can set some precedents. And in the White Sox's case, they have a much easier division in front of them. The Indians have been good lately, and people expected the Indians to be good, but none of these teams seems like a true powerhouse ahead of them, so there's a bit of a wider field ahead of them. And then lastly, the Pirates, of course, have been good for a while now, and everyone expected them to continue to be good.

They are, what, four games under.500 now. They're not going to catch the Cubs, and it's going to be tough for them to catch up to the bunch of teams that are ahead of them or around them in the wildcard. But they are young and talented and they aren't in the same spot on the wind curve or the competitive cycle that the Yankees are. So people have been talking a lot about trading Andrew McCutcheon. Joe Sheehan did a newsletter earlier this week about why trading McCutcheon would make sense. And enough people have been writing about this and talking about this that Neil Huntington was moved to make a comment about it and say that there's no way it's going to happen.

And I don't think it really could happen in McCutcheon's current state. If he were playing a little bit better, if he were healthy, then maybe there would be arguments for it. But as it is, he is just not himself, and he's got a thumb injury, and he's playing poorly. And so I don't know whether anyone would give up much to get him, not knowing whether they're getting good McCutcheon or the bad McCutcheon we've seen so far. It's possible that he could turn it around quickly. He started last season slow with an injury, and then he came on and was McCutcheon again. But it seems like selling him now would be selling low. I don't know what these three teams should do.

Now, what they'll probably do is just wait a month or so and see where they stand now, and that's a viable option. By then, they might have won a bunch. They might have lost a bunch. Other teams might have made big moves in the standings, and so the course could be clearer. But if you decide to sell, then obviously there's a benefit to being the first mover there and getting your guys on the market early when there's more time left in the season and there's more value for them.

So all of the trade candidates on these teams, and the Yankees have a bunch, the Pirates would have some, the White Sox would have some. There would be attractive players if they do decide that it's not going to happen this year. But I wonder whether it is too soon to make that determination or whether it will ever be appropriate

to make that determination. Do you have any thoughts about any of those teams? I think that you undersell the White Sox and the Yankees playoff positions. I mean, they're really close to the wild card. I mean, they're what, three and a half back of the second wild card. And it's not that hard to play really well for 90 games or 85 games. Worse teams have had better second halves than it would take to get both of those teams to the playoffs. And so I'm not saying necessarily that they're in a great position. As you noted, their playoff odds are, you know, one in five.

And that is, well, even worse than one in five. And, you know, those are just making the playoffs. Those aren't even adjusted for the kind of lesser reward of making the wild card but like when you talk about the yankees don't really need to like it might make them better to trade some parts but they don't really need to that seems to me that the yankees rebuilding plan is just waiting another year or so right and then having all the money in the world yeah you, you would think so. Yeah. And so they're not really in a position where they have to do something that's going to change the way that people look at them or that's going to cost them a chance at a, you know,

a reasonable chance at the playoffs. The Pirates are, the Pirates are a team that if the rest of the league is any indication, does every once in a while have to purge at just the right moment you don't have to necessarily go into a three-year rebuild but one of the ways you avoid the three-year rebuild is selling the pieces that you have at the right time and getting a lot i i would be very surprised if mccutchen were that to me that doesn't necessarily seem like something that they would do unless they were really forced into a corner. But, I mean, the Pirates aren't going to make the playoffs this year, right? I mean, it seems just based on being in the NL as opposed to the AL, as we talked about at the beginning of the year, there's no parity in the National League at all.

The good teams are really good teams, and it's probably not going to be an 85-win team that makes the wildcard game or even really has much of a chance going into the final three weeks. And the Pirates are not anywhere close to being on pace to be an 85-win team. And if you believe Pakoda, they weren't really an 85-win team going into the season either. So there's a little bit of confirmation here. And so, yeah, I mean, if you're the Pirates, you have to sell aggressively. Yeah. Well, the case for trading McCutcheon that Joe made and that maybe others have made is that the Pirates have all these outfield riches. Not only do they have Marte and Polanco, but they also have Austin Meadows, one of their top prospects, who was just promoted to AAA. He can play center. I mean, everyone in that outfield can play center.

And so if he's ready next season, then there will be no place to play him. And so he kind of broke it down as, you know, McCutcheon's under contract if you include options for a couple more seasons. And if he's healthy, then he'll still be a good value in those seasons. But Joe kind of made the case that having a spot for Meadows or, you know, being able to actually play Meadows instead of trading him or something, having that spot for Meadows and the money that McCutcheon's going to make and what McCutcheon would bring back now would be better for the Pirates over that period than actually just keeping the Cutchin, which kind of makes sense. I mean, it makes sense in a sort of dispassionate way. Yeah. Other than the fact that he is an immensely popular player and, you know, face of the franchise, which always makes it much harder to make a move like that. But again, I just think the fact that he is hurt now Makes it really pretty Impossible to trade him for

What he's worth yeah unless you Know unless he has a hot streak over the Next month and everyone is convinced He's healthy I just don't think there's Any way you would want to trade him now So there are other Guys that you could move on that Roster there you know rumors about

Teams being interested in Francisco Liriano and I don't know who else is movable on this roster Jaceau and Melanson and Melanson right Ray Searidge you could trade Ray Searidge I don't know there's there's not a Ray Searidge right now has the equivalent of a sore thumb though your broken thumb or whatever yeah you might need him to get back to it yeah so you know there's bullpen arms and jay so and liriano guys like that nothing nothing incredibly enticing but the yankees have a ton of enticing players to move which is kind of surprising since they are a pretty bad team or you know you look at the roster and it's

pretty thin but obviously if they are willing to move chapman if they're willing to move miller if they are willing to move beltron then those guys would have value you could even see someone like you know as bad as tashara has been i think he was one of the top guys when rob arthur wrote something for 538 recently about guys whose stat cast stats have been impressive despite their struggles slash line-wise. So, you know, if you don't have a first baseman on your team, maybe you'd take a chance on Teixeira. Maybe you would want CeCe Sabathia,

who has restored himself enough that maybe he has some kind of value, although I'm sure a lot of people would still be wary of him. So I think the White Sox and the Yankees are both six games back in the division, but that feels like a very long six games just because of the way that the White Sox season has gone, where they started out great in April and then 11-17 in 17 in may 8 and 12 in june you could probably go back to when their season opening hot streak ended and do a really dismal win-loss record since that moment which by the way is uh probably good news for hawk harrelson haters because i think when he entered this season he said that if they had another bad year like last year, this would be his last season.

And then they started off great and it seemed like we'd get more Hawk, but maybe not. If things keep going the way that they're going, then maybe he will retire too. Hey, Ben, forget 2016 and tell me who's of those three teams, who's in the best position right now for 2017 and 2018. Pirates. Yeah. So I agree. And so that's why I sort of think that McCutcheon is a extreme, it seems to me that he's just still an extremely valuable player at an extremely affordable price for the next two years as well. And if you're the Pirates and you're looking at how you're going to make yourself a contender next year, well, you're probably not going to get a superstar talent Anywhere else between now and then and So I would just consider them still really immensely

Valuable to where they are as a franchise you're right though that You know well everything that Joe said is right and Of course anytime trade Everybody's a good trade Candidate if the offer is right so But I kind of just don't See it happening everybody's right here all The people involved are right

Yeah well I would think with the Yankees, there would be a pretty big benefit because Chapman's a free agent. So between him and I mean, this is this is Beltran's last year of his contract also. And so between those two guys on expiring deals, Sabathia's deal is almost done. I think he has a vesting option for 2017, but there is a $5 million buyout the wildcard race, again, I mean, can you really envision the Yankees taking over and beating, you know, whichever AL East team or teams doesn't win that division. And then Kansas City and Detroit and Houston is now back over 500 and sort of in it. And the Mariners are hanging around. And I just can't see this Yankees team overtaking really any of those teams, let alone all of them them so it's just hard to envision so i would i would think that you could get a ton i mean for for miller and chapman alone those would be really enticing players to move how much is miller signed for two more years after this one but at nine million per which does not sound like a lot at all for Andrew Miller. So you could get a bunch from those guys. Yeah. So, Ben, right now, Pagoda's playoff odds have the second wild card being one with 84 games, 84 wins. And the Yankees are one game under 500. If you consider them a 500 true talent team,

then it's not much of a stretch to see them playing, you know, enough balls bounce their way. You know, a guy gets hot, somebody on another team gets injured. It's not hard for a 500 team to go 50 and 40. It happens constantly. Yeah, sure. That's all. All right. Yeah, it's a tough call because you're the Yankees and you're supposed to win every year and they've somehow managed to keep doing that, or at least they've managed not to be terrible, even though it seems like one of these years they're going to be terrible.

Hasn't happened yet, but they probably have the most to gain. Would you say that that's the case? If they do decide to sell, they have the most attractive players to offer because we covered the Pirates guys other than mccutchen which seems very unlikely to happen it's just kind of role players and spare parts mostly on that roster who you'd actually move because you expect that team to be good in the next couple years and so you wouldn't want to move any long-term pieces and then on the white socks i don't know you could you could move fraser again There's just not a ton

On that roster that you would want to give up Probably So Sabathia's got a vesting option For 2017 At $25 million That vests with a $5 million buyout So it's essentially $20 million That vests if he does not

End the season on the DL with a shoulder injury Spend more than 45 days This season on the DL with a shoulder injury, spend more than 45 days this season on the DL with a shoulder injury, or make more than six relief appearances because of a shoulder injury. If you're CeCe Sabathia and you see the free agent market that is out there for starting pitchers this year, and your team is not in the playoff hunt, let's say, do you fake a shoulder injury? That's a good question.

Yeah. Well, no, because if you do, then you're the guy with a shoulder injury. You got to fake it now. You got to fake it now and do the 45 days and then come back strong in September. Yeah, that might work. You can't end the season with a shoulder injury could you though do you think that what do you think would be the blowback on him if he faked a shoulder injury and then when he's you know talking to jeffrey loria at the winter meetings trying to convince him to sign him he goes you know i made up the shoulder injury so i could sign with you and And you can, you know, I promise everybody knows it.

Like, would would Laurie rat him out? Would it get out? Would he be punished? Would the Yankees be sad? Yeah, right. That's the thing. I'm not sure anyone would lodge a complaint. Maybe they'd be happy he's gone, right?

Yeah. So, yeah, he could probably get away with this. I like it. All right. Good plan. All right. Good plan. All right. Well, yeah, I think, I mean, they really have a lot to, if they do dismantle, we didn't even mention Brett Gardner, who's another guy who's generated interest in the past. So, I don't know, maybe the fact that they have so many appealing players means that they actually have a decent team and they shouldn't break it apart.

But they really would make a killing if they decided to break up this roster. All right, so we will wait and see. They will wait and see. The picture will be much clearer when the actual deadline rolls around. But it felt like time for some premature trade talk. So that is it for today. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. Five listeners who have already pledged their support.

Sander Glick, Colin Post, Dan Carty, Lewis Bailey, and Andy. Thank you. You can buy our book, The Only Rule Is It Has to Work, our wild experiment building a new kind of baseball team. Check out theonlyruleisithastowork.com for reviews and interviews and excerpts, as well as photos and videos and stats. We're adding Pacific Association PitchFX and HitFX leaderboards to the site. Lots of good additional information if you've already read the book. And if you have read the book and you liked it, please leave us a review on Amazon and Goodreads. The Saber Seminar in Boston, August 13th to 14th, is still selling tickets. Some of the

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