Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 93: Behind the Scenes of the Blue Jays-Marlins Blockbuster

Episode Date: December 3, 2012

Ben and Sam discuss and pick out the most interesting parts of Bob Elliott’s article on how the big Blue-Jays Marlins trade went down.

But to be the man, you gotta beat the man, and I'm saying, woo, right here in Nashville, Tennessee, pal, I'm the man. Ric Flair and Steamboat, you're gonna be mine! Woo! Good morning, and welcome to episode 93 of Effectively Wild, the Baseball Prospectus Daily Podcast. Coming to you from the Gaylord Opryland Hotel in Nashville, Tennessee, I am Ben Lindberg. And coming to you from boring old Long Beach, California, in the Honda Fit, is Sam Miller. Hello, Sam. Yeah, but I'm more relaxed than you. I guess. I'm just alone in my hotel room here. I could be anywhere in the world. I happen to be in Nashville, Tennessee at the

winter meetings at the biggest hotel and convention center I've ever seen. I needed a map to get to my room with like three stages of directions and there are color-coded carpets and each section of the giant convention center has a different name. And it seems like it would be very easy to get lost. And I think some free agent should just say that he'll sign with whichever general manager can find him first. And they can just have a big scavenger hunt. That would be fun. That would be amazing. So I have nothing to report yet as I just arrived and went pretty much straight to my hotel room to record this podcast. So you have brought a topic which we are going to talk about now.

What is that topic? So my topic is the Blue Jays Marlins trade. Bob Elliott wrote a piece for the Toronto Sun about how the trade came together, a kind of classic TikTok narrative. And I am a total sucker for these sorts of pieces. I'm particularly a sucker for this one because I love the detail in it, and it is told quite breezily, and there is quite a bit in there that interested me, and so I don't think you've read it, and probably most of our... I have, yes, I have at least quickly skimmed it. Okay, well, most of our listeners have probably not. But it's at the Toronto Sun if they want to read it.

And I'll put a link on the podcast post. There you go. So in the meantime, basically I'm just going to steal all his best stuff and say it. Good. Okay. So I'm just going to go through the list of things that were interesting to me. So this trade in a way began in July when the Jays approached the, I believe, well, I think the Jays approached the Marlins about Josh Johnson. The Marlins requested Hechavarria and Nicolino. The Blue Jays said, no, thank you. And that was that. So this is the start of the trade four months ago.

So then, four months later, the Marlins go to the Blue Jays and propose a trade. And that trade is Buck for Mathis. That is a great beginning. Buck for Mathis, which I love. I think that's my favorite detail. This trade, 12 players, hundreds of millions of dollars. I mean, basically a franchise that essentially committed suicide for the next few years. All that trade started with Mathis for Buck.

Can I just go back to July for a second? Can I just go back to July for a second? I thought one of the interesting things that the article talked about was how the Jays pro scouting director proposed that since the Jays probably wouldn't be acquiring prospects this winter because they are so prospect rich and would likely be trading for veterans, he proposed that they pull everyone off minor league scouting and cover the big leagues with the thought process that we want to get better, we'll be trading for major leaguers, and Anthopolis said that they were able to get a lot of extra looks at guys in August and September because of that, presumably some of the guys they traded for. Yeah, I also found that interesting at first, but it doesn't seem to me that he – I mean I don't think that – while that starts the piece, it's really hard to imagine what a pro scout would have seen about Mark Burley that would have made this trade happen or not happen. I mean, guys like Burley, they're pretty well-known. Yes.

And so I feel like he sort of set that up, but then it's not like in the 2000s where he's like, they noticed. Right. Yeah, I don't know how much it had to where he's like, they noticed. Yeah, I don't know how much it had to do with the trade, if anything, but I still found it interesting that they would say that given how much data there is on major league guys. You'd think that the returns would kind of be diminishing when it comes to scouting veterans who've been around forever. I could see a guy like Johnson who has had injury problems and maybe you'd want to get someone there to look at him and talk to people who've seen him and all that sort of thing. But I don't know, you'd think that there's so much data and so much history on these guys that you wouldn't be able to add that much value. But I don't know. Maybe not. Maybe you can.

Anyway, continue with the narrative. So they're in Palm Springs or somewhere around Palm Springs for the, what is it, the owner's meeting? Yeah, I guess. Or the GM's meeting maybe? One of those. Yeah, the GM meeting. I don't know if there is an owner's meeting. There's a GM's meeting though and I think that's where they were. So they're meeting, and this is where the Math is for Buck move comes up.

It's in the Marlins' villa. And so Anthopolis says, quote, none of our guys are off limits. And the piece says that this is a different stance than some teams take into meetings with other clubs. One executive tells of a meeting with a team at the GM meetings and how the opposing team started by saying, these seven players are off limits including two at class a quote we wasted our time guy gives a list of guys not available we're thinking dang are you serious a guy opening a notepad to read off names i'd rather go for a colonoscopy and this is interesting because the idea of untouchable players gets you out a lot and thrown out in media reports.

And I think we all consider all players touchable in the right circumstances. We've talked about how it's more of a semantic thing or at least we thought it was. Yeah, but I think that there's a truth to it. I think that maybe we don't quite give enough credit to. maybe we don't quite give enough credit to, which, I mean, I think that there is probably a list of players on teams where the executives just simply feel that they probably like them more than the public sentiment around those guys, and therefore it's very unlikely that they're going to get full value. And so it's essentially a way of, you know, removing them from the table and saying, hey,

we, it's, you know, we would move them in the right circumstances, but we like him more than you. We just, we know that we do. And that might be what, I think it is interesting though, to see that, that teams really do go into these meetings and say, we're not trading these guys. They are essentially untouchable. I didn't really realize that that happened in these, that was news to me. And later on, when they talk about when the trade is actually going through, one of the player development guys says, or it could be Anthopolis said, I'm not going to lie, it hurt when he laid it all out. Yeah, this is the player development guy says,

it hurt when he laid it all out. You feel attached to guys like maris and nicolino we've had them since high school and so you could see where there would be attachments and uh where that might be sort of where a seed of the kind of untouchable comes in where it's uh you know you you are possessive of the things you possess so anyway i found that interesting um what about reyes anthopolis asks putting his foot on the arm right the the picture that elliot paints of anthopolis is like some kid who's had too many pixie sticks or something he's like jumping up

and down and putting his feet on the chair uh and apparently it was an effective strategy yes exactly i like put on the chair and it was interesting that strategy. Yes, exactly. I like to put on the chair. And it was interesting that the shortstop's name had not yet been mentioned. A Marlins executive asked, what is this, one-stop shopping? You sort of think about this trade mainly, I think, from the Marlins' perspective of driving it. It was like the Marlins went into this looking to pump everything everything and the way that it works out or the way that it develops is not really that way at all and certainly they were more willing to move players than you might have thought that a team

would be but it's really the blue jays in a lot of ways that are driving this. The Marlins go in looking for Jeff Mathis, floating Josh Johnson, and it seems to be Anthopolis that pushes Burley into it, and it's explicitly Anthopolis that pushes Reyes into it. So that's interesting because it sort of counters the narrative that I had in my head. After an hour meeting, both sides adjourn. The entire thing essentially happened in an hour. Yes. Yeah, I noticed that too. It seemed very quick.

So then he describes how the trade almost falls apart. Again, Jeff Mathis plays a central role. Every proposal the Marlins asked for him and every time we declined because we were uncomfortable including him didn't want to include him he says out of a sense of loyalty because they had just signed him to a contract extension which you can understand it's I think it's still amusing something that we have to reckon with that baseball teams want Jeff Mathis so much I mean this is becoming something that I think everybody has to reckon with that baseball teams want Jeff Mathis so much. I mean, this is becoming something that I think everybody has to deal with because, um, Jeff Mathis is, uh, I don't know. He, he doesn't seem to be the punchline in baseball that

he, and so anyway, it ended up happening though, when the Blue Jays decided, I guess we can part with Jeff Mathis. And then later on, we had people in our office who would not have done the trade. Anthopolis told reporters it was a very fair deal. It was hard to give up a lot of the young players. I'm not surprised that there were people in his office who would not have done the trade, and it would be interesting to have heard from them, but there's nobody. I mean, after every trade, even if it's sort of acknowledged that one team really fleeced the other, you always hear the general manager who seems to have gotten the better of the deal saying, well, we gave up a lot of great players and it was tough to pull the trigger and all that sort of thing,

even if it's a total lopsided deal so I don't know how much I buy into that I'm sure even in fantasy you don't just immediately start gloating as soon as it goes through

you start explaining why it was so hard to give up Del Mion upside you want people to trade with you again in the future, so you don't want to show them up. And slightly off the narrative, but also interesting, the Marlins had ranked all 29 teams farm systems. The top three, in their view, were the Royals, the Rangers, and the Blue Jays. in their view were the Royals, the Rangers, and the Blue Jays. And those are all, you know, I think those are all pretty well acknowledged to be very good farm systems, but it is interesting to hear a team ranked them.

You never really hear one team's rankings, and it'll be interesting, I think, when organizational rankings come out on our site and at Baseball America later this year to see how different those are. Yes, I agree. All right, well, why don't you go schmooze? Yes, I'm going to shake hands and kiss some babies on behalf of Baseball Perspectives. And we will be back with a Tuesday show. And if you want us to answer

your emails on the Wednesday email show, send them to us at podcast at baseball