Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 931: Cubs Add Aroldis, Chris Sale Slices Laundry

Episode Date: July 25, 2016

Ben and Sam banter about the Hall of Fame and Jon Lester, then discuss Chris Sale’s jersey tantrum, Shelby Miller trade rumors, and the Cubs-Yankees Aroldis Chapman deal.

When we were younger, we were strong. We've got a lot better, the things that we've done. Now if this is me, if you still believe, come on, let's take a long cut. I think that's what we need If you wanna take the long cut We'll get there eventually Good morning and welcome to episode 931 of Effectively Wild,

the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives, brought to you by the Play Index, Baseball Reference, and our Patreon supporters. I'm Sam Miller, along with Ben Lindberg of The R the ringer hi ben how are you i'm all right all right lots going on in baseball at the moment do you have any uh any uh sort of more frivolous banter before we probably get into the more substantial banter i have one piece of very frivolous banter. The Baseball Hall of Fame revamped the Veterans Committee, divided the game into a few different eras. I think, what, four different eras. And there are going to be different frequencies of voting for each era's candidates so that more recent candidates, guys who didn't get in on the BBWA ballot,

can have more chances to get elected by the Veterans Committee. But I thought it was notable that they defined today's game, that's the most recent era, as 1988 to 2016. So they unwittingly endorsed your insistence that 1988 is when baseball began. Could it not possibly be wittingly? I mean, it could be, I suppose. Although they said modern baseball is 1970 to 1987, which I think is probably not what you have said in the past. That's the, what is it, 72 the DH year? Yeah, 73.

73. So it's interesting that they would... Yeah, 70 is year? Yeah. Seventy three. Seventy three. So it's interesting that they would have 70 as a weird one. I don't know. It's not even is it? It's not even an expansion year. No. What it is. It's not divisional era.

It's nothing. No. And even like when historians talk about decades, even if you want to do it by like, well, like even this, it it's you know generally consider that even the 60s went well into the 70s and that's not really relevant yeah all right uh all right just a little twist on the john lester base running thing yeah uh what we talked about is odd that you know the league was no longer able to run on him and then suddenly they were uh the brewers stole five bases against him.

I have not yet watched, but my understanding is that if I watch this game, I will see many amusing things. But they stole as many bases against him as the league had in his previous 10 starts. So there does still seem to be the possibility that you can just flip the switch and run on him so it has not actually gotten impossible to run on him or it has not actually i mean it was never impossible but it has not actually gotten apparently difficult or maybe it's difficult but not i don't know i don't i guess we it implies that he has done something to make it less tempting to the league,

but not necessarily done anything to make it himself actually less exposed. Yeah. Well, when I took a cursory look earlier this year, it didn't seem as if he had altered his time to the plate at all. It was the same as it had been last season. So we, when we last spoke about it, sort of speculated that David Ross was the difference that he was throwing over to first and trying to backpick people more,

but the Brewers are leading the majors and still on bases. So they are a fast team that is aggressive. So maybe he just hadn't faced the Brewers for a while, but also someone posted a picture, a screenshot from this start in the Facebook group with the caption, Always run on Lester, always. And it shows a Brewer leading off first base farther than I've ever seen a player lead off first base. There's no cutoff. There's no cutout, or maybe there's a slight cutout. It's hard to say but it looks like it's like a 20 foot lead it looks like Lester could jog over and tag him out if he wanted

to it's that far but there was no pickoff throw and Rizzo is still he's still crouched over with his glove forward as if he's expecting a throw at any second. We're confident that this is not another one of those photoshopped leads against Leicester. I don't think it is, but it's possible that I was duped. Yeah, this might be a game I need to watch today. It really is insane how far it's probably... So I guess he did lob one over to first, according to the comments here. I was not watching this game either, but someone in the comments in the Facebook group says he lobbed one over to first and Rizzo's throw to second hit Braun

because Rizzo didn't have time to clear the baseline if he wanted to get the out. So I guess there was a pickoff, but Braun just went to second because he was like halfway there anyway. I would guess, if I had halfway there anyway i would guess if i had to guess i would guess this is a 17 and a half foot lead and normal is 13 and first of all my guess might be wrong second of all that might not seem like a lot but when you visualize it it is and uh you know how many guys do you see get thrown out by more than four feet? Like it never happens. Yeah. So, all right.

Okay. On to the super important things. Sure. All right. So Chris Sale, cut up a jerseys. Yep. I want to, I don't really know how to talk about this. We'll just sort of fumble along and then we'll get to Aroldis Chapman after that.

But I guess one way to start is to ask this question. Ken Rosenthal, by the way, before we get into that, it really is interesting to see reporting getting done, to see the brick by brick way that reporting gets done. You don't get to generally see that when you read like the Washington Post reporting on, you know, the farm subsidies. But with baseball reporting is really like one place where you do. It's like where you see all the rough drafts and you see every single step. And I don't know if other if non-journalists appreciate this, if people who didn't try to do reporting earlier in their life appreciate this as much as I do, but it's really fascinating to see.

So like Ken Rosenthal tweets, there was like, it was sort of known that Chris Sale had been scratched, there was like 10 minutes of speculation that he'd been traded, then there was like 10 minutes of thinking it was the flu, and then it kind of came out that there was a clubhouse incident, okay? So the tweet that in particular interested me was, Ken Rosenthal, source, sale incident, not with teammate,

not quote directly with front office person, quote, really silly. So this source told him a lot and knew a lot more, and yet wouldn't tell Ken. And so this source could have told him he's already given him enough to you know be in trouble if you're going to get in trouble for this sort of a thing right yeah he's already done kenna solid uh and he's so close to the finish line all he's got to do is go well ken let me tell you he cut up the jerseys and yet he wouldn't he refused he she whoever the source was refused to

give him that last little bit and said you got to go find it yourself knowing that it would come out eventually yeah one way or another yeah yeah and someone emailed us about this recently a listener named chris emailed us about the montgomery vogelbach trade and how at the bottom of posts about transactions, MLB trade rumors always credits all the people who reported it first or reported some piece of it first. And so this one on the Vogelbach post says, ESPN analyst Tim Kirkjian first reported during a television broadcast that the two clubs had a trade that was in advanced talks. Bob Dutton of the Tacoma News Tribune tweeted that a deal was in place, and Yahoo's Jeff Passan reported via Twitter that Montgomery and Volgebach were involved. John Marossi of FoxSports and MLB.com tweeted that there were other players in the deal, and Fox's Ken Rosenthal first reported Blackburn's inclusion. USA Today's Bob Nightingale reported Pries as the fourth player. So it was like a eight person effort to report this trade.

So it's a similar kind of tag team thing. It is possible that Ken's reporting was being done by text. And when he tweeted that, like imagine a scenario where he tweets a text to source, says what's up with sale? And then the source replies with what I read, really silly. And then Rosenthal replies, give me more, what happened? And then it's just like the guy's down in the tunnels and it takes 15 minutes for him to reply or 45 minutes to reply, or he just never replies. But it's not quite so whimsical as the scenario that I laid out where they're on the phone. And he's like, and the source is like, follow the money, Ken.

You know? Yeah. So it could be that. And, you know, you tweet what you got. I find it extremely interesting as a person who tried to practice this profession. And it's just fun to watch Ken do his job because Ken is so good at it. And it's just fun to watch Ken do his job because Ken is so good at it. And it is worth following him in the same way that it was worth watching Jiro Dreams of Sushi.

It's just great to see people who are like really good at a job do it. Yeah. Anyway. Yeah. When he retires someday, hopefully in a very long time, we should have him on episode 4, 4000 to tell us exactly how all of this worked yeah oh man i hope he's keeping journals yes wouldn't that be great law wouldn't you well would you yeah i think i would memoir i think i would read his post i don't want to read his memoir i want to read his journals i want to read i want to read the captain's log okay from like you know from from that's the best we're going to get.

That's the closest we could conceivably get to our dream of the, you know, the documentary released seven years later or whatever. All right. Anyway, so Rosenthal's got a tweet here that I think is worth starting this conversation on. Sources say sale cut up throwbacks during batting practice upset that, in his view, PR and jersey sales were more important than winning. And, you know, the Chris Sale thing is hysterical and really super embarrassing, I think, for Chris Sale. And we all laughed and retweeted and faved and so on. But I just want to know if you think that that is an invalid position and whether you think that they're really, whether it's all that bad,

or if Chris Sale really believes that this throwback jersey is going to make it harder for him and his team to win, whether we really should be all that upset about this. Well, I mean, we're not upset about it for one thing, right? We're just, we're mostly amused. Yeah, we're not upset about it. We don't condone cutting up jerseys. I mean, I slept last night.

I will say that. But let's say, let me change some of those words. We are judgmental. We are judgmental, correct? And this will stick to him forever as a, you know, dumb goofball weirdo thing to do. And it does make him seem less sane as a human. And, but maybe it shouldn't. Maybe, like, maybe it shouldn't.

So I am not taking the position that it shouldn't. But I want to hear what you have to say about whether we should be judgmental here. Yeah. Well, I think, first of all, I don't think it will negatively affect his legacy, really. I think we'll probably remember him as a guy who was maybe the best pitcher in the league at the time and, you know, just chalk this up to weird lefty antics or whatever. at the time and, you know, just chalk this up to weird lefty antics or whatever. And this will be like, you know, something that you'll read about in 20 years and everyone will say, wow, that happened, but we won't actually think anything different of him. So it will not be as bad as like Dave Kingman sending a rat to a female reporter. However, however, like Steve Carlton

is, for instance, you know, remembered as a great lefty. But the second thing you remember about Steve Carlton after the 127 games for a last place team fact is that he didn't talk to reporters for like the last 15 years of his life. And he was a surly ornery SOB. And I don't know, maybe, maybe that isn't, maybe that's not bad for his reputation, but you know, it's in the same way. I sort of think that we might remember, I think this might be the thing we remember Chris Sale for 20 years from now is just being like weird. And it comes after the Drake LaRoche thing too. And it does kind of make you wonder about the stability of the dude which I again like I'm not sure I'm whether you are going to that judgmental place depends on

whether what you think he did is actually wrong and the first reaction I had was duh of course it's obviously wrong and then I read this tweet and I have well okay so that, maybe that's the right position that maybe for a player, for a group of players, for a single player, maybe the position that winning is more important than jersey sales is actually completely sane. And if it's weird and colorful that he cut up the jerseys and obviously insubordinate and going to, you know, really make his bosses mad and also a violation of the, of his contract and all those sorts of things. It's also the case that baseball is a very weird world where none of the rules seem to actually matter. Like where

you're just constantly negotiating what you can get away with in pursuit of winning and in pursuit of your own sort of interests. And I don't like you can do anything unless somebody else, some counterforce comes in response. Like that's the notion of the unwritten rules is that players are providing a counterforce to you trying to do what you want to do. They have decided, we don't want you doing this certain set of unwritten rules, so we are going to respond to you by throwing baseballs, this extra legal disciplinary process, to keep you from doing the thing that we have culturally decided we don't want you doing.

And so with the jerseys, what are they going to do to him? Like they suspend him for five games. Okay. Whatever. Big deal. That's basically pushing back his, you know, one start, uh, which already happened. And maybe that is enough, but he, you know, he didn't really know what was going to happen. They find him doesn't matter. He's super rich. So the fine doesn't matter. And so like, I don't know, do you. Do you, does this, does what I'm saying make any sense that like you can do, you can do anything in baseball as long as the response to what you do is not going to be more destructive than the gain that you get from doing the thing that you want to do. And he might've miscalculated here and he might not have.

Yeah. Well, first of all, I think one reason why this will be remembered as a weird, funny baseball story, more so than a dark baseball story, is that it's more of a victimless crime. Some jerseys were harmed. But other than that, I don't know, some clubhouse person maybe had to clean up pieces of jersey and his teammates were harmed in a sense because Chris Sale didn't make that start. But other than that, no one was directly harmed. He took out his aggression, not against the PR department or the corporate sales department that set this up, but the jersey itself. So that's one thing. But I will say that I think there's something

to what you're saying. I'm, of course, flashing back to a Sonoma Stoppers analogy here in that there was a time last season when we were running the Stoppers for the book and the team signed Jose Canseco and we had nothing to do with that. It was purely a publicity stunt. And there was a day when Theo Fightmaster, the GM, pulled a prank on you, on us, and pretended that he was going to bring back Canseco for the rest of the season. Because when Canseco played, a lot of people had bought tickets and attendance was great. And I'm sure the Stompers made money off the whole thing. So he had us going for a day or so about this proposal to bring back Canseco for the rest of the season. And we couldn't really have argued against that from a business standpoint. We were preparing arguments to do so,

you know, saying that it wouldn't be such a big draw after the first weekend that people would get tired of Canseco after a few games. But you couldn't really argue that the Stompers would draw worse or make less money with Canseco than they would without. But we really didn't want Canseco there every day because, A, we didn't think he'd be a very good player if he were actually playing every day as limited and as one-dimensional as he was. And, B, we didn't want him in the clubhouse

kind of undermining everyone's authority. And he wouldn't really have any reason to listen to anyone. And he would be a completely different age and background from everyone else. And we worried about the impact that would have. And then the manager, you spoke to the manager and he was equally upset about it. So that was kind of similar. That was maybe a little different in that we're talking about an actual player

publicity stunt where you're taking up a roster spot with this guy, but it's not completely different if you think that the jerseys would actually impact performance in some way. Do we know why he thought that was the case? Is he just so uncomfortable with the collar on this throwback that he couldn't pitch with it? Well, it was reported, maybe not totally convincingly, but it was reported that these are like heavy wool jerseys and that they were just really uncomfortable.

And so, yeah, for a starting pick on a hot summer day, like maybe you sell this on April 14th in Chicago, but on a hot summer day in the middle of a heat wave, I could totally see that. Yeah, sure. So if I'm a team that's technically in contention and I'm the guy whose stats are at stake, then sure, I could see being upset about that if you're really uncomfortable. I mean, starting pitchers have their routines and they're very particular about these things. And so being forced to wear this thing that makes you uncomfortable just for financial reasons is something that you might be upset about. Let me make one last pass at this too, which is that as a team, you are trying to get players who are obsessed with winning, who are so driven. That is what makes these people special as baseball players, is that they are so much more driven than most of us can motivate ourselves to be.

And they put up with an awful lot in their lives in pursuit of winning more and more and more and never getting enough winning. So it's not really necessarily the point. It is the job of the front office to manage this kind of beast that you have created while not suppressing it. And I don't know that we can expect, given how much that is driven into players from age, you know, elite players from age 11 onward, I don't know how much we should expect players to appropriately self-censor themselves or modulate themselves. Maybe that's not giving them enough credit as human beings, probably isn't. But like it is like sometimes there will be fights between the front office and the player. And I always think – like, and people will go, well, who's right and who's wrong?

You know, like, was Kenny Williams right to ask Drake LaRoche to not be in the clubhouse? Or was, you know, Billy Bean right to be upset at Josh Donaldson when he called him Billy Boy or whatever the case may be? And I always think that's sort of the wrong way of thinking about this because the players, there's 750 players. Not all of them are crazy. A lot of them are great, nice, normal people who probably don't even care that much about baseball. But the players are largely a group that is going to behave in ways that would be unacceptable in other contexts. But we accept that. It's a weird sport. It's a weird world. And it is the front office's job to be the grownups, to be the ones who reign them in, who set the limits, who figure out a way to manage them. They are selected for their

management skills. That is why they're there. So measuring the players and the front offices performances in these sorts of situations with a sort of equivalency seems wrong to me. I simply expect players, not all players, not all players, but out of a group that big, I expect players to do dumb things. It is inevitable that if you select a group of 750 young adult males to be, you know, for this physical, high intensity, aggressive pursuit, then you're going to have them making lots of mistakes. And you don't even have to select them for that to be the case. Right. It could be a randomly sampled group of 750 young males.

Young males, yeah. Exactly. So I just expect that. And I think we can sort of judge players on an individual case-by-case basis. Well, we can judge the players on an individual case-by-case basis. I don't think we can judge front office performance on the same scale, though. Like, I almost think that there's no, like, oh, well, if Josh Donaldson was right, then Billy Bean is more wrong.

Or if Josh Donaldson was wrong, Billy Bean was more right. I think, you know, the front office's performance in situations like this is totally independent of how right or wrong players are, because you just have to assume there are going to be wrong players all the time and your job as front office is managing crazy wrong players. And so I don't, we don't know enough about the situation to say how the White Sox handle this but it should not be a surprise to them that ballplayer in their employ did a crazy thing, and they should have probably, it probably reflects badly on them because getting through a season is all about limiting those crazy things as much as possible. Anyway, I am not defending Chris Sale at the end of this.

I think that that was a hysterically nutty thing to do uh nonetheless um and i don't know what i'm saying about chris sale he's a good pitcher he's a good pitcher uh all right so next thing here is aroldis chapman was traded to the chicago cubs for glaber torres adam warren billy mckinney rashad crawford going, I have no idea who Crawford is. He's the single A unranked guy. Okay. McKinney is a guy who was a top 100 prospect on most organizations' lists this year and last year and has had a terrible season this year.

He's also 21 and in AA, so that's not prohibitive. He's also a weird guy to look at, though, if you're like me, if you're not an actual scout, because you look at his baseball reference page and you go, huh, he's a outfielder with no power or speed. Interesting. I wonder why he's so good. But apparently he is or was at some point, because he was like a guy in the 60s, 70s. He was part of the Addison Russell trade from Oakland before this. According to MLB Pipeline's rankings, which I have no idea about the respective quality of rankings,

but I know that theirs is updated constantly. So he's at 75 right now on their list. Interesting. He did not make the baseball prospectus top 50, but that doesn't mean anything because he wasn't in the top 50 before either. All right. Adam Warren, a swingman reliever going back to the Yankees, was pretty effective, valuable

kind of guy who makes, you know, your roster go round and then just ended up being terrible with Chicago. So it's only like 30 innings or something like that, but it's his most recent 30 innings or something like that. And then Torres. Torres is the prize. Torres is the name. He is a top 30 or 40 prospect.

He was number 34 on Baseball Prospectus mid-season top 50. And we wrote about him. There's no real weakness to his game. Everything but the power flashes above average to plus. His instincts both at the plate and in the field are impressive for any age, much less a 19-year-old. He is currently a shortstop, so that's a pretty good player. And for this, the Cubs get Aroldis Chapman, who crew 105 miles an hour over the weekend and is also six months removed from getting traded for a much, much, much, much less impressive package. Perhaps, well, actually, probably I would say explicitly because he was coming off of a domestic violence incident that had,

do you remember what the Dodgers were giving up for him? Well, according to the ESPN report that said that the deal was actually done, ESPN report that said that the deal was actually done. They said that there were two prospects in the deal, but didn't say who other than that it wasn't Urias. Okay. Oh, wow. That's not that helpful. No, not at all. All right. The Reds got much less out of this. And so I would say that, first of all, this is the Cubs doing this. I think if we imagined the Diamondbacks Doing this trade we would probably have Some fun with it By the way I almost bantered about The Shelby Miller is on the block

Reports Because I mean That would just be the perfect ending to A disastrous trade if he were Traded again so soon I can't imagine that that would make sense Unless there's some kind of behind the scenes conflict we don't know about. Why would you ever trade the guy when his value

could not possibly be lower? Well, I was, yeah, I was going to ask you about that too. Is it a sign of their maturity and internal fortitude that they are willing to admit a mistake and not hold on to this sunk cost? Or is it just selling so low that... See, I don't know if the concept of selling low exists in baseball. I think we've talked about this, but the idea of selling low or selling high assumes that the other 29 teams are rock stupid and like don't do the same thing you do which is assess the players long and short term a past and long and short term future um so but uh yeah would it be if they traded shelby miller would it be cause for applause or further mockery of this trade

or both further mockery i can't imagine because it's not like there's a great benefit to dumping him now unless you think he's completely broken and he's never going to be good again. And I mean, it might make sense in that case, but I just don't see why you would want to trade him now and get essentially nothing, one would think, rather than hold on to him and get something. So unless you're so strapped for cash that you can't pay for Shelby Miller, he's not making that much money. So it seems like it kind of fits into that pattern of the Diamondbacks just getting tired of players and then wanting to deal them right away just like wanting to just get them out get them i don't even want to look at him anymore just get rid of him and just kind of shooting themselves in the foot because if you're kind of broadcasting your willingness to trade him then you're essentially saying that you think he's completely broken and he's never going to be good again right i mean that's the message that you're sending if you're willing to sell him now when he seems so unattractive, then you're essentially saying you don't think he's ever going to look more attractive than this.

Okay. Back to, though, the Chapman deal. This trade isn't being made by the Diamondbacks. It's being made by the Cubs, who are a team that generally get the benefit of the doubt. And so I guess that given that, there are probably three questions to ask about this. One is, is this a shocking reassessment of the trade market for elite relievers? B2, I forget, is this a specific trade market for the Cubs that does not apply to any other team except the Cubs, who, for various reasons, one of which is the drought, one of which is the extreme

strength of their young core, that they can remain sustainable, even trading a lot of young players in a way that no other team can. the third is that i forget what third is but you know would this is this trade different because it's the cubs as opposed to if it was say the nationals uh who were trading equal value for an equal return and the third thing i forget what the third thing that's the second time in a three-item list that I've forgotten the third thing. Okay, well, let's start with those two. Okay, well, I think, yeah, I think there is a special circumstance that applies to the Cubs. And in theory, the fact that they have all these young players and they don't even really have anywhere to put Torres,

and he's blocked and he's probably not going to be a great future cub because he just has nowhere to play right now. In theory, they should still extract the most that they can get for him. So even if you know you can't use him, you still sell him to a team that can use him, and they pay market value or whatever that is because other teams would want him to and other teams would make their best offers for him but in practice maybe it doesn't really work that way for one thing because everyone knows that the cubs have all these guys in front of him and too many players for too few positions and so maybe they assume that the the cubs will be more willing to part with him and uh won't drive as hard a bargain. I mean, they're not competing against the Cubs, though.

They're competing against 28 other teams that would presumably be interested in a 19-year-old top prospect shortstop. So I agree with the sentiment. I think the trade market is much less efficient than we sometimes assume it is, and there are much fewer players available than you think there are, and all of i'm just specifically to that last point you made i'm expressing skepticism i'm otherwise saying okay and of course because it's the cubs and because you know obviously they they have maybe more motivation to win than anyone else or certainly more history of not winning than anyone else. And so they would be willing to do some things up because it's the Cubs and because of the incredible payoff that winning would be for them than you would for some other team in a similar position. And because they are just a good team, there aren't that many places you could make the Cubs that much better.

I mean, they're pretty strong top to bottom, and the bullpen is an area that everyone has pinpointed almost since opening day as something that could get stronger. And that remains the case, I suppose, even after acquiring Montgomery. So yeah, I think the Cubs are in a position to give up more for multiple reasons than some other team would be. And maybe that should affect our evaluations of this trade, which otherwise would seem like an awful lot to give up for one reliever for half a season. And in fact, still does. Still does.

Even with all of that. I mean, yeah, you are talking about a reliever who's going to throw 30 innings if you're lucky enough to go deep into October, he'll throw 30 innings, maybe 35. And 10 of those are going to be extremely high leverage. And over the course of 10 innings, generally speaking, the difference between Aroldis Chapman and David Robertson might be half a run, which might come in a situation where you're up by three and it doesn't matter. I mean, it really is. It's so easy to look at baseball as a, you know, watch baseball every day and come to the conclusion that that having a closer like Aroldis Chapman in October is extremely

valuable. The final piece makes you invincible and so on. Because that's how it feels when you're watching. And yet, when every couple years, smart people go looking for the secret sauce, looking for what makes you better in the postseason than, you know, a team of similar strength in the regular season was, it fails to show a consistent, persistent edge to a team with somebody like Aroldis Chapman. I know that we just watched the Royals. That is an anecdote. That is an example of it working. And I, you know, in my gut, I strongly feel that that is sustainable and that in fact, every team in the Cubs position should go get Aroldis Chapman. And yet there is not actually any evidence that it works.

And there are teams that have won World Series without elite bullpens, without certainly a capital E elite closer. You know, the Giants bullpen has been a strength, but their ninth inning has not been a strength. They've won World Series with what? Santiago Casilla, Sergio Romo, and Brian Wilson, none of whom is like a closer in the Chapman, Jansen, Kimbrell, Wade Davis level. And a couple of whom are, you know, fairly general eighth inning guys who just got bumped

into the ninth. And so there's anecdotes every which way. And it really does, it is easy to say, well, this is not going to change the Cubs in the way that you think it will. Like you're imagining when this trade happens, you're imagining game six, runners on second and third one run lead one out bottom of the eighth and chapman comes in to strike the next two guys out and then comes

around and saves it and that's the world series that's winning that's the difference between winning and losing and that scenario can happen and I can see why you'd want to have Chapman for that scenario and why you'd pay a lot for it. It just doesn't seem to be the case, though, that that happens that much or that the difference between Chapman and the, you know, 16th best closer in baseball is different enough. And I could be convinced. Maybe the next study or maybe the next search for this answer will convince me and will show something. But it's probably fair to have a lot of skepticism about how much this actually changes the Cubs' World Series chances.

In fact, let me just ask you a question. Let's say the Cubs will go into the postseason guaranteed a division series. So they'll be one of the final eight teams. They'll probably, they'll be the best of the eight teams by probably both of our assessments. So let's say they're 21%, somewhere 18%. What do you pick a number? 18% to win the World Series? All right. Before Chapman, what are they with Chapman? Would you go to 19? 19? I guess, yeah, I was agonizing over whether to go to 19. Yeah. And so I think that's a fair way of assessing this.

You're getting from 18 to 19 and you only live this life once and maybe that's the one time. Maybe we're playing the one universe out of the hundred where this is the time but it's also i don't think unfair to point out that it's only one out of a hundred that the cubs are basically the same team they were they're not actually that much more of a juggernaut than they were and that the decision about whether to make this trade besides the question of whether more you could have gotten more for this package uh is whether there is a sort of sense of impatience here and whether the cubs would have been if the goal is to win a world series

whether it would have been better to play for a decade of sustained dominance or to kind of go for it right now, and whether this trade actually cost them significantly the chances of a decade of sustained dominance. And that's the other thing. Torres will, you know, probably, you know, it might turn out to be a great player, turn out to be a great player but there's probably only like a one percent chance that torres uh strongly affects their chances of being great in 2018 or in 2023 you know like they're probably they're either going to be great in 2023 without him or they might have been bad with him like there's no there's no guarantee that he was going to be the the the difference in those years either there's a lot of well which universe are we in here? Yeah.

It's a big price though. Yeah. Oh, definitely it is. Do you remember, it was either last winter or the winter before Theo Epstein said something about how everyone was going to start copying the Royals bullpen model. And like when one team does something and wins in the playoffs, everyone assumes that's how you win in the playoffs and he was like kind of he was mocking it kind of mocking it yeah no i don't remember find it well it's it's here uh if theo epstein prediction holds mlb teams will copy royals but it was speed and athleticism that he was talking about the only thing i know for sure is that whatever team wins the World Series, that particular style of play will be completely en vogue and trumpeted from

the rooftops by the media all offseason and in front offices as the way to win. Okay. Well, so he didn't specifically mention the bullpen. No, he didn't mention the bullpen, but he did mention the sentiment. I don't know if – and so, yeah, I don't know if that is true, and this will make people think about the Royals. And I don't know if that is true, and this will make people think about the Royals. And I don't know. I mean, this is a very different bullpen philosophy than they had last year, right?

When they had Rondon as their closer, they picked up scrap heap Fernando Rodney. They had three converted starters who were all really good and i mean that looked like a really deep bullpen and rondone at this point but it was a different kind of bullpen does the fact that rondone is essentially as good as aroldis chapman uh make this less necessary for you or Or are we completely past the idea that you only need one elite closer? And that now, that's really what probably most resembles the Royals, right?

So this is not the Nationals going, well, our closer's been kind of shaky. Or the Giants saying our closer's been kind of shaky. It's we need two. You gotta have two because the Royals had two. Yeah, and in a a way the Yankees Quasi success this year almost reinforces That because the Yankees

Are not as bad as they really really Seem like they should be They're still two games over 500 even though they've been Outscored by 25 runs And seems like they're even Lucky to have that kind of run differential And yet here they are Kind of hanging around the wild card race And the seems like they're even lucky to have that kind of run differential. And yet here they are kind of hanging around the wildcard race. And the only like shiny piece of their roster is the Batonsas Miller Chapman.

And so people have credited that for the success and it's not an unreasonable theory. So I think if anything, the Yankees have bolstered the idea that if you get two or three dominant relievers, that's almost all you need. Let's, last thing is the changing price for Aroldis Chapman. Nothing he did this year on the field would have changed your opinion of who he is as a pitcher. This is, it seems to be, opinion of who he is as a pitcher this is it seems to be in time unless this is just about soaking the team that is most desperate for him and that's why the price changed otherwise it seems kind of obviously that chapman with a recent domestic violence incident was almost untouchable chapman with a domestic violence incident eight months in the past is completely forgiven. And that's why his price goes up.

And that seems kind of slimy and not great, right? Especially from the Yankees' perspective. I think it was Meg wrote about the Yankees' profit motive in getting Chapman back then, where his suspension specifically made him what they didn't know. You didn't know what the suspension was going to be yet. And it seemed possible that he was going to get enough games that his free agency would even be pushed back. And so the Yankees would get him for another year.

And it just feels weird, wrong, awful that teams can in a way, profit off of. Yeah, and they were proved right by that. And they have been totally proved right by it. And I wonder if they knew. I wonder if there was some, you know, politician in the Yankees front office who basically said, this will blow over in six months, I promise you, everybody's going to want him again. And so they took a little hit, a little hit for PR that nobody else was willing to take.

And now they cash out. And it's, I don't know. There's a lot of ways that I don't know how baseball should be dealing with domestic violence. But I always just feel like the grossest part of a lot of these situations is the people who are ancillary players who manage to take advantage of it. I don't know. Yeah, well, I know there are a lot of Cubs fans who aren't thrilled that they got Chapman or that if they were going to give up that much, they gave up that much for someone they don't really like

based on his actions in the past, and that if the Cubs do win the World Series and they have that long-awaited moment, there's a good chance that Aroldis Chapman will be on the mound for that moment, which maybe taints it a bit if his history bothers you and makes you feel dirty for rooting for him. So, yeah, definitely it's a consideration. All right, let me wrap this up with one question for you.

It's probably going to be two questions. It'll be three and I'll forget the third. All right. You're Theo Epstein. Jed Hoyer brings this trade to you. Do you tell him to go ahead or do you say, nope, not interested? There were a lot of relievers on the market. And I wonder whether Roldis Chapman kind of commands more just because he is the living embodiment of like hard throwing bullpen guy. Everyone has a hard throwing bullpen guy, but he is the hardest throwing bullpen guy. And so I wonder whether there's almost like a, like a macho aspect to it. Like we'll get the guy who throws 105 and you'll all be stuck with guys throwing 101 So yeah, I mean the difference between Chapman And the next best reliever available is not huge

And so I think I would have tried to do everything I could To wait until, you know, because if you're the Cubs You have a seven and a half game lead You're almost certainly winning the division. So not having him for the next week or so doesn't really hurt you at all. You want him for October. So you can afford to wait until the last possible moment. Obviously, other teams might be trying to acquire him.

You don't want to lose him and end up with nothing. So they have a much, much better sense of the market than i do but i think if this were the package i were presented with my instinct would have been to wait a few days at least and just see if something else shook loose all right so so you wait and not saying i don't do it all right well so let's let's your theo epstein. You've waited. Congratulations on waiting. It's it's 14 seconds before the trade deadline. There's nobody else coming. There's nobody else competing for him.

This is now still the trade on the table. Do you accept it? Because I don't like any analysis that and I do it too. Not your fault. But I don't like any analysis that goes they should have been able to do better. Yeah, because, you know, like like my been able to do better. Yeah, sure. Because, you know, like my first reaction to this is, how do you not get Andrew Miller? Well, the way you don't get Andrew Miller is the Yankees said no.

You know, I'm sure they asked for Andrew Miller. Yeah. And they said no. I'm sure the Yankees asked for Schwarber. Right, exactly. And the Cubs said no. Yeah. So, yeah, if it's 3.59 p.59pm and this is my only

Option I'd probably do it I don't I think I don't like it that much But I don't really Have any way of knowing whether I'm right or not Was there another question? Yeah the other question is did the domestic violence thing play into your answer

At all just now Like I'm not asking you now to reassess in those 48 seconds that you spend on this question did it cross your mind it didn't really it didn't for me either i'm sick at myself kind of thinking of it as just like my duty is to win a world series and that's all i can afford to think of right now. So I'm sure it's very easy to fall into that mindset. It's really hard because it would be great if, you know, like every team was on the same page. And I'm not saying that guys who commit one crime or, you know, not even technically a crime, but do one action that is abhorrent should necessarily be banned from baseball forever. But at the same time, it would kind of be nice if everyone just independently decided we could do something better.

So if that were the case. Or it'd be nice if just one person decided I can do better. Well, I'm sure. Yeah. Well, that's good. And like everybody can make the choice on their own. I would like to think that I would be the GM that decided to do better, but it didn't cross my mind when I was having this thought. Yeah, I mean, because your division rival is probably not going to make the principled stand.

Division rival is probably going to trade for the guy and then you're going to lose. And no one over the winter, no one down the road is going to say, you know what, we didn't win, we lost to our rival, and he didn't deliver the World Series. But he voted his conscience, and he didn't trade for this guy because of his history. I don't think anyone would be thinking that. Even people who probably think they would think that or want to think they would think that would probably just kind of forget that over time and just remember the results.

I actually think if in real life, if I were living with this trade package for a day or living with the thought of trading for Chapman for weeks, I think I would think about it a lot, and I think I would vote my conscience. I don't think I would. I don't think I would take Chapman if I were a GM. I'm promising if any team wants to hire me to be the GM with a conscience, you won't go anywhere, but good heavens, you're going to feel good about yourself at the end of the day. I don't think I would. With a clean conscience.

Yeah, I think I would take it. I mean, there's enough players, you know. I mean, look, if you're trading the 34th best prospect in baseball for a reliever, one of the nice things about that is you got a lot of choices. There's a lot of teams willing to do business with you. And so I don't think I would have done it for Chapman here. And that's why you can object to this trade based purely on talent, too. Yeah, it's true.

And that's why you can object to this trade based purely on talent too. Yeah, it's true. I, yeah, I wouldn't have, I do want to, I can't remember if I just thought it or said it, but I think earlier in the show, I said something nice about David Robertson and said that maybe there's not a big difference between him and Chapman over the course of 10 innings. And while everybody else knows this, I'm just now learning that David Robertson's having a really bad year. Um, so that's not true, but put a different name in there. It's still true. Yeah.

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