Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 932: Fixing the Angels Without Trading Trout

Episode Date: July 27, 2016

Ben and Sam banter about Matt Albers’ heartbreaking blown save, then discuss how much talent the Angels could acquire in a franchise-saving firesale.

Albers who got three outs in the eight will start the night. No career saves but I'd give it about an eight percent chance he'll finish this game. You think he would have picked one up somewhere along the way four hundred thirty seven games

pitched in his career for thirty eight counting tonight. Good morning and welcome to episode 932 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from I have a plan All right, I'm still recovering from the drama Monday night, which we didn't get to talk about yesterday. But we came closer than we've come during the life of this podcast to an actual Matt Albers save. So it was a scary moment. My heart was in my throat. Yeah, I think it's worth considering that there is no such thing as being close to a Matt Albers save. There is no such thing as being close to a Matt Albers save that this story has already been written and all the false drama is designed to trick us into thinking that it might happen or might be about to happen. But, of course, the author of this drama knows the ending already.

And Albers has, always has, and always will have pitched his, in some dimension, Will have pitched his entire career without A save yeah I always feel Bad when we launch right into web and Albers talk at the right at the beginning of a podcast Because there's always someone who's New to the show and wondering why we Lead off with web and albers and if You don't know there's a long-running Thing that we're watching about web

And albers having the most games finished In the majors without a save. And so Albers has finished 96 games and has not had a save. But on Monday night, he actually had a save opportunity. And we get a lot of false alarms. People will tweet at us and say, you know, it's an Albers save opportunity or Webb is in with the save or something. And technically it is a save opportunity, but you you know it's like the seventh inning or the Eighth inning or something and the point Is that they never actually get to finish

It so they come in and then they get replaced By the guy who gets saves but In this case on Monday The usuals were unavailable And so Albers came in and Got three outs in the eighth and then they left him Out there with a two run lead Over the Cubs and so this Really looked like there with a two-run lead over the Cubs.

And so this really looked like it. If he could just get three outs before he allowed two runs, he could finally break this streak of no saves and couldn't do it. Javi Baez doubled to lead off the inning, and then he stole third base, and then Dexter Fowler singled And then Chris Bryant singled and got thrown out at second So Albers was pulled in favor of the lefty Dan Jennings With a runner on third and one out And that run scored And the White Sox ended up winning in the bottom of the ninth But by then it was too late Do you believe that Albers needed to go 1-2-3 to get that one?

Do you think he would have been pulled regardless when the lefty came up? If a runner had been on base? Yeah, probably. He had already done the two-inning start over the weekend when Sale didn't go. So Jersey Gate maybe made Albers a little bit gassed when he came in for this second inning and for the second time in a few days. It seems clear to me from the usage that this wasn't a situation where Robin Ventura went to him before the game, my guess, before the game and said, you're my closer today, be ready for a save. Because if that was the case, I don't think he would have brought him in in the eighth.

I think this was matchups that ended up putting him in a position where with very little margin he could have gotten the save. But I think even a single base runner would have brought the lefty in to close it off. Yeah, and I was as anxious as I've been watching baseball probably since last summer when we were watching the Stompers every day to write the book. And I think I still haven't decided whether I'm rooting for him to get the save or not, and so I was anxious about both outcomes. Some part of me would have been sad if he'd gotten the save. Some part of me was sad that he didn't.

All right. So we do this thing in our house where we'll, like, if I can't decide something, if I can't decide whether to do X or Y, I'll play rock, scissors, paper against my wife, where she, with no interest in this decision at all, will be one half and I'll be the other half. And we use rock, scissors, paper to decide a lot of things where we are truly in disagreement. But this is a different thing where she is neutral and it really doesn't even matter which outcome I am because I'm totally ambivalent, right? I'm conflicted. I can't decide. so one is assigned to me and one is assigned to her and we go through the ritual of doing Best two out of three and in doing it it becomes clear to me which one I want because I am I'm either happy or sad Yeah, and like it becomes a much more

Instinctual reaction to the to the possibilities and so We don't even have to play out all three because it quickly becomes clear to me. So you say that you're not sure what you want Alvarez to do, but when you were watching it, what were you rooting for? I think I was rooting for him to do it. Again, it's a little different because either outcome would have made me sad in some way, but I think I wanted to see him do it. He was so close. So you both agree that it's scissors paper and not paper scissors, huh? Do you do rock, paper, scissors to decide which way it goes?

No. She asked me this actually the other day. Maybe it's a regional difference. I've always been a paper scissors. I think it might be a generational difference, but I think I actually used to say rock. I think I was rock, paper, scissors all my life. And then at some point I started calling it Rochambeau. And it's not as though bow, like I don't know if Rochambeau has anything to do with the weapons. Like maybe it didn't used to be paper. Maybe the, maybe, I don't, I don't know. Like, I don't know if there's any connection, but it sounds like you're, it sounds like an abbreviation, right? Like, like row, rock, sh, sh.

Yeah. So anyway, and so I think just going from Rochambeau to then back to calling it rock, scissors, paper. Okay. That explains that. By the way, when we were talking about what Chris Sale's jersey cuttings will be remembered as, we were looking for historical analogs, and I decided that I think the historical analog that I like best is Dave Winfield throwing a baseball and killing a bird. And yeah, I remember Dave Winfield killing a seagull pretty good.

And yeah, I remember Dave Winfield killing a seagull pretty good. And if you ask me to talk about Dave Winfield, I know in a very general sense that he was good. But it's not like I could give you a number that represents Dave Winfield. It's not like I could tell you like, oh yeah, Dave Winfield, the guy with the iconic 462 home runs or however many home runs he had. I just know he's good. So he's good at baseball. 62 home runs or however many home runs he had. I just know he's good, so he's good at baseball. I know that he was a three-sport star as an amateur,

and I know that he killed a bird. And which of those is the most salient to you? Well, the most specific is the killing of the bird. And so I think that's pretty much, Chris Sale manages To if Chris Sale has like a Like if you ask me for instance About Ron Guidry I would Say oh well Ron Guidry 25 and 3 right

Like I remember Ron Guidry going 25 and 3 so if Chris Sale Had a season like that where I could attach Myself to one single number or if he Wins three straight Cy Youngs or single number, or if he wins three straight Cy Youngs or something like that, or if he has a bloody sock game. But otherwise, I think I'll just remember him generally being very good, and he cut up the jerseys. All right, that's it. On to the topic. The topic today is a little bit of a thought experiment. And so we talked a few

weeks, maybe months ago about the case for trading Mike Trout, even though it would be extremely painful and hard to do if you were the team that controlled Mike Trout. And the case is mainly that it seems to be the only way out of this for the Angels. They have no good short-term outlook. They have, some would say, the worst farm system in the prospect rankings era. And they have a fair amount of money tied up in a few veterans and, you know, Trout being one of the good cases, but Albert Pujols being one of the bad cases. And so Pedro Mora on the Sportswriters Blues

podcast has said and then repeated at Andy's request, the sentiment that the Angels cannot be good while Mike Trout is with them, while he is under their team control. And that is not to say, he's not saying that Mike Trout is prohibitive, quite the opposite, but it is to Pedro's eye, mind, very unlikely that in the four years that they have him under team control, that they will find a way to dig out of this terrible rut in any way other than trading Mike Trout. If they keep Trout and they keep on this trajectory, four years will not be sufficient time for them to reset the terrible state of their franchise.

So that is what makes the case for trading Mike Trout. Now, the case for not trading Mike Trout, besides him being really good, is that you don't want to trade Mike Trout. Like we talked about, there are different ways to measure success as a franchise. And one way of measuring success is having Mike Trout. And even better than having Mike Trout is having Mike Trout for a really long time to the point where he is, you know, identified with your team. This guy might go down as one of the five greatest players of all time. And it's a lot better if you get him for, you know, something

like his whole career. At the end of the day, I think that, you know, the Padres got a lot more out of having Tony Gwynn associated with them than, you know, the Mariners got from having A-Rod associated with them or the Red Sox got from having Wade Boggs associated with them than, you know, the Mariners got from having A-Rod associated with them or the Red Sox got from having Wade Boggs associated with them or, you know, similar situations. And so if you can have a George Brett or a Cal Ripken or a Tony Gwynn in your organization for all or nearly all of his career, it is decades ofwards for that and of just sort of Enjoying that like there's a pride in having That kind of a player and so

If they you know Mike Trout's going to be a free Agent in four and a half years but if they Trade him now it certainly keeps Them from being able to sign him to another extension For instance or working Out a deal with him or whatever the case may be And so nobody wants you know I assume nobody wants to And just finally it's early enough In his career that if they traded him or whatever the case may be. And so nobody wants, you know, I assume nobody wants to do that. And just finally...

It's early enough in his career that if they traded him now, he could very well be identified more closely with another franchise by the time he's finished. Exactly. As A-Rod, I think, is probably more identified with the Yankees and probably as Manny Ramirez is probably more identified with the Red Sox and so on. So, and finally, the last thing is that you don't, I mean, it would really be a shame. We've talked about how by various circumstances, the Angels have essentially wasted this incredible four and a half years of Mike Trout performance.

And it would really be just, I think, disheartening to trade him and to say that the Mike Trout era was a bona fide flop for the franchise. And I think it would be a lot more fun to have a chance to win with him. So this thought experiment goes like this. Is there a way that this trade deadline, the Angels could put themselves in a position where they could win with Mike Trout in 2020. All I'm asking for is 2020 without trading Mike Trout, 2020 being the last year of Trout's deal. So I want to look at the Angels roster and see how much you think they could get for the rest of their team if they traded, if they consider trading everybody. And, you know, if you have Mike Trout and if you assume that Mike Trout is going to stay a eight-win player into his mid to late 20s, which I do, then you only have to get to a 500 team

around him. You don't have to be the greatest team of all time. You just need to get to about 500 and then throw Mike Trout on top of it. So this is basically a math problem. Not a math problem, but this is going to be a tally. We're going to just see, okay, what do we think you could get for each player on this team? All right? I'm just going to go down the list. And if you think, hold on to them, then we'll add them to the 2020 roster if they're under team control. Otherwise, we're going to see what you get. All right. So, catcher, Carlos Perez, age 25, 65 OPS plus, nothing, right? You get nothing You trade Carlos Perez, you get nothing to add All right

Yeah, Carlos Perez was traded to the Angels recently for Hank Conger, right? That was, what, a year and a half ago or so? And there was another guy in the deal, so I think, wasn't that, that was the Tropeano deal, right? Yes Yeah, so Yes, right Okay, all right, so then CJ Krohn.

Krohn is 26. He is a poor fielding first baseman or an average hitting DH. He has turned out to be much— Well, when he got drafted, it was like, wow, look, this guy looks exactly like Mark Trumbo. And he has turned out to be almost exactly like Mark Trumbo. He has got a.307 on-base percentage and a.453 slug in his career. Trumbo's.304 and.471. They're very similar. They're low on-base percentage power hitters who are negative assets anywhere

you put them on the field and okay hitters for DHs. the trumbo comparison sounds a lot better right now than it did a year ago when trumbo was a was a you know non-tender guy uh you know he was it was unclear how much you would pay him this year he's obviously doing very well so that well i was going to say that maybe that clouds your judgment or maybe that's uh um informative but if they traded cj crone well first off do you trade CJ Krohn He will not be a free agent Until after 2020 He'll have two years of service time

After this year So you can keep him on your 2020 roster He will be 31 that year 30 that year So trade or keep I'd say probably keep I don't think you're going to get more For him than someone who might

Eventually turn into CJ Krohn Well so a good Maybe a comp for him Also somebody who has been traded Well I guess Mark Trumbo was traded At around the same time in his career And that was a weird trade Because it didn't all make sense

But that was in the Tyler Skaggs-Adam Eaton three-way trade. You're not getting something like Skaggs or Eaton back for Krohn, though, right? Even with four years of service time? I don't think so. It's a lot of team control, but he's not that good. He's been worth one win above replacement in his career, which is about a full season and a half. And he has no defensive value, and he's like a slightly above average hitter.

You know, maybe an average hitter for a first baseman DH type. So unless you think he's going to have a Trumbo type of breakout, then I don't think he's worth a whole lot. Another comparison might be Chris Carter, who got traded at a similar stage in his career for Jed Lowry, which you wouldn't be trying to get Jed Lowry back, but, you know, Jed Lowry as a, like, if you were trading Jed Lowry at this point, what would you get? Or at that point? Yeah, okay. So you're not getting much for him But are you keeping him?

You're keeping CJ Krohn? I think I'd keep him Chris Carter was like a prospect too And Krohn wasn't really So I don't know I think probably keep him Because you're just going to get A future reliever or something for CJ Krohn

I don't know For the purposes of this I'm trading almost everybody So I am trading him. I am trading him. And a future reliever? Yeah. I mean, he's got a broken hand right now. So he's going to miss the next month. So there's not a huge advantage to trading him to a contender right now. But I could see getting like a bottom of a team's top 10 prospect, like outfielder right now, like a team's number seven prospect. Okay, but what's the expectation for a bottom of a team's 10? Is it anything better than what CJ Krohn will be in four years?

Right now, the Angels do not have any team's top seven prospect. There's nobody on their team who is a team's top seven prospect. So I'm just building a farm system here. Okay. So I'm trading Krohn, and I'm saying that I can get an average team's number seven and number 25. All right? You arguing that? I'm not strenuously arguing that.

All right. Next player. You arguing that? I'm not strenuously arguing that. All right. Next player, Johnny Giavitella, 20, 28 years old, former friend of the podcast in a sense, will be a free agent before 2020. Do you get anything if you trade Johnny Giavitella right now? He is a second baseman who has about a 90 OPS plus as an angel and 1.5 wins above replacement in 215 games.

Yeah, no. If he could play more positions, maybe someone would want him, but as it is... Well, you're definitely... Yeah, but you're trading him. What do you get for him? Do you get a team's 30th best prospect? Do you get a team's 18th best prospect?

How high... You're definitely trying to trade him for if you're Building for 2020 uh-huh Yeah okay I guess you do you get A do you get a team's international Bonus slot I don't think You even get that all right So how about

26 so you give me 26 Okay sure all right a team's 26 Best product it's like just about any major Leaguer who's under team control and is not expensive. If he's good enough to be on someone's major league roster, then theoretically he's good enough that someone else would want him to the extent that they would give up someone who's almost certainly not going to contribute anything ever. I'm bumping it to number 23, which is future backup catcher. Okay. I mean, what did the Royals, for instance, had Johnny Giavatella forever,

and they traded him for Brian Broderick, who I don't know who Brian Broderick was. Big difference, though. He played for the Nationals for 11 games in 2011. Yeah, Johnny Giavitella has, though, changed what you think of him in that time. I don't know that he has. Well, you liked him because he had good AAA stats, but the Royals were giving him 12 games a year for multiple years. He was considered a quad A flop,

and he has been a major league regular for the last two years. He's been a major league regular. Not a great one, but a one-win player. He's a one-win player. One-win players are fine for the 23rd spot on your roster. Sure. I think everyone except the Royals would have thought he could be a one-win player. I don't know.

Everyone on the internet certainly thought so. So anyway, okay. You get number 23 all right okay uh let's see andrelton simmons simmons is signed for 2020 through 2020 yeah through 2020 so you can have him he will be 30 that year i don't know how much you question his aging curve he doesn't hit now and he probably won't start hitting any more than he does. He's been very consistent though, offensively and defensively. He remains a plus 20 shortstop, maybe a plus 25 shortstop. He remains the best, probably the best defensive

player in baseball. And I feel fairly confident that he still is that in 2020. So do you keep him or do you, I mean, you could say, well, great, I want that player on my team. Or you could say, wow, a team would probably give me a lot for four years of a three or four win player. Yeah, well, we know almost exactly what a team would give up because the team just traded for him. And he has really been exactly the same player

that he was before the trade. The only difference is now there's A half season less of Team control left and yeah that's About the only difference and so the angels Gave up useful players They gave up Sean Newcomb good prospect And Eric Ibar and you know Yeah so Newcomb is the

Average team's best prospect And Ellis is probably the average Team's maybe fifth or Sixth and then Ibar I don't know if Ibar was value or salary dump. He came with cash. It came with cash too, right. So I think you get roughly the same thing that they got, that the Braves got for him. So for 2020, building around Mike Trout, do you rather have 30-year-old Anderson Simmons

or the average team's first and sixth best prospects? I'd take the prospects. Okay, great. Next player, Younel Escobar. Escobar has a club option for next year. That option is for $7 million. He is currently hitting 326. He's got a.118 OPS+. Over the last two years, he has a.116 OPS+, in full-time play. He is no longer, you know, a slick fielding shortstop or anything like that. He's actually probably a butcher at third base, according to a lot of metrics. But nonetheless, he hits. He's a probably two-win player, major league average player, getting paid To be about half of that So assuming that this Club option is not dependent on not being

Traded I have no reason to think it is You trade Younel Escobar what's Younel Escobar Bring back a team would certainly want Younel Escobar on their team right now right Contending team yeah he's a Useful player okay so He's another guy who of course just did Get traded over the last offseason.

So we know that he was traded for Trevor Gott, who is on the Angels right now and doing all right. And Michael Brady, who is a double-A pitcher. Seems like he has good numbers. So you get some useful stuff for Escobar. I guess you'd get a team's I'm kind of just Picking things out of a hat here But maybe you'd get a team's Sixth best prospect

Okay, sixth and only sixth Okay, yeah, because it's a year and a half I mean, I That is definitely a trade we write up Like we don't Hold it for a roundup of moves. Adding you Nell Escobar would be a trade that we would write up right now. So yeah, I think sixth is a good estimate. All right, then we got Cole Calhoun. So Calhoun is the second best angel right now. He will be a free agent

before 2020 unless he signs an extension between now and then. He will be 31 in the last year of his deal, so it's unclear whether he's a great extension candidate anyway. Calhoun has three years left of club control. He'll be a free agent before 2020. You keep him if you think that 2019 is a hedge year, maybe. But otherwise, he's basically a three or four win player. He's a fringe all-star. He's very underrated in that respect, but he's a fringe all-star, an excellent fielding right fielder, and basically you know Escobar lately with the bat, and everybody likes him. He just plays the game the right way. So you would think that Calhoun, while not the kind of name that you can sell a lot of season tickets around, would be a player that would have a ton of trade value right now.

Who is, honestly, I'd rather have Calhoun. I don't know exactly what the contracts are like, but I would rather have Calhoun over the next three years than Chris Archer. And Chris Archer, the trade packages around him are huge. Yes, right. Well, you would have said a bigger package for Archer. Okay. And Chris Archer, the trade packages around him are huge. Yes. Right. Well, you would have said a bigger package for Archer six months ago, probably. I would have. Yeah. But we're recording episode 932. Yes. Yeah. I mean, people came into this season thinking Archer was maybe the best pitcher in

the league. Yeah. So Cole Calhoun. Who has been traded? Who is a player who has had 10 wins of pre-free agency traded recently? Like Matt, how about when Matt Garza got traded? I mean, I don't know. Again, it's like I'm not sure that the whole league sees Calhoun as 10 wins over the next three years. But if he is, like that's a guy you get three good prospects back for, right? Yeah, probably. He's making $3.4 million this year, and he'll be making a lot more than that probably in the next couple of years, but still definitely a good value. So, yeah, you get something good for him.

Of course, you could also keep him and bank a three or four win player in 2020. Yeah. Well, no, you can't. You don't get him in 2020. Oh, that's right. You get him in 2019. You could keep him and assume that you re-sign him. Yeah. You could keep him and assume you re-sign him, right? But I'm not doing that. So I'm trading him. I'm trying to think of a really good player comp for him who has been traded. And Simmons isn't a terrible one. They're totally different

kinds of players. They have somewhat different contracts. But what about Justin Upton? Like, again, Upton feels different. But when Justin Upton was traded the first time to Atlanta, it was three years of club control before free agency. And he was basically a three win, you know, on average, a three or four win player. Right. He had the six win season,

but he'd been, you know, worse than that. So yeah, younger seen as having more upside, more, I would say more trade value, but not super far off.

So he was traded with Chris Johnson. So that complicates things for Nick Ahmed, Randall Delgado, Brandon Drury, Martine Prado complicates things. For Nick Ahmed, Randall Delgado, Brandon Drury, Martin Prado complicates things, and Zeke Spreel. Unfortunately, Prado was a large part of that. I don't know. Let's just pick some numbers.

Let's go 2-6-9. Okay. 2-6-9? Yeah, sure. I mean, on some teams, a number two prospect is a very, very highly ranked prospect. On the average team's prospects, number 50 overall. Yeah, so number 50 and then like probably two people out of the top 100, but still pretty good. I think you could probably, I kind of think you maybe even get more than that.

All right, so we'll go with that. All right, we are getting there albert pool holes you uh not worth discussing right right okay and then the bench holler if there's a name you want me to talk about otherwise gregorio petite daniel nava about jet bandy just because that's a great name yeah i don't know anything other than that, though. 26-year-old catcher having a very nice year in very limited playing time. He has 104 career plate appearances and has produced a win with a 127 OPS plus. Former 31st round pick who had a 725 OPS plus at altitude in the PCL before that. And seemed like an org soldier who's had a very good 100 plate appearances.

He's also 26. So unlikely you're getting much yet for him. All right. Jeffrey Marte, Daniel Nava, Jet Bandy, Shane Robinson, Giovanni Soto, G-Man Choi, Cliff Pennington. Do you want to talk about G-Man Choi? No. No. Okay.

Cliff Pennington, Craig Gentry, Todd Cunningham, Brendan Ryan, Caleb Coward. All right. On to the pitchers, Jared Weaver. You could not, would anybody give you a number 35 prospect for Jared Weaver right now? Would anybody, nobody would take Jared Weaver's money. So I think that rules it out. All right. So Hector Santiago. Yeah. Hector Santiago has been a subject of trade rumors recently. He has, yeah, so he is signed for one more year after this. Sorry, he's under team control for one more year after this. He's making $5 million this year.

He's basically, consider him Unel Escobar's contract status, more or less, and consider him Unel Escobar, more or less. I mean basically The exact same war Over the last Couple years Similar You know

Similar performance Just as a pitcher From Escobar The Angels have received Inquiries from a number of teams About left-hander Hector Santiago And they're willing to listen

To offers for him But Only if it would improve The team's roster right now Or in the near future Well that We are not bound We are not We should future. Well, we are not bound. We should be thinking about 2020.

We're not bound by that. No, we're not. Okay. So it doesn't say anything about what they're asking back, but we can go with the Escobar package. Well, I think the Escobar package was a number six prospect. I think with a pitcher, especially with a pitcher heading into the postseason where him simply demonstrating that he is healthy at

this moment increases his trade value and because no team is really going boy we can't go into the postseason with him as our third baseman but a lot of teams are saying there's no way we can go into the postseason with him as our third starter i think that you get more for a pitcher at this time of year so i'm going to bump him up from number six to number six and twelve. Sure. Okay. All right. Matt Shoemaker.

And this is actually what inspired. The gold mine. This is what inspired the whole thing. Because you really have to decide what you're doing with Matt Shoemaker. At this point in time, he has been the best pitcher in the AL for almost as long as Rich Hill has been the best pitcher in the AL. He is 29 years old, so he's old. He doesn't come completely without a history of success. He was what, rookie of the year or runner up, I think, a couple years ago. He is currently making the minimum. He will be a super two this offseason, and he will not be a free agent until after 2020. So you can have 33-year-old Matt Shoemaker,

or you can trade four and a half years of Shoemaker, including this half year where he is, you know, if you believe in the hot hand for pitchers, one of the best pitchers in the league today to a team that is going to be in the postseason, not two and a half months from now yeah and i think that you could probably get a ton for that pedro pedro pedro did not pedro said that like when they were talking about who might be traded uh on sports writers blues he

said of shoemaker if you could get a lot, he would be traded right now. Like there would be big offers coming in right now if the league believed in him. And so the league probably doesn't believe in him. I don't know if I, I mean, somebody's got to believe in him, right? 12 starts. You would think so, right. 12 starts, 12 starts, 2.39 ERA, 93 strikeouts and 10 walks. And yeah, like I said, best pitcher in the American League over the last two months.

And it's not a total fluke. Like you'll read scout quotes that say, oh, he's got the best splitter I've seen this year, that kind of thing. So, you know, who knows if he'll continue to have the best splitter everyone's seen. But right now he does. That backs up the stats. And yeah, 12 starts. Right now he does. That backs up the stats.

And yeah, 12 starts. So Rich Hill had four starts last year, and the A's gave him $6 million for one year. And of course, you would have given him several times more than that, I think, but evidently no other teams were. So if we assume that teams are conservative about this stuff, still, he's been doing this for three times as long as hill did it last year and he's younger than hill and has had more recent success than hill and maybe fewer injury problems than hill so i think you definitely get something good and he's under team control for years so there's

at least the chance that you end up with the best pitcher in the league for the next three years. It's not likely, but it could happen. And there's a pretty good chance that you'll get that for the rest of this year in the playoffs, at least. So yeah, I think you get something pretty serious here. So he is a lot older than the player I'm going to say, and he has not come with the prospect pedigree of the player I'm about to say, and he has not come with the prospect pedigree of the player I'm about to say, but he has similar contract status to a pitcher who was traded in 2011 from Oakland to Washington, Gio Gonzalez. And Gio Gonzalez at that point had a longer track record of people thinking he was great, but he also had a 105 career ERA plus. He was still quite wild.

You know, he was not, he did not have Cy Young votes to his name or anything like that at that point. And he got, he brought back four of the Nationals top 10. And yeah, I mean, I'm not saying that you're getting that for him because you know gonzalez was really considered quite sexy and also was much younger and so i'm not saying that just as a baseline though do you get four of the top 20 and two of the top five oh two of the top five man i mean look what the cubs just gave up for chapman yeah half a season and know, 30 innings or something. Who would you rather, if you're the, not if you're the Cubs, because the Cubs have a specific need, but if you're a general generic playoff team, who would you rather have for the postseason,

this postseason, this year's postseason, Aroldis Chapman or Matt Shoemaker? I think I'd rather have Shoemaker. Yeah, I think I would too. Yeah. So now I'm starting to- We discussed the ways in which maybe the Cubs gave up more for Chapman than other teams would have, but still, yeah, I would rather have Shoemaker. So now I'm wondering whether I'm low. I don't think you're low. I think it's okay. Let's say 2, 4, 12, 20. Let's say 2, 4, 12, 20.

Okay. All right. Let's see. We've got the three Tommy John guys, Heaney, Richards, Tropeano. All young, all coming off Tommy John next year. None likely to contribute to a team's probably regular season, but Richards and Heaney both conceivably back and healthy By like August, September next year So maybe to a playoff contender

They'd be ready to step in And then of course under team control For some time after that Richards will be a free agent after 2018 By the terms of this exercise You have to trade him Unless you just think that by waiting Until he comes back and establishes himself as healthy

Then you don't trade him yet And you wait. Or you extend him right now. Richards hasn't ended up having it yet, right? He's still trying to rehab it. Oh, okay. So I don't know how that affects things. I don't know how to handle any of these three guys.

At this point, I'm keeping Heaney. So Heaney's going to be on my team. And I don't know how to deal with Richards. So let's just say we'll put Richards off in this abstract other category of trade him later. And then Tropeano, I don't, it's too weird to trade Tropeano. Yeah. At this point. Might as well hang on to these guys.

All right. Yeah. And yeah. And you know, yeah, Tropeano is going to be under team control too. He won't even be, you know, he won't even be in his last year of ARB. So those guys are the foundation of my rotation, Heaney and Tropeano. So keeping them. All right.

Chassin, Tim Lincecum, pass, pass. Fernando Salas, you maybe get a team's number 45 prospect for him. Maybe. Maybe. All right. Houston Street. Yeah, he's on the block but of course he's having a terrible season he is having a terrible season even worse than david robertson yeah wow goodness gracious is he so is he is he just done is his career over i don't know he's signed for next

year too which would normally make him much more appealing And in this case makes him Less appealing because you don't have any idea There's also a team option For 2018 which adds some upside For the team but depending on how Likely you think it is that You're going to cash that out If they put Houston Street on

Waivers right now How many teams would claim him? The Giants list of relief pitching targets includes Angels closer Houston Street and Street has been rumored, been tied to other teams. So it seems as if maybe teams kind of want Houston Street a little bit. So yeah, I mean, I'm assuming the number of teams that would claim him on waivers is greater than one. Yeah, I'll say half the teams. Okay, so from there, what could you get from him for him?

Number nine? Could you get a number nine? Okay. You don't like it? You want to go 11? I mean, I could see nine. He was a long-established and successful closer until his last 20 innings. So, sure, you can get nine. All right. Joe Smith, not having as bad a year as Houston Street. Contract expires this year.

Not paid much at all. Pure rental, right-handed specialist. Very, very good reliever for most of his career. And not as good the last two years. I would rather have him than Houston Street. Yep, me too. Let's say eight. He's an eight. Okay.

That's maybe it. Cambodrosian? I don't think I'm trading Cambodrosian. I guess I should. Some team would pay me a lot more for their closer to the future over the next four years than it is worth for me to keep him until that fourth year. So maybe I would.

I mean, I guess, yeah. Look, he's not Ken Giles, but the Ken Giles package is instructive. And he's probably 80% of Ken Giles at the same, more or less the same contract status as Ken Giles. I mean, this year he has Ken Giles stats, but he was bad before that. He was bad before that. And I think Ken Giles was better than his. The ERA is Ken Giles-esque, but Ken Giles was like, yes. Right. All right. So let's call it 80% of Ken Giles trade return. And that was like, I mean,quez is probably was probably a you know he wasn't quite prospect eligible but i don't know maybe call that good teams maybe two five eight and twenty

or something like that so let's call it three five ten twenty five all right i don't think he's 80 percent of joust but all right uh you know okay so right, I'm going to drop the five down to an eight. Okay. Yeah, I think you're right. I'm just going to take out the eight. So now it's a three, a 10, and a 25. You're getting a top 100 prospect, a name in the system, and a live arm. Okay.

That still seems like a lot, but I don't know. Go ahead. All right. You might be right. So that's it. I think we're done. Did we skip Skaggs? We did skip Skaggs. Sk don't know what to do with Skaggs.

Skaggs just came back. Okay. Just give me a return on Skaggs. So all we've seen of him is one start in which he went seven innings and gave up no runs. So that was a good way to build up his trade value for this fire sale. And he was, you know, a below average pitcher before the injury but seemed like he could be better than that and he's still 25 i had to bet on what tyler skaggs is it is an injury prone league average lefty uh right now so that's like bad jamie garcia okay maybe that's it's like that's like jorge de la rosa kind of and Maybe that's, it's like,

that's like Jorge de la Rosa, kinda. No, he's worse. He's probably worse than the good version of de la Rosa. I don't know. What's his service time? It doesn't say on reference.

It's hard to tell because of the, I guess it's pretty high though because he would have collected for all of last year. He's probably closing in on three years. So it's probably either 2 as a super 2

or 3 so you get probably 3 years around 3 ARB years of that hmm something I don't know like a couple guys in the back half

of the top 10 you think so? ok'll give i'll give you 9 10 okay all right i'm gonna tally this up so you've got a team right now you've got a team in 2020 that has mike trout good start andrew heaney nick tropeano and a payroll depending on what heaney and tropeano are getting as arbitration uh payroll of about 40 to 45 million dollars okay so you've got a lot of money to spend even accounting for the money you know the various players that you're gonna have to pay from this prospect list and so on uh you've probably got around 120 million or 100 million play with on free agency. You've still got pool holes, right?

Oh, you do have pool holes. Yeah, pool holes forever. All right. Pool holes in 2020 makes $29 million. All right. So now you've got a payroll of $75 million. So you've got probably, not counting all your league minimum guys, you got maybe 80 to 100 million to play with okay which is not bad that's more than some teams get all right and you have got i'm going to tally this

up all right and you have added to your farm system an average team's best second best second best third best fourth best sixth sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, ninth, ninth, 10th, 10th, 12th, 12th, 20th, 23rd, 25th, and 45th prospects. Now on top of that, you've got your own system, which doesn't count for much, but you have managed to build a better than average top 10. I would imagine, you know, I would imagine that the Angels depth once you get, you know, past the top 10 is probably not all that their bottom 190 are probably not all that different than the average team's 190. And so you've got, you know, probably a well above average farm system. You've got five guys that would be an average team's fourth or

best prospect. I think 14 guys that would be in an average team's top 10. And you've cleared the decks for the 2018 free agency class. I think you could do this. I think it gets done if you have the tolerance for what it would entail. The worst team ever for the next couple of years. Yeah. Yeah, there's that. And I don't particularly like teams doing that, so I don't know if I'm encouraging this. But if the alternative is trading Mike Trout,

then I guess you could argue that it's the noble way to do it. So it is possible. Yeah. All right. They've got some pieces if they want to play for 2020. Do they have the guts? That's the only question. We'll have to find out.

We've laid it out for them. If they don't do it, the only thing to conclude after this is that they don't have the guts. Not that Cam Bedrosian wouldn't really bring back 80% of Ken Giles, but that they don't have the guts. Yeah. It's funny. Someone in the Facebook group, I think yesterday, was proposing a similar thought experiment. How much of the top 100 prospect list could the Cubs acquire right now if they wanted to, if they just wanted to get as many of the players on that list as they could using everything at their disposal? And probably like all of it, based on this experiment where the Angels, who we think of as just having almost nothing other than Trout worth having or worth selling,

and we've gone through it, and maybe there's enough to actually get the foundation of a pretty good team a few years down the road. So if you could do it with the Angels, you could do it with anyone. Yeah. We are not assuming any of these guys, though, is a top 10 prospect. No. And really, other than, I think in the Anderton-Simmons deal, we gave Sean Newcomb credit for being the average team's best.

He might even be more of a two. But it's possible that nobody that we've hypothesized or hypothetically i should say acquired is even a top 30 prospect uh but there are there are five top hundred guys roughly four or five top hundred guys on here uh-huh and a lot of depth it's just quality over quantity mostly but some of those guys will pan out. Yeah, and of course, if you did this, there'd be all the other benefits of being bad. Right, yes, good draft picks. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. Okay. Not encouraging it. I will say this. If they do this, I will shame them, and I will root against them. However, I would also understand Yeah, you'd also be flattered that they took our suggestion Okay, so that is it for today You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild

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