Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 94: The Perplexing Trade Value of R.A. Dickey and Billy Butler

Episode Date: December 4, 2012

Ben and Sam discuss the trade value of two of the players whose names were most often bandied about in rumors on the first day of the Winter Meetings.

Good morning and welcome to episode 94 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Prospectus. I'm Sam Miller in Long Beach, California, where I'm reading a legislative proclamation from the Georgia General Assembly in support of Ryan Klesko. I just saw that comment on your article. And Ben Lindberg is in Nashville, Tennessee at a hotel that I just timed. It takes five minutes and 20 seconds to walk. Yeah, probably longer than that. I was going a pretty short way to find my headphones.

It takes longer than that to make a full circuit, certainly. Okay, well, you've brought a topic. Yes. Yes, okay. I am somewhat traumatized by the sound of you stomping crickets on the way to your car. crickets on the way to your car. Before I wanted to, before I brought my topic, which is two players who were the subject of a bunch of trade rumors on Monday, whose value is kind of tough to assess, I wanted to mention that there has been a new addition to the lexicon of uh of assessing how tradable a player is frank wren today talking about andrelton simmons said i don't think anybody

is untouchable but i think he would be and then there's an ellipsis unreachable so that's when you know you're really not getting traded is when you're unreachable untouchable is one thing unreachable yeah so um so the wow so that there is a little a little is there any space between those two words in in meaning um i don't think so i mean if you can't reach something you also can't touch it can't touch it yeah uh i don't know he said because he plays one of the skill positions in the middle of the diamond much better than your average bear he's a special player are bears particularly good at skill positions uh oh this one is the other thing is we've seen him grow so much in the last two years from the time we drafted him to rushing through the minor leagues and winning a batting title at the a ball level he just continues to get better and better we may be

just scratching the surface of how good he can be so andrelton simmons unreachable unreachable maybe that means that if you try to trade for andrelton simmons frank wren will just screen your calls right he won't pick up the phone. He's unreachable. Simmons might just not actually have a phone. He might be like, we want to trade him, but we don't know how to talk to him. Right. He might be on vacation somewhere. Yeah.

He's in Zivinigan. You ever try to get someone there? We traded him twice. He never found out. Never showed up for the physical. Okay. found out so we never showed up for the physical right uh okay so the two players who are reachable and touchable apparently uh that i wanted to talk about one is r.a dickie the other is billy butler so r.a dickie was the subject of many reports today because uh apparently Mets have gotten serious about trading him

or entertaining the idea of trading him. And we didn't hear too much about specifics about what players were in play for Dickey or what exactly the Mets were asking for. We did hear one, I guess, one actual package was named that the Mets were asking the Red Sox for their top two prospects, according to Jason Parks on our rankings from last week, I think. So Mets were asking the Red Sox for their top two prospects in return. asking the Red Sox for their top two prospects in return. And there was also a report that the Sox didn't really have interest in Dickey,

perhaps because of that asking price. Andy Martino, who writes about the Mets for the Daily News, tweeted, Fair or not, since I get from rival execs on Dickey, age, knuckleball, make them reluctant to give up big talent, niece more appealing. Wow. Yeah. I mean, yeah, but I mean, I don't know. That could just mean that, I mean, I think there's a weird way that the price of a player gets sort of priced into your opinion of them. So, like, I don't know if he's necessarily saying that in a vacuum, the teams would actually choose Nice, or if that sort of reflects the asking process

that they've been getting from the Mets. Yeah. It could go either way. I don't know. Nice, not even a league average pitcher career-wise, but had his best year in 2012 and he's signed to a pretty reasonable contract uh he's signed for three million next year and five million the year after that and seven million the year after that and nine million the year after that with

two team options after that for 10 million and 11 million so yeah and he's 26 and he's a lefty he appears to be getting better so whereas Dickey of course is old and 38 and is signed on a very team-friendly contract for next season for five million but not beyond that and of course he has the the knuckleball and the peaking late and the no ucl and on the other hand he is also the reigning nl cy young award winner so lots of things to to consider with him but i thought that was interesting because we we did have an episode where we played that game where we said, which starter would you rather have? And I think when we played that game, we just did it for one season, right? We said, which would you rather have next year?

So obviously teams are not just thinking about one year. But I thought it was interesting to hear Nese brought up because no one thinks of Nese as anything particularly special, and he is certainly not the reigning NL Cy Young award winner, and yet teams maybe are more interested in him, and maybe it makes sense that they are more interested in him. Okay, so let me ask you something. With Nese, there's no reason to doubt a projection for him. If Pocota came out and threw a number on him for the next three years,

you wouldn't really have any reason to doubt that projection, right? I mean, he's a player. He's a typical player. That's what Pocota's supposed to be able to do. Dickey is different than other players, and so I think that you could find plenty of reasons to think that Pocota is not necessarily as qualified to project that, because he throws a unique pitch, his career path is so unusual, etc. So just curious, what sort of multiplier would you put on a pakoda

projection would you think that it's more likely to underrate ari dickie or overrate him and by how much so let's say that it over the um nine wins over the next three years i'm pulling that number out of nowhere but let's say that's what it was. What number did you say? I'm saying nine over the next three. Nine wins. Oh, Warp wins. Yes. I would have said that it would be inclined to

underrate him because I think it looks five seasons in the past, and five seasons ago, R.A. Dickey was not very good 2008 and 2009 he really was not particularly good nine wins over the next three years

that sounds not really unreasonable to me I just made that number up so say it's 50 whatever I would have guessed that Dickey

would be underrated by a projection system that took that much past data into account just in the abstract and yeah with him I mean if a pitcher suddenly adds a new pitch that is really effective or somehow improves a pre-existing pitch or gains a ton of velocity or something, I'm okay with discounting his projection because that's not data that is included in that projection.

So yeah, I don't actually know what Dickey's projection is for next year. Do you happen to know what that is? I'm trying to look right now, and I'm trying. So I might get there. Am I on? Okay. Well, the way Warp values pitchers, it tends to discount them anyway relative to position players so even in his Cy Young award-winning season he was worth something like four wins according to Warp which is good for a pitcher Warp-wise

so in that sense I guess I would take the under on on the number that you picked out of thin air but uh I don't know I expect him to continue to be effective for a couple years. So, Warp actually has him at 1.6 Warp for next year. Which I would say, certainly low,

seems to me. Although, like you say, Pocota is conservative, and particularly so with pitchers. But yeah, I think low. I think that he is better than his projections right now. Yes, pitchers. But yeah, I think low. I think that he is better than his projections right now. Yes, I agree. But not better than John Neese in terms of, well, he would take Dickey over Neese for 2013, I assume.

Yeah, it would. Yes, me too. It would and I would. We all would. Everybody agrees. Right. I don't know what the and I would. We all would. Everybody agrees. I don't know what the asking price for Nese would be. I don't know what the Mets would I don't know whether the Mets would

demand another organization's top two prospects for John Nese. I don't know if you can do that with a guy who doesn't have the cachet of reigning Cy Young award winner, even when there's a lot of other stuff in his favor, but that would be an interesting discussion to sit in on.

They should trade him for Billy Butler. Yeah. So the other guy, Billy Butler, also a popular guy on the first full day of the winter meetings. So a report last week, according to MLB trade rumors, I don't remember the report, but suggested that Billy Butler was close to untouchable. So you can touch him, but it's difficult. But that didn't stop teams from showing interest in him. And according to Bob Dutton of the Kansas City Star, the Mariners and Orioles have shown the most interest, and maybe the Mariners kind of make sense given the young pitching they could give back to the Royals, although the Royals reportedly want more of a sure

thing. Not a minor league guy, however promising a prospect uh so Butler is kind of interesting case because he like John Neese I suppose is 26 years old is signed for a while at a pretty reasonable rate only three more years I guess he's signed for eight million for next year eight million for the year after that. And then there's a team option for $12.5 million for 2015. And he's a good hitter, and he has improved as he's aged. And his 2012 season was, at least on a rate basis, his most productive, according to true average, his offensive production. But Butler is, of course, a DH. And it seems sort of like that

is an endangered species right now. And there's something I wanted to quote that Chris Mellon, one of our prospect guys at BP, wrote in an email thread about some prospects. He said, with a straight DH prospect or one with a very iffy defensive future, I think you have to consider the overall trend in regards to the position over the last handful of seasons. Only Billy Butler logged more than 500 plate appearances, 591 this year as a DH. In 2007, there were six players that broke that threshold as a comparison. Teams are using the position to rotate players or give defensive days off, which is putting more of an emphasis on most of the DH types to at least be able to play a little bit of defense to stick on the roster. types to at least be able to play a little bit of defense to stick on the roster. David Ortiz may have been another such person if he had not gotten hurt, but it does seem that there are few of those guys around, and maybe it is a trend, as Chris suggests, and that seems to make sense,

or maybe it's more of a cyclical thing and it just happened that there were fewer of those guys around right now. But it certainly takes away from Butler's value, even if he were a first baseman who could play some defense. Someone who hit as well as he does and is his age and has his contract would be much more valuable. So I would assume that Butler doesn't have anything close to the value that the Royals' other young position players have, because they are position players and are under team control for even longer. But I don't know, I guess, I don't have a specific question, but what do you think of Butler's value? Or how much would you discount him just because he is limited to DH, which is not something we see often now, and especially for someone his age? Yeah, I mean, I think that it's the fact that DHs are sort of disappearing, as you noted.

It's not, it's just, it's not a coincidence. It's how teams prefer to build themselves. They kind of like the idea of having more flexibility with their roster and not less flexibility. There's a hard-to-define, but there's a real value to that, to having roster flexibility. there's a real value to that, to having roster flexibility. And if you start building, I mean, if you're taking a guy like Butler, who is going to cost, you know, a legit player, you're basically building around your least flexible player. You know, you're putting money into a position that is more easily filled. You're giving up talent to fill a position that is more easily filled. And it really backs you into corners

in all the other positions in ways that you're not quite backed into those corners when you have guys who can theoretically move up or more likely down the defensive spectrum. I think with the Mariners, it's particularly odd. I mean, I know that they want bats. I know that they are in a state of near desperation to see a run scored once before they die. But they currently have a fairly corner and DH heavy roster, and particularly with the Jaha, not Jaha

going back a bit there and Montero Butler doesn't really have a natural fit. It's a little easier maybe if you give up on Smoke but still, I mean, Butler is of all the guys that the Royals have, he's the worst fit.

Now, that's probably going to be true for everyone. DHs don't fit anywhere. That's why they end up at DH. I think there are probably teams that in almost no circumstance would be willing to take on a full-time marquee DH. They just would not do it. It's not worth the market rate for them. And when you kind of take that into account,

you can sort of see that DHs really shouldn't cost very much. If there's only a few teams interested in them, they don't have the buyers. They shouldn't be as valuable. They shouldn't cost very much. If there's only a few teams interested in them, they don't have the buyers, they shouldn't be as valuable. They shouldn't cost as much, and I think Wells will probably find that. Although, Butler is a very nice hitter. I think that the Mariners would love to have him. It's just at what cost. Right. Well, he's not the sort of overpowering DH that David Ortiz was in his prime, or even this season for that matter um so he's not quite that

caliber of hitter and you assume that he might get a little bit better but probably not anything dramatic um but I mean there is a price at which Billy Butler or any full-time DH makes sense and I would think eight million for each of the next two seasons would be that price. Or I mean, certainly he has some surplus value at that price, right? I would think. Yeah, yeah. He has some surplus value at that price, for sure. I think, I mean, just in general, I feel like maybe we underrate multi-position guys. I don't know that people in the game do. I doubt they do. But it seems to me that it's something that's not necessarily captured just by a positional adjustment. You can add or subtract a certain number of runs based on

what breakdown of positions a multi-position guy ends up playing but i feel like it it adds a flexibility in roster construction that is not captured in the numbers in the sense that if you have a guy who can play a number of positions then you have much more freedom trying to fill some of those positions than you would otherwise. And you're not kind of locked into getting a guy at a certain position because you know that this guy you have can play two or three positions. And so if you find someone on the market who's a good deal at one of those positions you can play him at the other one and it really i think frees you up a bit and lets you get the best deal or improves your your leverage i would think that's not something that's captured in a value stat but that i would think that a general manager would appreciate. So who would you take in a trade between Butler and Dickey?

I think, man, I think I would kind of lean towards Dickey. Me too! Yeah, because, I don't know, Butler, the last time that he really played a position was 2010, when he played first base most of the time, and according to our stats was acceptable there. He was worth three wins that year on the dot, and since then he has been almost a full-time dh and has not been worth three

wins even this season as a better hitter uh he fell short of that so that really kind of limits his ceiling i think and if he were younger and cheaper then i would probably still prefer him to dickie but with just two years of team control left, plus a team option that gets more expensive, I would kind of lean towards Dickey on that $5 million for next year. All right. Well, tomorrow we'll see if either of those players is traded. We will be doing probably email Wednesday.

So email us your questions at podcast at baseballperspectives.com. And we'll be back tomorrow.