Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 943: Debating the Diamondbacks and Dylan Bundy

Episode Date: August 22, 2016

Ben and Sam banter about Mike Trout’s draft-round dominance, then discuss whether the Diamondbacks need a regime change and whether the Orioles are making the right decisions about Dylan Bundy.

Good slider right here. Chris Ironeta again. Touched the ground. So hey, buried the slider in. Effectively wild inside the zone a couple times there where getting in front of Mike Trout with that fastball. One and two. And then throwing that little curveball for a strike. Able to freeze him. He tried to keep it yesterday, the good old days The same old ways that kept us dying Yes, you, me, myself and I indeed What he need is a nosebleed In between the lines, and then you see the lie Politically planned, don't understand That's all she wrote

When we see the real side to hide behind the boat And they can't understand why he the man Is singing by the king They don't like it when I decide to make it43 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Prospectus, brought to you by the Play Index at BaseballReference.com and our Patreon supporters. I'm Sam Miller along with Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Hi Ben, how are you doing? Doing okay.

All right. Anything you want to talk about? Well, just a quick follow-up to our episode from Friday. A couple of people posted in the Facebook group about your hypothetical about the Mets betting on Prince Fielder, basically. We did an episode on insurance and you wondered whether a team could take out insurance on another team's player, basically, betting on a player. So we have a couple of insurance agents in our Facebook group. Of course course there's always someone who does the thing That we're talking about so Aaron says a team needs

A defined insurable interest In a player to qualify for insurance Courts wouldn't recognize A hypothetical Mets interest on the status Of Prince Fielder and the Texas Rangers Unconscionable policies are also Illegal against public good To indemnify intentional harm against

A third party. Another listener named Scott confirms that that is correct based on his experience, and both of them want to make sure that we know that it's a personal opinion and does not necessarily reflect the views of their employer. All right. Good to know. Yes. Anything else? Nope.

All right. Quick one, I guess. Mike Trout currently has produced 34% of the wins above replacement of the entire 2009 first round. Okay. So 29 other players are actually, maybe 31 other players, because there might've been a couple of picks left over from the previous year of guys who didn't sign. I'm not counting the supplemental round. So in 2016 only, you mean, right? No, no, no. Career.

Career today. Okay. Yeah. So it's an interesting, well, so this year though, specifically, he is at 6.6 warp and all the players drafted above him are at 6.8 warp. If you add Randall Gritchick to that, which I included in the first fact, the 34%, but not in the second one because the Angels did not take Gritchick instead of Trout. Then it pushes the 6.8 up to, I think, 7.9. So it's still close, but it's not super close. Well, it is super close, but it's not – Trout's probably not going to take the lead tomorrow. Trout's probably not going to take the lead. Trout's probably not going to take the lead. So Trout so far has not had a year other than maybe his rookie year where he outwarped the entire first round. But if you look at this draft, you've got a couple of guys who are at their peak or seem to be at their peak, a couple of guys who

are on the upswing, perhaps. Like I would say, maybe you could say Zach Wheeler is on the upswing. Tyler Matzik still sort of exists. AJ Pollock and Shelby Miller might have better years ahead of them. Kyle Gibson might have a better year ahead of him. But otherwise, we're starting to see guys who are like basically out of the game now. Like I wrote about the worst age 27 seasons and there's I think four or five guys from this draft who this year did not play organized ball or are now in indie ball. And last year, I don't think that was true of anybody,

if I'm not mistaken. I think every player was in affiliated ball last year. This year, four or five did not. And really, there's a lot of guys who you would think of as a lot less sure than you would have two years ago, like Mike Miner and Jacob Turner and Matzik and Aaron Crowe and, you know, probably Dustin Ackley. Guys who – Nick Franklin, who are clearly less valuable or seem less valuable than they did a couple of years ago. And so what would you guess, will Mike Trout have another year where he outwarps the entire

first round of picks? And what age do you suppose is his best bet for doing that? Or the earliest age that it seems like he could do that? Yeah, well, you'd think at the very tail end of his career, he would have— He'll be the last one standing. Right, he'll be the last one because he was young, he was coming out of high school, and he's Mike Trout. So there will be some point probably when Mike Trout is 40 and hopefully still pretty productive. We'll see. But at that point, you would think that he will do it.

So before then, do his odds get better every year or Shelby Miller and AJ Pollock? That's the big problem. It'd be hard for them to have worse years than they've had this year because one hasn't played and one has been sent down to AAA. Yeah. And they're the, they're after, after Trout and Strasburg, they're probably three, four on this list of guys who at least coming the year, were the big threats to this. And so, yeah, this might be his best chance because Pollock was injured for most of the year. On the other hand, there's a lot of guys who've been sort of contributing a half a win here and there

who are slowly falling out of the game or in the minors. Grant Green, like that. Tony Sanchez. So yeah, I don't know. Like, I'm not sure I look at this list, and other than Strasburg and Pollock, I'm not sure I see a guy, and Grichuk, I guess, maybe Mike Leak. I'm not sure I see a guy who I would bet on being active at 32. Like a bunch will, but I'm not sure I see one where I would say,

yeah, there's a better than 50% chance that that guy is in the majors at 32. Like a bunch will, but I'm not sure I see one where I would say, yeah, there's a better than 50% chance that that guy is in the majors at 32. Right. Yeah, I'd agree. So his chances get better, will stay the same maybe for a couple of years and then just start getting better? Yeah, I think so. But then of course he'll start dropping too. What do you think Mike Trout's war will be when he's 35? 4.5. Okay. I wanted to talk about two articles that came out late last week. One is the Keith Law barn burner on the Arizona Diamondbacks. The other is Kat Garcia's piece on Dylan Bundy. And I wanted to talk about Dylan Bundy generally.

So you want to pick which one goes first? Well, I've read Keith's, so we could start there. I haven't seen Cats. So Keith wrote a piece basically calling for change in the Arizona front office, complete regime change, which is probably a piece that thousands of us would be qualified to write, but not the way that Keith wrote it. I was thinking of writing one for the same day, but it would have been oh you would have been crushed much more wishy-washy than keith's was yeah so keith this is a this is a sourced piece usually a named source but sourced piece not not uh speculation but a sourced piece about the miscues of the arizona diamondbacks

front office and the embarrassments within uh and there were a number of block quotable charges against them. And this is just to veer off slightly, but Alex Speer wrote a piece that also came out late in the week about John Farrell and the sort of disconnect between the public's view of his chair's wobbliness and the internal view of it. And it's always hard to know a vote of confidence from your boss, particularly in a public setting, often means nothing at all. But Alex seems to give the impression that if you are around the Red Sox organization, you do get the sense that John Farrell is seen very differently when the public sees him. And so while it would be easy to write a piece going through the many sins or failings of John Farrell as a tactician, or even pointing out the general underperformance of this franchise over the last

few years, and maybe even arguably the underperformance of this franchise this year, arguably, even though they've paradoxically outperformed a lot of expectations, you might make that case, but then you would still be describing a manager who, for reasons that Spear gets into and for probably reasons that Spear doesn't get into, nonetheless has the faith of the very smart people who have a very strong incentive to win baseball games. So I read Keith's piece. I sort of reread Keith's piece. in baseball games. So I read Keith's piece. I sort of reread Keith's piece, looking at each of these, at each of these accusations or each of these, I guess, each of these counts and trying to think if this is something that totally pushes you toward fire them, or if these are just part of the tapestry of actions, some good, some bad that define any major league executives tenure. And so I just wanted to go

through them and ask you to maybe rate them on like a scale of one to 10 or something, how bad you think they are, how emblematic you think they are of bigger problems. I mean, you can, there are lots of things that get people fired. Grady Little, you know, got fired for one non-pitching change, kind of. Whereas there are a lot of things that are infuriating, but you go well learn from it and we'll do better next time. So I just want to kind of place each of these things within that spectrum. Does that sound okay? Sure. All right. And Keith's piece is behind a paywall, which means that A, some people have not been

able to read it. And B, we will try to respect fair use as much as possible and not give away the whole barn because there should be incentive for people to pay for the things that are being sold. All right, so the first thing that he, the first count is what is subtitled the Yohan Lopez fiasco. Lopez was a Cuban pitcher who was signed for $8 million a few years ago, three years ago. And there are a few reasons that the Yohan Lopez signing kind of went sideways or why it's easy to judge the Diamondbacks somewhat harshly and to maybe even draw larger things from it. Lopez was signed for $8 million, even though according to Keith, other teams had him significantly less valuable than that. But it's not just the $8 million. Lopez was an international signing, so he also cost the Diamondbacks,

basically prohibited them from making any more high-priced, high-profile international signings for the next two years and cost them an $8 million roughly tax on that. And so really they spent $15-, 15-ish million dollars and the opportunity to sign new amateurs for a player that a lot of people didn't think was good. So that's all fine in that different teams evaluate players differently and put their needs in different places. The two places that Keith though points out the significant extra baggage is, according to Keith, the quote, diamondbacks didn't understand the international bonus pools and were unaware they would have to pay a penalty on top of the bonus

and be prohibited from signing any July 2nd free agents for the next two signing periods. So that is one thing. The other is that even after Lopez has come over and everybody, everybody has had a chance to see him a lot more, they continue to make claims about his abilities that, in Keith's telling of this, defy belief or industry consensus. The most interesting which people might have seen, Keith tweet a month ago when Tony La Russa claimed that his scouts tell him that Lopez is a top three prospect, I believe, in the game, while, according to Keith, this can't be. Lopez isn't even a top three prospect in Arizona's system or a top 200 prospect in all of baseball. So that would mean basically two things. One, wildly different evaluations than the rest of the industry. And two, unfamiliarity with rules that affect to a great degree a team's ability

to strategize and compete. Rank these. Yeah, well, the unfamiliarity with rules is a bigger problem and seems to be a theme in this article that is very high on this scale or is this a one to ten scale i'd yeah put that uh i'd put that probably at about a like an eight maybe a nine even i mean that's especially because it's there are there are obscure baseball rules out there when it comes like teams have an an assistant GM usually or somebody in the front office who is sort of the guy who's supposed to be familiar with all these arcane rostering rules, because it is easy to lose your high A catcher because you forgot, you didn't realize, you didn't understand these complicated option rules or minor league service time rules or when you have to put

in your paperwork for your draft picks. Those are all sorts of things that you have to have somebody who goes way out of their way to familiarize themselves with these. But the international signing rules is like you just follow Ben Badler. It's fairly – it's not that hard. We knew, right? We all knew that that was the cost of signing him. I don't know how complicated the story was.

I don't know how complicated Lopez's case was, if he was somehow seemed to be an exception to the rules or something. But it doesn't get into that detail. But yes, okay, so you say an eight. And to be fair, the Diamondbacks have since hired that person who does that for them, I think. He spoke at Sabre Seminar last weekend. Brian Manitti, their assistant GM, was hired away from the Nationals in October 2014, which is after the things that Keith is talking about. So it could be that they have addressed that problem already. Yeah, right. Yeah. So that would go a long ways.

That would then qualify this perhaps as mistake that you learn from and move on. this perhaps as mistake that you learn from and move on. I think I would consider that maybe like a nine or a 10 though. Like to me, that's if the account of this is as it is laid out here, I would consider it among the most embarrassing things a front office official could do without breaking the law. That's just basic competence. That's like first do no harm, basically, is, you know, don't run afoul of rules that everyone knows or should know or can know. So, yes, I would put that up there, too. Although if they have learned from it, like, I don't really care if Tony La Russa knows every arcane rule. I care that he hires someone who does know. But so if he didn't do that before, that's a huge strike against him.

If they have since corrected that error, okay, maybe that is something you learn from and move on, but it's definitely a bad sign. The other aspect of this, the evaluating, would be a problem if I knew that I could take the quote at face value. We're talking about someone who works for a team trying to pump up his own player, essentially, and saying that his scouts have told him something complimentary about that player. I don't know. It could be an outright lie or distortion of the truth, just trying to make your own player look good.

So I don't put that much stock in it. Maybe it's part of a pattern where The Diamondbacks seem to say things That don't make sense and Every time they say those things we Try to at least you and I kind Of say well do they have some other Ulterior motive here are they trying to present

Some image to the public That we're not giving them credit for But if it keeps happening then maybe You think no this is actually what they believe. And they're just saying what they believe. And that would be bad. Yeah, they did put a price on him. We do have confirmation that they valued him

at $8 million at one point, which is already. But let me ask you something. If you had a prospect who was, say, a top 200 prospect in your mind, but you wanted the baseball world to think of him as a top 100 prospect. So you want to subtly convince everybody that guy who's 200, let's make it easier. Well no, let's not make it easier. Let's stay with the original. So 200 guy, you want the

baseball world to think of him as a 100 guy. Do you say things publicly like we think he's a number 100 guy? Do you say things like we think he's a number 60 guy? Or do you think we say he's a top three guy? Which one is more compelling to the public or more convincing, do you think? I'd say the higher the better, probably. Yeah, right? It does sort of. It's a big lie. It's the anchoring effect, right?

When you say some high number and then you pull people up toward that number, even if it's way unrealistic. So, yeah, I think the higher the better. All right. Okay. So, you know, maybe that was just good strategy. Sure. All right. The 2015 draft debacle, which basically boils down to two things.

One is they seemed to trade away a competitive balance pick and the money attached to it for less than competitive balance picks are usually worth. And maybe the reason for this was later revealed when they didn't even spend all of their bonus slot money. And I think at this point it is widely understood by anybody who follows baseball or the draft at all closely that draft pick bonus slots are worth more than the dollar figure. That is why teams are willing to trade for them. And that because draft picks and minor leaguers and players, salaries are suppressed by unnatural market forces. You do not give away your

opportunities to sign players out of the draft. The Diamondbacks did that essentially twice. And they did that despite having really a sort of a, I mean, they had a greater chance than any team in baseball to collect a massive amount of talent in the draft, rebuild the team in the way that, you know, we've seen most recently the Astros attempt to do with the top pick in the draft. And they gave it away, which suggests a fundamental lack of understanding about the value of young players. Yeah, that's a 10. Oh, really? You have that as a 10 but not knowing the international signing rules as an 8, huh? Yeah. Well, I guess they're not all that different.

They're both very close to the top end of the scale. It does seem like if I had a, like, let's say I went on Antiques Roadshow and I had, you know, some framed picture of Americana that I had found in my grandma's attic. And some guy came over to me and like to assess it, an assessor. And he's like, oh yeah, this is, you know, this is this, this, and this, it's worth $80. And I'll buy it from you right now for a hundred. Then you'd be suspicious. You'd be like, well, maybe I should get another assessment, right? Maybe it's actually worth $20,000 and this guy's trying to take advantage of me. So maybe the fact that even if you had a, you know, even if you didn't think that these draft picks were worth all that much, the fact that teams are trying to trade from them, you'd think would, you know, you'd at least read an article after that to see if there was maybe more to it.

Yes. And probably the Diamondbacks front office, which by the way, we should stipulate that even beyond the question, which Ben and I are not qualified to answer of whether Dave Stewart and Tony La Russa are good at their jobs. We can say with great certainty that the Diamondbacks front office is staffed with many people who are tremendous at their jobs and very intelligent and that are not, I would say, on trial here in any way. Fair? Yeah. We don't know how much input they have. Yeah. Or how many of them are sources here in Keith's piece. All right.

So are you pulling that back down from 10? If anything, I'm raising the earlier one. Okay. All right. Poor player evaluation. An example of this is that Will Harris, who was a good pitcher before Dave Stewart took over, missed a bunch of time with injuries and bad luck, and then the Diamondbacks gave him away for nothing.

Does Will Harris stand out to you as an extraordinary example of not knowing how to evaluate your own talent? Well, it's not as if there was something not obvious that they might have missed. I mean, he had a sub 3 ERA And everything like even if you're It's not like some case where he had A high ERA but there were Good indicators or something like everyone

Knows that a low ERA is Good so well in his last Year within 2014 he Had a 4.3 ERA So if you You know that's a bad ERA for a reliever. He had a 3.2 FIP. He struck out 11 batters per nine. Everything seemed good about him to, you know, if you were drafting a minor league, if you were drafting a relievers only league, I would expect you to be on Will

Harris coming out of that season. But yeah, in his defense, there was a high ERA. Okay. Well, coming out of that season. But in his defense, there was a high ERA. Okay. Well, so yeah, that's probably pretty bad. I mean, there's been a pattern of seemingly poor player evaluation. It seems to be tied into the draft pick valuation sometimes. But like Keith mentioned, the Tukey Toussaint trade,

and Tukey Toussaint has been bad since that trade. And everyone thought that the Diamondbacks were crazy to give him up, and they'd given up on him too soon. And at least since that trade happened, he hasn't shown that they were wrong. And there have been other controversial Diamondbacks moves in the past where no one could believe they did it. And, you know, the players they traded haven't become superstars or anything. traded haven't become superstars or anything. So I think there are times when maybe they were even closer to the truth than the internet was on some of those deals. But yeah, Will Harris as a specific example, the Astros got that claim, the Diamondbacks got nothing, and the Astros have gotten a lot of good pitching. So that's a bad move, but every team makes a bad move. have gotten a lot of good pitching. So that's a bad move, but every team makes a bad move.

Particularly when it comes to assessing relievers, every team right now has a good reliever that a team gave up on in the last 365 days, probably. But yeah, I think what makes Harris especially galling is that he is not even a guy who was going to make an arbitration decision difficult. He had virtually no service time. He is making the minimum still today. And so, you know, giving like you, you, there was no external force pushing you to give up on Will Harris unless you're just that short on 40 man spots, which sometimes can be its own, its own sin. Yeah. So I'd put that at a, I don't know, a six or... You wouldn't, if that were it though, you wouldn't be calling for regime change. Right. Yeah. I'd put that at like a one case, I'd put it a three. If it were one case of Will

Harris, if you had seven Will Harris's, then I'd move it up to a six or a seven. So then maybe you do have better case of Will Harris because you have the Dansby Swanson trade, which is the trade that what? A few minutes after it was made, somebody, Ken Rosenthal or somebody tweeted a executive saying it was like the worst trade in history. And it has gotten so much worse, so much worse since it happened. It is now a defying belief, worst trade in history. You might rather have every player involved in the trade than Shelby Miller at this point. You might rather have every single person involved in the trade than Shelby Miller. And I am including Gabe Spire in that.

Dansby Swanson has reached the majors 14 months after being drafted. Shelby Miller has become a disaster. And I guess the best thing you could say is that Aaron Blair has been very poor this year, but for a lot less and arguably not as poor as Shelby Miller. So Keith, though, doesn't make the case that primarily based on the fact that this was a trade that everybody should have seen was illogical and silly, but rather that since he came over, Miller has been a disaster and that given what we know, you have no choice but to put the blame on the Diamondbacks. Whether they changed his mechanics, whether they failed to maintain his mechanics, or whether they've simply been unable to fix him. The fact is that they are the team that is responsible for getting the most out of their players. They have gotten the very least out of Shelby Miller. And they have said weird

things about him publicly, which is something that over the course of his career, Tony La Russa has made a habit of doing about players that have crossed him or lost his favor. So who's a team that has a non-wobbly-chaired GM? If John Daniels had made the equivalent of the Shelby Miller trade last year, would we be calling for John Daniels to be fired? Well, probably not. I mean, he did make the Adrian Gonzalez trade, but I think probably not. It was part of a pattern.

It was seen as part of an ongoing issue With the Diamondbacks when it was made I think everyone would have been Just as perplexed by the trade But maybe would have been less quick To condemn it as an institutional problem Alright, and so those are the big ones Of the small ones I'm just going to bring up One last one

Which isn't really new information So much as it's still interesting and I'd forgotten about it. How much of a red flag do you consider it that Dave Stewart's wife is the agent to a number of Dave Stewart's players? Yeah, well, that sounds highly irregular. I don't know exactly what the conflict would be there, least as far as i mean it seems like there are potential problems obviously about using your players or making transactions with your players who are essentially you know giving your family money by being represented by your wife so and i don't know if there's uh as they used to say on every single Good Wife episode,

a Chinese wall between Dave Stewart and his wife when it comes to those clients, but it seems sticky and like something you would want to avoid. Yeah. If your essentially family is representing reliever Enrique Burgos, which his is, there is a huge, huge disproportionate difference in the benefit you get from promoting Enrique Burgos over a pitcher who's 10% worse than him and the gain that you get as his agent of having a AAA reliever in the major leagues. And that seems like significant. Nick Piacoro wrote about this in March and writes, it's a situation without precedent

in baseball, but those involved say the proper mechanisms are in place to ensure conflicts of interest do not arise. For one, Murray says the conditional agent certification she was granted requires her to recuse herself from a negotiation involving the Diamondbacks. She also said she must explain to her clients in writing the potential conflicts involved in using her as their representation. And Stewart from the club side points out the layers in the organization's decision-making process. Decisions are not made unilaterally. Many involve La Russa, Chip Hale, other executives and coaches. That includes the arbitration process, which is

generally handled by others on the club's baseball operations staff. Nothing in those two paragraphs convinces me that the proper mechanisms are in place to ensure conflicts of interest do not arise, but maybe they are. I don't know. Still, it's weird. Very weird. All right. So let's see. That's it. Okay. Switch. Okay. All right. So Dylan Bundy is, of course, a former elite prospect who missed virtually all of three years while going through arm problems. He was essentially forced onto the Orioles roster this year because he was out of options. They used him as a reliever. He was fairly poor for a while, and then suddenly something clicked.

His velocity kept going up. for a while, and then suddenly something clicked. His velocity kept going up. He became a completely dominant reliever, so much so that the Orioles, who have one of the worst playoff-bound rotations in Major League history, certainly recent Major League history, if they are in fact playoff-bound, moved him into the rotation where he was the ace they needed. Bundy's first six starts with the Orioles were exceptional. He had an ERA of 2.76, I believe. And really, everything was going great. Everything, I think you could say, is going great with him. But Bundy is a pitcher who has thrown, I think, a total of 68-ish innings over the last three years. 67 innings,

I should say. The Orioles in early June said of Bundy, we are hopefully going to get 60 to 75 innings out of him and be ready to go next year. And Bundy, because they moved him into the rotation, passed 75 innings. I think he passed 75 and his velocity has been dropping as Kat's article shows it as a starter. Well, as a reliever, he basically went from like 93 steadily up to high in 96, 97 and took over as a starter. 96, 95, 7, 96, 95, 2, 94, 6, 93.9 was the progression of those six for his fastball velocity. His fastball was not very effective in his start on Thursday. He got, or start on Wednesday, I think, he got two whiffs on 51 fastballs that he threw. His curveball hasn't been very good this year, and he doesn't even throw his slider. He decided during the winter that the slider was what was giving him problems in his forearm.

So he junked it and hasn't thrown it this year. There's talk about maybe throwing it next year. But Dylan Bundy is simultaneously potentially the most, you know, one of the most important players in baseball over the next two months. This is a team that desperately, desperately needs a pitcher who can look like a playoff starter, both for the next month and a half, they're in a very close race, and in the postseason. And Bundy is arguably the most fragile or could be seen as the most fragile and most potentially lucrative pitcher in baseball.

Those two things exist simultaneously. And right now, I wonder, A. Whether you think this is an easy decision For the Orioles And B. Whether you're at all surprised About the decisions they've made to get here Well, no, I don't think it's an easy decision I think they got a lot of benefit Out of what they did For his first several starts

However many it was He was good in relief And so sure, if you're in the position that the Orioles were in with as weak a rotation as they had, why wouldn't you try to get more out of the guy if you can? And it worked quite well for a while. And if it stops working, and maybe it already has, then they'd probably adjust. And I don't know if it's an easy decision because it did work so well for a few starts that it was very tantalizing. And having a guy like Dylan Bundy

would really help them out, not only making the playoffs, but if they get there, if they end up playing a wildcard game, having him or who he was a few starts ago would be very valuable. But yeah, I'm sure they'll react to what they see. I'm sure they're not blind to the fact that he's losing velocity. And given his history,

and maybe his lack of conditioning for this kind of role, you'd think they would be pretty quick to adjust if he stops working and turns back into a pumpkin. And hopefully they can still turn him back into an effective reliever, at least. So they had a very effective reliever in him. He was, you know, like I said, very bad for the first month and a half. He had an ERA over five. He had as almost as many walks as strikeouts. He was striking out five-ish batters per nine. And if you want to pick a day, say May 27th, 20 innings as a reliever, 23 strikeouts, four walks, a 1.33 ERA. I could do even better than that. If you want an even shorter sample from June 6th to July 6th, a month, his last month as a reliever, 14 and a third innings, 19 strikeouts, no runs allowed. That is a great reliever, and that is what gets

you to 60 to 75 innings, and hopefully we start over next year or whatever Buck Showalter said. They made the decision to have him start, knowing, of course, that that was going to push him much more quickly into a high innings threshold and perhaps take him out of postseason. Does it make sense to you that this team would deem a starter in July and August more important than having a shutdown reliever, you know, through the end of potentially through the end of October? Well, they have to get there. And that's never been close to assured. So I mean, all the projections have had them falling out of the race throughout the year. They've never been able to build up a lead really, or at least for the last month or two, it's just been, you know, a game or

two when they've even had a lead at all. And the two teams that they're competing with are generally seen as superior. I think we're certainly projected to be better. So no, it doesn't surprise me. I don't think they were close enough to being able to take the postseason appearance for granted to say we'll save this guy for then. And they, of course, have a truly dominant reliever in Zach Britton. They have had another truly dominant reliever in Brad Brock. They also have a pitcher who has been extremely good for many years, less dominant this year, but I would certainly bet on him going forward, Darren O'Day.

And they also have Michael Givens, who's a dominant if somewhat less reliable reliever, but also a very good one. based on this sort of model of being extremely good in the bullpen and hitting enough to outlast your starting rotation problems and then having the bullpen come in, shut things down, and you win every game 6-5 because your bullpen is just that good. I guess what I'm asking is, does it make more sense to play to your strength and have Bundy be part of that system that has worked, or does it make more sense to say we have four really good relievers two or three truly great ones and bundy is superfluous and you know we he's just not going to be that valuable to us going forward as a reliever yeah i think the latter i mean he would

have had value in either role but i think just given how weak their rotation was i mean it was like unprecedentedly bad for a team that was trying to make the playoffs. I think you put him in the place where you are hemorrhaging runs every day. And hopefully you save yourself from needing a really good reliever sometimes because you already have a lead. So I think they handled this intelligently or rationally or defensively. And I think they should be quick to adjust if something changes as it seems like it is. If he starts every game from now until game seven, not every game, but every fifth game from now until the seventh game of the World Series, and let's say he throws an extra 80

innings in that time. Will you scream and shout? Just from a health perspective? Yeah. He keeps being good, good enough to merit his spot. So yeah, but just from a long-term health perspective, does this rise to the level of outrage? I don't think it does just because of who he is and the fact that they were very, very careful with him early in his career. And that didn't work. He got hurt anyway. It looked like his career was over or it looked like there was a very good chance that his career was over. where you just got to get what you can out of him because you've already broken the seal, essentially,

on Dylan Bundy getting hurt. And once that happens, there's a good chance he's going to get hurt again. We know that managing his innings is not necessarily the panacea. And because he was on a major league deal all that time, right, they have used a lot of his service time? When is he a free? I don't think, I was Googling this. He was out of options, but. I was Googling this. If he was out of options, that

means they've been sending him down. And so I don't believe he's been collecting service time. I don't. Okay. I think that he was probably optioned before his 2014 injury and it's all been a 2013 injury and it's all been continuum since then so i don't believe he's been collecting any service time okay well that changes things a little in that you're still hoping to have him for several years and obviously you you don't want to run him ragged if you think that you're going to get a lot out of him in the future but even so i think just based on they tried the the protective route which doesn't necessarily mean that, okay, that didn't work. So now we'll just run them out there every day.

You know, I'm sure there are still merits to the cautious approach. But, yeah, I think you at this point just have to go for it. All right. Sounds good. They can do that. All right. Then we will leave it there. By the way, the guy who said effectively wild on on today's intro was Ryan Rowland-Smith

on the Mariners broadcast last week. In case you were wondering where that Australian accent came from. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. Today's five supporters are Scott, Simon Penchansky, David, Chris Campin, and Eric Westland. Thank you. You can buy our book, The Only Rules It Has to Work, our wild experiment building a new kind of baseball team Check out the website at theonlyrulesithastowork.com For more information

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And we will answer some of your questions the next time we talk. But I don't believe what they tell me. The price of the piper was high. It was so good while it lasted. The long ago days that we knew. that we knew I love you again as I loved you then so say that you love me too