Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 945: Why Did the Dodgers Make Clayton Kershaw Cry?

Episode Date: August 26, 2016

Ben, Sam, and BP’s Jonathan Judge discuss the Dodgers’ puzzling decision to trade A.J. Ellis for Carlos Ruiz, breaking down the beloved backstops’ hard-to-see skills and then considering the clubhouse implications.

Just when the best things in life are gone I look into your eyes There's no smoke without fire You're exactly who I want to be Without you What would I do? Hello and welcome to episode 945 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives, presented by our Patreon supporters and the Play Index at BaseballReference.com.

I'm Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Sam Miller of Baseball Perspectives. Hello. Yo. Yesterday, there was a trade that shook the baseball world. A 37-year-old backup catcher was traded for a 35-year-old backup catcher. Always huge news. Actually was huge news in this case because of the particular catchers involved. AJ Ellis was traded by the Dodgers to the Phillies for Carlos Ruiz. This is something that has caused a cataclysm in the Dodgers clubhouse because A.J. Ellis has been Clayton Kershaw's personal catcher to a great extent for years now. They are best friends.

Both men were said to have shed tears or said themselves that they shed tears over this news. And so this was an extremely divisive move. People are questioning why it was made at this particular time, what the point was, why the Dodgers would risk disturbing their team's chemistry for what seems like a marginal upgrade. But we're about to discuss, first of all, whether there is any evidence that it is a marginal upgrade or maybe more or less than that And to talk about that before we get into the chemistry ramifications We are joined by an integral member of the Baseball Perspectives stats team

Jonathan Judge Hey Jonathan Hey, how are you? Very well So you have been one of the driving forces behind BP's new age catcher stats Including catcher framing and throwing and impact on the running game. And also something that's not published, but that you and Harry Pavlidis discussed at Saber Seminar, game calling. And Harry wrote something for ESPN last year,

and we actually talked to him about it on this podcast, about some initial attempts to measure game calling Or however you want to define exactly what game calling is As you'll tell us in a second But based on Harry's early work AJ Ellis showed up as a game calling stud Which would help to explain why Clayton Kershaw is so attached to him Other than being his friend off the field But if you can sort of just summarize some of the things you said at Saber Seminar, where are we with game calling stats and quantifying Clayton Kershaw's tiers?

Sure. Game calling is the hardest part of the catcher equation because it's really more of game management. It's something that we can't really quantify. We sort of quantify it as it's like a diagnosis of sort of inclusion. In other words, we quantify everything else that we can, and we wonder why certain people are still being used. And so we sort of look at, do they have a residue of results sort of independent of their pitching that seems to suggest they are contributing on the field.

And the most obvious way that could be would be through the way they call the game, even in terms of choosing pitches or locations or just their mannerisms, or we don't really know. All the things that make catchers catchers and seem to make an awful lot of catchers end up being managers, I assume. Right. It's like dark matter. It's like, you know, it's there. We can detect that there is some amount of stuff there. We just don't know what it is. Correct. And many, there will be, unfortunately, we don't get any grants for looking at this sort of stuff, but many other people get grants for looking at things like dark matter. But we, this is something that baseball people very much believe in. And as I said at Sabre seminar, I think the traditional caricature in any way,

sabermetric reaction to baseball people saying something exists that we couldn't measure was to say, oh, they're just wrong. And my presumption is the other one, which is, well, we're just not, we're missing something. We need to try harder. And so that's what we've been trying to do. More specifically, trying to get more granular about it, And so that's what we've been trying to do, more specifically trying to get more granular about it, because what we were doing with Harry was simply looking at the sort of overall value in terms of results on the field. And we were doing some controls, but it was with a kind of an early version of DRA and deserved run average and some of those models. And it wasn't really getting down to what particular events they were influencing.

models, and it wasn't really getting down to what particular events they were influencing. So this year, when we updated deserved run average, we actually broke it down now. So it's sort of calculated component by component rather than just sort of the overall soup of accomplishments. And that was very helpful because now we're finding, of course, that certain players are very relevant to certain plays and events, and other players are completely irrelevant to those events. And that is certainly true for catcher game calling. And so basically what we do is we take these events that we found that independent of framing, independent of these other things we've measured, that catchers still seem to have some residual value. The identity of the catcher does affect in some meaningful way the result of the play.

And so we've honed in on those. And those are, as far as we can tell, walks, strikeouts, and home runs. So they seem to be fit motivators, I guess you could say, at least potentially. And so we focused on trying to quantify those and try to figure out which one of those aspects are real and which ones might be more just sort of happening to be on the field at the right time. So when you say, the way that you describe this, I think a reasonable person would say, okay, well, if you told me that AJL is worth 3.1 runs, I would probably be skeptical that you can tell me that with much certainty. But the goal of a stat like this is probably twofold. One is to just simply point you north-south.

Is he good or is he bad? And two is to establish the bounds of what influence a catcher might have, like whether we're talking about a skill that is worth half a win a year or five wins a year on the extremes. So do you have a sense from this of what are we talking about? What skill is this comparable to in value in a vacuum? Not for Ellis specifically, but for catchers generally. For catchers generally, I would say the game calling aspect can be worth six to eight runs a year, maybe 10. That's really the outliers to say the least. That's really the sort of Sal Perez line of folks. So it can do that. It can be a little volatile, of course.

You can jump back and forth a little bit, but I would say I feel comfortable saying it's worth at least a few runs, one direction or another. So it's nice to have. I don't know if it's necessarily something except for the really extreme situations where you would totally build around it, but it is definitely along those lines. All right. And so what do we know about AJ Ellis? And what do we know about AJ Ellis and what do we know about Carlos Ruiz in this respect? Because one of the things Andrew Friedman said was that he felt comfortable making this move because Ruiz shared many of Ellis's skills, in particular his ability to call games and manage a pitching staff. So do the stats that we have bear that out? Of course, Ruiz has had testimonials from pitchers such as Roy Halladay, the way that AJ Ellis has too. But do the stats explain why Clayton Kershaw was so attached to having AJ Ellis be his

personal catcher? And how do those two compare? They do. If we look at the top catchers over the last, oh, last five years. I actually just went from 2011 to 2015. Even in part-time duty, A.J. Ellis potentially is worth, I would say, in the neighborhood of 20 runs, which is nothing to sneeze at. Now, I'm always a little cautious, especially with A.J. Ellis on anything, because he certainly is getting to direct Clayton Kershaw around is a great first start if you're going to be calling a good game.

But consistently over the years, he has produced that, and that counts for quite a bit. Carlos Ruiz has also been good. He has from 2011 to 2015, over those five seasons, we have him possibly gaining or saving about 12 runs. So not as good as A.J. Ellis, I would say. They're both plainly plus in that direction. I think we can fairly say that over time. And certainly, I would assume that's when the Dodgers talked about the ability to call a game. I don't know what they measure or don't measure, but certainly what we're finding would be consistent with that. Both of these guys do a good job, get a lot of value, and I would have to say, particularly for Carlos Ruiz, to squeeze out 11 runs of value, especially when you're including the last few years of the Phillies, that's pretty good. So this seems like the sort of thing, though, that it would be very specific to the pitcher,

to the relationship that you have with each individual pitcher, that you might be the world's greatest Clayton Kershaw whisperer, but if you had John Lackey on the mound, you guys might clash, or your styles might not mix, or your skills might not be complementary, or whatever the case may be. So do you have any sense of those 20 runs that Ellis gets credit for? Do you have any sense of what percentage of them? I guess he mostly only catches Kershaw lately, but on a sort of rate basis with Kershaw, is it a very different answer? Would it be even higher? I haven't actually gone back and sort of broke it down. I mean, the thing is that these are modeled rates. So we're kind of looking at their

average over everybody. I can certainly, I imagine they would be better with Kershaw in general. But I mean, we do in these models, we do two sort of things to protect ourselves against that sort of pollution. Number one, we control. These are the same models that we use for DRA. So, you know, the picture is already being separated out and given credit or lack of credit for things. And Clayton Kershaw has had zero trouble getting credit from DRA for his accomplishments. So I think we're doing a pretty good job of carving out a lot of what Clayton Kershaw would contribute to this. The second thing is that to give you the sort of non-math version of it, we do what we call shrinkage.

All these player positions have controls on them that make them extremely conservative and sort of push them more toward the average or the mean. So for them to still stick out and have an effect, it has to be somewhat meaningful. So with those two checks, one, we control for who the pitcher is at each and every plate appearance that they have, and also putting that sort of filter on it, as we have with DRA, to make sure we're only giving credit where we're fairly confident it is deserved. I feel pretty good about those numbers for A.J. Ellis. I mean, certainly if someone is predominantly catching only one pitcher, it gets a little harder.

But on balance, I think it's fair to say that he is definitely an above-average game manager, and that's what we're seeing. Okay. I'm going to ask you to speculate irresponsibly here, but no one will hold you to it. Let's say your numbers were, we can confirm that they were the God's honest truth, that they were bulletproof. I'm curious if we polled pitchers on their catchers and how good they were and asked them to estimate, what would you guess is the correlation between their insight, their guts, and their feelings based on experience, and the actual numbers, the actual truth?

Oh, boy. I don't know. I think the problem is that many major league pitchers just have had very few catchers. is that many major league pitchers just have had very few catchers. So I think they can probably distinguish between, you know, the guy they've been with the most and maybe a couple other guys who filled in a little bit. But I would probably think they wouldn't necessarily match up very well at all because they just don't, you know, I mean, all that they know is what they hear from other players.

Oh, so-and-so is a great catcher. So-and-so is a great catcher. They really have no idea what those other catchers are like. So I have a feeling that, and we're assuming, of course, that pitchers are being completely honest, that even if they were trying their best to be honest and talk about whether they thought they called a good game or not, I think they would probably overwhelmingly think nicer things than they ought to about their catchers. But, you know, they may be more savvy about that than I might expect. Neither of these catchers has played all that much during the period that you looked at,

particularly Ellis. So I imagine that to be worth 20 runs over that period when he mostly wasn't starting on a per game or per pitch basis, he would be at the very top of the list among catchers in this skill? Yes. Now, he is one of the top 10 or 15 people in this skill by a rate basis, to the extent it is a skill. And he's actually got an awful, he actually has the only people with as many chances as he has that are higher than him are Sal Perez and Matt Wieters. So that's a pretty good company.

And, yeah, I would say that on a rate basis, he is certainly – I mean, Ellis rates over the past five years, he's like 14th, 15th. And Ruiz is like 40th. So, you know, and that's out of 195 guys. So both well above average. But certainly Ellis does seem to be slightly in a different class. Okay. And so if you had to compare these two guys for the rest of the season, just overall, based on all the things they do, neither guy has good framing ratings lately, at least.

According to BP's offensive predictions, they're actually projected to be almost the same over the rest of the year. I know that Ruiz has been much better this year, but AJ Ellis was much better last year. And I don't know, maybe the Dodgers can appraise that better than a projection system can. And maybe Ellis is actually less likely to hit against left-handers for the rest of this I don't know, maybe the Dodgers can appraise that better than a projection system can, and maybe Ellis is actually less likely to hit against left-handers for the rest of this year. But trying to bake in everything that we know, what would you say is the difference, if any, between these guys, even allowing for the fact that neither of them is going to play all that much anyway, so even if there were a big difference, it wouldn't be that big a difference.

But based on what you know, what do you think? Well, I went to Andy McCullough's write-up because I wanted to, you know, I figured that was a good place to start in terms of what the ostensible basis for this was. And the thing that I kept seeing was references by the front office to Ruiz's ability to hit left-handed pitching. And the Dodgers apparently are very sensitive to the fact that facing left-handed pitching is not their strong point. And I guess that more recently demonstrated. So the ostensible basis is that Carlos Ruiz has hit left-handers really well. You know, the thing with that is, though, that A.J. Ellis has also hit left-handers really well.

I mean, his sort of multi-year platoon split, which at baseball prospectus is sort of, you know, it counts your current year the most, and then it sort of decreases over time. He has a 316 true average against left-handers, which is awfully good. Certainly nothing to complain about. I mean, Ruiz is 324, but that's, you know, considering two guys who are both backups, I can't imagine that's the reason why you would make a trade like this.

The one thing I will say is that whereas Ruiz has kept up that level of hitting against lefties this year, Ellis obviously has not. I mean, just not in general, but also against lefties, he is only at a 70, you know, OPS plus. So I think this suggests more to me, based on that,

that the Dodgers simply think that A.J. Ellis is just done. I mean, he just can't hit anymore. And they are essentially saying, look, we need somebody who can at least hit certain pitchers when we put him in the lineup. And they are concerned, I assume, about A.J. Ellis and their view essentially being an automatic out at the plate. That's really the only thing I can see. And frankly, in terms of deciding whether plate recognition is going down, bat speed is going down, that's something that their staff is probably best equipped to diagnose. Right. Yeah. Because if we were just looking from

afar, if we were to use our projection systems and your catching stats and all of that and roll it all together, if anything, Ellis would probably be the better player, I would think, just based on the fact that his framing ratings haven't been quite as bad and his game calling has been better and the offense, at least historically speaking, hasn't been much different. So just going by that, you wouldn't say this is a big enough upgrade to risk upsetting your best player and many of your other players. So there must be more to it so i guess we can discuss that aspect of things and i think a lot of people made the connection i know dylan hernandez drew the connection in his la times column between the fact that this news was announced and then immediately after that the dodgers came within one out one batter of getting no hit, which is probably...

It's probably on purpose. It could be on purpose. Yeah, I don't know. If you're Andrew Friedman making this move and hoping that you'll get away with it, it's like the worst possible outcome is that the team could almost get no hit that night. And so you wonder whether that was morale or whether it was some sort of protest or whether it was just extremely bad timing for him. But what do you guys think about this? Because this has been a discussion for a while about Kershaw wanting Ellis to catch him

and the Dodgers wanting other people to catch him because they have Yasmany Grandal, who's very good at everything. And in theory, the more he plays, the better off they are. By the way, Jonathan, how is Grandal as a game caller? Yeah, he's not good. He is from 2011 to 2015. He is giving up 13 runs. He has the worst. He may have one of the worst game calling uh rates of all to be quite

honest so he is down that he is to the extent that there is such a thing as game management and and game calling he is sort of operating in complete defiance of it which just to just to be clear is totally irrelevant to this discussion with the ruiz not, to our knowledge, acquired to replace Grondahl. Grondahl is still the starter and will still play, right? And Ruiz, and Ruiz as established, or at least as Ben described, there's no clear indication that he's actually a better baseball player than Ellis anyway. So that's interesting, but also I think actually irrelevant, right? Well, I think it's relevant in that the Dodgers want Grandal playing more because he can hit and he can frame. He's good at all kinds of things.

Oh, so you're saying that actually the trade makes it so they can play Grandal more because they're not locked into the every fifth day he must sit. Ruiz is the new guy, even though he's old and veteran and respected and all that, but he doesn't have the relationship with Kershaw. And so in theory, it would be easier to wean Kershaw off of a secondary catcher than it was when that catcher was Ellis. But in doing so, you have to trade his best friend to Philadelphia. So I guess it's a way. I did wonder whether the thinking behind this was

get it out of the way now, pull the bandaid off, and it will stop being a story by October. Well, the other thing I would say is that I was wondering if this was sort of in process when at a time when they thought Kershaw might not be coming back. And who knows what they think at the moment, whether they think he actually will. And so perhaps that made it particularly attractive because they had a person on the staff whose sole believed value was catching somebody who they hoped would be back, but they certainly couldn't count on. And so, you know, since that is his one reason for being on the staff, that certainly didn't help. Yeah. One of two, though. He's also, I think even in a world without Kershaw, the Dodgers as a whole, if you pulled the clubhouse, would have said that Ellis is the leader, the chemistry guy. He's the guy you, one of the guys at least, that reporters go to to get the realm of intangibles and chemistry and psychology and all those things, his perceived value, I think, goes beyond Kershaw.

But I also had that same thought. Yeah, and that's an interesting thing to me because we do see guys who are perceived as good clubhouse presences seem to go from team to team at times, even though they might not be all that great statistically anymore. There's some perceived value to them. And I wonder whether you can just swap a player and expect that same clubhouse presence to apply, because these are two players who had been with their respected teams for their entire careers since they were 27. That's when they both debuted. Ellis with the Dodgers, Ruiz with the Phillies. Ruiz, of course, has won a World Series in Philly. He was one of the oldest, longest tenured people in the clubhouse. And so I always wonder whether you can

just take that guy and expect whatever value he's adding to transfer to a completely different team where I guess he's being reunited with Chase Utley, but for the most part, people don't know him apart from him just being someone they've seen across the field. And so I don't know whether you can just plug and play like that, like you can statistically speaking. So I don't know that it matters anyway either because the, I, so one question is whether AJ Ellis actually brings true value with his leadership that can or can't be replaced by another player. That's a that's a that's a question that we can't answer. There's another question we can't answer, though, which is that even if he doesn't, but the Dodgers as a team think he does, then there becomes it becomes sort of this meta grievance where whether or not they actually lose anything in the swap, they have now been told by the front office, we don't care what you think. We don't care about your relationships with each other. We don't care if you think that he does contribute leadership. We are boldly stating that we consider you to be simpletons who believe in witchcraft, right? And so then it becomes a second tier

possibility for anguish and grievance, which seems to me plausible that that is a real loss, that having your club mad at you as a front office, particularly going into the final month when you want to have good vibes and all that. And also, it creates this moment in time where if the Dodgers lose three in a row, it's going to be panic. They were not at risk of panic before this. They were just a baseball team playing good baseball, and they'd win or they'd lose, and maybe they'd lose three or maybe they'd win three, but it's a long season.

In fact, they were a team that was on a great run. That was on a great run. That run had been attributed in part to chemistry and everyone getting along and being in a great mood. Yeah, so this is the Cespedes trade times a thousand where if things start going bad, the story, all of the oxygen goes to the story of the Dodgers missing Ellis. How could they have done this? Like, you're going to have the hottest takes in the world in the next month if they don't win. It's actually kind of the same thing with the DePodesta trade, where it wasn't that trading Guillermo Mota and Paul LaDuca for Hisap Choi and Brad Penny was a bad trade. It was a great trade.

And in some ways, it even was a trade that paid off even in the moment until Brad Penny got injured. But because it was like sort of this mile marker in the season that everybody clung on to, it in a way cost Paul DePodesta his job. So I don't think that like, for instance, this is likely to lead to Andrew Friedman losing his job by any means, but it's going to lead to columns about whether he next few weeks. And it seems like a wholly unnecessary risk, even absent the actual possible tangible loss of AJ Ellis's intangibles. applicable comparison, but I was also wondering about when the Cardinals front office, it was either last year or the year before, was it when they shipped out Alan Craig and it was widely perceived as basically that they couldn't trust their manager to not play certain people. And so if they couldn't trust them to make the best lineup decisions, they were simply going to

remove certain players from the team. So that could no longer be an obstacle. I don't sense that that is it here, but whenever everyone that someone in the clubhouse loves gets abruptly traded, that suggests to me that sometimes there's a belief that some sort of directive from the front office was not being obeyed to their satisfaction, and so they made sure it would be obeyed going forward. Does anyone else get that sense here, or do you think it's just a straight trade for other reasons? I don't know. I would think that it's less about managing Dave Roberts and more about managing Kershaw. Like, if I had to take this beyond what I could possibly actually comment on,

I would imagine that it's game two of the NLCS, and Kershaw is pitching, because, of course, he pitched twice in the first series. That's why he's pitching game two in case you're furiously writing me letters asking why he's pitching game two. Because Rochelle is starting game one, obviously. Obviously. So and A.J. Ellis is in and A.J. Ellis has won for his last 32. And Bill Plaschke is writing a column about that. and Bill Plaschke's writing a column about that.

And they really want him, they really wish that they could not have AJ Ellis in this game, but they know it would be drama and a story. And so that like maybe in anticipation of that, they go, well, do it now. Take it out of Kershaw's hands, basically. But again, that's like wildly speculative. I wish I hadn't said it well i mean this breakup was coming one way or another probably because aj alice is about to be

a free agent and maybe this is the the time when the front office wanted to draw the line and say okay we're not signing up for another aj alice season so rather than make this an off-season issue we'll just get it out of the way now. And maybe we'll actually make ourselves better in October if they believe that Ruiz is better. But you could probably make a pretty good case that this would be less disruptive in the offseason if you just choose not to re-sign a guy. It's a little bit different from sending him out in the middle of a very tense pennant race. It seems like there's more potential to screw things up now. Jonathan could be right.

Maybe they aren't as optimistic as the public statements that Kershaw will be back. But I guess you could also make the case that maybe it's even more important to coddle Kershaw now in case his confidence is affected by all the time he's missed and any lingering effects of the injury. Maybe it's even more crucial that you have his personal catcher there to shepherd him through his return. Yeah, and guys leave as free agents. That's part of the game. I mean, guys get traded also out of pennant races, but it's a much different act to let somebody leave as a free agent and negotiate with other teams and sign somewhere else than it is to say, well, we're on the brink of a division title in a postseason run and you have to move to Philadelphia. Yeah. Yeah. And you and I went through similar things with the Stompers last summer when we were working with the team and working on the book. There were

players that we didn't really want or we didn't want in their present roles. And those players had attachments to everyone else and they were the veterans. And so we had to deal with that. And I was more in the burn the ships, burn the backup catcher camp, I think, getting rid of those guys. But in part, I was willing to do that because we were there for three months and it was a discreet event. And I figured we're not here for the long run. I was willing to do that because we were there for three months and it was a discreet event. And I figured we're not here for the long run. We probably won't see many of these people again.

So the long-term ramifications can't be that significant. So I just want to think about now and think about the short term. But the Dodgers and Freedmen don't really have that luxury. So they have to consider Kershaw's future with the team. And this is something that could color that down the road. But I guess the real objection to it is just the timing. And I know that some people have pointed out we're so close to rosters expanding. Yeah, like that's the weirdest thing is I don't get why AJ Ellis was in this trade. Right.

It can't be like the Phillies said has to be AJ Ellis or we're not doing this thing. I mean, I guess they need a catcher for the rest of the season, but I'm sure they could come up with someone. So why get rid of AJ Ellis now when you're several days away from just being able to carry him and not really use him with none of these ramifications. I mean, if he's there, as long as he's there, Kershaw is going to want to pitch to him. So if you think it's really important that you divorce those two, then you have to have a clean break and you have to have him gone. But just, it just seems like you could have gotten most of the benefits that you think you're getting from this move without all of the heartache if you had just held on to him until the end of the year and just carried him at the back end of the roster so you know it when i was a young man it used to be that

um you'd go oh well this guy's worth 2.1 you know he projects to 2.1 war and this other guy projects to 2.2 war so the choice is easy right to 2.2 war, so the choice is easy. That was a very simplistic way of looking at things, and I was a very simplistic person. And then you get smarter, and you realize not only are there huge error bars in performance, but there's also all these things that war does not capture, such as his game calling, but also such as his temperament and whether you want him being around your other 24 guys and all that sort of stuff. And I think probably, and I say I, but I think that, you know, that describes a lot of us

and many of the people who I follow on Twitter and so on. And I would sort of speculate that we have kind of gone the other way where now we go team makes a trade or decision is made and you got your 2.1 war guy and your 2.2 war guy, but you go, oh, but the 2.2 war guy is a, or the 2.1 war guy is a chemistry guy. And so you immediately default to, well, we can't say who are we to judge? It's impossible to know. Chemistry is very important. We just can't measure it. And so we maybe defer a bit too much to the players' descriptions of their clubhouse and to the great unknown. But really what I think it all adds up to is that if you don't know, if you have a decision where you don't know enough of the details to really

make an informed decision, you shouldn't be that sure either way. And you go back to the heuristic or to the way of viewing the world that you're most confident in. And you could say, well, I'm most confident that Clayton Kershaw knows what's good for his career, for his pitching, and I defer to him on that matter. for his career, for his pitching, and I defer to him on that matter. Or if you're the Dodgers, you could say the thing that I am most confident in is the observed performance of these two catchers. We are confident that Carlos Ruiz is a better baseball player. The rest is the fog of baseball. So we're simply like we're – it's not an easy decision.

It's a hard decision. But we're simply going with the thing that we're most confident in. And that's, I guess, the best way of looking at this is that they just thought, hey, this could work. It could not work. There's a thousand different details that we can't even see. And given that, rather than grasp around in the dark aimlessly, we'll just do the simple thing. Like the simplest answer to them probably is Ruiz is a better baseball player than AJ Ellis. And we'll manage the rest. We'll deal with the rest.

And for all they know, maybe this inspires the Dodgers clubhouse. Maybe they play the season out for AJ. Maybe, you know, maybe they win the next three games and it's all about how they finally got the, you finally got the left-handed batter they needed or something. And it is the best thing that ever happened to them. There's no way of knowing, so you just go with what you know. Yeah, it's interesting. If you believe that the Dodgers got shut out and almost no hit last night because of this trade, or in some degree because of this trade, then that probably wipes out whatever difference, whatever upgrade you're getting

From going to Ellis to Ruiz If you're losing a game Against your division rival Or even if you think it was worth Half the loss or something Oh come on you don't think it was worth half the loss I don't but I'm saying People are already writing

About it that way No people are and so maybe you've lost. Maybe any hope that you had of getting a narrative bump out of it is done. But that doesn't mean that it had to have happened. It could have gone the other way. They could have scored 14 runs off more in the first two and a third innings. I mean, look, I think this is the least comprehensible trade of the season. To me, this is weirder than the Shelby Miller trade. Like I just do not

get it at all. One bit. I think it's probably a fairly low stakes disaster. Uh, and I don't get it one bit, but I am not ready to blame Andrew Friedman for Matt Moore looking good last night either. Yeah. I can see some value in kind of putting your foot down and showing who's boss. Like that's another thing that we went through with the stockers last year is like you make a decision just to show that you can make future decisions just because you hope that it will benefit you in the long run. So maybe there's some value to Andrew Friedman stating very plainly, this is my team. This is the front office's team. You guys don't get to decide who's

on it or who plays. But if that comes at the cost of potentially screwing up this season, then that's not worth it. Yeah. And like, I can definitely see people grinding their teeth and going, AJ Ellis doesn't deserve a roster spot just because he's friends with the ace. But I kind of trust that there's more to it than that. And that, you know, AJ Ellis does have some value, some value. If, look, if this was trading AJ Ellis for, Miguel Montero is a lot better than Carlos Ruiz, right? Sure. If it was AJ Ellis for Miguel Montero, I'd say, okay, I get that. Even for what seemed like maybe it's only 60 plate appearances, maybe it's not the biggest trade in the world,

maybe you're still risking all this, but I see it. It's obvious. The problem is that it seems like such an unnecessary deal to do this for. That's all. Miguel Montero's batting 197. Three points better than A.J. Ellis. Geez, give me another name.

Who's a good catcher? Brian McCann. Brian McCann. If they did it for Brian McCann. All right. Jonathan, you have any closing thoughts on Ellis? I do not. I also think it's a little strange.

Do you have any closing thoughts on Ellis? I do not. I also think it's a little strange. And I was also, the other thing we haven't talked about is that the Dodgers also agreed to include two additional players in order to get, to get Ruiz. So part of that may be because Ruiz has a team option for next year. And they really wanted his,

his chemistry was best enjoyed long-term. But I, you know, they really wanted him. They not only really wanted to get rid of AJ Ellis, they really wanted him. And I find that interesting. Maybe they included the two players to unload Ellis's contract. I don't know what the dollars, does anybody know what the dollars are going back and forth?

Ruiz is making $8.5 million this year, and Ellis is making $4.5. Are the Phillies, though, taking on all of Ellis' salary? Like $1.5 million? I don't know. I don't know. Okay, by the way, I should have known. Sorry, everybody, but I didn't know about the club option. That makes a little bit more sense now,

because he's a pretty easy pickup at $4 million. Yeah, $4.5 million, yeah. million. Yeah, four and a half, yeah. So, yeah, now it – okay, fine. I take back my last rant. Yeah. Delete your fire emojis. I mean, it's nice, I guess, to be able to cross backup catcher off your list for next year,

but it's not like you couldn't have gotten someone as good as Carlos Ruiz probably to be your backup catcher. For $4 million. Yeah. Yeah. I think you're right. Okay. Back on.

Rant on. All right. Any closing thoughts on Matt Moore's pitch count since we're talking about last night's game and it was the highest pitch count in a start this year by a guy who has had many durability problems? I don't know. It didn't bother me too much. I don't know. When he's on, he is so good.

He's just a fascinating player to watch, and I don't know. It's one of those things that managers, as you know, get kind of sentimental about. Yeah, it's really hard for me to have the conversation about whether he should have gone out there, because I have such a different opinion of no-hitters than Matt Moore and Bruce Bochy do. And so I don't really care that much about him getting a no-hitter. If it were a perfect game, then that would be something else. But they do, and who am I to tell them what to value in this world? I thought it was fitting that the starting pitcher on the other team was Ross Stripling,

who I think that one of the other worst moves that a baseball team made this year was pulling Ross Stripling from his no-hitter in his major league debut. And to sort of see him later in the season, he hasn't developed into anything else. He is just a guy who's going to have a short career and will never have a no-hitter. I was reminded of that move and

I don't know. I think it's worth caring about what players care about. I don't know. I think it's worth caring about that. That's all. Alright, so we will end there. You can find Jonathan on Twitter At Bakla

How do I say that? Spell it out for everyone B-A-C-H-L-A-W Alright, and you can find his writing At Baseball Perspectives usually And that is it for today Jonathan, thanks for coming on Hey, thank you Alright, if you want something to listen to this weekend

The Sonoma Stompers are going for their first ever Championship in the Pacific Association Hey, thank you. Or follow the Stompers on Twitter at Sonoma Stompers. And we teased former Stomper Dylan Stoops' first start for the Padres high A team on our show on Wednesday. He had a great start. He went five innings. He struck out eight. Walked none. Allowed one run. Sam wrote an article about it at BP. So you can go check out his scouting report if you're interested.

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Leave us a review on Amazon and Goodreads if you like it. You can get the discounted price of $30 on a one-year subscription to the Play Index by going to baseballreference.com and using the coupon code BP when you like it. You can get the discounted price of $30 on a one-year subscription to the Play Index by going to baseballreference.com and using the coupon code BP when you sign up. I did an episode of the Ringer MLB show yesterday with Kevin Goldstein, talking about the Astros signing of Uli Eski-Gordiel. I also spoke to Stan Conte, the Dodgers' former trainer,

about how the Dodgers have been winning so much this year, despite all their injuries. We did not talk about the emotional pain inflicted by the AJ Ellis trade because it hadn't happened yet, but it was a fun episode. So you can go check that out. You can email me and Sam at podcast at baseball perspectives.com or by

messaging us through Patreon. Have a wonderful weekend. We will talk to you next week. I'll be thinking of you