Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 974: Survey Says

Episode Date: November 9, 2016

Ben and Sam review the results from Jerry Crasnick’s 2015 MLB executive survey and discuss the latest installment in his long-running survey series.

When you comfort me, and doesn't bring me comfort actually, when you comfort me, true life in haiku, and balances the phrase out of the blue, the meaning shown to you. of the blue, the meat land shown to you. Good morning, and welcome to episode 774? 200 off. 974. That's it. Of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives, brought to you by the Play Index at baseballreference.com, and our Patreon supporters. I'm Sam Miller of ESPN, along with Ben Lindberg of The Ringer.

Hi, Ben. Hello. How's it going? It's been better. Let's talk about the Krasnicks. Sure. All right. This has become something of an annual tradition.

Every year, Jerry Krasnick, the great, great ESPN writer, polls Major League Baseball executives on some hot topics of the day, difficult questions both about where players are likely to go, maybe how much they're likely to get, or which player they would prefer among close free agents, or how players are likely to do. So these are sort of questions where you could debate them, and he polls GMs, executives, are sort of questions where you could debate them. And he asked, he polls GMs,

executives, that sort of thing, and gets their responses, which is already good, fun, worth reading. But I love it because GMs are horrible at projecting, predicting these things. They're horrible even at predicting like sort of easily verified in retrospect questions about how the market is going to behave. And it is a relatively, I would say, benign reminder that even elites are terrible at projecting what's going to happen when November rolls around. So, Ben, we're going to talk about last year's Krasnicks. We're going to talk about this year's Krasnicks. And we're going to call it a day. All right. All right. So quickly, we'll go over last year's Krasnicks. We're going to talk about this year's Krasnicks. And we're going to call it a day. All right.

All right. So quickly we'll go over last year's Krasnicks. First question was, which staff ace would you be more comfortable giving a nine-figure deal? David Price or Zach Greinke? Have we gone over these? Years pass very quickly these days. We might have done a mid-season Krasnick update, but I don't think... Yeah, we definitely didn't do a close to the end of the season update, so

safe to proceed. So I'm going to ask what the... You're going to tell me... You're not looking at this page, are you? No. Okay. So you're going to tell me what the correct answer is in retrospect, and I'm going to tell you how the GMs did, And we're going to see if the GMs did better than coin flip. In my review of a decade of these, I found that I think they get the equivalent of 52% right on coin flip style questions. So they're just slightly better than blind chance. So, so cranky or price, which staff ace would you be more comfortable giving a nine figurefigure deal to? That is a tough one. The correct answer is neither, but I guess if you had to pick one. So we are evaluating these just based on which has turned out to be better.

Yes. Right, not which was the better choice at the time. No, of course not. You're going to tell me whether they were. I'm going to tell you whether they were right based on what we know now all right i suppose i'll say price they said cranky yeah what uh one executive called it a push which is a good reminder in these uh things that a lot of gms go off script and so if they it was none said neither and uh and i guarantee you based on the history of these questions that many of them considered neither and would have said neither if they'd wanted to, but they didn't.

Nobody said neither. Anyway, most won't though. All right, Granke won that one. It was close, 19-14. If we consider the answer to be close to a push, then it is close to a push right now. I would give them neither credit nor say that they were wrong. Okay. Which former Uber prospect outfielder will be the better performer over the life of his next contract? Justin Upton or Jason Hayward?

It's another neither. Last year's free agency was unbelievable. Really terrible. Yeah, I guess you'd have to go with Upton. Yeah, you'd have to go with Upton, I think. I mean, Hayward got benched in the postseason of this year. Yeah, he still played good defense, and I don't know. How did their overall value compare? It might have been similar because Upton had a bad offensive year by his standards too, not nearly as bad as Hayward's. But if Hayward was worth He was worth 1.6

Fangraphs war Upton is 2 on reference And I think Hayward was 1.7 on reference Uh huh Upton's 1.4 on Fangraphs So basically the same So Hayward got paid more of course right And longer deal

Hayward got paid more longer deal Who ages better from here Hayward's got the better body but Hayward can't hit He just can't hit Right, I mean maybe they could make him hit I don't know He's not getting his dessert Until they hit

Alright You said Upton I think Upton is right at this moment in time Hayward was the pick, 20-14 Which free agent power hitter would you rather invest in for the long haul, Chris Davis or Jonas Cespedes? Guess you'd go with Cespedes. Yeah, clearly it was 17-15 with two respondents saying neither in favor of Cespedes.

So they narrowly got that one right. Which playoff hero is more likely to maintain his October success during his next contract? Colby Rasmus or daniel murphy pretty clear answer there and murphy and it was a pretty clear response murphy 22 rasmus 9 3 had no preference which again just it's an anonymous survey i guess that's just is that just apathy like i busy. I don't have time to think about this or what? I don't know what your possible reason would be. debates with my young daughter. And, you know, she's five. Like, I could very easily just do what my parents did and just let me, you know, let her talk and then assume she'll grow out of whatever weird opinion she has. And usually I do, or I encourage the weird opinion. But sometimes I just really, like, feel like I want to win this argument. And so maybe I feel like these are people who take it too seriously and just cannot give an answer they don't believe in. They just cannot,

like there is no place, no corner of the world, no matter how small or unseen, where they feel comfortable having an inexact definition of truth. And so they just take it really seriously. That's what I think. Mm-hmm. Okay. All right. Which of these free agents is more likely to bounce back from his disappointing 2015 season, Ian Desmond or Jeff Samarja?

Desmond. Well, I mean, they were both pretty good, but I guess I'd go with Desmond. Yeah, I would also go with Desmond. And they went with Samarja. These are all very close. This might be, just in terms of finding the perfect middle ground where you're going to get a 50-50 response, like where you set the over-under, I guess,

this might be Krasnick's best year. These are all very narrow, except for the Rasmus Murphy one. If the Cubs trade a young infielder in the offseason, is it more likely to be Castro or Baez? Okay, well, it's the one they traded. Yeah, and they got that right, 20 to 11. Which pending free agent has the best chance of returning to the Royals? Gordon, Cueto, or Zobrist?

Okay, the one who returned? Yeah, Gordon was the popular pick by Cueto, or Zobrist. Okay, the one who returned? Yeah, Gordon was the popular pick by a lot, and that's all. We did go over these early in the season, I think, or sometime in the season. I remember talking about that one. So the two that had a clear answer and that were market-based, they were correct on. The five that were market-based, they were correct on. The five that were about rating players,

I would say that they got the one clear one right by a lot, Murphy over Rasmus. They got the second basically clear one, Cespedes over Davis right, except it was by a narrow margin, so almost no preference. And then the other three turned out to be really close and actually hard to say, out to be really close and

actually hard to say, and their votes were close and hard to say. So this is the GM's best year, too. You could make a case that they answered every one of these broadly correctly, either by getting it right when it could be gotten right, or by showing no strong preference in the ones where there really was no strong preference to be right. So this is history making. Arguably seven out of seven on the Krasnicks. All right. Okie doke. On to the next one. I forget how we've played this game in the past. Are you reading them? Do you have it in front of you? No, I did read them on Friday or yeah, whenever it came out, but I don't think I remember the responses, but I don't know. I might. Hmm. Maybe you should read them and I should guess the response.

Okay. So you haven't read the responses? I have not yet read the responses. All right. So we'll reverse it. Okay. So the first one is which free agent closer, Kenley Jansen, Roldis Chapman, or Mark Melanson, will provide the best value for the contract he's likely to command? Oh, well, this is a tough one for the GMs because they have to predict two things they're bad at predicting. Yeah, contract and how good you are. Yeah, as a ratio to each other, too. They have to do math as well on the fly.

So this is a tough one. I will say before I guess what their answer is that I think in retrospect, we talked at, I think we talked at the time of the deadline trades about how odd it was to me that Chapman and Melanson have been essentially the best, you know, equal, not the best, but equal relievers for any, you know, reasonable length of time. If you go back one year, two years, three years, or four years, they have been equally good at run suppression. And yet, they're viewed totally differently. And even when the market had a choice, and of course, it's very complicated, the timing of trades and so on, and what the Cubs decided to give up and

all that. But when the market had a choice on the trade deadline, Chapman got, you know, cost a lot more than Melanson did. And, you know, Melanson, I think, validated that position. He had a, after going to the Nationals, he had a 1.82 ERA. He had, you know, 27 strikeouts and three walks. He was as, you know, basically as good as you would ever bank on a reliever being, and that was consistent with his career performance. And Chapman, the one who's supposed to be the one who's unhittable, and you get him for the one inning that the whole season depends on in the World Series, got into that inning and turned out to not actually be invincible, as none of these pitchers

are. And probably the gap between him and melanson is is tiny tiny and yet seems to be a lot bigger i so i would say that my own personal answer is that um melanson will end up getting paid fairly considerably less than chapman maybe maybe also partly because of age but but you know i would say relatively uh big gap between them and i don't see them being having a gap between them as pitchers particularly. So my own answer would be Melanson. I believe that most GMs will answer this question almost entirely on the basis of who is better. And they all think Chapman is better.

They all think Jansen is the second best. And they probably all think Melanson is the worst. So I will say that the answers answers how many GMs were surveyed 36 36 I'm guessing The breakdown is going to be 24 9 3 with Chapman at 24 Jansen At 9 Melanson 3 that was

Incorrect so the GMs and various Other personnel have Jansen at the top At 19 And apparently that's because He broke into baseball as a catcher And the theory is that he would have Less wear and tear on his arm

At least that's what Krasnick cites And then Melanson in second With 11 and then Chapman In 6 And two people didn't answer Yeah And let's see. So one of the assistant GMs did say basically what you said.

He said, I'll go with Melanson simply because I think he gets about half what the other two guys get. He's not as dominant, but he's certainly better than 50% of those two guys. So that's not exactly what you said. I like, okay. I read that quote as he's better than one of those two guys, and it seemed very coy, but he's better than half of those guys is what the GM is saying. Right, yeah. One ALGM says about Chapman, he does it the easiest of the three,

which I think makes him the best bet to maintain what he has. I don't really think of Chapman as a guy who does it that easy, but I guess it's easy. I guess he throws really hard and it's almost all he has to do. So I guess that's easy. But maybe it's just because he's so dependent on the velocity. I mean, he could lose a lot on his fastball. And at least in theory, it would still be a good fastball. So I guess that makes sense.

I don't even know what that would mean. What does easiest mean, do you think? I don't know whether easiest means like mechanically maybe or... You could say it's the most clearly natural gifts and like he doesn't have to practice. But I assume that that means that his saves are cleaner, less stressful. You put him in and you don't worry about it because he's so dominant. But Melanson has a better whip over the past four years,

and he's allowed fewer home runs over the past four years. And those are basically the two ways that saves get busted, or that they get scary, I should say, is that either you put runners on and then you're more scared or you have the threat of a home run on every pitch. And Melanson is like the least homer-prone closer and allows fewer base runners than these other two guys. Yeah.

So he makes it look pretty easy is what I'm saying. Yeah, definitely. I don't know. And at least one person, the AL scout, cites Chapman's off-the-field problems, which is a valid thing to take into account. All right, next question. Do you think the Cleveland Indians will trade Andrew Miller this offseason? If yes, where will he wind up?

I think over the weekend, the Indians said that they were not going to trade him or there was some rumor that they were not looking to trade him or something like that, which could be posturing, could be their position right now, but things change, or it could be the actual honest to goodness truth. I would say I'm more confident they won't trade him because I read that than I would have been a few days earlier. This would be an interesting question to add Cody Allen to, because I do think they will trade one of them. I don't know which one it will be.

And if I were them, I don't know. I'd have to hear what was being offered. Okay, so I think that the GMs will answer. The second question here is really messing with me, because I feel like if all the GMs said no, that Krasnick would have just chopped the second question from the story. So that to me is a hint that a somewhat significant number said yes. Krasnick, you're so good at making me care. ah, Krasnick, you're so good at making me care. I would have said that the answer would be overwhelmingly no,

but I'm now going to say that it is 21 no's. No, I'm going to say 23 no's, 13 yes's. It was actually overwhelmingly no. So all but two, or I guess all but three. There were 35 no's, two yes's, and one who said they'd trade him at the deadline. So of the two yes voters, one said the Dodgers, one said the Mets. But yeah, your instinct was correct. No, no, my instinct was. Well, your instinct except for parsing Krasnick's question phrasing.

By the way, that's 37 respondents. Yeah. And so you told me 36 for the first one. So he's picking up GMs as he goes along. There were 36 with the first one, but two non-responses. I see. And then this one is 37 plus. And then this one was 37 plus the deadline.

All right. I'm bad at this. All right. Number three, which free agent slugger do you like best? Edwin Encarnacion, Yoannis Cespedes, Mark Trumbo, or Jose Bautista? I saw some of the early free agent rankings and was shocked by how low Jose Bautista was. I think I saw one of the big ones, I think, had him not in the top 10 free agents. And of course, this is a terrible year for free agents. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe he was at the

bottom of the top 10. But I personally think that Jose Bautista is still really good and that, you know, he's getting up there and I'm not sure I would want to give him a massive deal. But I don't know that I see permanent decline yet there. But to the question, which free agent slugger do you like best? Well, it's not going to be Trumbo at all. I will say zero, say Trumbo. Nothing against Trumbo, but this is a pretty good list. Cespedes plays, if the emphasis is on slugger, if it's on whose slugging do you like best, I think Encarnacion would win this. I think that if you go into this offseason saying we need a big bat, Encarnacion's big bat looks the biggest. But of course, if the emphasis is on total players, Cespedes plays a position and

would probably have, I mean, obviously, if you're an NL team, how do you answer this question? You have three DHs and a Cespedes, kind of. So for that reason, I will say that Cespedes will win, that he will get the NL vote especially, and that it will be 23 Cespedes, 13 Encarnacion 1 Batista and 1 will it be none, no preference don't like any of them or a tie

I will go no preference so there are actually half responses in this one and I don't know what that means there's no explanation of what a half response is. Oh, wonderful.

I think a half response just means somebody named two. Okay. And probably was very particular about how he was represented. And so Krasnick's like, okay, cool, I'll put you down as a both. And the guy goes, no, you better put me down as a half for each. Yeah. So the winner is Encarnacion at 17 and a half, narrowly edging out Cespedes at 17.

Oh, maybe that's why. Maybe that's why it's the halves. Tiebreaker. Yeah. Yeah, maybe. And then it's Trumbo at one and a half and Bautista at one. Good for Trumbo. Mm-hmm.

Yeah. All right. I'm bad. Number four. I'm doing bad, Ben. Well, you're doing bad at predicting what GM say, but maybe you're doing well at predicting the correct answers. It is really like they say. You can't predict baseball predictions.

Yeah. Number four. What's the most likely scenario? Number one, Ryan Braun gets traded. Number two, Yasiel Puig gets traded. Number three, they get traded for each other. Oh, nobody with a conscience could pick three. Right?

I'm not giving anything away i think that overwhelmingly gms around baseball probably think puig is going to get traded i think that they largely believe braun will or at least a lot do but less likely than puig i think that you would have if if everybody answered if everybody read this question correctly and took it seriously, I think that it would be unanimous for Puig. I don't think that they will respond unanimously for Puig, though. I think that you'll get some boths and you'll get one guy who says three. But I'm going 31-5-1-1.

All right. It is Bron gets traded 13 They're traded for each other 9 No Puig gets traded 9 No So what this is saying What this is saying is that

People think that it is 50% likely People who think Puig is going to get traded Believe that it is 50% likely That people who think Puig is going to get traded believe that it is 50% likely that he will get traded for Ryan Braun and 50% likely that he will be traded for anything else, the entire field of trade possibilities. Yeah, I don't think these responses make logical sense. And Braun as well. It's like they think that the brewers go out with Braun, go out to take Braun shopping, and are 40% likely to get Puig and 60% likely to trade with any other team in baseball for anything else. All right.

Yeah, I prefer your answer. What do you think are the chances that Ryan Braun and Puig get traded for each other this year? Like if it was a betting market, when would you buy? I'd give it about a 20% probability. I'd give it a 3% probability. What are the odds? What about

for Braun gets traded? 45? Yeah, I'd go 35. 30 or 35. The Brewers aren't that far away. And Braun could be part of a... He could definitely be part of the next good Brewers team, in or 35. The Brewers aren't that far away. And, you know, Braun could be part of a – Braun could definitely be part of the next good Brewers team, in my opinion. And then when would you buy at Puig gets traded? 60?

Yeah, I'd go like 75 or 80. Okay. Can I just say, they did have – you hear different things about what the market was like for puig last summer there there i think there was a general consensus in in the public sphere that puig might might never play for the dodgers again uh and yet you also heard that there were teams that asked about him and the dodgers weren't Just giving him away so You could you could go too confident In either direction based on like

The slivers of information that we got That were somewhat contradictory about Puig Last summer yeah I wouldn't be Too confident just because as I Think some of the people in the Krasnick Responses mentioned they don't want to Look bad like they ran him out of town And then he becomes a superstar somewhere else

Which is quite plausible So yeah or is all right yeah all right this one's gonna be tough for you to answer because it's very open-ended so it just says which free agent this winter do you think will land a contract that's far and far above and beyond what people expect i.e the what were they thinking award oh well rich hill well so let me give let me give more answers than that somebody i forget who reported that uh maybe rosenthal i think it was rosenthal who said the craziest thing that he heard a gm say in the gm meetings was that yvonne nova was going to get five years and 75 million. So like that would be a good one. Yvonne Nova is the leading vote getter. Okay. Eight responses. All right. So I'll just leave it at Nova and Rich Hill. And let me think of one hitter. Who's a hitter who is going

to get way overpaid? I guess I'll say Encarnacion. Rich Hill is tied with Jeremy Hellickson for second with six responses each. The top hitter is Desmond with five, but then Encarnacion is the second ranked hitter at three. And pretty much everybody is named. Yeah, there are a bunch of Cashners, Cespedes, Reddick, Saunders, Batista, Trumbo, Chapman, Turner, Napoli, Wieters, Holland, Blanton, Castro. In case it sounds weird, I am scrolling behind Ben. Redick, Saunders, Batista, Trumbo, Chapman, Turner, Napoli, Wieders, Holland, Blanton, Castro. In case it sounds weird, I am scrolling behind Ben. So I'm now looking at the responses. So I'm not looking in advance,

but if I seem familiar with some of the text here, it's because I'm reading it. Josh Reddick doesn't seem like a guy who's going to get a what were they thinking type contract. No, wouldn't have occurred to me. Oh, Matt Wieders does though. Matt Wieders is though. Matt Wieters is a good answer. Yeah, I guess. He didn't get a qualifying offer, so I don't know. I'm not saying he will get that, but you can see a universe where he does. All right. They should just name

this the Jason Hayward Award, joked an AL front office man. Hayward didn't shock the industry, did he? He was the number one free agent on the market last year, and he got $30 million less than two other guys. No, that's purely a hindsight joke. Okay. Yeah. All right, number six. Will Chris Sale be traded this offseason? If your answer is yes, what do you think is his most likely destination?

I say the answer is going to be—I think the answer is yes. And I think that the most likely destination is the Dodgers. And I think that the GMs will say that the answer is yes. And that they will say the answer is the Dodgers. They are split 18 to 18. Yes, no, with two no responses. And they have the most likely destination as the Red Sox With five choices Dodgers in second With four I'm going to give the no response guys credit here

I'm just going to assume that they're on the White Sox That they are White Sox And that's just good ethics So that's actually it Is that shorter than the usual Krasnik? It varies every year. It's, you know, six to eight usually. Mm-hmm.

Well, that's it. Yeah. Good. Well, good. I loved it. Mm-hmm. Learned a lot. Yeah.

Krasniks are always fun. So we'll link to it in the Facebook group and in the blog post at BP. Did you, in reading these, did you have your mind changed about anything? I'd say no, probably. I think no. I had my mind changed about whether the Indians are likely to trade Andrew Miller. Yeah, I probably wouldn't have gone that heavy in the no side. I would have been more no than yes, I think, but probably not that lopsided.

Although people were saying, you know, like, he's making $9 million and the Indians aren't a team that can afford to spend $9 million on a closer or, you know, whatever the combined cost of Miller and Allen is. I mean, that's not that much money, is it? I mean, it's $9 million for Andrew Miller is like a bargain. I don't see why even if you're the Indians, you can't afford to do that, seeing as they are willing to use Miller in this way that makes him extremely valuable to them. So that doesn't seem like an overcommitment for a low payroll team. Well, what would you expect that their team payroll will be next year? It was $83 million last year. I mean, you have to admit, if they stay at $83 million, then having 20% of your payroll going to relievers is something that

I'm sure they would be hesitant about doing. It's not a lot of money for most teams, but if you have that low payroll, the flexibility that you have starts drying up very quickly. have that low payroll, the flexibility that you have starts drying up very quickly. And I think we've seen teams like, you know, the Rays, they just have a different threshold for what is a good price for them because they need some ability to move and maneuver. Yeah, but they also have Terry Francona and they know what he can do with that bullpen tandem in the postseason. So, I mean, it got them to the World Series this year, even without most of their starting rotation. So I would think if you have that combination of personnel and manager, it is worth it to them. There's two things, though, that made Miller so

valuable. One is that Miller was great at pitching, and the other is that Terry Francona used his best reliever in an unconventional way. And you could do the second part of that even without Andrew Miller. I mean, if you wanted to be really aggressive with Cody Allen and Brian Shaw and whatever third reliever piece that you get who costs a lot less than Miller, or with Miller and Shaw and whatever third reliever piece you get that costs a lot less than Allen, you could still get some of the benefits Of managing optimally Regardless of who he is Yeah assuming the reliever

You get is just as willing to be used That way as Miller Alright should we end it there Yeah sure Alright so that will do it for today You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to Patreon.com slash Effectively Wild Five listeners who have done so already

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