Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 982: Scouting the Yankees and Signing the Cespedes

Episode Date: November 30, 2016

Ben and Sam banter about a scene from Major League, an Adam Jones tweet, and the return of Nora Morse, then talk to BP’s Jeff Paternostro about the Yankees’ farm system, the Mets’ Yoenis Cespedes signing, and the future of international free agency.

Good morning and welcome to episode 982 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 along with Ben Lindberg and today our special guest Jeff Paternostro, who is going to talk to us about the Yankees farm system and the international draft. And we're going to get to that. Hi, Jeff. Hi, guys. How's it going? Good. But first, I got a little bit of housekeeping. So hang on, Jeff, or jump in, Jeff. That'd be fine, too. Three things that are all relevant to this show's history. One is that we got a video of the clip from Major League where Charlie Sheen strikes the dude out at the end. And the first two strikes, no dust pops from the catcher's glove the third strike huge cloud of dust this

might be patient zero of this uh televised trope and is particularly notable for the introduction of dust only for the final pitch which as somebody as somebody suggested that the radar i think shows 99 for the second pitch and no dust and 100 for the, I think, for the third pitch. Somebody suggested that there is a dust threshold of 100 miles per hour. Yeah, that's what I was going to ask. It's like the thing you wrote about, like the flames on the radar on a TV broadcast. The conservation of energy in baseball movies. Yeah.

Well, props only brought one dust, dust pop. So they had to, they really had to save it. I think you think Charlie Sheen got that in one take. Well, I'm pretty, I don't, it's not a complete, it's not a complete shot. I'm pretty sure that they, they cut from Charlie Sheen throwing to guy catching. I mean, I don't believe that there are two, I don't believe there is a combination of two actors alive who are capable of throwing a baseball and catching a baseball in one take. They're all horrible at baseball. So probably there were like seven or eight takes each.

And if you'd waited for them both to get it right, that would have been 49 takes. Anyway, so that's that. Keep looking. For the moment, I'm still interested in this topic. Two is that I found the tweet that some years ago I sent everybody out looking for by Adam Jones that I remembered from like six years ago, in which he stated that everybody should make the Hall of Fame. And it was unfindable. I couldn't find it anywhere because it had been deleted. But I found it in my own tweets. June 6th, 2010, I retweeted him manually.

And therefore... You must have manually retweeted Adam Jones. I did. And so it is in my records. Therefore, it has now been identified. Adam Jones writes, This Hall of Fame thing is so much bullshit. All of them deserve to be in. And then people replied.

And the replies are strangely not deleted. Only this tweet is deleted. But people replied and engaged with him and said, ah, that seems like a bit much. Like some of these guys are only pretty good. And Adam Jones says, I challenge you to find one who's only good, not great. And somebody, I don't know what they put, but somebody presumably said, great counsel or something like that. And he said something along the lines of they battled for years and years.

You don't understand if you've never played the game. Not many can say that these guys deserve it. So he was, he he was this is his philosophy and i'm i i'm gonna walk around with it for a few weeks and think about it all right last thing so was that it was that why you were looking at old tweets forever no i'm not i even if it is ben i'm not gonna tell you because i want you to keep wondering if it's not rt or a quotes manual retweeter rt always RT. Yeah. I liked, I liked manual retweeting, but I didn't like the way that then everybody gets credit for your

tweets. Uh, when they get retweeted, uh, I always, I found that, uh, back when I was doing a lot of blogging, you'd find some video of like, you know, Tom Barringer playing minor league baseball or something. And then you'd post it on your blog and be like, can you believe Tom Berenger played minor league baseball? And then you'd have a joke at the end of it. And then you'd always put hat tip platoon advantage or hat tip, Larry Grineo or whatever hat tip. But like they never found it originally either. They found it from somebody else or from Reddit or from,

you know, whoever tweeted it. from somebody else or from Reddit or from, you know, whoever tweeted it. And there was always a, like a whittling away of credit from the original source. And that's what manual retweeting. I liked manual retweeting, but really it was just a way of getting it further and further away from the person who actually produced the content. All right. Third thing, last thing. I wrote a piece at ESPN about walk-off triples which seemed to me something that shouldn't really exist but they do exist and uh the commenters loved it oh did they love it but uh one of the commenters in particular noted that i had a uh life is a highway i'm gonna write

it all night long uh reference and this comment says the author tries to stretch a double into a single with a tom cochran life is a highway reference although it could have been a rascal flats reference which would make it even more egregious and you guys that commenter's name is nora morse it is i believe it is the same nora morse no no connection to me otherwise. No sign that it is a listener playing a familiar tune. I think this is the Nora Morse bashing me in my articles. That's amazing. I'm so excited.

I don't think a listener would leave that comment, probably. And so, yeah, that's, wow, that's going back a bit to the Arizona Diamondbacks headline submissions from, I don't know, a year or two ago. Wow. Nora Morse sighting. Nora Morse sighting. Yeah. All right. That's all.

So, Jeff, the reason that we have you is that we have a annual tradition of talking to the baseball, whoever is doing the baseball prospectus, prospect rankings, about whichever team is likely to be the number one team in the org rankings. You don't have your org rankings yet. The Yankees are not necessarily going to be the number one team. It might be them or it might be the Brewers or it might be somebody else entirely. But it seems like the Yankees are plausible. And even if they're not number one, I think they're still worth talking about. So we wanted to talk about their farm system and also the little mini essay that you wrote within on the Yankees' role in bringing the international draft to the front burner of CBA discussions, although it now looks like there will not be an international draft after all. So let's talk about org rankings, generally speaking. The number one team has sometimes been a biggish market team.

In 1996, it was the Dodgers. In 2002, it was the Cubs. But those are really exceptions. If you otherwise look at the last two decades, having an elite farm system has really been a mid or small market team's game, which is somewhat, I imagine, about where you put your resources and somewhat about the difficulties of actually having a good farm system when you're competing every year, giving away draft picks, trading prospects, and so on. So that was fine and good and how we understood baseball to work. Rich teams get free agents, poor teams get prospects.

2015, number one team was the Cubs. 2016, number one team was the Dodgers. 2017, number one team might be the Yankees. Is this a fundamental shift in who now is going to be ruling prospect-dom for the foreseeable future, rich teams? I don't think so. I think it's probably just a three-year blip. It could just as easily this year be the Atlanta Braves, who are, I guess we're allowed to say they're tanking. I don't know if we're allowed to say they're tanking. Actively trying to build the number one farm system in baseball, I guess would be one way to talk around it. But keep in mind, the Yankees were pretty active sellers at the deadline.

They got of their top 10 at baseball prospectus. Let's see, I can do math. One, two, three, four of their top 10 were players they acquired in trades this year, up to and including the Albert Abreu for Brian McCandill. It just went down a week before my list, which was great. At least it was a week before instead of a week after, I guess. They also had, I mean, me last year i forget exactly where we had them in the org rankings i think they were middle of the pack somewhere between like 15 and 22 or somewhere in there and that was on the strength of having pretty good talent at the top of the system guys like jorge mateo and aaron judge gary sanchez and outside of sanchez the only one that really graduated

you know you still mateo there you still have judge there and judge drops all the way to seventh just because of all these trades but he's still a top 101 guy you can make a case for 11 players in this system making a top 101 so i if that's your standard for best organ baseball the entire top 10 plus guys i don't even rank are in contention for the 100 best prospects in baseball. I think the Yankees certainly fit the bill. It sounds like it would be a record. I have to go back and look, but it's got to be close. Yeah. I guess there are three ways that you can have an elite system. A combination of the three is best, but there are three sort of avenues. One is that you invest a lot in unsigned talent or in draft talent. Two is that you, I forget what the three are. Two is that you develop extremely well and a bunch of guys who, you know, you hit on a bunch

of picks because you did really well. And three is that it's just sort of a quirk of timing that everybody is kind of advancing right along with each other. And just before they're all about to graduate, they're all kind of hitting their prospect peak so of the the three like how which of those are most in play for the yankees how do they get here well they've drafted well certainly uh blake rutherford who we had at number four was their first round pick this year and it is a little quirky because he on talent would have gone higher than that but he was quoting a extremely high price tag to get himself to drop to the Mets who he had a pre-draft deal with and the Yankees basically decided to take him a pick earlier and give him the same money but he might have in a normal year not

that you can really say there's a normal year in the draft anymore but if you were just doing a rank of draft talents in the 2016 class he probably would have gone top 10 if not even higher than that so that's a nice guy to add to your system in any circumstance. But we don't know that much about him. He only played in rookie ball this year. What it really comes down to is they were able to, I think, cash in on a, and this might be a blip as well, but a trade market at the July deadline that valued high leverage relief options. And they had those arms to trade. So I guess I don't know that people would have said that the Yankees had really a wealth of players who were convertible into top prospects. If you had asked everyone a

year ago, like, you know, if the Yankees sell, what could they get for everything they have that would be attractive to other teams? I don't think I would have looked at what they had and thought, yeah, if they actually sell and they make some trades, then they should be the team with the best farm system in baseball potentially when that process is over. And yet they are there. So what do you think the like typical expectation would be? Like if you are a team that is kind of at the end of its rope and a veteran team and, you know, have one of the worst farm systems in baseball, like what should the typical expectation or forecast be if you say, okay, we're selling now, you know, like if you're whoever's in that position now, the White Sox, let's say,

or the Tigers, if a typical team like that decides to sell, how good should they be on the other side of that farm system or ranking wise? Well, the Braves farm system was pretty awful, I think, even as of two years ago before they started this sell-off. And they were kind of in an unusual spot because they were not that sort of veteran team, the White Sox that you mentioned, or the mid-2000s Astros that also sort of ran out of their contention window without planning for the future all that much. So the Braves were able to trade good players on cost-controlled deals

and probably get a little bit more back than the average quote-unquote rebuilding team would. The Braves were only one year away from being a playoff team at that point too. And they also got a little bit of a helping hand from the Diamondbacks in there as well, of course. I mean, it took the Astros three to four years, I think, to really rebuild the farm system sort of, I guess, by probably the correa draft or certainly not that the year after where they started showing up in the top five of org rankings and whatnot but the yankees do have other structural advantages uh brian cashman's a really good gm

and i think that gets overlooked because of the payrolls that they've run but when he's had to make trades he's been very good at it whether it's been to buy or in this case to sell, which is really the first opportunity they've had to sell. And I can think I can in my lifetime at this point, but they got Dylan Tate and Eric Swanson, who would be back at the top 10 type prospects in most systems for a few months of Carlos Beltran. And those aren't guys that don't even show up in the top 10, but speak to the overall strength of the Yankees system. I mentioned this sort of in the others of note, but I could give you another 10 pitchers that could have meaningful major league careers in this system outside of just the Yankees top 10. And they're very good at developing these guys, sort of the players and pitchers that me and my colleague Jarrett Seidler refer to as sort of

like the 91 to 95 and a slider guys that you see a lot in systems. The Yankees are really good at turning those guys into, you know, maybe not roll five major league arms, but useful pieces, guys that might show up 20 to 30 on a prospect list. And that's usually kind of like the detritus of your system at that point, older or guys, dudes in rookie ball that you think have a chance but are just flashing at this point and they turn those guys into major leaguers like louis sessa is a good example of this i saw a lot of louis sessa in the met system over the years before he was traded to the tigers as a second piece in the cesspettist deal and then back over to the yankees this past offseason and you know he's in 91 to 95 with a slider and the yankees this past offseason. And, you know, he's in 91 to 95 with a slider.

And the Yankees have sort of refined that and turned him into a major league arm of some quality. Not a great one. Maybe a swing man, maybe a seventh inning type. There's probably not enough stuff or command there to start. And pitching in that ballpark with his stuff isn't going to help either. But there's guys like that up and down the system. Domingo Acevedo jonathan holder i can just keep listing names off this you know uh ronald herrera who's in double a right now a guy

i saw this year and liked a lot it sort of fits in that mold too though he's got a little more pitch ability and these are all guys that would be borderline top 10 prospects in average to slightly below average systems they just have a lot of these guys and they get a lot out of them and we haven't even gotten to their international spending yet. And those guys don't even make the top 10 because they're mostly like 19 years old still at this point. Yeah, so let's talk about that international. I mean, a couple years ago, they basically obliterated the spending limits. They, you know, it looked like they might be responsible for ending the system because they had made such a farce of it. And those guys, they're 16 when they get signed. So they fall off our radar for a little bit. We hardly even know their names when they get signed. Is the fact that none of them is

on your top 10 particularly telling? Is there any indication that that group is a flop? Or would you still expect that the Yankees are going to end up really benefiting from their decision to spend $30 million on 16-year-olds? I think it's too early to tell either way, but I don't think you can learn anything particularly negative a couple of years out. There's guys, Wilkerman Garcia is a good example of that. I forget exactly what a guy, I don't think it was their biggest bonus, but he was low seven figures, shortstop out of Venezuela. I almost snuck him onto the top 10 last year. I think he made baseball Americas for their, for their Yankees list.

And again, in a weaker system, as I, as I said before, and you know, he didn't really hit this year in Pulaski and the reports weren't as good as they were last year but it is different this stuff can change in six months with 18 and 19 year olds it it changes rapidly um you know some guy that got 400,000 out of that class and I think they gave 17 players at least six figures could pop up next year in Staten Island or maybe he has a really good spring and they send him to charleston and suddenly he's on the map or one of their six foot two 180 pitchers is now six four 220 and throwing 95 this stuff happens all the time when you have i think 53 players that they signed out of that class you really only need to have two or three hit into meaningful major league careers to make it worthwhile at what age are prospects most i don't know if the word is going to be

volatile or if I'll think of a better word, but at what age do you think their prospect status is most liable to change a lot? Because I guess if you're signing a 16 year old, there's more uncertainty about him. But on the other hand, you know, after a year, no matter how bad he is, he's only 17. Is there anything at that level at that age that is sort of comparable to the double A test or to the, you know, major league test? I don't know if I want to structure it so much at age. So if I were to pinpoint it would probably be like 19 or 20. I think the first time they go out and play full season ball at a full season A ball level

is where you can really see things start to change on a couple of levels one it's really the better approximation of what major league baseball looks like and sort of the daily in and out rhythms of it because when you're extended spring training isn't really organized baseball short season baseball as i like to say is barely organized baseball a lot of the times. But I think once you get into an A-ball level and you're playing every day and you're on the longer bus trips, you sort of get a feel for what this guy is a little bit more. And the other thing too is it just, from the prospect writer standpoint, it just gives you

a better birth of knowledge about this guy. It's easier to track down reports because a lot of teams don't scout short season levels there's better you know for whatever it's worth there's better milb tv coverage there's just more opportunities to see the player there's more like if i'm going to go see a ball it's probably going to be in lakewood and i get however many shots at that player well if he's still in the appalachian league yeah i try to get down there once a year but it's, if he's still in the Appalachian League, yeah, I try to get down there once a year, but if it's a pitcher that's not on turn or it's a player that's two days on, one day off,

am I really going to get a good look when I'm down there for a week? And it applies to all the prospect writers at Baseball Prospectus as well. You're just going to get more shots at seeing these guys and getting a better idea of what they are. They might not have necessarily changed, but the information has changed.

Is there a type in the Yankees system? Like, do you look at the guys that they've drafted or the guys they've targeted in trades and said, oh, this is the tool that they value or this is the position they're trying to stockpile guys at, that sort of thing? the position they're trying to stockpile guys at, that sort of thing. I think the one thing about the Yankee system that stands out to me is actually the variety up and down the organization right now. Sam mentioned sort of one of the ways your system can peak on org lists if all your players are sort of peaking at the same time. And that's, you know, if you look at the top 10, I guess they're all pretty much in the general A plus to double A range, which is what you would expect. You get the best sort of balance between there's still some projection left, we can

dream a little bit, but there's also been some actualization of baseball skills there. Like Gleyber Torres, we're pretty confident Gleyber Torres is going to hit. I mean, we're less confident Clint Flazier is going to hit, but we've seen the power in double A and triple A, and that that means something. You know, we've seen Jorge Mateos tools in full hit, but we've seen the power in double A and triple A, and that means something. We've seen Jorge Mateos tools in full season ball. We've seen Justice Sheffield to get double A hitters out. This kind of stuff matters. But as far as tight, they have a good match of, match of, or mix of pitchers and position players. They have a pretty good, like we range from, let's see, 19 to 24 seasonal age in their top 10 going into the 2017 season. We still have those younger, toolsy international players further down the list.

We have, you know, big arms with a chance further down the list. And we have more polished corner players up and down the system as well. So it's just, I think, a really well-balanced system. And as far as the trades go specifically, I think they just went for best player available. They tried to get the best prospects out of the Indians and Cubs system that they could for Andrew Miller and Earldest Chapman.

And they got two, with each of those trades, they probably got a top, if not top 25, certainly top 50 prospect at the head of the class and some very interesting down ballot guys as well of these 10 prospects uh on the top 10 how many would you guess if you had to guess will lose their rookie eligibility with the yankees with the yankees so i am i can definitely guess eric judge but i think he's only about 50 at-bats short of it. I don't think he is, if they go out and get Chris Sale, I don't think he's the attractive guy here.

Because they have all these guys in the upper minors, they have the option to just give it a year and see how they develop. Because they could have a lot of young, cost-controlled talent that's majorly ready between the Super 2 deadline this year and the end of 2018. Or, sorry, the end of Super 2 deadline next season and the end of 2018. Or sorry, the end of Super 2 deadline next season and the end of 2018. They could build that, you know, the new core four, which is what they're going to call it, whatever four end up working out, if they want to do that.

They weren't that far off a wildcard spot coming off 2016. They'll have a full season of Gary Sanchez next year. They need pitching badly. And as far as the close to the majors guys go, there's some pitchers in there, you know, that you could see Justice Sheffield in 2017. You can see Chance Adams in 2017. I don't know if they're going to be kind of the kind of impact arms that are going to front a rotation for a playoff team. I'm not even sure that either of them are starters. So if they want to go out and

get that front of the rotation arm and compete now, they have the pieces to do it. I realize now that I'm dancing around the question, I should just give you a number. So I'm going to say six. So the league has dropped its demand for an international draft in the next collective bargaining agreement. And do you have, it doesn't, personally, like, I don't, I think that probably none of us are particularly that eager to see an international draft or anything that suppresses the amount of money that 16-year-old Dominican kids are allowed to make. But it also doesn't seem like the current system makes any sense at all. Like, I don't, I don't, it feels weird. It just feels like a, like a very badly patched together system. So particularly with the way that the Yankees were able to use it two years ago.

Do you have any vision for an international system that works and that is not so foreign and radical that it couldn't, you know, be approved in the current baseball political environment? I don't think the old system was that bad outside of the... So there's really four parties here. You have the 16-year-old Dominican and Venezuelan kids. You have the Major League Baseball Players Association. You have the ownership. You have the agents, trainers, and I use that term fairly loosely, that are representing these kids.

I guess even a fifth. I'll say you have the front offices for these teams. The front offices for these teams have identified, and this doesn't apply just to the Yankees, this applies to smaller market teams, that they can get talent more cheaply here than they can in the draft. Because the draft is still, you know, Blake Rutherford dropped 10 spots. You'll see prep kids sometimes drop completely out of the top 10 rounds, but some of them will still get significant bonus money equivalent to third or fourth round money there if the team wants to spend it and has it available in their pool. It's just generally talent in the draft gets paid in the order and amounts that it should for the most part. And you don't get, you only get one shot at

your pool every round. You can do what the Yankees did and get a sure fit of talent like that. And again, only they spent, I guess I think it was around 30 million plus the tax money. So double that. They have three or four of those guys work out and become average major leaguers. They've made it back. Anything more than that as a bonus, they get one star out of it. It's huge. But even for individual player, you know, the Braves spent the most money in the past July two signing period with Kevin Maiton. They're not a big market team. They certainly haven't spent like it during the rebuilding process. The Rays spent serious money for Adrian Rondon. I mean, the first time I sort of became aware of the international free

agent market as a baseball fan was I think when Kevin Goldstein wrote about the A's signing Michael Yanela for $5 million back in like 2008, I think it was. So the front offices have an interest in spending money on these players and spending significant, I say significant, but spending their bonus pools, spending over their bonus pools if they can without it being, if they can get ownership buy-in for the tax. But when you're in a CBA cycle, ownership wants to, and I say this pretty much outright in the piece, they want to legislate their front office's ability to spend money out of the game.

They won't necessarily tell them not to spend it, though some ownership groups will, of course, but they just want to set up a system where it's not even an option. I just don't think the old system was a problem outside of the, you know, we had the kickbacks, there was some shady agent stuff going on you had you had more i think uh birth certificate problems then but that stuff's all already been cleaned up to a certain extent and now it's just sort of what we

have now is half of an international draft because of the slotting but also half of the old system and it doesn't really serve anyone that well. And because a lot of that stuff has been cleaned up, do you think that hurts the argument that it's just not feasible to have a draft? I mean, you could have a draft. These areas all get scouted. You already have sort of the slots in place. You could just have an international draft. The problem is what's the scope of it? And place you could just have an international draft the problem is what's the scope of it and because you'll see a lot of times guys will pop up you know they're are you just drafting 16 year olds what about the 17 year old or 18 year old that's suddenly popping

has grown a little bit is popping 95 and now maybe a team wants to throw 250 000 at him that's life-changing money for the kid you know how do you sort of deal with that because we have very clear rules for who's eligible for the rule for draft right whether you agree with them or not the system's very like it's high school or three years out i think it's three years out from your high school graduating class so you have your juniors and your draft eligible sophomores so we know exactly what the pool players is every year outside of i think like tj zook or whatever, who nobody knew was eligible except for the Reds this year. So it's just, it makes it a little more logistically complicated. So the incentives for the clubs are obvious. They want to have a market that has, you know,

players that have no negotiating power and therefore they can save money. And they're getting the same players. They're getting the same talent either way. Yeah. And for the, for the kids, it's obvious they want to get more money. And theoretically, the major league players would be on their side. The union would be on their side in that theoretically, although who knows. Is there any argument that you can make for the international draft existing as good for us, good for the fans? Is there any way that you could fathom that it makes baseball a more enjoyable sport and industry to watch and follow? So the one argument, I don't know if this is good for the fans per se, but a lot of these deals,

you know, contrary to MLB rules are agreed to a year ahead of time, up to a year ahead of time. So if you're actually on draft day, you have more information about the player than you might have already had when you agreed to this, agreed to a deal shortly after his 15th birthday. So you might be getting, your team might be able to make better decisions with their money. I don't know if that matters to you as a fan. The time horizon and the hit rate for these guys are so, the time horizon is so long and the hit rate's so low even within an individual international class as it is now i mean just looking up and down i've i noted this in the marlins list because the marlins have probably the worst farm system in baseball and they've not really spent that much internationally but even not doing that plenty plenty of other of the NLE's teams I wrote before had identified,

signed, and developed Latin American talent for under $300,000. There were top 10 prospects in their system, top 100 prospects globally. So you're not always getting the most bang for your buck. I don't know if the draft will make that better. I don't know if it's going to make teams better at identifying and developing these players because they're 16 years old. They're from a different culture and they're coming into the rigors of professional baseball with very little cushion. I mean, some of these teams have complexes in the Dominican. Almost none of them have complexes in Venezuela at this point, which I don't think any do. So there's not really a structure in place for these kids.

So a lot of them aren't even going to make it stateside in a lot of cases. That was certainly true of some of the Marlins' bigger six-figure signings in recent years. So I don't know if there's – I think a draft is just a distraction. It's just lip service to the idea of competitive balance. All right. So to change topics completely, just because we happen to have someone who has covered the Mets on the day that the Mets made the biggest move of the free agent market, do you have any quick cesspitous signing reactions slash forecasts of how the Mets will make their outfield next year.

It's funny because on our BP Mets podcast, I think I've been saying for five months at this point, they should have just added two years at a higher AAV to the end of Sespidus's previous contract. Yeah. Guaranteed that, which is essentially what ended up happening. I don't think he ever wanted to leave. I don't think he ever wanted to leave It's a weird thing to say Because we Sort of the flip side of what we've been talking about Is once you hit free agency

Players have to be mercenary to a certain extent And he had bigger offers on the table Last year before he Resigned with the Mets There was a nine figure deal with the Nats Although a lot of those Nats contracts I believe was heavily deferred So I didn't actually do the math on time value of money and whatnot. But it was certainly more

real dollars, if not in 2016 dollars. And for you know, the Mets say they wanted to get done early Cespedes, they didn't want to be on the market that long. There was never really any, you know, Ken Rosenthal or Buster Olney story linking any other team particularly strongly to him. It was more about who wasn't in on Cespedes. You get the occasional, you know, where I think it was the Yankees were looking at every free agent bat. So this seemed like the ideal match. I mean, the Mets need Ioannis Cespedes' bat in the middle of that lineup.

It's a reasonable deal for both sides. You know, Cespedes gets $27.5 million a year. The Mets don't have to go to a fifth year where if there'd been a more protracted free agent process then you might have more teams might have gotten involved as encarnacion and batista signed and started to look for a fallback from those two or just for whatever power bat was left on the market but i don't as a as a mets fan which i guess i still myself as, or someone at least that watches a lot of Mets games, I don't really care about the money or the years or the dollars per war analysis of it. I just enjoy watching Yohannes Cespedes play baseball, and it's very easy for me to do that now. I think he'll be good.

I think he'll be worth the contract. Whatever. you know whatever he'll be a borderline all-star player for the next two seasons probably assuming his lower body injuries don't linger or worsen which they kind of once you get into your 30s i think they're only paying for his age 31 through 34 seasons now so it's not what you would consider like the serious decline years and he's athletic enough that you think the profile would age pretty well uh leg issues aside it's you know it's it it's, it just, it makes sense. There's not, I don't have much more analysis behind. The Mets had to do this. Cespedes seemed like he wanted to stay. He got his no trade clause. He has spent an extra two months at his ranch in Vero Beach

when the Mets are there for spring training. He can ride a horse or a Ferrari that spits fire to the, to when he has to report. And then it's good. It's good. It's, you know then it's great it's good it's you know it's it's it's a really good fit of team and player i think it always has been for some of the flack cesspitist gets in the media for being a bit of a i don't want to say he's an odd duck because he's really not that unusual by baseball player standards but he doesn't like dealing with the media so that gets construed a certain way in the media it was interesting interesting to see the reaction, I think from other Mets players on Twitter, sort of the excitement there. And it,

yeah, that can be perfunctory, but it didn't feel like it. I think he's well liked in that clubhouse for the most part. And I think, you know, when you hit, I guess when you hit 30 home runs a year and lead a team to a

playoff two straight years, you're going to be well liked in the clubhouse. It's sort of like chemistry follows a winning team kind of thing. But yeah, it's just you get it all now. You get the neon yellow sleeve. You get him trying to bear handballs on one hop in left field. It's the whole Jonas Tespitas experience. It's aesthetically pleasing. Yeah, I don't disagree. I think it makes a lot of sense, too. The only surprising part of it really seems to be that he signed on November 29th, but I guess if he loves New York that much, then it makes sense he'd get it out of the way early. So I mean, there's a percentage of players where that probably actually does matter.

Yeah. And you know, the problem is you never know which players fall into that camp. Whereas it's very easy to write a column saying that so-and-so doesn't like it in this place, or he loves it in this place. But whoever knows until the deal is signed. He didn't seem to care about the Denver school system or how good it was. Right. Yeah. All right. So we can wrap it up there.

You can find Jeff on Twitter at Jeff Paternostro. As he mentioned, he co-hosts the BP Mets podcast for all you kids. And we will link to the Yankees list in the usual places and he will be churning out top prospect lists for every team in this very sleepless winter. So follow along with his work at Baseball Perspectives. Jeff, thanks. Thanks for having me. All right. So that will do it for today. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild.

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or by messaging us through Patreon. Keep your emails and questions coming. We will talk to you soon. Let's overturn these tables. Disconnect these cables. This place don't make sense to me no more. Can you tell me what they're waiting for, senor? Can you tell me what they're waiting for, Señor?