Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 985: Three Topics for Winter-Meetings Week

Episode Date: December 5, 2016

Ben and Sam banter about the possibly unprecedented complete lack of luddite teams, then discuss the Royals as sellers, the reliever market, and Braves trade rumors.

And so now, I'm sorry I missed you, I had a secret meeting in the basement of my brain. It went the dull and wicked, old merry way. It went the dull and wicked, ordinary way Good morning and welcome to episode 985 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectus. Brought to you by The Play Index, BaseballReference.com, and our Patreon supporters. I'm Sam Miller, along with Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Hi Ben. Hello. How are you?

Okay. Anything you want to talk about? Well, as I'm sure you saw, Mike Fitzgerald was hired by the Diamondbacks. He is a former quantitative analyst for the Pirates and wrote about him and the Pirates R&D department a couple years ago at Grantland because they were doing something that seemed sort of novel at the time in that Fitzgerald was traveling with the team full-time and he was in the clubhouse as kind of a liaison between the front office and the field staff,

and it seemed like a model that could be copied by other teams. Anyway, the Diamondbacks have now hired him as the director of their new R&D department. And, of course, they had an R&D department before under the old regime, but it was led by an old buddy of Tony La Russa's who didn't really have the background that you traditionally associate with someone who was running an R&D department. So it was kind of a Diamondbacks version of that. And so I think we've finally reached the point now where I've been waiting for a while and wondering when it would

happen, but the point where there's no team that is a holdout or notable for being a holdout or ever says anything that would suggest that it is in any way a holdout. and started talking about, oh, stats and scouts, and we blend the two together, and the whole usual rhetoric of the enlightened modern baseball team. There was always at least one holdout somewhere. It was the Phillies. It was the Royals for a while. It was the Phillies. It was the Diamondbacks. It was maybe the Twins. Yeah, the Diamondbacks and the Twins have, of course,

both been modernized almost overnight this winter. So there's no team that you can really pinpoint anymore and say, well, that's the one that's lagging behind. Obviously, there are still teams that are more in than others or started before others did or have bigger stat departments than other teams do. or have bigger stat departments than other teams do. But I don't think there's any team that you'll hear say anything even vaguely Luddite sounding or regressive or anything. I think you still will because I don't think there is a team that I would classify as Luddite. I don't think there's a team that...

I'm not sure there's a team that is poised even to take the reputation. I mean, somebody has to be last, but I'm not sure that there's any team that will even get a reputation as last because it's sort of so flat there now. But you still have plenty of teams with a president or, you know, like, you know, Kenny Williams, for instance, is still, you know, I like, there's nothing wrong with Kenny Williams or anything like that. But Kenny Williams is not considered, wouldn't have been, if he had still been the GM, we wouldn't be talking about the progressive Chicago White Sox. And he's still in a position of, you know, some considerable authority and quotability. And

you have various people who have made, I guess, what you would call Luddite quotes in the past, who are still in positions of power for different teams. It's just that, like, for instance, the White Sox also have Rickon and they have a broad front office that has all sorts of generally progressive. I don't know. It's weird to say progressive when like the whole point of this conversation

is that it is just what everybody is. Yeah. That is not to say that I'm like predicting Kenny Williams. He's just the first guy that came to mind. I can name a bunch of guys who, you know, will say, somebody will say something. I wonder. Yeah. I mean, there are definitely teams that might just have, you know, one or two people in their department and they're clearly way behind, but I don't know whether we'll hear anyone sort of be the proudly kind of, you know, old school throwback team the way that the diamondbacks were the way that you

know the twins would sort of acknowledge that maybe not be as blustery about it as the diamondbacks were but there isn't any sort of standard bearer for old school baseball left i don't think yeah for a long time the incentives were to if you were a stat head team the incentives were to talk about how much you valued scouting and to downplay how much you valued stats and so even the teams that were very very nerdy they would always talk about how how not nerdy they were how really they were very traditional and i don't really feel like the i think that to a little bit of degree, there's still an incentive to talk more about your old school, your respect for the old school and how credibly you take baseball wisdom and everything like that. But it is basically, it has stopped being a large advantage to talk about how old school you are. Whereas even just a few years ago, I think a lot of GMs or a lot of teams still felt like there was an edge, there was an advantage to talking that way in public.

Yeah, all right. Well, it was inevitable that we would get to this point. It just, I mean, even the sort of teams that were vocal about not being at the forefront of things were still probably, you know, if you could have transported them back in time two or three decades, they probably would have been the most advanced of that era. So everyone had kind of, you know, made some progress. But the fact that there was always one holdout, I wondered when that would end. And it seems to have ended now. I would say that it is fairly fitting for my career as a writer that the two big news items for the Diamondbacks are that, that they have proven that they are full and signed Jeff Mathis to a two-year deal. Yeah, right.

Jeff Mathis is going to have a minimum of a 14-year major league career. Yeah, that's amazing. It is. It's continually interesting. And Ben, did you know that a couple of days ago, I ran across an old tweet in which I said something about Mathis and Mark Saxon replied, and I told him that I was all in on Mathis, that I had become a convert and that I was a pro-Mathis now until I die. And then I quit writing about Mathis and I forgot what I felt about him or what I currently feel about him.

But I am glad that he continues to get jobs and multi-year contracts. Like they were worried that if they signed Mathis that they would have to replace Mathis next year. I like that. I like that he hit 238, 267, 333 this year, which is the third best season of his career. Yeah, well, both of these newly stat head-ish teams

made their first move sort of signing a good framing catcher. Haven't you read all your old tweets by now? It's all you've been doing for weeks. I actually have. I actually have been. I've reached the end yeah the last it's over like four days ago i uh reached hand um mathis is interesting too because he is not a guy who has been uh radically re-evaluated in the in the framing era his defense is fine but he's not he doesn't grade out as an elite framer he is a good defender a good framer good at catching but

generally speaking his like his career value in the 12 years to date is 3.3 wins above replacement which is like less than jason castro last year um and i think and it is not that interesting to me that jeff mathis gets signed anymore but i do wonder if it tells us anything about the proprietary work that's being done on catcher defense that we don't get to see in catcher, or if it is simply just that everybody in the game basically accepts the notion that having a general behind the plate, even as a backup, is worthwhile because it makes for better relationships with your team and your pitchers and that there are benefits that they haven't even bothered to quantify and they just

accept that enough enough old schoolers told them that they just accept that it's true which is i think uh also a possibility yeah i uh well he was actually i mean last year last year he was uh yeah he was like seventh on the list of per pitch framers. If you lower the minimum to 2,000 chances. Last year was like his career year on a per game basis. All right. All right. So I think we're probably halfway done with this show.

I don't intend to go that deep on anything, but I thought that with the winter meetings coming up, we could just talk about a few quick things that are going to be big topics. And first off, we're now a month into the off season. This was the off season that was going to be totally dead because there were no free agents. Is it your perception that the off season has been notable for its deadness or liveliness, or has it fit right into the normal rhythm of previous off-seasons? Yeah, I don't think it stood out to me, really, or I don't think it would have. The biggest free agent probably is off the board, but just by quantity, not that many

guys have been signed, but the winter meetings haven't started yet, so I don't think I would be thinking anything was out of the ordinary. So I don't think I would be thinking anything was out of the ordinary. And just as far as the number of rumors and the intrigue of rumors, I mean, there have been a couple of amazing off-seasons in our lifetimes, but for the most part, it's been a solid rumor year. I think that there are, it does seem to me that there are more players either available in trade or talked about as possibly being available in trade. And I think a good trade rumor is worth maybe eight good free agent rumors. Trade rumors are so much more fun because

you don't know, you maybe didn't even know that they were available. It's sort of packs the element of surprise, multiple teams involved. And like the possibilities of a free agent signing are very, they're very limited he'll he'll sign with your team or he'll sign with another team and he'll sign for more than you thought or he'll sign for less than you thought and that's it like this no matter what happens with you on assessment it's it's like oh okay yeah 20 minutes later that's that's life uh now but trades they could anything could happen anything so when you start seeing um more and more players uh talked about i mean the well i guess we should just talk we'll

start here uh so the royals have a lot of guys who are going into their walk years and maybe two weeks ago that seemed okay they could compete this year and then get a lot of draft picks the year after that. But with the new CBA, they're going to get kind of lousy draft picks if they let these guys go, even if they make qualifying offers. The list of players who are entering walk years, according to MLB trade rumors, Danny Duffy, who was competing for the ERA title for part of last year. Wade Davis, who is one of the best closers in baseball over the last three years uh lorenzo kane who i think finished what third in mvp voting uh 13 months ago eric hosmer who is definitely someday really probably gonna be good and mike mustakis who had the, who started showing a lot of

signs of breaking out before he had his season ended last year. And Alcides Escobar, who is literal magic. So, I was not thinking of the Royals as being a seller at all one week ago, and now there are rumors that

they could move Davis and Dyson somewhat imminently, and maybe any or all of these guys could be available and the Royals could be rebuilding. Do you think that this is the time? Do you think today is the day for the Royals to rebuild? And on a scale of 1 to 10, how rebuildy would you get? It's tough because I don't think they're that good, but they might also be the second best team in the division. Or if I had to bet right now, which would be the best, the second best team in the AL Central on have, it's conceivable that the Royals

could be an 81 win true talent team playing 57 games against the three worst. I mean, it's conceivable that they could have 57 games against the three worst teams in the American League. Conceivable. Yeah. And in which case an 81 win team

might very easily get the 88 and a wild card. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's probably enough for me to say, go for it one more time. I think. Yeah. I think I would just because of where they are and the competition they're likely to have.

I don't know that I would double down and start signing people, but, but yeah, at least, you know, give it half a season, see how it's going, and maybe try to move some of those guys at the deadline if it's not going well. Yeah, if they traded all of them right now for 100 units of value, how many units of value do you think they could get for those same players traded in July?

Well, you tend to get more per win that you're giving up at the deadline as opposed to the offseason, but you're also giving up fewer wins because there's less playing time remaining. So I would say you might get 70. Okay. And if I told you right now that I saw into the future, and I only saw one thing, though. I saw that the Indians won 99 games

Would it change? If you knew that they were playing for the wild card Would it change your assessment? I think it's already really likely That that is the case So probably not Not very much, no So 30% of that haul

Well, I mean This is, I don't know if I believe this, but I'm like low man on wild card. Like I don't know that the wild card is very valuable or I don't know how valuable it is. Royals fans would probably say pretty valuable. Yeah, they didn't win the World Series when they won the World Cup. No, but you're right. They did, but another team win the World Series when they won the wild card. No, you're right.

They did, but another team, the A's, I mean, for the A's, it was like nothing. Like for the A's, they got like almost literally nothing out of it. So I, yeah, like if I knew I was going to win the wild card, I would keep this group together. The chances would have to be pretty good though, because I'm not that stoked Even to get the wild card I feel like

In a sense being Tied for a wild card at the trade deadline Might be bad You almost want to have a cakewalk To the postseason at that point Or be able to say I don't want them to sell Forget it just don't sell Keep everybody

Yeah that is a dilemma. It's tough. They should be. I mean, I'm sure they are listening as every team is, but I wouldn't be pushing them the way that the Pirates seem to be pushing McCutcheon, for instance. So if let's say they trade Wade Davis and draw Dyson as the first rumor that I cited suggests they might do this week. Would that make sense to you? Or is that just making it less likely that they get anything out of this season and increasing the case for selling everybody else? Yeah, I think if they do a partial dismantle, they might as well go all the way. Yeah.

I mean, Dyson's not as important. No. they might as well go all the way. Yeah, I mean, Dyson's not as important. No, but they're going to need every win they can get if they want to really make a run at it. So if they start taking away wins, then they're really hurting themselves. So I'd say probably all or nothing at all. Okay, segueing from Wade Davis, there's a lot of free agent reliever news, and now there's also getting to be some trade reliever news.

So like the Tigers are willing to deal Frankie Rodriguez, and the Marlins want to go get one of the big three closers, which sort of surprised me because I didn't think the Marlins were one closer away from being great, but whatever. So when we, we've talked on this show before about how the idea of a sort of a scarcity on the market is often an illusion that if there's only one shortstop on the market, well, that means that there's only one team that just lost a shortstop to free agency. And there's probably not going to be a lot of buyers. And meanwhile, if there are six shortstops on the market, people will often talk about how there's a glut on the market,

but there's also a lot of teams that need shortstops. It occurred to me that closer is actually an exception to that because closers are not, like shortstops are shortstops because they're capable of playing shortstop. There's nobody else who can play shortstop. And, you know, there's only 30 of them or, you know, some number near 30 of them capable on the whole wide world. And left fielders, in a sense, are the same, even though everybody can play left field,

but not everybody can play left field and hit like a left fielder. And so it makes sense that there would be a, you know, relative equilibrium of how many players are available at that position and how many teams need it. But closers are not that way. There are like, you know, for instance, Frankie Rodriguez is an effective closer, a good closer, you know, has value to a team. There are like hundreds of players who could be a closer. If you, if you wanted somebody who could pitch like Frankie Rodriguez, you just go trade for Chris Sale and make him your closer. But you don't do that, you know, unless there's no better closer available. And so with the closer market, it's sort of odd because some teams, some years want two

closers or even three closers. And the rarer it gets, maybe the more likely you are to keep your starting pitching prospect in the bullpen instead of having him go back to the rotation. Or maybe you're more likely to call him up, or maybe you're more likely to bring somebody, like to sell your guy to the team that is currently collecting closers. And it's a very, it's a much more, it seems to me, fluid market that has a lot of different supplies and a lot of different demands that are not nearly so clear as like shortstop. And so that is a way of asking you whether you think that this is the time to be trading Wade Davis or shopping for Mark Melanson.

Is it a buyer's or a seller's market for closers? And I don't just mean closers, but closer type relievers, ace type relievers right now. Well, there are certain teams that are going to wait and see what happens with the big three free agents available, right? I mean, whoever's interested in one of those guys is not going to suddenly say, whatever, I'll just take Frankie Rodriguez instead. Probably. I don't think so. Well, so like, for instance, the Giants have been linked a million times to both the big three closers and Mark Melanson in particular. Let's say Melanson signs with the Dodgers tomorrow and Kenley Jansen signs with the Cubs tomorrow and Aroldis Chapman signs with the Marlins tomorrow.

What do you think? I mean, the Giants very well might get Frankie Rodriguez, right? Sure. Yeah. I mean, someone will take them and there are going to be more teams that want one of the big three probably than get one of the big three. So there'll be some sort of market for other guys, but I don't know whether now is the time before any of those three sign. Okay. So let me slightly rephrase this question. Having now had a month of seeing who is shopping relievers, who is buying relievers, and knowing the trends that we've seen throughout baseball in reliever usage and reliever compensation and everything else, more or less likely that the Indians would trade Cody Allen or Andrew Miller in this market? Well, I guess more in that the Indians themselves made a pretty good case for why it's important to have one of those guys, but I still think- I mean relative to what you knew a month ago. Yeah, relative to, I don't know.

I haven't- You haven't thought about it. If there have been lots of reliever rumors, I haven't been reading them. So I don't know. I always thought that the Indians would probably hold on to both of those guys, but nothing in the last month has changed my mind, perhaps because I haven't paid attention. If the Marlins sign one of the big three, will you roll your eyes a little bit? Yeah, probably. All right. All right. Lastly,

the Braves are in pursuit or or have been linked at least, to both of the Chris's, Chris Sale and Chris Archer. The Braves have also signed three starting pitchers this year, Bartolo Colon, R.A. Dickey, and Jaime Garcia. Are the Braves in danger of being the Diamondbacks, Padres, White Sox of this year? Do you think that they are doing too much, too soon, not enough, too late? Yeah, I talked about this with Michael Bauman at the end of last week, and neither of us was concerned about the moves they've actually made so far, whether it's Garcia, Colon, Dickey, or Sean Rodriguez. All of those are pretty short-term.

All the pitchers are in the last year of their contract, not huge dollars or anything. They have a lot of promising minor league starters, but not a whole lot at the major league level. So you need someone to take some innings. And if there's any benefit to not being completely terrible when you open a new stadium, which I don't know, maybe they've done some research that shows that there is, that people are more likely to come back for a second look if you don't lose when they've done some research that shows that there is that people are more likely to come back for a second look if you don't lose when they're there for the first look then i think all those moves make sense if you start getting into blockbuster territory and sail and archer i probably wouldn't do that now i mean i guess those guys will be around

for i don't know how many years of team control they have left i mean they're not i think spiring i think sale is three more years if you count the options and archer is five more years if you count the art options uh-huh so i don't know i would say wait just i don't think there's anything the Braves can do realistically that will make them good this year or make them have any shot of playoff contention this year. So why essentially acquire a guy knowing that you're going to waste the first season of however many is left on his deal and you're giving up prospects, you're trying to build around prospects, unless you really think that you have to make a splash when a new stadium opens. And I would think, if anything, it's the opposite. You have a new stadium, so people will come see you regardless. I don't know what effect it has on retention if you're not terrible.

But I would say that is too far. They don't need to go get an ace now. They can wait and see how their prospects pan out and then decide what to do. Yeah. I'm less worried about the wasting a year aspect of it, although that's part of it too. But where I'm kind of torn on it is that let's say that 2018 is the target for them. On the one hand, you can't count on there being good pitchers available to them in 2018, in the offseason before 2018. It's hard to land players as, you know, Jack Srinic learned, just because you want players doesn't mean you can go get players on demand. And, you know,

maybe it makes sense to start collecting the pieces for your good team now. On the other hand, I think one of the things that is a lesson from the Cubs is that to the extent possible, you don't want to get pitchers needing them to stay good. You want to get, ideally, you want to get pitchers the day before they're going to pitch the start for you. Getting Rich Hill, for instance, is great because he's good today and right like he's good today and you you know you needed him to pitch like not just Rich Hill but trade deadline pitchers like you know that they are throwing well that they are healthy that they are that to the extent that attrition and injuries

are going to uh to uh you know eventually ruin all pitchers you don't have to hold your breath for very long because they're pitching right now like like right now. And with the Cubs, they kind of did that. Like they, that, you know, they, they got all their hitters in a row and then they said, okay, flip the switch. And they went out and, you know, got a, got, got some good pitchers, got a bunch of pitchers and also, you know, developed Arrieta and Hendricks. So that's not the only thing they did, but it is what they did. So with Sale and Archer, it's not so much that I'm thinking, oh, well, you're going to waste a good year that some other team, you know, would probably pay more to have that year as well. But rather that I don't, even with Sale and Archer, I don't know how good they'll be in

2018. And I know even less in 2019. And I would probably rather have a pitcher who's 90% good but i could sign him before 2018 than get sale or archer now and bet on them to stay at 90 of where they are uh-huh yeah that makes sense so all right anyway that's all there will be other stuff we'll talk about things that happen 16 teams have shown interest in daniel hudson that made me very happy. That was a good rumor. Yeah. Yeah, your colleague, Jason Stark, did a full winter meetings preview that I just read in preparation for this episode. And he basically said the same thing that we were saying at the start or same thing we talked about on a listener email show a couple weeks ago when someone asked if this was going to be maybe a more eventful offseason in other ways because the free agent market is so light and everyone that stark talked to and quoted says that it's going to be a crazy trade winter and obviously we've seen some trades already so yeah

could be a fun slash busy week so we'll talk about it later this week you can support the podcast on patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. Today's five listeners who have already pledged their support, Jared Martin, Joseph N. Cohen, Sarah Luthi, Nick Gallinelli, and Terry Spencer. Thank you to all of you. You can buy our book, The Only Rules It Has to Work, our wild

experiment building a new kind of baseball team. Go to the website at theonlyrulesithastowork.com for more information. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectivelywild. And you can rate and review and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes. Contact me and Sam via email at podcastatbaseballperspectives.com or by messaging us through Patreon. We will talk to you soon.

And time would be cruel because it is cruel to everyone. He's crying out from the meeting place He's stranded here, self-loved Will her voice still echo?