Rates & Barrels - Making sense of non-tender decisions, avoiding arbitration, and Len Kasper's surprising move to the White Sox

Episode Date: December 4, 2020

Eno, Britt and DVR break down the moves made at this week's non-tender trade deadline including the Rockies' puzzling decision to let David Dahl go, the impact of uncertain 2021 budgets on free agency, Len Kasper's move from the Cubs to the White Sox, and more. Rundown 1:23 Making Sense of Non-Tender Decisions 9:52 The NL DH & Future Leverage 12:07 Teams Don’t Have Budgets Yet? 16:54 Agents & Teams Trying Harder to Avoid Arbitration 23:23 Time to Recalibrate WAR for Relievers? 27:36 Len Kasper’s Move to the South Side of Chicago 33:31 What Is the Ideal Play-by-Play Opportunity: Location & Medium 37:02 Wander Franco Injury Follow-Up 40:26 Winds of Change in the Pie Rankings Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow Britt on Twitter: @Britt_Ghiroli Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So let's be clear. When it comes to shipping internationally, can I provide trade documents electronically? Mm-hmm. The answer is FedEx. Okay. But what about estimating duties and taxes on my shipments? How do I find all the... Also FedEx. Impressive. Is there a regulatory specialist I can ask about? FedEx. Oh. But let's say that... FedEx.

What? FedEx. Thanks. No more questions. Always your answer for international shipping. FedEx. What? FedEx. Thanks. No more questions. Always your answer for international shipping. FedEx, where now meets next. Welcome to Rates and Barrels. It's Friday, December 4th, 2020. Derek Van Ryper, Eno Saris, Britt Giroli here with you on this Friday. Of course, we're talking about the group of players that became free agents this week following the non-tender trade deadline. We speculated on a few names on our Wednesday show, and it wasn't the complete blood

bath that it could have been, but it wasn't a great day for the players. We'll dig into why that is the case over the course of this show. At some point, we may get to a pretty devastating flip-flop in my pie rankings, but obviously baseball first. I'll say this at the top. I feel like we used our A material before we hit the record button today. We were just kind of getting ready for the show, and hopefully the B material is at least listenable. How's it going for you guys on this Friday? Well, as you said, I- Way to tease it. I know. Well, according to you, I peaked 10 minutes ago, so I don't even know. Yep.

Here are our leftovers. Here are the leftovers. They've been in the fridge for more than a week. No, come on. This will be fine. All right. Well, I want to start with the non-tender stuff because, for the most part, it was the types of players that we've seen non-tendered before. I think what made this year's group of players a little bit different is that there were more former first rounders and guys who were highly regarded prospects who were non-tendered at this deadline than usual. At least it seemed that way.

But the most surprising player of all has to be David Dahl. And it's because David Dahl wasn't projected to earn $8 million or $10 million in 2021. He was going to make less than $5 million. And the Colorado Rockies, who I think have ascended to the top spot in the poorly GMed franchise rankings, let a guy go for a salary that you would give to a veteran fourth outfielder with no ceiling and minimal floor. Dude, I think MLBTR had him down for $2.4 million. No, $2.7 million. That was nothing.

That's nothing. That's what mediocre backup outfielders get. And this is a guy that I know he's had a lot of injuries in his career. In three different seasons, he's been at least 10% better than a league average hitter. But he did something for the team too. Do you know that he had a choice between removing the spleen? Do you remember this? What? He had a choice between removing the spleen and losing a whole year or having some sort of in-between surgery rehab thing that would get him back on the field. And the problem with that was it left him at risk for COVID and left him kind of lesser than other people.

Maybe he chose to remove the spleen. That's it. I think he chose to remove the spleen so he could get back on the field faster instead of trying to sort of rest and rehab his way through it, which would have left him with a spleen. But he took the spleen out to get on the field for the Rockies during the time of COVID, at which he was more at risk because the spleen was gone. And the Rockies are like, well, thanks, dude.

But, you know, 2.4 million. I don't know. We can't afford it. And the best part is we saw some clubs non-tender players and they're like, oh, we might re-sign them. Not the Rockies. They made it very clear that they don't thanks for taking your spleen out for us thanks we'll keep you on our

christmas card list we're thinking about putting murphy out there oh my god oh god that that's a joke because murphy was a really really bad outfielder. I love him as a person, as a hitter, but I don't know. One thing I would say, though, that sticks out to me from this, there's a lot of things, but I was thinking about improving the arbitration process. And one thing that you do see is that there are a lot of terrible defenders on this list. Eddie Rosario was rated by Outs Above Average as the worst defender in baseball the last couple years. Kyle Schwarber is bottom 5%. Michael Franco is not good by Outs Above Average.

Nomar Mazzaro is bottom 10%, 5%, 10%. Travis Shaw doesn't do well by this. Danny Santana is a terrible defender by Outs Above Average. And all of these guys do a little bit better by UZR and the stuff you'll see on fan graph. So a lot of times you'll say like, oh, Eddie Rosario was projected for nearly two wins. Well, not if he's the worst defender in baseball. Um, and Kyle Schwarber projected for two and a half wins. Well, not if he's more of a DH, then that's more of a one and a half win guy.

Um, so that was one thing that came to mind. And the way that I think I talked a little bit on the last podcast, the way arbitration works, you have non-subject matter experts, former lawyers and judges that are arbitrators on these panels. And the thing that moves the needle is only precedent. They don't care about would have, could have, or should have. And they don't like advanced metrics. So they want to know how many games did he play?

How many RBI? How many home runs did he hit? The most advanced metrics that are allowed into arbitration are leverage index for relievers, just to let them know, hey, this guy was important to his team, even if he didn't get a lot of saves. And to some extent, you can use wins above replacement. But if the defensive metrics and wins above replacement are inferior to what teams are using, and they are, then you're going to end up with these players that are not being correctly valued by arbitration.

So this is separate, I think, from any financial issues that are going on in baseball, or any sort of effort to drive down salaries, or even the DH, and we'll talk about that later. I think separate from that is a disconnect in arbitration between how players are valued by teams and how arbitration values them. And that's a problem because it leads to more non-tenders. And this year was only a little bit more non-tenders than last year, but last year was like twice as many as the year before. And this is like a three-year record stretch of non-tenders. So we're coming to a point now, I talked to a couple of agents about this, there is some interest in reforming arbitration. And I

don't know what form that takes, but one form could be some sort of education to arbitration arbitrators about like, these are the advanced stats, This is what we can use. So please consider these. Another one might be, I've heard this from Cheryl Ring on Fangraphs, pay the arbitrators hourly so they don't have to have one hour for arbitration. Every arbitration meeting is one hour long. And so if you wanted to bring an expert and say, okay, you know, Saris is going to come in here and explain outs above average. If you do that, you lose 10 minutes out of your hour and every arbitration hearing apparently goes down to the last minute. So nobody wants to do that. But if you were paying your arbitrators by hour, you could say, okay, we're going to do two, three hours, whatever it takes. And so then we're going to have some people come

in and explain to you what outs above average are so that we can tell you, you know, what, you know, we can have better you know what you know we can have better values uh for these players and we won't have these sort of gruesome non-tender deadline situations and rant i know i go back and forth because i think most fans don't care about arbitration or how it works or how much money these guys are making because it's more than us so to me the most interesting thing from all that besides like who's now free agent was mike elias the orioles gm kind of saying the quiet part out loud um i don't know if you guys saw this but he basically said hey we can't afford we don't really want to pay these guys the salary that they might make so according to the collective bargain agreement

we're gonna just get rid of some of these guys. Obviously, they had an interesting day. They traded Jose Iglesias, who was one of their glue guys, to the Angels for two more players you never heard of. They got rid of Anzer Alberto, who was a big name for them, more of a fan favorite. I think when you look at these teams, and I know the Orioles aren't going to be good, but that mindset to me is just kind of killing baseball. The whole, hey, yeah, you're going to be dual-raised because you had a good season. We don't really think you deserve that, and we don't think anyone else is going to pay you that, so we're going to non-tender you.

And that's really what's happening right now? Think about the Twins, right? I think they would, on some level, rather keep Eddie Rosario. You know? Like, he came up through the twins. He's their guy. Right. You know?

And Kyle Schwarber is, like, a cub for life. Yeah. And, like, people love him. But I don't think that you can say, oh, if only they could just offer Kyle Schwarber $4 million and then they could keep him. I don't know. Like, yeah. Yeah. Kyle Schwarber should ask for, and then they could keep him. I don't know. Yeah, Kyle Schwarber should ask for as much as he can get. I don't understand the problem with Schwarber. They've dealt with his defense in left field for a few seasons.

Even his projected number in the $8 million to $10 million range isn't excessive. We're talking about a guy who's projected Wobas at $3.52 million. He's in Paul Goldschmidt, Fran Mille Reyes, Jock Peterson, Chris Bryant territory in that range. Tommy Pham, we talked about, who was tendered. Same kind of Woba, right? So I know you're giving up a lot defensively, but this is a Cubs team that has been woefully inadequate

in filling needs, even basic bench needs in recent years. So to think that they're going to take the money they were going to give to Schwarber and go find a better player to take that spot seems laughable. Beyond that, they don't have a prospect at the ready, at least in the case of the Twins, like we talked about on Wednesday, Alex Kirilov is ready. The Cubs don't have an Alex Kirilov ready to play left field. Yeah, it's a little bit weird. I do see in as a sort of an adjacent issue here, the DH and the NL as a problem. I know Eddie Rosario plays in the American League, but there might have been more of a trade market if there was a DH in the NL. Kyle Schwarber, I think it's fair

to say he might have been kept by the Cubs if they knew they had a DH place to put him. Right. Isn't that the reason Atlanta got rid of Adam Duvall? Because they were like, hey, we don't know if we're going to need him. I think Duvall plays defense like a DH as well. But it behooves ownership to wait this out and then say, oh, look, you lost Kyle. Like, you know, without a DH in the NL, you lost a Kyle Schwarber job. That was $10 million. So basically, the DH in the NL is worth 10 times 15, $150 million. I don't think it's worth $150 million. I don't think the average team will spend $10 million on a DH spot. But they

can use that as leverage. And they can say, look at all these non tenders, you cost these people a job, you should have DH in the NL. And that $150 million is worth expanded playoffs, which is worth probably more like $300 million or whatever, $200 million to the owners. So they're going to play that fancy math game and try to get the expanded playoffs just for the DH. And I still don't think those things are equitable. I don't think those are on the same level.

DH in the NL does not equal expanded playoffs. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I just think it's ridiculous as a sport that we're here in December, guys, and we're still arguing what the rules are going to be for a season that could start with spring training in February. I get the players and the owners need to sit down and have this discussion. But this should not be tied to COVID. This should not be tied to when the season starts or salaries for next year or what's going to happen this is a case where teams are trying to build out their rosters and set their budgets and like you said you know like how how do you do that without knowing what the actual rules are i mean it creates a different market for certain guys marcelo zuna is not going to sign until he knows if there's a dh or not because guess what if you're his agent there's 15 more teams that are

now interested in your client that now want him um as DH rather than a guy who they're going to have to kind of stomach playing the outfield. Next week is going to suck. Tell the people what it is. Tell the people, our listeners. Yeah, I know. But I heard from a free agent that GMs were telling him that they didn't have budgets yet. It is the virtual winter meetings next week, guys. It's supposed to be like the start of the offseason. And yeah, the Nationals don't have a budget yet. And this is not an unusual thing. It is an unusual thing year to year.

This year, yes. It's not unusual across baseball. I would say that most teams don't know their budget. Most GMs don't know their budget yet. I'm surprised that anybody is making signings. Maybe, you know, it is interesting that somebody like the Braves are being aggressive because the Braves have to their finances have to be sort of open to the public as a as they're owned by a publicly traded company so maybe they're just like maybe

they already have their budget because they have to because their numbers are more see-through and everyone has to everyone has to be know what they spend and what they bring in so they're like screw it let's go get Drew Smiley for 11 million. Screw it. We can't say we're losing money because they aren't, right? And the Mets too, right? I mean, Steve Cohen has money. He just bought the team so he could spend more than the Wilpons. And that means they're in on everybody for now. But that's kind of the list right now. It's just those two teams that are really actually looking to spend. Obviously, other teams will spend too. I think Toronto comes up a lot

as a team that's going to make some sort of impact in free agency. But I mean, Britt, how do you even begin to start building a team if you don't have a budget? And have you heard anything about a deadline for when this is going to happen? Are we weeks away from teams knowing what they're going to spend? So I had an agent tell me that most people feel like by Christmas, teams are going to know what's up. Now, that doesn't help anyone next week, as you know, was saying, like teams are still like, hey, man, like, don't call us. We'll call you and we figure it out. Probably a great year to have a virtual winter meeting because what a colossal waste of time

walking around the grand old Opry in Nashville it would be with no one knows what's going on. There's no budgets being set. So I do think hopefully by Christmas, these teams will have a handle on what's going on. Certainly teams are kind of eyeing it like, okay, we think we're going to have fans, but what if we go a month with no fans? What if we go two months with no fans? These are things they're

adding up. And make no mistake, like we said, the Braves are making money. These teams are all making money. It just comes down to how much money? How much money do they want to lose in terms of versus a regular year? So I think that's kind of what the holdup is right now. And then also teams are looking around like, well, we do have X amount of money we could probably spend. But if no one else is spending it, why don't we just hang out and wait and see what the rest of the market is doing? That's part of the reason too. Agents are a little worried because usually by now, some of the market has been set to some extent. You can kind of tell your guys, oh, wait on this deal, shop this around.

Nobody has any clue what's going on. There's really been no market setting. There's been a few deals and that's about it. Yeah. In terms of like how this market looks versus the bass, one thing I did do was look at all the tender deals and look at them compared to the midpoint of projected arbitration at MLB Trade Rumors, I did find that the average deal came in half a million dollars short of their projection. So there is going to be deflation.

There's going to be some sort of deflation in the market. And I don't know how much you can blame baseball for doing that. They obviously lost money this year. It wasn't like... Yeah, okay. How much they lost can be up for debate. And they, you know, they brought money in. I'm not saying that they, you know, that, that we should just take Manfred's number and be like, yeah, they lost, you know, $4 billion or whatever. But just because COVID it was the year was the way it was, they obviously are going to be more, you know, conservative and they're going to spend less money. So there's already within the pretender market some deflation happening.

And also, that's a good point. Because remember last winter, they actually did spend money. The winter meetings was a big deal last year. People forget, like, it's easy to kick baseball and be like, oh, the winter sucks. Last year was pretty interesting at the winter meetings, especially Strasburg, Cole. There was a bunch of money, Rendon. There was a bunch of money spent last year. So, yeah, of course, it's going to go down between COVID and the pandemic.

Yeah, the Reds were pretty aggressive, I think, before the meetings too, right? And Castellanos was before that. We saw the White Sox add Yasmany Grandal pretty early last offseason, so it's a pretty harsh turn from what things were shaping up to be last year. One big difference, we talked about this a while back, Mookie Betts already signing his extension with the Dodgers. That kind of took away the big, big name, the Garrett Cole type that would have been the megastar sitting out there too, so that pulls away a little bit of the intrigue. megastar sitting out there too. So that pulls away a little bit of the intrigue. But it was interesting. I was looking at the Ken Rosenthal piece that went up on Friday morning, and it seems like agents and teams are on the same page as far as not really wanting to get tangled up in those arbitration cases because they, both sides, they both see how ridiculous

it is to go in front of three people who are not baseball people and sort out salaries. And they realize it's even more ridiculous and random coming off of a 60-game season. And in Ken's piece, he just had a few agents basically saying, we worked it out. And this was really the right way to go about things. It was two players from the Twins, Jose Barrios and Taylor Rodgers. I think their agents were quoted in the piece. The Twins were very aggressive signing pretender deals and not even letting things linger. I mean, Byron Buxton also signed already. So he was obviously not a guy who was going to be non-tendered. But just the fact that

they don't even want to get close to arbitration with the players they like says something about the current market and the uncertainty of how players are going to be treated for cases that actually make it that far. Interestingly enough, compared to their MLB trade rumors projections, that trio of twins came in on average a million dollars short of what they were projected to get. Wow. So it actually, the numbers got a little bit higher if you kind of just considered mid-arbitration guys as opposed to kind of the $1 million players. There was a bigger difference at the top. And the biggest difference, award difference award award goes to drum roll

aguilar uh came in 1.75 under and i think he's actually kind of perfect for this discussion because we're talking about nldh uh top of the top of the market deflation i mean in fact he's kind of lucky to have gotten that deal. Yeah, there was definitely some, hey, good for Jesus. Like, when that happened, it was like, oh, we didn't see that coming. But the reason it did happen was he came in at 4.3 instead of the 6.1 he was supposed to get.

Yeah. This is going to have ripple effects. You wonder, are guys going to be more willing to sign extensions? You know, I think about a guy like Trey Turner. Does he look around and- Even Bregman, dude. Bregman took 100 million instead of pushing it. Right.

Do you look around and say, all right, this isn't going to be right for a while. Do teams have a chance to, if they convince ownership to spend, lock some of these guys up? Listen, I don't think you're getting Juan Soto on a bargain ever, but some of these other guys

that are floating around out there, is this the time to kind of look at this and say, okay, I don't want to hit the free agent market next year, or I don't want to be arbitration eligible. Look what's happening to these guys. They're taking these pretender deals just so they don't get cut or just so that they have some salary that's guaranteed where they're not just like cut bait and spring training and piece out on the rest of your money. So it's a fascinating thing to look at. And I'm wondering what you guys think about relievers because it's a tough group anyway. It's a tough going to be a reliever. You have one good year, one bad year. It can be tough for bullpens to sustain success. They're

highly cyclical. A lot of right-handed relievers, non-tendered as expected. I'm wondering what you guys think. As a reliever, are you going to see these multi-year deals for guys? Are you going to see a lot of one-year deals? One quick thought. As I look through the players who were non-tendered this week, I didn't see names that were sticking out to me on the reliever list for the most part as mistakes in terms of how I look at those players and what I think they're able to do. There's one name. Yeah.

There was one surprise also that the Brewers, I think, were going to non-tender Corey Knabel. They ended up trading him to the Dodgers instead and getting a player to be named later, which who knows what that ends up being. Archie Bradley is the big name. He was down a tick and a half. Right.

And you have been talking a lot about velocity and some of the fast movers in free agency, even on short deals, were guys that were throwing harder. Most of the relievers were down in velocity. Most of the non-gendered relievers were down in velocity. Hansel Robles was down in velocity. Definitely, that was a big deal. And I talked to an agent. He said, when you talk to teams, all they care about is stuff.

All they talk about is spin rate movement and velocity they do they do not care about your era which is hard to evaluate in a 60 game season when guys like max scherzer i remember the last start of the year was like i finally feel good from a team's perspective you say it's easier than era though because it's like at least we can you know movement and velocity you know are usually stable pretty quickly but you're right it's like at least we can you know movement of velocity you know are usually stable pretty quickly but you're right it's good it's good to point out that like the training wasn't right the injuries were crazy

you know all of that and then you know we heard you know in our piece coming up some some shade thrown at the quality of the major league games which I that was a that was a crazy quote it was crazy quotes in our a crazy quote there's some crazy quotes in our piece on monday there's some laugh out loud quotes uh in our piece on monday there

really is so i it to me it's just fascinating ever since brad hand like the option kind of got let go i'm like all right what's you're right derek there weren't too many relievers that you're like oh my god but i just wonder like what happens to that market i do feel bad for relievers who maybe a year or two could have gotten. There were a time where Tommy Hunter got a multi-year deal from the Phillies. Remember that? May should have gotten more. Yeah. May would have gotten like three and 30.

May would have maybe gotten twice what he got. What does Blake Trennan get? I don't know. It's just an interesting dynamic. These are like three for 30 guys, right? Yes. These are like that kind of like they're not quite closers so they don't get that like the chapman deal but like they remember when the rockies signed like three three for 30 guys they get brian shaw like three

for 30 yes i mentioned tommy hunter because like he got a ridiculous deal too a few years ago from the phillies that really obviously didn't pan out on relievers because the because the deals are shorter it's easier to get out of them you know i think that you know relievers if you take like dollars per war is kind of broken right now uh but if you take relievers out it all starts to make a lot more sense dollars per war minus relievers is around five million and if you do dollars per war not free agents but across all baseball it's like four and a half million so that that's the number I'm kind of zeroing in on. I think teams want to spend about $5 million a win. And that makes a lot of these moves make a lot more sense.

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It's kind of eye opening that I mean, leverage index is part of a relievers war. It does increase their war. Their higher leverage does increase their war. But it is kind of eye opening to me that leverage index is being used in arbitration as a way to kind of value relievers. That means that there's a sort of a separate process for evaluating relievers. And that's sort of how I kind of think about the market. I think if you just separate relievers, things make a lot more sense. I've thought this for a really long time. Just dollars per war for relievers is off the charts.

It's like $10 million a win. And it doesn't make much sense. Yeah, I keep thinking back to the surprising Royals teams of five-ish years ago, right? And their formula for success was in part playing really good defense, but also having a bullpen that for the last nine to 12 outs was lights out, right? And teams have been trying to really copy that model for the last five years. Is this a direction we're going to see for the foreseeable future where you can't easily develop starters that go six and seven innings consistently?

That's really hard to do. But you can develop relievers who throw gas and have that second pitch and come out and wipe hitters out three at a time. This is what's happening. This is absolutely what's happening. How long does this go? Joe Gatto is another example, the guy that just signed with the Rangers. Everyone's like, who's that?

Well, his name looks like Joey Gallo, but he's a reliever. And one of the things that was posted when he signed, Levi Weaver had a piece about it. It was his workout. I think it was at driveline in Arizona. And it was like him maxing out his Velo at like 98.6, setting a new record, right? So you're just watching this workout video and you're like, this is what gets relievers in the door now. It's just... Yeah. And I think the idea is spend a million dollars on your pitching coordinator. Spend a million dollars, spend $2 million on your pitching coordinator. Spend a million dollars, spend $2 million on your pitching player development pipeline,

and they turn out relievers for you. And then be a little bit, maybe even more like the Nationals, where you spend money on starting pitching, just because it's hard to develop those guys. And once they show something in terms of aging, like a lot of those guys age pretty well. I mean, Corbin, the doors, you know,

the question's still out there. But I think Max Scherzer, that big deal, Max Scherzer is one of the best deals of all time. Right, right. One of the best big deals of all time. He's also a future Hall of Famer, though. Those guys don't grow on trees. But like you think about some of the big name guys

that people spend money on, like starting pitching has, I think, turned out better than a lot of the other places. Yeah. It's not good to spend big money on a reliever. No. You kind of want to churn those out with your player development. And then instead, you go out and you buy starting pitching.

That has made more sense for teams so far as I see it. Yeah. Here's the thing with those Royals teams back in the day that people miss is that a lot of those guys came up through the system. They didn't just go and buy them. I think that's the danger is trying to buy three or four relievers seems to never work out a lot of these reliever deals never work out um yeah and the issue to me now and we get into this in our our piece next week you know is that like teams now are getting like 50 guys to throw as hard as they can if some of them break some of them break some

of them are eventually going to get to the top and they're your young relievers until they break. And then you got the next wave of young guys. It's become... It's that max velo idea. Yeah, it's become a max effort sport. Max effort swinging,

max effort pitching. Injuries are rising. And I think part of that is not COVID. Part of that is the max effort force of this game. And people used to lose their jobs because of so many injuries and that just doesn't really happen anymore it's like all right here's the next wave

and as you pointed out during our playoff show the the race didn't just have the velo they had the different looks and the different arm angles and i think that's the next wave here it's not hey we have four guys to throw 100 it's what do those four guys look like what angles are they coming at i think that's the next thing as guys become more and more immune to just like that straight upper 90s fastball, you're going to have to give them something more. That is absolutely the next frontier,

those different looks that we saw. Let's get to some other topics here. Zahadiv Sharma had a story that Len Casper, the TV play-by-play guy for the Cubs, who's been there for 16 years, left the Cubs and is now the lead radio guy for the White Sox. This is the most 2020 announcer story possible. This blew my mind because Len Casper A is very good. And in my head, TV is a better, higher-paying gig than radio. Of course, in the way I think about franchises, with no disrespect intended to the White Sox whatsoever, a Cubs job is a bigger job than a White Sox job.

What the heck happened here? This doesn't sound like it's related to the way the Cubs are spending money and that there was a major dispute over a contract or anything like that. Who knows? It's still pretty early in the life of the story. But I can't really recall seeing anything quite like this before where a very well-known great TV guy in a big market decided to go to a lesser team to do radio. Yeah, it's fascinating. to go to a lesser team to do radio yeah it's it's fascinating i do i want to ask you britain a second because there's i think the nationals um announcing team there's there were stuff that is happening too like with covid and i remember you were talking about contracts and stuff and how they

how they were treated uh but there's this this tweet just came down the line from jordan bastion says len casper says cubs came to to him and offer that quote blew me away, but it only quote crystallized the decision for him. It showed him what his priorities were. In this case, the priority was that chase of that dream of moving to radio. Yeah. That's been the undercurrent of the story the entire time is that he just

wanted to be a radio guy. And if it wasn't about money, Len Casper is 50 years old. He's had that seat for 16 years. Maybe at a certain point, it's one of those moments in your career where you say, I can choose my next job.

I can call all the shots. But who wants radio over TV? What is the benefit of radio over TV? Here's the main thing in that story. It says that he wants to call a World Series. Close your eyes, gentlemen. Who's winning a World Series right now first? The White Sox or the Cubs?

The White Sox look like they're trying a lot harder. Exactly. The Cubs look like there could be another 100 years, right? I'm not really sure what they're doing. I personally think they should burn it to the studs, start over, get past the Theo era, try to build it back up. Oh, wait a second. That's a different soon radio and TV. Yes, you can call World Series games for your team, right?

If your team you cover goes to the World Series, you lose those games. You're not kicked out of the booth. They're not locally broadcast. You become the guy. Yeah, TV is done at the end of the year, basically. Right, so unless you're Joe Buck or if you get to the Bryan Anderson TBS level,

you can call LCS games, right? I mean, you can do that, but you can't call them for your team on TV. He wants to call a World Series. That's the way to do it. That's the way to do it. I'm sure the White Sox jumped at it. I'm sure they were super excited for this. That, to me, is the one main advantage with radio,

is that you don't get kicked out during the postseason. You are still doing that stuff. That's interesting. And it's a little more stable. I think with TV a lot, they work for the regional, at least from my experience, teams work for the regional networks when they're on TV. Radio is still considered a team employee. Oh, okay. they're on tv radio is still considered a team employee oh okay so was there but there were some shenanigans when it came to nationals announcers and the in covet and stuff right weren't they like

sort of summarily laid off early on or something um so the no the mass and took the all paid full salaries to the orioles and nationals announcers The radio guys as team employees took the pay cuts that everyone in the team took national-wise. But Masson, I mean, there's that big Orioles-Nationals war that continues to rage on. And then, of course, all the freelancers at all the regional TV networks, right, that didn't actually have jobs.

That doesn't normally affect on-air talent. Though certain people like Victor Rojas out in Anaheim, that are considered not full-time, did not make any money during this layoff. So, I do think the radio is a little more stable because you're not tied to the RSNs.

Interesting. I thought they were all team employees, really. They're not, no. Like, for example, the, what is that, the Marquee Network? The regional broadcast? Yeah, it's the Cubs Network, yeah. employees really they're not no um like for example the what is that the marquee network the regional broadcast network yeah right so like yes with the yankees like um susan waldman is not a yes employee she's radio so she's with the yankees but meredith markovitz their sideline reporter is a yes employee it's a separate deal and i do get the sense the tv is a little bit more cutthroat year to year you know they yeah they they're more maybe ratings based and they're just like you know

if they think that the announcer had something to do with ratings going down like they'll they'll move on pretty quickly it's also like whoever um you know kelsey winger it's super popular with the braves in atlanta with their fox affiliate let go for no reason um they you could just get a tv exec in there who wants to put their own person on TV, put their own person in sideline, put their own person in the booth. I think radio is a little, because it's a team employee, because you're part of the team, I think owners kind of see it as a little more of a stable thing.

You don't see too much turnover in that radio booth. So this might be a rare case, guys, where it's not like a big drama thing and it's not really that big of a money thing. It is what see too much turnover in that radio booth. This might be a rare case, guys, where it's not a big drama thing and it's not really that big of a money thing. It is what he wanted her to do. Right. A perfect storm where someone was at the right point in their career to just make a decision that few people get to make.

You don't get to just pick the job you want and dictate the terms very often. Kudos to Len Casper. He's great. The White Sox, you're spoiled. You've got Jason Benetti on TV. Now you've got Len Casper on the radio. I'm curious, if you guys were choosing between a TV play-by-play or radio play-by-play gig, what would you choose and what market would you want to be in? I'd actually prefer radio because as a female, I wouldn't have to be on TV.

I wouldn't have to worry about doing my hair and makeup every day. This is like totally foreign to you guys. But it's exhausting. No, it's not foreign to me, dude. I hear you 100%. It's exhausting. Also, it's also one of the- On the hair angle, I'm there 100%.

That's true. Kino gets it. And then one of the first things you notice on TV is it's not necessarily what you say. It's also how you say it, right? Your mannerisms, the way you just – I always enjoyed when I was in Baltimore, I did a lot of radio. And I really enjoyed it because it was just – same thing with podcasts, right? Just what you say. It's not so much how you say it.

So I would probably do radio. I think it would be really cool to call a World Series. So I'm with Len on that. Plus, yeah, you don't get kicked out of the booth you get to be more of a team employee I'm not going to pick a team because all that's going to do is have whoever's listening to this affiliated with

the Nationals give me a hard time but I think it'd be really cool you know what would be really hard though and what I would never want to do but have so so so much admiration for is hockey because that puck is going non-stop and these guys so hard these guys know exactly who has it when and where and he's like oh and then thornton's got it across the boards and he goes to here and you're like holy hell yeah it's really fast it's unbelievable it's unbelievable so i i could never do it i agree with a lot of your reasoning and it's tempting to take radio

but the one thing that like the spin or the thing that I would do obviously if I was an announcer and I've actually been able to do it for the A's and it was amazing is to do kind of more of like a sabermetric type

thing where you're kind of telling a story of stats and stuff like that. And I just think the TV allows you to put tables up and, you know, and like do more things interesting visually where you can kind of either, you know, trace the Homer and show the launch angle and exit velocity, that sort of stuff,

or just explain deeper concepts about spin and movement and stuff. It'd just be easier to kind of show a clip and be like, this is what I'm talking about. Yeah. So I think that just the medium would speak to me that I would like the ability to kind of show people something while I'm talking. Right. We see that executed really well, I think, on the nerdcast. Yeah, I like that. The Benetti, Mike Petriello.

Yeah, like the alternate feed that ESPN has. I think hopefully that's the future direction of baseball on TV. I think for me, location is San Diego. And that's not because I don't think other places are worthy of spending time or other teams are good. But living in San Diego when you're not on the road, I mean, that's the dream, right? Being able to just chill there as much as possible. Good team, too.

On the way up, you might be able to call some big games. Don't have a strong lean radio versus TV. I mean, I have more podcasting and radio experience, so I'd probably be more comfortable there, but not afraid of TV if that were a long-term future. If I were calling the shots, if I hit the Len Casper part of my career and I can choose my seat,

San Diego is the location. TV versus radio, I guess I still got to figure that out before that time comes. Probably a long way away from happening if it's ever going to happen at all. But yeah, it's all about where you are, right? Interesting stuff from the Rays.

We were waiting for a follow-up on Wander Franco. He had the injury that caused him to leave the Dominican Winter League. Good news there. No structural damage in his arm. I don't think we're going to see him play again this winter, but that puts him on track to be ready for the start of spring training in February. So he'll be, at least for now now avoided the catastrophic injury to the game's best prospect. But the debates will rage on, you know, is he a major league ready player? I know, you

know, you were recently looking at some of the underlying numbers for Wander and they weren't necessarily eye popping. And I was thinking more about that in the last couple of days. I don't think we've had advanced stats and stat cast type numbers and track man data for so long that i want to look at a 19 year old and say oh you know what the launch angle is not very good so yeah sell all the rookie cards as mike selfino said right like i i don't think we or we in the public we just don't have we haven't had access to it so we haven't done in the public we haven't done that sort of research on how much Maxi Exvilo can improve when you fill out and get bigger

and how much Exvosti can improve in the minor league portion of your career and that sort of deal, how much launch angle can change. We have done it in the major leagues, but a lot of times major leagues are fully formed dudes. They're big dudes. There's not as much growing to be done um and so maybe we're looking at one end of the tail you know when we do research on on changes in max exavilo and and monchangelo and stuff like that we're not we're not getting the full picture like you know teams get to get all their minor league stuff they get

they get they get max exavilos and exavilos from high school and college guys, and they can throw it all into the mix and kind of look at a full picture. So I think that's a good point. It's a good point. And, you know, I did have somebody that's within baseball text me recently that the Rays could have won the World Series if they had only just

inserted Wander Franco in the lineup. That seems like a little bit of a stretch. I mean... They did have a problem with contact. Was this person Wander Franco? Or his agent. No, no, it wasn't.

That's pretty great, though. I mean, here's what would make me change my tune on him if the ray has traded him in some kind of blockbuster trade okay something they've seen something's not quite what we expected that would be the red flag a very highly regarded prospect getting traded is pretty rare and usually when we see that and it's been hard to see the last few years, I think Taylor Trammell getting moved at the last trade deadline, he was one of the only top 50 prospects on anybody's list who was actually dealt. When those players get moved, it's often the beginning of, uh-oh, this player's not the player we thought he was going to be, and it plays out over the next couple of years. I'm not saying that about Taylor specifically or anything, but

that would be the one thing that would actually cause me to be quick to change my tune with Wander. I don't think that's happening. I think the Rays are closer to installing him as a regular in the infield. Or Lau or somebody else to make room. There are so many other

ways that can play out. I do want to report on one thing. And you guys were killing me on this on Twitter. I have a pie flip-flop. It's important. Thanksgiving fallout. I think pumpkin pie is actually better than baby food. It is actually a good pie when done correctly.

It is actually a good pie when done correctly. And the key, the secret to pumpkin pie is to have cinnamon crunchy bits along the top. It's kind of like what you put maybe on the top of a cobbler. It keeps it from having the only baby food texture. Yes. It fixes the texture. The other thing you can do, of course, hand whipped cream, but add bourbon. That fixes most things. Okay.

So you're drunk and don't realize. Alcohol makes everything better. Alcohol makes everything better. So it took two legitimate modifications. It took crunch being added to the top, like very sweet crunch across the top of the whipped cream and bourbon in the whipped cream. And then you had me. You had pumpkin up at a level where if you put it next to a typical apple pie and not an amazing apple pie, I might actually take your souped up pumpkin pie. So I owe pumpkin pie an apology. There was a way to make it good and I just couldn't see it. I had a flop in the other direction. I had a realization. You talking about how much it was like baby food made me think, gosh, this really is baby food. And my aunt made me a chocolate pie, which is a little bit like chocolate pudding with crusty bits and some whipped cream on top.

And I realized, hell, if I'm going to eat baby food, I'd rather it be chocolate. Yep. So I don't know where I ranked chocolate pie and pumpkin pie in your rankings, but chocolate pie is ahead of pumpkin pie for me, right? Yeah. Chocolate pie is ridiculous.

I don't know any babies eating chocolate pie. Do you? But it tastes like baby food. I mean, it's like very know, it's like very. Because it's pudding. Yeah. So like, okay. It's pudding.

Is it baby food or is it like food that you feed to. Toddler food. The food that you feed to like geriatric people who can't chew. I mean, there's a wide variety here. I also had chocolate pie and I did not even eat pumpkin. I had apple chocolate and was like, I don't need to eat pumpkin. I'm already uncomfortably full. I will say that the food, people got really into this on twitter the food rankings and my favorite comment was the person who was like he knows already laughing my favorite was the one

that was like you know like it's great at beer great at baseball terrible at this you can't be good at everything. No, there were better ones. Somebody said something like that Derek had been dropped on his head or something. Derek was like the Sacramento Kings or something. Yeah, Sacramento Kings. That was a lot. They thought I botched the side draft because I took the sweet potatoes

over the stuffing. I'm going to double down on that. I made the sweet potato casserole this year. It turned out like a dessert, as I said before. Also had a sweet kind of crunchy topper on it. It was basically sugared pecans across the top. It was delicious, better than any mashed potatoes I've ever had, and definitely better than stuffing.

And I think stuffing's pretty good when it's done right, as I said before. So I'm not the Kings. I'm ahead of the curve. I'm stuffing's pretty good when it's done right, as I said before. I'm not the Kings. I'm ahead of the curve. I'm not some paste-eating... I'm not the Rockies. I'm not the garbage teams that you guys all make fun of. I'm ahead of the curve. I'm small budget, but I'm ahead of the curve.

I don't know. I'm going to send an anonymous Sacramento Kings to Derek's home for the holidays. For the Christmas food draft. Are there actual Christmas foods? I don't know. We always have lasagna. Is that an Italian thing though?

Probably, yeah. That's interesting. My wife's family is Filipino Mexican, so they always have enchiladas. Nice. And then my German family always has a duck, but none of my close family likes ducks, so I just do some sort of roast. Yeah, usually a roast. Do you guys do potato pancakes?

You know? Is that a German thing? Yeah, my mom did. She never really taught me that. I don't know why. I've learned other mom recipes. She was mad that I didn't include ginger in my soy sauce rosemary mustard thing that I gave y'all, but I don't always put ginger in myself. How dare you?

Hi, Mom. Hi, Mom. This is a food podcast now, guys. Tune in. Bon appetit. You can send us your takes on food. Is there a Christmas menu? I think it totally varies by family.

I think families just make whatever they like. People out there making ribs for Christmas. I think we saw the story. It was Mark Canna who had ribs on Thanksgiving. I think smoking foods for Thanksgiving is the way to go. I think you could smoke a turkey, though, and have it both ways if you really want to.

But share the food takes, ratesandbarrels at theathletic.com. If you don't already have a subscription to The Athletic, you're going to want one for that piece that Eno and Britt have coming out next week. Sign up for just $1 a month.

Best deal of the year still on right now, theathletic.com slash ratesandbarrels. it's 80% off for the first year we don't usually do 80% off on Twitter feel free to make fun of us he is at Eno Saris she is at Brit underscore

Jeroly I am at Derek Van Ryper direct all of your scorn towards me my food takes are the absolute worst that is going to wrap things up for this episode of rates and barrels we are back with you on Monday. Thanks for listening.