Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1136: The Double-Draft Edition

Episode Date: November 14, 2017

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about Mookie Betts’ bowling exploits and Jeff’s AL Rookie of the Year ballot, then predict and review the results of Jerry Crasnick’s annual insiders survey, draft winter World Series odds movers, and do another draft of free agents’ estimated earnings. Audio intro: Jale, "Double Edge" Audio outro: Camera Obscura, "Double Feature" […]

Answer me quickly, won't do it again Double H, Double H, Double H, Double H Answer me quickly, won't do it again. Double edge, double edge, double edge, double edge. Hello and welcome to episode 1136 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. My name is Ben Lindberg. I write for The Bringer and I'm joined as always by Jeff Sullivan of Fangraphs. Hello. Oh, hello. Hi.

We have a lot on the docket today. This is going to be a competitive episode, a draft-filled episode. One quick bit of banter I wanted to get to before all of that. Mookie Betts bowled a 300, a perfect game on Sunday night. This was in the final qualifying round of the World Series of Bowling in Reno. And I want to ask you how impressive you find Betts' second career as a bowler. So this has been well reported, of course. He's out of 195 players. So he is not making the cut for the PBA World Championship, but he improved over the previous year and he's good.

These are the best bowlers in the world and he is one of them. Not on the short list for the best bowlers in the world, but he is one of the best 150 or so bowlers in the world, it seems like, or at least of the bowlers who are competing for the PBA championships. So how impressed are you by that? Because we talk about multi-sport athletes a lot. We've talked on this podcast about whether we'll ever see another Deion Sanders or Bo Jackson, someone who makes at least two of the highest leagues in the land. How does Betts' bowling compare to that? I guess I'm really just asking you for your opinion of bowling, more so than Betts.

Well, I'm not going to lie. I don't have much of one. I have bowled. I'm someone who has bowled. But I don't know the exact – I mean, bowling at 300, it's not as rare as a baseball perfect game, and it's not as rare as a hole-in-one. Betts himself had apparently done it 10 times. This was his first time doing it in an official event.

But yeah, it's more common than a baseball perfect game. It's more common than a hole-in-one or something. But it's impressive, I think. It's an common than like a hole-in-one or something, but it's impressive. I think it's an impressive feat. Evidently, all of the top bowlers were congregating around Betts to watch him do this, and he performed under pressure. Yeah, okay. So it requires—well, maybe the thing about it is that it requires such a small sample. You're bowling, what, 12? 11 or 12 times in order to get a 300?

Yeah, 12, right. 12. Okay okay so that's just like it's 12 it's executing 12 perfect pitches and there's no function of luck you know like if you throw a perfect pitch in baseball then someone can still like hit it off the fists and get lucky hit one of those luis gonzalez squibbers into the outfield to win the world series but if you make your bets just like i'm going to put these 12 pitches exactly where i want and then that's it like there is no batter and i have succeeded so given his clear know-how of physical mechanics and his presumed wrist strength we know from his hitting he has very quick wrists maybe maybe there's not enough crossover baseball players and bowlers among the uh the really good contact hitters so i'm going to say that i was i was more impressed over the weekend when i first heard about this

but now that i'm actually thinking about it and what goes into bowling a perfect game it's good but i i get the sense that there are an awful lot of bowling perfect games but maybe that's not what your actual question is about it's not just about his his perfect game but about the quality of his bowling in the first place right right i would interested in knowing, we need a much larger sample of professional baseball players who are also bowling to know how good they are. And I wonder how much benefit there is, like the general body athleticism, I don't know how much that matters, but like the precision that you have to have with your with your forearms and your wrists seems like there would be a good amount of of overlap i wonder

about pitchers specifically maybe bowling would be good exercise for them or really bad exercise for them i don't really know which so i'm going to say i'm less impressed than i want to be i'm i'm wide open to being impressed by mookie bet' bowling, but 156? I don't care. Yeah, the rarity of it stands out. I mean, you hear all the time about baseball players who are also really good golfers or something, but it's just not as common a pastime, I guess, at least at an elite level. So it stands out more, and it's impressive. I don't know. I mean, the athleticism of bowlers is probably not nearly as high as baseball players not only because of the requirements of the sport but because of the

incentives the fame the money etc so maybe if you put someone like bets in this kind of competition you'd expect them to be really good i don't know curious now about bowling luck since you brought it up because i live across from a bowling alley, which is called Lucky Strike. So there's got to be some luck, right? I guess maybe there's luck just in the sense that if you're a bad bowler, you could have some good rolls, right? I mean, you will get lucky. You'll just not be very good, but you'll happen to cluster your good games together, which is a form of luck. But I guess you're right that once you actually put the ball in play, so to speak, there's less luck. I guess there are different surfaces that might suit one player or another,

but the conditions are probably, they don't differ as much as they do in some sports and activities. So you're probably right about that yeah probably a a good good element of cluster luck cluster unsustainability but yeah i i think that lucky strike probably applies to if i go bowling any strike that i bowl is lucky now we're probably opening ourselves up to a number of emails from people who actually understand bowling and maybe maybe the uh the pin resetters aren't quite so precise as you would think that they are or Or maybe there is more variety in, I don't know if there's a word for pin topple ability. Maybe there's more of a spread in that than one would assume. Maybe bowling balls aren't all exactly the weight that they advertise themselves to be.

And maybe the lanes aren't always as waxed or polished. Maybe there's differences there. So there could be a wide opening for a lot of variety in bowling alleys but no i think the other is that there is not i saw that the red sox tweeted that he bowled a 300 and had a video of him doing so and there were many many responses to that tweet that said something to the effect of if only he could hit 300 in baseball which he did that last year like give the guy a break like geez he had a low this year we've talked about it but he has been a 300 hitter in baseball so come on that's within his skill set too he's been worth 20 wins above replacement in like three seasons and a month he's absurdly

good people are so unfair yeah and we've talked about how he was probably just about as good this year as he has been in previous years and maybe he got a little unlucky this year and lucky in previous years but certainly based on the quality of contact he's he's still excellent but i guess yeah i don't know. People even were tweeting about, like, if he could hit 300 in the playoffs or something, which he just did. He hit 313 in the ALDS, like, a month ago. Come on.

All right. So I want to bring something up. Do you have any banter? No, it was going to be bets. Okay, good. All right. So the Krasnikick's as we have called them on this podcast came out today this is a Sam Miller favorite it's an annual tradition

Jerry Krasnick every winter since at least 2003 has polled baseball insiders about various hot topics pertaining to the offseason so he'll do this at the beginning of the offseason. He will survey people in baseball about what's going to happen over the offseason, basically. And Sam is always fascinated by this. He's already emailed me about it today. And he, at one point or maybe two points, tracked the results of these surveys at Baseball Perspectives. And when he looked at a big sample like 2003 to 2011 he found that the results were barely any better than random chance which is maybe somewhat surprising or i don't know maybe it's what you would expect i mean it it's surprising because these are the gms largely

these are people who are plugged in they're making the offseason news and yet even they don't seem to be able to predict it at all. And so I think we're always fascinated to see what they think and how it might differ from what we think and what actually happens. So I have not read the survey yet. You have not read the survey yet. You'll all just have to take our word for it. So what I want to do, which I think we've done on this podcast before, is just go down the list. There are nine questions this year and there's a question and then he tells you what his insiders thought. So this year he has 40 people, 40 general managers, assistant GMs, baseball operations people, and scouts about nine hot stove questions. So I want to read the questions and then I want each of us to say what we think the response will be from these insiders. And then maybe also what we would say

if we would differ from what we think the response would say. So I'm going to scroll down this list very, very slowly so that I can see the questions, but not the answers. So question one, will Giancarlo Stanton be traded this offseason? If so, where? Some of these are yes or no questions. Some of them are more complicated. But let's just say, okay, what percentage of these respondents or how many of the respondents do you think will say that he will be traded this offseason and maybe what will be the top team that he's supposed to go to? Okay. So I think 39 of 40 will say yes, traded. And 38 of 40 will say Cardinals. Yeah. Right. Okay. I'm definitely saying Cardinals and

I would be right in the range that you are. Maybe I'll take the under you said 39 i'll say i don't know 37 or something but i'm i'm right with you there so respondents say yes 32 only 32 and the most likely destination is the cardinals 10 i guess 10 of the well i don't know i guess this could be 10 of the 40 say the the cardinals are the most likely destination so okay so that's uh yeah a little lower than we both thought it just it seems like a certainty that stanton will be traded just because the marlins want to cut payroll he is the most obvious way to do that he's coming off a possible mvp campaign and uh but i guess you know there are always complications when you're trying to trade a superstar with a strange and big contract.

So maybe that's what they're thinking. By the way, you can now talk about your deliberations on the AL Rookie of the Year voting, right? Are those results coming out today? Is that right? Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's happening. The many hours and days you spent poring over the stats to try to figure out who was the American League Rookie of the Year. What was your process here?

Like, how much time did it take you to fill out the name of, I'm going to assume, Aaron Judge on this list? Well, what took me the longest was figuring out a third American League Rookie. Because at the start of the year, I was like, okay, I think it's going to be Andrew Benintendi. I think Benintendi's going to be great. And then Benintendi was like, he was fine. So I'm going to level with you. I kind of need to look up who I voted for third place. Yeah.

So I'm going to guess, in retrospect, I probably submitted Aaron Judge and then Andrew Benintendi and probably Matt Olson. But it might have been Jordan Montgomery. Look, this isn't a good look for me to not know who i voted for i understand that this makes me look like an idiot but all anyone really cares about is first place and if aaron judge is so unanimous yeah that i think that there are national league voters who probably also voted for him just to give him more of a boost i have never i cannot imagine an easier vote ever in the history of

any vote that has taken place in like the history of democracy or even sham democracy where like the votes aren't real yeah no this is this is the easiest thing that's ever been done so glad i didn't get like a national league mvp oh yeah yeah yeah they should have just like waved the voting this year of course course, it's Judge. All right. I got it. I got it. Who was it?

No, okay. It was Judge. Then I voted Jordan Montgomery second place. Why not? Judge, Montgomery, Benintendi. All right. Way to go, Jeff. You almost remembered what you did.

All right. Next question on the Krasnicks. Number two, which team will Shohei Otani be playing for on opening day all right so what do you think the people said okay well so this one's impossible because we don't know anything so therefore i'll say yankees no no i take that back i take that back okay yeah i'm gonna say cubs also i think and and that's what you think, presumably, too. You don't differ from what you think the crowd will think? No.

Okay. All right. The responses are Yankees win. Yankees win with seven and a half. Actually, it's a tie. Yankees and Dodgers, seven and a half each. Seven and a half? What's half?

I don't know. What happened? I guess someone submitted a tie in his response. Seven and a half each. Seven and a half? What's half? I don't know what... How do you... What happened? I guess someone submitted a tie in his response. Come on! Kind of a cop-out. It's an anonymous poll. This is an anonymous poll with no stakes whatsoever.

Just pick someone. Surprisingly. If you're a general manager and one of the people in your front office hems and haws and you hear that he voted half Yankees and half Dodgers in an anonymous poll. You fire that guy. That is not a decision maker. Yeah. Surprisingly, the Cubs only one person. Really?

Yeah. This is strange. So the Rangers, five. The Fighters, four. Mariners, four. And then the Cubs are tied with the Padres, the Astros, the Giants, and the Red Sox, all with one. That's somewhat surprising. Yeah.

All right. Strong disagree. Well, not strong. Mild disagree. Yeah. All right. Number three. Which Kansas City Royals free agent, Eric Hosmer, Lorenzo Cain, or Mike Moustakas will provide the best value over the course of his next contract.

So, I don't know, probably like dollars per war, let's say, or whatever. Which contract will turn out to be the best? Well, this is a weird question because I don't know exactly what he means. Because value could just be overall performance or it could be performance efficiency, right? So, I don't know what's being asked right i guess the the respondents were free to interpret this however they would like so we can predict how they would have interpreted it i would interpret it as just being the best deal so not necessarily the most valuable player but but best taking into consideration the terms of the contract too okay i think everybody said hosmer but i would say

mike minor mistakis i mean no minor minor was not on the list well i don't care i still think mike minor is most it would be the best value i agree but uh of this three all right so you're saying hosmer will be the best value i'm gonna that's what to say Moustakas. The responses are Hosmer, 25. You are correct. 25. Wow. You are correct. 25. Wow. So, all right. So there has to be some element of people just saying he's going to be the best, right?

I mean, I would think probably because this isn't even close. It's Hosmer 25, Kane 10, Moustakas 4, which, I mean, if you were interpreting this as who's going to be the best, I could see it. But best value, best bargain? That seems strange to me that 25 would say. so yeah it's nothing the scott boris deep state is infiltrated every front office in baseball this is out of control all right number four jd martinez is the top free agent bat on the market where does he wind up and for what size deal huh all right i don't even know how to how to do this one so where does he wind up and for what size deal? I mean, there's so many possible responses here.

I'm going to say, gosh. All right. How can we? All right. Well, should we just say most likely destination? Yeah. All right. I don't know.

Yeah. All right. So most likely destination, and I don't know how to do the what size deal, but that's an open-ended question. But all right, most likely destination. What do you think these people will say? Yeah, I think they're going to say Boston, and I think that their words are probably not stupid big deal, but my words are.

Okay, yeah. I will also say Boston, and I don't know what to say, like 150 million or something like that. I don't know what these people are going to say. All right. Responses. Yes. Red Sox lead the way with 23 and no other team more than five. Even the Diamondbacks, his most recent team, only with five.

So, okay. And then let's see. There's nothing about the size deal. That was just a red herring here He's got He's got observers Individual observers predicting the size of the deal He says let's see

Most respondents expect him to come away with a haul In the 120 to 160 million dollar range I have a question for you Yes okay Related to J.D. Martinez And Scott Boris' wild ass propaganda So it came out like toward the end of last week Boris you know he's talking up his client J.D. Martinez and Scott Boris's wild-ass propaganda. So it came out toward the end of last week. Boris, you know, he's talking up his client, J.D. Martinez, and he's like,

if you look at what he did with the Diamondbacks, he was on like a 70-homer pace. Right. Okay, but look, I understand. I understand the King Kong of slug or whatever his term was. But what he did with the Tigers was also super good. So why would you even try to draw a 10 he led baseball and slugging percentage overall right with the diamondbacks he had a 172 wrc plus but with the tigers in the same amount of playing time it was 160 he's great don't cut the season in half

you look like an imbecile right just say like jd martinez led baseball and slugging percentage full stop that's the argument you don't need to say anything else. Yeah. I mean, ending on a high note, sure, that's appealing to people. But I think, yeah, if you call attention to the fact that you're just talking about like two months of performance, then it's even more obvious that you're trying to twist things to make the guy look good, which you don't have to do because he looks good regardless. And I don't know. No one is actually paying attention to what Scott Boras says inside baseball operations departments anyway. So it doesn't really matter what he says. I guess just this way he gets more publicity,

which is perhaps good. But why? Why does he get the publicity? Why do people quote him? Look, I understand why you have to quote agents. Agents use the media and then the media gets tips from agents in return. So you kind of

get what's going on so if you're someone if you're trying to be like a primo scooper or whatever a word is that is better than scooper yeah then you have to do the agent's bidding but what don't don't give scott boris a platform he doesn't deserve he's just lying to you he's lying to the world all the time i hate to break this to you, but you're giving Scott Porras a platform right now. But not for the same. He wins either way. He can't beat Porras. All right.

Number five. What kind of impact will Yu Darvish's World Series performance have on his next contract? And this is a multiple choice question. A, zero. It was only two starts. B, somewhat. It's a caution flag. A, zero. It was only two starts. B, somewhat. It's a caution flag.

C, substantial. He bombed twice on baseball's biggest stage. So what do you think will be the most common response here? None. None. No effect. I'm also saying A, zero. And the responses are somewhat leading the way with 23.

Somewhat 23. Wow. That was a bad question. Somewhat 23, 0, 13, substantial 3. That's something. Wait. 23 plus 13 plus 3. Who didn't?

Yes. Who's missing? No opinion. That is actually what Sam emailed me about this morning. Every single question had at least one no opinion or no response and several of them had exactly one no opinion or no response so sam said he is choosing to imagine krasnick's interview with the one gm who agreed to take the call but refused to answer anything sure i'll do your survey no comment no comment no comment uh it's the waffler

it's the half vote it's that guy he's like all right i have no opinion except on this one i have a strong opinion one of two teams yeah all right number six where will jake arietta signed as a free agent. Oh, man. This is tough. I don't know. I don't know who wants Jake Arrieta. I don't even know who's the market for Jake Arrieta. Yeah. I mean, it doesn't seem like he's going to be back with the Cubs, even though they've been his team and they are in the market for starting

pitching in theory. So maybe that's just kind of the default answer because we don't really know who has a strong interest in Jake Arrieta. But I mean, I guess you just go with the usual suspects, right? Yankees, Dodgers, but... Well, let's see. Let's think our way through this. Okay.

Yeah, so Arrieta is available. Who out there has bad pitching but doesn't think that they're in a rebuilding cycle yet right so that's other than the cubs yeah yeah other than the cubs baltimore the rangers of terrible pitching yeah oh he's from texas isn't he yeah okay i don't know yeah i don't know if they're in the place where i guess they're either in the place where you have to go for someone like this or you kind of have to give up because if they don't do anything, I don't know that that's going to work out too well for them.

Right. I don't think the Angels have the money. Yeah, probably not. It would be funny if the Tigers jumped in for no reason. I'm going to say... I guess there's the Mariners. Oh, God. I'm going to say Texas.

Okay. I'm going to say Texas. Okay. I'm going to say Cubs, I guess, just kind of default. Not that I think that's going to happen. All right. Responses. Rangers, 10. All right. And Cubs, 5.5.

Cubs, 5.5. Come on, guy. Phillies, 4.5. That's not a terrible guess, I guess. Dodgers, 3.5. Come on. Angels. So wait. So we've got multiple people who refuse to answer here. guy philly is four and a half that's not a terrible guess i guess dodgers three and a half come on angels so wait so we've got multiple people who refuse to answer here because we've got multiple halves nationals one half come on just i mean at least it's not like nationals one quarter

dodgers one quarter yeah kudos to these people for not having a four-way tie atop the answers all right number seven which late inning reliever wade davis greg holland or brandon morrow will put up the best numbers on his best deal next deal that is davis morrow holland yes so i think morrow but i think they said davis yeah i think they said davis too because this is nothing to do with contract this is just best numbers and the responses are davis overwhelmingly 34 of these people said way davis holland three morrow two and then there's no opinion of course why has it always been like this you know the history better than i do i there are usually no responses and no opinions in here i don't think it's standard for every question to have one which is what we're seeing here so i'm guessing there's one participant who's not going to be invited back

to the 2018 krasnicks anyway not. Maybe somewhat surprising that it's so overwhelming. But I guess if you think Davis is the best, there's no reason not to pick Davis. All right. Number eight. Which free agent cargo, Carlos Gonzalez or Carlos Gomez, is likely to reestablish himself as a prime player in 2018? I mean, Carlos Gomez kind of did

reestablish himself, right? I mean, he was kind of done, it looked like, and then he had a bounce back. I don't know if he reestablished himself as a prime player, but he was an above-average hitter and seemingly a competent defender.

So this is a weird one. Carlos Gonzalez is hitting the free agent market at a strange time where his value is extremely depressed and he's coming off a below average offensive year. So, I mean, I guess Carlos Gonzalez is more likely to reestablish himself as one because he's further from being one this past season. But I don't know that that's how they'll take this question so i guess i'll say gonzalez will be the more common response this is a stupid question i don't feel comfortable giving an answer i think that the people said carlos gonzalez but i think it's a stupid question okay responses yes carlos gonzalez 29 carlos Gomez, 7. No response, 3. Yeah, well, that one I agree. Yeah, that's fine.

Yeah, I guess, yeah, neither won. That's actually fair because the question didn't say which is more likely. It said which is likely. So neither is a decent answer there. Anyway. All right. And lastly, number nine question is Bryce Harper won't be traded this winter as the Nationals take another run at a World Series, but Josh Donaldson, Manny Machado, and Andrew McCutcheon will also be free agents a year from now. Which of those three players is most likely to get traded this offseason?

Donaldson, Machado, McCutcheon. Oh. I'm going to say, yeah, I'm going to say McC because he i mean he was the closest to being traded probably and the blue jays are probably gonna make a one more chance at this thing and machado i think if he was gonna be traded that probably would have happened already so yeah mccutcheon all right responses mccutcheon 26 donaldson 11 machado zero three respondents had no opinion all right so we did that we expressed opinions on every one of these things because that is the spirit of this exercise so carlos gonzalez career 412 weighted on base average at home 316 on the road that's good for wrc plus of 95 carlos gonzalez

basically average hitter for his career he's been great in Colorado he seems like just a classic like look the Orioles are going to sign one of Andrew Kashner and Jason Vargas they're going to fall short in the bidding for Lance Lynn I guess and then they're going to sign Carlos Gonzalez to probably play the outfield dumbly and then they're still going to just kind of fart their way to 83 wins right all right so we're gonna try to cram two drafts into the rest of this podcast so we teased one on friday that's the the free agent contract draft the first one i think will be quick these are both drafts that we have done on this podcast in the past the first one will be World Series odds changers. So essentially we're taking the

World Series odds as of today. I'm just using the sportsbook Bovada for this, and we are predicting which odds will change between now and opening day. So what are the odds today? And we're predicting whether certain teams will have better or worse odds come opening day. And I don't think we care about the magnitude of the change, just the direction of the change here. Okay. I have a coin here. Yeah. Okay. So do you want heads or tails? I will take tails. Okay. Just take my word for it.

Okay. It's tails. You go first. Okay. Sam Miller used to insist that he could predict heads or tails based on the sound of the coin landing, which is the most mystifying thing I've ever heard. Here, listen to this. He believed that to be true. Okay. What do you got? No opinion. I am like the respondent in the crash next survey.

I say it's half heads and half tails. Right. Okay, so I am going first. Okay, so let's see here. I have written down some picks here. So I'm going to go with, I think, the Marlins to fall on this list. So the Marlins right now are plus 6,600. So the Marlins right now are plus 6,600.

And if you're confused about gambling odds as I am, I have plugged in what this means into a gambling odds converter. So plus 6,600, that means 66 to 1. That means they have an implied probability of like 1.5%. I'm going to guess that their odds decrease between now and opening day there are currently six teams with odds either equal to or worse than the marlins and obviously this is it's priced in right what people expect the marlins to do this winter is priced into these odds it's not like people are just completely throwing up their hands and saying we have no idea what these teams will do we have a sense of which teams will be buyers or sellers. And obviously the Marlins are perceived to be among the most likely sellers. But I still think

that when that actually comes to pass, when the Marlins trade Stanton, trade some other guys, presumably, they will just kind of have the stink of the seller about them by opening day and i think if anything the market probably tends to overrate off-season activity and so the team that's like been the big buyer will get a bigger boost than maybe it should and and vice versa for the team that's been the big seller so i'm going to say the marlins are the most notable seller of the off-season and so their odds fall even from their fairly lovely point where they are today okay my pick yeah Padres I think the Padres do better Padres are at the bottom of this they're at plus 10,000 which I interpret as I guess 100 to 1 tied with the Tigers tied with the Tigers who

are dreadful just absolutely dreadful team I I think well now I'm not going to give anything away I think the Padres will do better here's give anything away. I think the Padres will do better. Here's the thing. I don't think the Padres are actually going to be good next year, but I think that there's a decent enough chance that this winter they do something that's just out there, whether that's trading for Stanton. I think that there is some possibility they end up with Shohei Otani. I think that there's some possibility they end up with another premium player. Not saying that this is what they should be doing, but I think they have a decent chance that someone like otani and then otani makes things a heck of a lot

different because he's just such a such a lottery ticket so i think the padres will end up moving up not into any kind of good spot but i don't think that they come out of the winter in last place okay all right i'm gonna take the giants to rise i think they are currently plus 4,000, 40 to 1. They are right there with, well, the Rockies, I guess, and then the Braves and the Orioles right below them. I just think that the passage of time will kind of correct what people think about the Giants. I think that they're one of those teams that is in line for a bounce back without really doing anything, just because everything that could possibly go wrong went wrong just about this year and i don't know that they'll be big sellers but presumably they'll do something they'll turn the page a

little bit we'll have time to reflect and we'll be thinking less about how awful they were this season and more about how they actually stack up heading into next season so i'm going to say the giants do a bit better than they are currently projected to do okay i will uh i will use my pick on the royals the royals are currently at 50 to 1 it's roughly two percent world series odds or something i guess they are tied for 17th it's a big tie these are some uh some split the middle gamblers they're tied with the Braves Orioles Angels White Sox and Rangers I think the Royals odds will get worse because I think that the Royals are bad I think that they will assign players who are not good I think that the roster will remain bad I think that they will lose Lorenzo Cain they will lose Mike Moustakas even though they'll try

to resign him they will lose Eric Hosmer even though they'll try to resign him they will lose Mike Miner even though they might try to resign him and They will lose Eric Hosmer, even though they'll try to resign him. They will lose Mike Miner, even though they might try to resign him. And they will all be replaced with players who are worse, not necessarily players who are bad, but players who are not good enough to make the roster not bad. And I think that that will be clear when the winter is over. I think the Royals will be a bad baseball team. All right. I, with my third pick, I guess maybe we can do five each here. We can take the Mets next. They are at plus 2,200. I'm going to take them to fall.

They are currently, what, eighth, I think? Eighth highest odds here. They're sandwiched between the Yankees. Actually, they are tied with the Cardinals. They're above the Diamondbacks. I think that they are kind of in that Giants category of team that could get better without doing anything just because they're unlikely to have quite the same injury issues that they had this past season. And, you know, they have a new manager and new

trainer and maybe people will buy into that making a difference health-wise. But I just think they probably won't be all that active this winter was it last winter when they almost literally did nothing like every player on their opening day roster had been on the team the previous year i think it was they yeah you know they've they've had some years where they've signed free agents and spent as they've gotten further away from the made off disaster but i don't know that they're in line for big free agent splashes or anything. So if they have another winter of inactivity, I think maybe the market will cool on them a little bit. So I'll take Mets to fall.

Okay. I'll take the Rangers to fall. Okay. Rangers, they're tied for 17th with the Braves, Orioles, Angels, Royals, White Sox, and the Rangers are there. They're at plus 5,000, so 50 to 1. I think there's that chance, I guess, that they come out of this winter with Shohei Otani on the roster, and that would be great for them.

It would be doubly great for them because they have no pitching. Cole Hamels is the best pitcher on their team, and he just got a lot worse. I don't really know why, but he did. The numbers got worse. Strikeouts got worse. And so they don't have Darvish anymore, of course. They don't really have a lot of pitching coming through the system. Certainly not that it has made it to the major league level.

So I think that the Rangers are not a very good team. I think that will become more apparent over the winter, short of some sort of Otani acquisition where no matter, even if you think the Rangers have some sort of leg up, well, they don't because a lot of teams have a perceived leg up and I don't think that the Rangers are special. All right. I'm going to take with my fourth pick the Reds to fall also. I think they are at 66 to 1 right now, right where the Marlins are, right where the Twins

and the A's and the Pirates are. I just think that their odds are worse than the teams that they are currently tied with. Other than the Marlins, I've already expected the Marlins to fall. But I think between now and opening day, it will be clear that teams like the Twins and the A's and the Pirates and even the Phillies, who are even worse World Series odds-wise, I just don't really currently see the argument for the Reds above any of those teams. So I don't think they will do anything all that impressive or momentous this offseason so yeah i just don't think the pitching is there maybe it's coming but we're coming off

back-to-back years of just abysmal pitching and i don't know that that will change in 2018 i will take the brewers to fall i think that the brewers are fine i like their their rebuild process but they're at plus 3300 so 33 to 1 they are tied with the mariners and rays boy there's not a lot of good baseball teams but the brewers are therefore technically tied for 12th place and i think that they are fine i would be a lot a lot more satisfied with their roster if they knew what they were going to be getting out of jimmy nelson their best starting pitcher who is going to miss a chunk of next year and he's coming back from major shoulder surgery don't let pitchers hit or run the bases and yeah i don't think that maybe maybe the brewers are going to do something like trade for chris archer i guess this winter

there's that possibility i know that they were hot after sunny gray around the deadline last year so maybe maybe they would make a move like that but I think that once again this is going to be a situation where there's like a handful maybe two handfuls of really really good baseball teams and I just think that those I don't know seven eight nine teams are going to have by far the strongest odds and I don't think the Brewers are deserving of this standing all right All right, and my last pick, I'm kind of torn on what to do here. I think I will take Angels to Rise. Right now, Angels are at 50 to 1. They're tied with the Royals, the Braves, the Orioles, the White Sox, the Rangers.

I think they're probably better than those teams for one thing. They have Mike Trout they have Simmons we now know that they will have Upton although that is priced in here I think Billy Epler's made some smart moves maybe he makes some improvements on the margins to get them looking a little bit better before opening day and of course they were one of the closest misses for the postseason field this year so I'm gonna going to go with Angels. Maybe by spring, it'll be looking like Garrett Richards is healthy and some of their other starters are healthy. I guess it could look the opposite. They could all be hurt, but I'm going to say Angels do a little

bit better than this before opening day. I agree with you. And I will use my last pick on the Tigers to do worse than last place that they are currently in. They're at plus 10,000, tied with the Padres, tied for 29th. They're at 100 to 1 odds, which I think is far too generous for a team like the Tigers. I think that if anything, this offseason could see them trading in Kinsler. It could see them trade Nick Castellanos. It could see them trade, well, that's all of their good players, so I don't know what else they could do. So I think that the Tigers are going to come out of this winter in better organizational shape,

but absolutely dreadful Major League roster shape. I don't think that they deserve to be tied to the Padres at all. They should be in last with a bullet. All right. So I'm going to screenshot these odds as they stand right now, and we will compare them at the end of the offseason, and we'll see what has changed. Were you debating any others? I was thinking about Diamondbacks to rise maybe just because they're at 28-1. end of the offseason and we'll see what has changed were you uh debating any others i was

thinking about diamondbacks to rise maybe just because they are at 28 to 1 they're below the mets the cardinals the yankees etc and i was thinking about mariners to do something to maybe to rise i don't know they're at 33 to 1 right now and you just never know because there's probably more volatility around the mariners every winter just because, you know, Jerry DiPoto is going to be tempted to turn over the entire roster. And there is the chance at least that they could end up with Darvish or Otani or someone and make a real run at this in the last chances they have available. Any other teams you were considering here? Yeah, three potential risers. I think the A's are going to rise, but I don't know if it's going to be reflected in the odds i think the a's are just going to go with the next year

kind of underrated i think the phillies are a good candidate for a similar reason but they might go out and spandon actually get better in a conspicuous way and i think the cubs uh right now they're tied for fifth i guess but they're at plus 1100 so 11 to 1 and i think that the considering that just a year ago everyone thought the cubs were or a lot of people thought the Cubs could be a building dynasty. They didn't really get much worse. And I keep thinking they could come out of this offseason with Darvish and Otani at the same time. So I think the Cubs are a good chance to make some sort of splash. They have a lot of talent on the roster. I think that they can move up. All right. OK, so we have worked through the undercard and we've come to the last leg of this podcast, the main event. This is the free agent contract draft.

And in this draft, the magnitude and the direction both matter. So we're using MLB Trade Rumor's contract predictions here. We could have gone with someone else. I know John Heyman did his top 80 free agency. He not only makes his predictions, but he has an expert make the predictions, and he says nothing about who the expert is. It's just expert. It doesn't even say like a team source or a GM or something, just expert. Anyway, we're going to go with the MLB trade rumors list. It's a top 50, although that has already been winnowed down slightly by people like Tanaka and Brantley,

who are not actually free agents. So this was the product of, it looks like, four people at MLBTR who put their heads together and came up with this ranking and these estimates. And the game, we just take the contracts that we think will be furthest from the mark, the estimates that we think will be furthest from the mark. And we say whether we're taking the under or the over. And at the end of the winter, we tally up everything. And you count it if you got the direction right. So if you get the direction right,

then you get the amount of money that you were right by, essentially, added to your column. And if you didn't get the direction right, then it's just washed away. And the person with the most money at the end of the winter wins. So I guess you have the top pick here. I don't think that's true. I think we have to flip the coin again.

Oh, okay. Sure. Heads or tails? I'll go with tails again. Okay. Tell me what you think it is. I still have no opinion. That was tails.

You go pick. You go first. All right. Okay. With You go pick. You go first. All right. Okay. With my top pick. So I'm always torn by the, you know, I guess you go first with the big dollar, the big ticket items here because you have the potential to make many millions of dollars, whereas maybe there are some on the bottom of the ranking that you feel very certain about,

but you might only stand to make a few million dollars either way. So I'm going to go first, I guess, with Jake Arrieta. Your top seat also. Yeah. So Arrieta predicted to make a hundred million dollars over four years, and that might be a reasonable thing to pay Jake Arrieta, but I am going to guess that some team will do the unreasonable thing and pay him significantly more than that. So I think that that's my pick. We're not going to talk about where these guys are going to go because we have no idea. MLB Trade Rumors predicts because it's fun. But yeah, that's what I'm going to go with. I think there are a few potential landmines in this market, right? And not everyone who seems like they're going to go with. I think there are a few potential landmines in this market, right? And not everyone who seems like they're going to get more than they get ends up getting that.

There was someone last year who was like the consensus, oh, he's going to be a terrible contract. And then it didn't really turn out to be the case. But every year there are a few of these guys. There are definitely a few of these guys this year. And Arrieta is probably topping the list. Maybe teams are just so smart now that they won't overcommit to him, but I'm going to guess that someone will. Yeah. So wait, go back to the start. The prediction here was 4-100. What did you think? I'm not going to say. We don't have to say what we think it'll be. We're just taking

the over or the under, and we get credit for it. So I'm taking the over on that. You're taking the over on 4-100? Yeah. You're taking the under. You take the under. Okay. but you for uh so i'm taking the over on that you're taking the over on 4100 yeah you're taking the other you take i would okay i well you know what my pick doesn't matter but i was gonna take the under really wow yeah i think i am well here's the thing i think that there's a pretty good chance scott boris convinces some owner blah blah blah because this is not going to go to the gm level right but i think there's a decent enough chance that enough executives are out there just like all they hear all i would hear right now if i'm an executive going into this market

and i'm looking for starting pitching it's just constant like like the sound of fire alarms just going off in the distance just all around you and then sometimes like if you if you call up scott boris the alarm gets a little bit louder and you're like whoa i can't scott i can't really hear you can you you speak up with yeah i think i think that there's Too many red I think Arrieta I see him as A potential landmine but I think there's A pretty decent chance that teams are just like You know what no we're not going to do it Yeah that's certainly possible

I just think either he's going to Get more than this just on a Per year basis or I could see him Getting like a five year Contract that wouldn't shock me Just someone's's gonna want him enough to to add that extra year on and then maybe you're just kind of getting over 100 million just by bulk so yeah i'm gonna i'm gonna say that he ends up over this probably shouldn't some teams

will be smart enough not to but i'm gonna say at least one won't be man can you imagine giving him more than that when rich hill signed for 348? I know. Okay, so you took Arrieta off my list. Wow, that's amazing. We each had him as our top pick, but for opposite reasons. Okay, so you went for the big money. So I'm going to go for the biggest money. Yu Darvish here is predicted for 6-160.

And you know what? After talking about the Krasniks, after having people being like, look, I think that he's going to be somewhat affected. Hugh Darvish hasn't reached 200 innings since 2013. He's had Tommy John surgery. He's in his 30s now. He's always been a strikeout machine, but has never really quite pitched at the level that I think that one would expect him to pitch at, given the quality of his stuff. Now you've got some World Series uncertainty. I'm going to take the under on you, Darvish. Okay. Interesting. Yeah, I think overall, I would say overs are more common picks in this draft. Just, I don't know, I guess I tend to think that maybe the estimators are more conservative than the market is, or you don't really price in the winner's curse. You kind of,

part of you is thinking, well, this is what this guy should get, or this is what I would give him. And the team that ends up signing the player often gives more than that. That's why they end up with the player. And then also, I think sometimes we maybe fail to anticipate the market and the year-over-year inflation. So I find myself taking more overs than unders in this draft. But if I were to take one on Darvish, I suppose I would take the under, but I didn't feel all that strongly about this one. All right. I think I'm going to take the over on Lorenzo Cain. Lorenzo Cain, 4 and 70 is the estimate here. And he's another one that, you know, stands out as, oh, this is a guy you maybe don't want to commit to because he's in his 30s he's 31 he'll be 32 next April so maybe I'm wrong here I don't know but I think he's been

a good enough player for long enough and has a diverse enough skill set that maybe he can command more than this either on a per year basis or an additional year tacked on there. I mean, I don't know if JD Martinez is looking for a contract that would get him to like age 37, then I don't see why Lorenzo Cain couldn't request the same sort of length. And if he gets to five years instead of four, then suddenly this seems like a very achievable number to me. So I'm going to go with Cain. He's got the the qualifying offer attached of course which maybe depresses his potential a little bit but yeah i'll still take the over okay i'm going to take the under on i shouldn't be taking unders i want to take the under on lance lynn he's here at

four years and 56 million and i don't know why either of those numbers is in this post maybe they're tagged to the wrong player but lance lynn perfectly fine i guess starting pitcher yeah the odd thing is in in hayman's predictions he actually had either the same or higher numbers like when i first read this i thought lance lynn that much money but hayman has him also at 56 over 4 and his shadowy expert has him at 75 over five years what which Lance Lidd come on yeah come on I don't know you don't even need a better argument than come on I know Lance Lidd's like whole claim to value is durability right and he hasn't even really had that I mean he had no because he missed the whole season and he hasn't been a 200 inning guy since 2014. Granted, almost no one is a 200 inning guy anymore.

But yeah, I mean, I guess the argument here is he had a low ERA. So superficially speaking, and he had low, you know, he was like a legitimately good pitcher in 2014 and 2015. And even before that, I mean, you know know, all of his years prior to Tommy John, he was a good pitcher. He was, you know, not like super exciting, but fips in the threes, low to mid threes every year. And so you would have paid him that before the Tommy John surgery. And I guess the question is just how much of a market there still is.

He had the durability this year. He made 33 starts, but the peripherals were not impressive. The walk rate was up, et cetera. I guess maybe you could say, I don't know, a year removed from the surgery. Maybe he'll be better in some way, but it still seems like a lot. Yeah. No, Lance Lynn can't pitch to lefties. He's, the whatever durability argument he had doesn't exist anymore. Last year, Rich Hill got 348. He was actually good. Ivan Nova got 326. He was more removed from Tommy John surgery than Lance Lynn.

And also, he was less removed from being a good pitcher than Lance Lynn. Charlie Morton got 214. And look, I know the deal with Charlie Morton. But Lance Lynn at 456, that would be a... Look, I didn't come into this winter thinking that lance lynn was like a primo landmine but if we're talking 456 and 575 no hard pass yeah i'm with you there all right i think i'm gonna take an under also with my third pick and that is logan morrison logan morrison is predicted here to make three years and 36 million, which, you know, it's not totally unreasonable, certainly based on the season he just had.

But season he just had was a departure from every previous season he has had. So, you know, he was a legitimately good hitter this year, 130 WRC plus 38 home runs. But he has no track record of doing this. He was basically a league average hitter just about every year before that, going back to the beginning of his career with the Marlins. He is now over 30. He does not seem like the greatest clubhouse presence slash teammate slash person you want publicly representing your organization he is you know defensively fairly limited he i mean you know i've named enough reasons i mean he

he walked more this year and he's not a extremely high strikeout guy for the power that he gives you so i can see it but i just i'm gonna say that team's just based on the lack of a history of doing this and also just who logan morrison is and his public persona that no one's gonna want to go three years with him okay against well okay how many picks have we done i've done three i think in the past in the past we've done eight each here I don't know whether we will each come up with eight that's feels that's too many but yeah all right well we'll see okay how deep we go I will against almost my better judgment as long as I'm just gonna pick some big money I'm gonna take the under on Wade Davis yeah I was tempted to do that too maybe again maybe I have too much

faith in what I think the landscape of front offices is right now. Wade Davis did not have a bad season. But I think at his age, his velocity has dropped precipitously. His strikeouts were there, but he doesn't throw a lot of strikes. His strike rate last year was actually below average. He lost about two miles per hour off of his stuff. He's getting older, as many of us are. And I think that there are going to be enough durability concerns here so he's projected here at 4 and 60 million i could see him getting like 3 and 45 million but

you know mark melanson signed for what was it like 462 or something with the giants and yeah and he was he had more of more durability on his side now that's funny now because he immediately got injured but yes i think that there are too many red flags with way davis for team to go to 460 yeah i'm with you there he he walked a ton of guys late in the season his velocity was down relative to previous seasons so i wouldn't give way davis four years and 60 and and this was on my list but i don't know i mean you mentioned the melanson deal this is essentially theanson deal, except it's a year later, and the market for closers is not as strong.

Melanson got that money, even though Kemely Jensen was out there and Aroldis Chapman was out there, and those guys were getting even more. And this year, I think it's fairly indisputable that Wade Davis is best reliever available, at least based on his history. I mean, relievers are pretty unpredictable, and there are other people who will be just as good, but I think just based on what we've seen, you'd have to say Wade Davis is the best. And so I could see some team that is just desperate for certainty giving Wade Davis this amount of money. I wouldn't be shocked if he gets something in this range, although I wouldn't want to be that team. All right. I'll take with my fourth pick, I think I'll take the

over on Carlos Santana, who is at three years and 45 million. And I mean, Carlos Santana is just, he's such a good player. He is going to be 32 next April, which is the main concern. But Carlos Santana has been, I would think, among the most consistent players in the majors, right? I mean, he has played 150-plus games every year since 2013. He's really never had a year where he's missed a lot of time. He's basically been a three-win player every year. I mean, sometimes a little bit better, sometimes a little bit worse. But in that range, year after year after after year I think teams value that kind of consistency

and he's a switch hitter he is a good defender I don't know whether people think of him as a good defender but by first base standards I would say he's he's pretty good over there and I don't know I think there are enough teams that are in the market for first baseman and won't want to enter the Hosmer sweepstakes that he could get either another year tacked onto this or maybe more per year. And I'm not sure it would be a bad investment because he's just been a very solid player for a long time now. So I'm going to say he gets a little more than this. Okay. I'm going to make the boldest pick of the day, I think. I'm going to take the over on Eric Hosmer at six years and $132 million.

All right. I think so. There are a few things working in Hosmer's favor. One, last year he had, I think, a career best season last year, but his April was just dreadful. He had WRC plus of 52. And then after that, he was a very good hitter. But Eric Hosmer right now, he just recently turned 28 years old. So he kind of has that Jason

Hayward edge working for him not that again that's worked out for Hayward but yeah Cosmer I think he's he's young so you're gonna have a team signing him for a while I think that it would be easy to convince yourself that he's found something at the plate I'm not saying that you necessarily should because in two of the last four years he's been a replacement level player that's bad but he trimmed down on his strikeouts he improved his power I think that there are a lot of teams out there who are going to look at his stat cast measurables and and think that there's room for a lot like even more power hitting down the road if he makes some sort of adjustment that maybe he didn't make with kansas city it's weird he has like he just can't hit the ball to the bullseye he just can't he hits everything the

other way but looking at hosmer i think that to me the the actual upside here is kind of more conspicuous than it like every player has upside you know but I think that his is is pretty clear he has an average contact rate actually an above average contact rate so he's he has bat to ball skills and I think that neither one of us can prove that this is true but I think Hosmer will benefit from the intangible perception of leadership I think that he is considered one of those those clubhouse guys really strong people are probably going to associate hosmer with the royals overachieving for the last three or four years so throw in the boris factor the ownership factor and i think hosmer will probably clear 150 million at least all right okay bold pick but i like it. And with my fifth, I'm going to go with a smaller money deal here. I'm going to take the over on Michael Pineda, who MLB Trade Rumors has him at two years and six million. And this just seems low to me. I mean, Pineda was in line for a huge deal before he had Tommy John surgery in July. He was having his best year probably by, well, he was having about as good a year as he had had the previous season, just if you go by the peripherals at least.

And he had set himself up and then he had Tommy John surgery. But I think this is likely to be a multi-year deal because he'll want some security and some team will want to kind of sign him when he is an unknown quantity and get a good deal on his first full healthy year presumably and he had tommy john early enough that there's potential at least for him to come back for the stretch run for the playoffs next year even if that's far from a certainty so i'm going to say that some team gives him a good deal more than this kind of pricing and having him for a full 2019 who can you think of who's signed a contract like this like the nathan diovaldi comes to mind right yeah right i'm thinking of like like john lieber that's going back i think about that too was that the first

one of the precedent setting one i think right that was like the first time at least that i remember that a team signed a tommy john guy to like a multi-year deal with an eye toward getting a good deal on his healthy season so that's probably why i think of that but there have been more of these like uh but there have been some some relievers who've had this i think was i'm trying to remember it was soria one of these guys or i don't know but it's happened and i think he's he's get more than $6 million. Okay, I'm going to take the under on Zach Cozart. Now, I'm not saying that he should get paid less than this,

but Cozart is projected in here for three years and $42 million. That seems perfectly reasonable for a guy who's been pretty good for a number of years and seems to be benefiting from this new baseball. But I think that there's kind of one clue is that the Reds declined to extend the qualifying offer to Cozart, which is a little surprising because I thought that Cozart at like 17 or 18 million and one year would be fine. But I just have this mounting sense that the Reds are feeling pretty good about their chances to resign Cozart and for less money. So I think Cozart is going to come out of this with a smaller deal than 342. And I think it's going to work out pretty well for whoever gets

him, provided that team plays in a sandbox of a ballpark. Okay. I'm going to take the over on Jaime Garcia with my six pick. This is two years and 16 million. And I mean, is there that much of a difference between Lance Lynn and Jaime Garcia? They seem somewhat comparable to me. And Garcia is coming off a year where he was traded for by two contenders, two playoff teams. So clearly teams want him, see something of value in him. He is fairly durable. He's left-handed.

He's fine. He's nothing special he's a guy who good competitive teams are happy to have in the back of their rotation and i'm going to say that's worth more than eight million a year or two years so i don't know that the lance lynn estimate here is something that you really want to use as a baseline because i don't know that either of us totally buys it but i'm going to say he can do a bit better than this okay i am going to take the under on andrew cashner at yeah that's 20 million yeah and two years and here's why yeah it's not good no he's not last year last year there were 125 starting pitchers who threw at least 100 innings and everyone is

familiar with strikeout rate everyone is familiar with walk rates and so fan graphs has a measure that is just strikeout minus walk rate. It's better than strikeout to walk ratio. Anyway, the worst starting pitcher out of that group, Mike Pelfrey, with a strikeout minus walk rate of 2 percentage points. And Andrew Kashner, second worst at 3.1 percentage points. Andrew Kashner, to whatever extent that you think Kashner is good because he throws hard, he still throws hard. But his strikeouts just evaporated. I don't know what happened to him right but look you don't sign andrew cashner this winter as a guy who you think you want to use in the playoffs and you i don't i wouldn't

want to give him multiple years when he's coming off a year where he struggled to strike out more battles and he walked his whole thing was soft contact but i don't know why you would ever believe in that in the year 2017 so yeah i think he gets a one-year deal maybe like six to eight million okay all right yeah i agree on the evaluation the only thing that gives me pause is that hayman and his expert both have cashner making more than this either 22 over 2 or 30 over 3 oh i don't know cashner has just entered that realm i've talked about this on the podcast before where like you have certain guys who are tantalizing because they are either good or hurt. And eventually they leave that class and they get hurt enough that it actually affects their

performance. And then suddenly, even when they're healthy, they're no longer good. Like, you know, this is kind of the the Rich Harden kind of class of pitcher who is always just, oh, if he could stay healthy, he'd be great because when he was healthy, he was great. But then eventually not great. This is the Rich Harden, Ben Sheets kind of pitcher. And Kashner was kind of in that group. And now he has maybe entered the phase where he is not good even if he's healthy.

So, yeah, this seems dangerous. I don't know if he still has enough kind of cachet attached to his stuff that someone will bank on and bounce back here, but it wouldn't be me. Ugh. All right. So we are through six. I actually, I could go two more if you have two more. I'm going to go with the over on number 50 on this list, Myles Michaelis, who is a former major league pitcher. He pitched in the majors for the Padres and the Rangers a few

years ago, and he did not distinguish himself. Then he went to Japan. He has spent the past three seasons in Japan with the Yomiuri Giants and has been fantastic. He has had a 2.18 ERA in more than 400 innings, about a strikeout per inning, has barely walked anyone. I haven't looked to see what his stuff has been like. I mean, his strikeout rate inning has barely walked anyone i haven't looked to see what his stuff has been like i mean his strikeout rate has improved each year he's been over there i don't know whether he has reinvented himself or added stuff and that obviously has some bearing on what he'll make here but durable guy well maybe not so durable but whatever he's he's been one of the best pitchers in japan for a few years in a row now.

And I have to think that that's going to be appealing to people because I think we've seen enough players go back and forth now that teams are maybe more confident than they used to in projecting how players will handle that transition. And man, I don't know if you've been that good at that high level for that long. That's got to be pretty tantalizing. So I'm going to say that someone gives him more than you'd think. Like the Eric Thames kind of contract last year where he got more than anyone was expecting, including himself. I don't know whether that turned out to be justified or not.

But, I mean, he certainly wasn't the sensation that he looked like in April, but he's basically worth the low commitment he got there. And I think probably Michaelis would be worth something in this range. So I'm going to say he gets a little more. Okay, I'm flying blind here. I'm out of notes. So I'm going to take the over on Anthony Swarczak, which is a silly thing to say,

because I'm pretty sure that a year ago, he signed a minor league contract and he's 32 years old, but he had a big year for the Brewers and the White Sox. He struck out in more than 10 battles per nine innings, didn't walk many guys. He kind of, I think he started to figure out what he wanted to do in 2016 with the Yankees, but then he allowed a bunch of dingers and you don't want to do that as a pitcher because that makes your ERA go boom. But Swarczak in 2016 with the Yankees started leading heavily on his slider he threw it more than half the time and he did that again last year with the White Sox and the Brewers so he's just a

fastball slider kind of a righty reliever so he's he's not a it's not like Andrew Miller or anything but he is good now against righties and lefties I think his sliders turned into a weapon I think that Swarczak has kind of figured out how to be a pretty good—he's not a closer. No one's going to use him to close. And I don't think he's even necessarily like the setup guy, but I think he's the setup guy's setup guy. Kind of like the seventh inning, sixth and seventh inning sort of specialist guy who can handle those innings. He threw 77 in the third innings last year, made 70 appearances. He was used heavily.

He didn't seem to wear down. He was good to the brewers. I think he's going to end up coming away with a three-year deal okay and with my eighth i guess i'm gonna go with the under on jonathan lucroy and you know he's at 224 which is not a lot of money obviously but his defense just seems to have declined to the point where you just wouldn't want lucroy playing for you for any amount of money, really. And I know that he sort of salvaged the season a little bit after he went to the Rockies. His framing was still poor, according to Baseball Perspectives.

But his bat bounced back a bit. Not really his power. His power has evaporated. But he hit well overall and showed good plate discipline particularly and I think walked many more times than he struck out once he was with the Rockies so maybe that's enough to to get him this amount of money I don't know I just think that as a catcher at this point if you believe those framing stats he's pretty much unplayable and this is not just a one-year blip I mean it was a one-year

blip of him being like the worst catcher but he has been trending downward for some time now the days of him being among the best defensive catchers are far behind him at this point so I just don't know there's not that big a market for catchers period I wouldn't say that many openings and I just don't know if there are that many teams that are going to be willing to commit to him as an everyday guy and I'm not sure that you'd trust is bad enough to use him as like a first baseman DH so yeah I don't know it's one of the more fascinating free agencies I think it's a fun test case but I just don't know coming off a season when if you believe the framing stats which as you pointed out were less consistent this past year than than in prior years but still if you believe those he was among

the worst players in baseball period well with my last pick i guess i'm kind of torn look i see sabathia it would be an easier pick i don't think he's gonna get two years i think he's kind of at a year-to-year point in his career. But I'm just going to bypass that. I'm going to take... What was I looking at? Uh-oh. Who was I looking at? I've already lost track.

I'm going to take the under on Mike Moustakis at 585. I think Moustakis is a fine player. But I think that there is some concern about his body. I think there's some concern about his defense at third base how long he'll be able to do that and he he's an above average hitter i think it's it's safe to say at this point but he's not like a great hitter he just doesn't have the great hitter tendencies he hits too many pop-ups and he's not actually that good at going to the opposite field it's a complicated case but i think that he's going to end up settling for a four-year deal i don't think

a team is going to love a five-year term with him. I think that to whatever extent the Royals are perceived to have had great leadership, I bet Hosmer is going to come away getting a lot of the credit for that. Uh-huh. Okay. I had a couple others I was considering. I was thinking about the overrun Wellington Castillo at 2-14. I was also considering the overrun Carlos Gonzalez at 1-12 just because I think he could get a multi-year deal if he wanted to.

And I don't know why he would want to. He should probably go for the one-year deal and do the kind of pillow contract thing, try to rebuild his value. But if he did want multiple years, I think he could probably get them and that would take him over 12. But I didn't feel strongly about anything else. So we will see how this all works out. That was an action-packed episode. We didn't even talk about the fact that the Braves have a new GM now, seemingly. Alex Anthopoulos is the new Braves GM, which I don't have a whole lot to say about other than the fact that it's better than having no GM or a GM who resigned in disgrace very recently. So having a guy who had some success in Toronto and has been immersed in the Dodgers front office for a while now, probably an improvement.

Yep. Okay. All right. So we will end it there. The news about Carlos Beltran's retirement broke after we finished speaking, so I'm sure we'll get to that next time. In the interim, you can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. Five listeners who have already pledged their support include Daryl Purpose, Melissa Goodwin, Cameron Mosley, Mike Thompson, and Robert Livingston. Thanks to all of you. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash Effectively Wild. And you can

rate and review and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for editing assistance. We'll take your emails next time. So please keep your questions and comments coming via email at podcastfangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system. We will talk to you soon. Why was we? Because we were there. The star of the future is everything.