Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1149: The Winter Meetings That Were

Episode Date: December 16, 2017

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about Jeff’s Winter Meetings experience and then discuss everything that did and didn’t go down while the baseball world was in Orlando, including the Reds�� published pitch to Shohei Ohtani, Ohtani’s injury status, the Marcell Ozuna, Stephen Piscotty, and Ian Kinsler trades (and the leveled-up Angels), Manny Machado trade […]

And in the street, that's where we all meet Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh And in the street, that's where I meet Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh Oh, no, oh, no, no, no, no Hello and welcome to episode 1149 of Effectively Wild, No, no, Ben. Yeah, it turns out that Winter Meetings Week slash Star Wars Week is not all that conducive to podcasting, but we're catching up now, so we're going to do a Winter Meetings in Review Winter Meetings Wrap-Up kind of episode. Talk about all the stuff that happened

or was rumored to happen and might still happen or didn't happen. What happened to you personally? How was your winter meetings? Do any good schmoozing? Anyone offer you many machado no no really okay no just sat in the big room and blocked i never really know we so at vangraphs of course we work remotely and so the winter meetings are effectively an opportunity for us to see our co-workers face to face and that's something we really only do like twice a year as a company. But other than that, there's really no reason for us to be at the winter meetings. And bigger than that, there's

really no reason for almost anyone to be at the winter meetings. John Daniels, there's an article that, it might have been Evan Grant, I don't know, but one of the Rangers writers wrote an article the other day that talked to John Daniels about how the winter meetings are antiquated. And John Daniels was like, I think I get more done at the GM meetings. It's a lot less chaotic. And during the winter meetings, you know, no one's eating well, no one's sleeping well. Why would you want to be making important decisions under these circumstances? So we were there and we were staying off site, which is an inconvenience. So you have to shuttle back and forth. You're not in control of when you get to go back to your room. So you have to shuttle back and forth. You're not in control of when you get to go back to your room. And I don't know. Have you I always feel a bit bad about the fact that I'm not there when I'm not there. But when I have been there, other than what you're saying, just, you know, being able to say hello to people in person, perhaps we could have podcasted in person. But other than that,

yeah, our jobs are not really dependent on being there. I don't know that anyone's job is really dependent on it anymore, other than the people on the minor league side and who are you know plugging their products and doing sponsorship stuff for the upcoming season that's still important but on the major league side it gets less and less important i did like uh this part i was talking to a beat writer for a team and every day the writers for a team will be invited up to like the team's suite just for like an afternoon debriefing yeah from the general manager just to kind of you know give the lay of the land and give some quotes for the articles because you know every beat writer who's at the winter meetings has to write something every day just because otherwise why are they

there and so one day there were uh the the writers were called up to a team suite and rumors had gone around that the team was signing a pitcher and the writers were talking to the general manager about the pitcher who was being signed and the gm was like well you know i can't really discuss the pitcher it's not official he uh he has to go through a physical and so i'm not really at liberty to say very much and one of the writers said you know next week you're going to be on vacation and do you really want to have a conference call with us when you were on your vacation so that you can give quotes about this like third tier pitcher that you're signing? And some of the general managers like, yeah, all right, that's a convincing argument. So they had a conversation. And so

it's a conversation about a week in advance so that the writers can have their quotes about the pitcher when it is actually official. That's very efficient. So let's see, we've got Otani news, actually official that's very efficient so let's see we've got otani news we've got machado rumors we've got the kinsler trade we've got the azuna trade let's start with otani maybe since that was some of the earliest stuff to come out first of all i wanted to just mention the reds which we rarely do but i want to mention them because they did kind of go public with their response to the otani survey questions. And I was hoping someone would. I was hoping we'd get a look at what teams did.

And we didn't get a full look. We got friend of the pod, Zach Buchanan, writing in the Enquirer. He got to see what the Reds did. They made a video. They made a big binder. And it was interesting to read about. They had been working on this for some time. They clearly put a ton of effort into it and were very hesitant even to give up their pursuit when they didn't

make the finals they were like refusing to concede essentially it was like a Roy Moore situation sort of thing and you know I think that you can understand why because they put a lot of effort into this and as we discussed Otani went from 30 from 30 teams or close to 30 teams to seven teams very, very quickly, like too quickly to have really read everything in depth if every team produced anything close to the amount of material that the Reds did. So I can see why if you spent months working on this and had this very professional package, you would be maybe a little miffed that you got eliminated in about two days. But that's what happened. Anyway, they made something like a 12-minute highlight package and selling the city and the team. And then Big Biner, just very

glossy and professionally produced, they sort of outsourced the design of it to a third party. And they had full scouting reports from members of their organization. They had all kinds of projections of how he'd play in their park and on and on and on. I mean, it was evidently a very comprehensive package, although I guess not a persuasive one or not persuasive enough. But I think, you know, salute to them for putting the effort in. And once you put the effort in, if you didn't get the player, you might as well show everyone that you put that effort in, show your fans that you tried. I'm sure that if I were a Reds fan, I would appreciate the effort that went into this, even though it was ultimately fruitless. So it was nice to get a glimpse of at

least what one team did. And I wonder how it compared to the typical response. Yeah, I had a chance to talk with Zach Buchanan. It was, I don't know if it was Monday night or Tuesday night, but it was the night before he and some other Reds writers got to go up to the suite and take a look at the Reds presentation to Otani. And so he was telling me about it. And I was really excited to see what was going to come out of that for the same reasons that you just brought up. And I really enjoyed Zach's article, even though I talked to him after the fact and he said yeah i didn't really i didn't really write the article that was just everything that the reds did and i just wrote what the reds did so maybe i don't know how much credit zach deserves so sorry zach i'm taking some credit away from your article i

apologize for that handshake you didn't deserve it but yeah it was it was a compelling presentation and it was one i think that if you are one of the 30 teams or i guess one of the 27 teams who did fill out the questionnaire what was it the marlins the the orioles and who do we know the third team that didn't think we know for sure no there's been speculation but no okay i would think it would be funny if it were the angels is it the rockies maybe the rockies right oh right the rockies said that they didn't pursue i don't know if they officially said it but it sure sounded like they kind of just you just decided not to pursue him some time ago. That sounds vaguely familiar. So therefore, it is fact.

It was the Rockies who were the third. So anyway, I was really interested to see what the Reds did. And I think if you're one of the 27 teams, every single team can probably find some sort of angle that would make signing with that team really interesting really compelling and and the reds are i believe the one team in the major leagues who have never had a japanese player on the roster which is like part of the pitch yeah right like that's the point where it seems like maybe he would work very strongly against them but on the other hand it's not that hard to try to turn into a positive which yeah i think the reds did and and zach was saying that the reds whole angle here is the owner what was it bob castellini is the owner and dick williams is the general manager and and they want to be very open not just about this but they want to be very open about the entire rebuild

they want the public to know what the reds are doing every step of of the way which is a noble goal i don't know how closely they actually adhere to it because just much like yourself i don't pay that much attention to the reds why would you but i i appreciated that they were the first team to have their their material come out it was kind of sad reading about the video highlights of reds history that they had ready for a home run against the reds yeah red socks have reds in the name? Yeah. Yeah, that was funny. I mean, realistically, they could have used any number of, like, really exciting baseball highlights from history and just kind of, like, Photoshop the Reds.

Like, how much does Otani really know about the history of the Cincinnati Reds? Yeah, good point. All right. So glad we got a little glimpse at that. And then in other Otani news, Otani injury news, it was reported by Jeff Passan and Tom Verducci, much to MLB's annoyance and dismay, that Otani has a first degree sprain of the UCL in his throwing elbow. This is the least serious sort of sprain, and he has some loose bodies flowing around in there. And this sounds scary. Obviously, this is something that evidently teams were aware of before they submitted their pitches for him. Not that, I mean, look, if his UCL was hanging by a thread, every team would have wanted him. So it's not like they would have done anything differently, but teams were apparently apprised of this before this whole process got started.

And now we know, and I don't know exactly what to make of this. Obviously, you never want to hear elbow or UCL it, but he said this looks consistent with other pitchers his age, essentially saying that, yeah, every pitcher, especially every hard-throwing pitcher who has a similar workload in his past is going to have some messed up stuff in his elbow that is almost inevitable. an imminent risk, at least more so than the typical pitcher. Every pitcher is at risk of hurting himself in this way. And certainly someone who throws as hard as Otani, you would not at all be shocked to see him get hurt. Many other pitchers his age have been. So I don't know whether this changes our outlook or our expectation for him for 2018. I don't know whether it affects how the Angels handle him. I mean, it just drives home, I guess, how risky any pitcher is and how easily he could go from being the most exciting part of the season to not a part of the season. If Shohei Otani were available, he were posted. And then shortly after being posted, Shohei Otani were shot in the abdomen by a gun.

It would affect nothing at all about how hard teams were pursuing Shohei Ohtani, because they would think, well, we really hope he pulls through. And if he lives, we're going to be delighted to give him the league minimum salary for the first season of his major league career. So yeah, this doesn't change much. Certainly from the team's perspective, this changes nothing at all about his outlook because they knew about this. Now, it does from the public perspective, it is the, immediately, it is the first thing that takes some of the shine off the apple.

It is our first indication that maybe Shoei Otani isn't going to be the perfect baseball player. So, you know, it took, what was that, three days or four days for Shoei Otani to be knocked down a peg. Now, what the upside, I i guess of going to the winter meetings is that it is a even though it's a media engagement it's really it's people are there to socialize and just talk starting at around like i don't know 6 p.m and then carrying on henceforth until like four in the morning i don't know why the bbwa insists on having meetings at nine in the morning during these things like think about your client anyway so dave cameron and i were leaving the media room whatever night it was tuesday i think it was tuesday night wednesday night we were leaving the media room and i had just seen that jeff passon

had published an article about eric cosmer and how polarizing eric cosmer is okay we all we all know that part but we went over to say hi to to jeff shake his hand talk to him a little bit and he's like i i mentioned to him oh i was going to read the harzbolt hosmer article and then he didn't so sorry about that i'll read it later just throw away comment and he was like oh don't even worry about that one i'm i'm just about to publish this article on otani because i have the physical and we all kind of looked at each other like wait what yeah yeah what's uh what's going on and jeff pointed to his editor sitting a few rows in in front in these rows of temporary tables and he said yeah he's uh he's going on and jeff pointed to his editor sitting a few rows in in front in these rows of temporary tables and he said yeah he's uh he's just looking over it right now and it's

going to be published any minute and so we went down to the lobby and i i don't i was expecting more of like an audible gasp i think as soon as it hit twitter but his article was retweeted like five or ten thousand times or just something absurd because yeah it comes out showy otani ucl damage like that is that's a powerful statement now it was only i guess a partial scoop because like you said tom verducci had published i think that morning or maybe the night before that he had had a platelet rich plasma injection and uh the agent or i don't know otani's camp the defense was oh japanese pitchers have prp injections done pretty commonly as preventative measures and then i saw that and i thought all right different culture you know you don't know what they what they do and so i talked to a few people during the day a few agents and a

few writers and they're like no no they don't they definitely don't have preventative prp injections so i don't know maybe they're a little more gratuitous with their with their injections maybe they do them more than than in the states but it's definitely not something that you do as a normal part of the pitcher offseason so long story short there is definitely something minorly wrong with shohei otani's elbow and of course billy epler would figure that it is normal because if you think of all of the pictures billy epler has seen in the past three years they have also all had damaged elbows on the Angels. So as far as he's concerned, Otani is now just one of the group.

Yeah, that's right. And was Epler still with the Yankees when Tanaka and his injury stuff came to light? I don't know. I forget when. What was he hired in October 2015, I think, by the Angels. And I guess Tanaka had been with the Yankees for a couple of years by that point. So maybe he was already familiar with being able to pitch through this sort of thing and be successful. So yeah, this doesn't mean that Otani's elbow is just going to pop

and that'll be that any second now. That's a possible outcome. It always is. I don't know whether maybe this affects how he'll be handled next season. Maybe it makes it more likely that the Angels will try to use some sort of six-man rotation and work him a little less hard than they would otherwise. Or, you know, if they do that, then maybe does he have more of an opportunity to be a position player or a DH because he is not starting as regularly? And how do you handle, I mean, if he does get hurt, if he does have Tommy John, would he come back as a position player before he came back as a pitcher?

Because position players who've had Tommy John come back much more quickly than pitchers do. So that's all intriguing. Obviously, we hope that we don't have to find out the answer to that latter scenario and that he'll be fine. But yeah, I mean, it's entirely possible. Like we got an email from someone asking essentially what Otani would have to do or not do this season to be regarded as

not a bust but a disappointment and one route to that certainly is just not pitching or not pitching very much and you know Angels fans I'm sure having been you know scarred by the last couple years and the whole Garrett Richards experience I'm sure they're looking at this thinking, oh, no, not again. But, you know, either that or if he pitches and just doesn't distinguish himself, it's really hard to imagine him being healthy and pitching and just not being good at pitching. That's not really an outcome that I can realistically envision, but I could certainly see him, you know, either getting hurt or just being used so sparingly and cautiously that maybe he doesn't make the impact that a typical top of the rotation guy would. And at the same time, not really getting a full look as a position player and the whole two-way player thing, not really materializing. That would probably lead to some sense of letdown. And you figure like, I don't know, Rich Hill, two years ago, he started 20 games.

He was great at a 2-12 ERA, 2-3-9 FIP, and he was worth 3.8 war. That's good. He was a good starting pitcher, but he wasn't one of those good starting pitchers every five days. So question for you, who do you think throws more innings this season? Justin Verlander or Garrett Richards plus Shohei Ohtani? I'll take Verlander. I think, I don't know. I mean, gosh, Garrett Richards, is he, as far as we know, like ready to go opening day, no restrictions or, you know, I mean, based on what we know now ready to go opening day no restrictions or you know i mean based on what we know now which has little bearing on what we'll know in april but is he as far as we know okay let me check his

roto world page and see the most recent news from garrett richards okay latest news garrett richards garrett richards yielded three runs in three and two-thirds innings Wednesday against the White Sox. Okay, well, that's not really helpful. Well, he threw 23 innings in September. According to this unnamed writer, health questions will continue to dog him into 2018, and it's really difficult to know what to expect from him next year. Yeah, well, that's why we're reading you. Okay. Well, I think, as I recall, he had the PRP injection, which, by the way, side note, I did hear on the flight home, happened to be sitting next to a former pitcher while we were flying back to Portland.

And apparently the needle that they use for a PRP injection is gigantic. Like he was saying one of his co-workers had a partial tear in his Achilles, which sounds dreadful. And he had to have PRP injections three times. And he said it was the worst experience of his entire life. So just awful. So anyway, Richard's had that in his elbow. That's a little tidbit you get from going to the winter meetings. Makes it worth it, I guess. All right. So I guess we can stick with the Angels since we're on the subject. They now have a second baseman and a pretty good one, Ian Kinsler. There have been some rumors as well

that they're pursuing Zach Cozart to play third potentially. So it looks like they're really going for it as you would expect them to. They were kind of projected to be on the fringes of wildcard contention pre-Ohtani. Now they have Ohtani and based on where they are in the competitive cycle

and having Ohtani and Trout under control for the next couple of years, obviously they're going to go for it. And that appears to be what they're doing. And we got an email from someone, maybe an over-exuberant Angels fan, I forget, who was asking like, well, what do the Angels have to do to close the gap between them and the Astros? And I said, well, you know, they have to sign every remaining free agent, essentially. Like, it's still not even that close. Like, the projected win gap is still pretty giant, even after the moves the Angels have made. That was pre-Kinzler trade, but still. So I can't foresee a scenario where they're going into this season as, you know,

a team that's expected to really give the astros a real run for their money although obviously that could happen but to solidify their likely hold on a playoff spot of some sort i don't think they have that much more to do and kinsler obviously improves them quite a bit and it turns out that they had two prospects to give up which you know not that either of them was like a highly touted or very close to the majors prospect. But there was a time not that long ago when the Angels just did not have two prospects, period. So maybe things had improved there a little enough that they were able to make this move. But partly it was just kind of picking at the bones of the Tigers.

Yeah. Yeah. Kinsley was never going to cost that much. He's 35 or 36 years old, contract year player coming off a down season at least by the numbers so the angels were able to get him pretty cheap and he plugs what had been a massive hole they were i think projected to have like the worst or second worst second base position pre kinsler and now they're top 10 because kinsler projects well so it's just an like an easy short-term move for the angels to make now there are their rumors they would like a better third baseman than Luis Valbuena. And so there are rumors that have connected them to Kozart, like you said, but there's also a rumor that has connected them to Chase Hedley because Hedley is going to spend about, I don't know, a week as

a member of the Padres before he is no longer a member of the Padres. Now Dave Cameron and I were talking about something. You know where Chase Headley would really fit pretty well is the Yankees. We were wondering, would it be legal? Is there anything against the rules in baseball where the Yankees send Headley and his contract to the Padres, with the Padres

just buying Brian Mitchell, and then the Padres send Headley back to the Yankees, but eat most of the money? There's nothing wrong with that, right? I guess not. I can't think of. But essentially, if you would then connect the two moves, it would be like the Padres just giving the Yankees money.

So I don't really know, but I don't think it would be anything against the rules. Now, anyway, I don't think Headley is going to go to the Yankees. I think they would rather have Todd Frazier or somebody else. and we're not even talking about the yankees we're talking about the angels and they are still no matter almost no matter what they're going to do they're going to end up projecting several games behind the astros doesn't mean they can't win the division of course the mets and giants were projected to be really good last year we all know what happened there so you might as well take a chance and get close but yeah the angels are

basically playing for the wild card but that's not their fault you can't really tear down when you have mike trout on the roster so might as well try to get as as good as you can and credit to them billy epler inherited a roster that had mike trout and that's it and he has been able to make i don't i don't know if he's made lemonade out of the lemons but he's at least made some sort of drink yeah i don't know if he's made lemonade out of the lemons, but he's at least made some sort of drink. Yeah. I don't know. Maybe it's not sweet enough. You don't like lemonade?

I don't like lemonade. I don't know. I wouldn't. I'd rather have the lemon, probably. It's good flavoring for other things. But, okay, what about, how are you with just like the juice spectrum? I like apple juice. I like orange juice.

Yeah, I'm okay with juices. Not a big fan of cranberry juice, but there are definitely juices that I enjoy. That is not one of them. Now, when you refer to cranberry juice, do you mean like ocean spray cranberry juice or like cranberry juice? I think probably both. Okay. Yeah, that's probably fair. They're extremely sour. So are you just like against AIDS, lemonade, limeade, other AIDS? Yeah, that's probably a fair statement. I don't know if there are any exceptions to that.

I guess they're all pretty sweet. There's a lot of sugar content. You're essentially drinking a non-carbonated soda. All right, I'm coming around. Okay. So Kinsler is good. Obviously, you know, career long, he's been excellent. He's going to be a first ballot hall of very good guy, most likely,

unless he ends on a really high note, in which case maybe even better. But you made the point in your post that his decline last year to still a fairly productive level was somewhat deceptive. He was probably better than he looked, or I don't know, maybe he was a little worse than he looked the previous year, but he's good is the point point he has been good every year of his career essentially he's never been worse than at least an average or a little bit better than an average player and has been considerably better than that at times his defense still seems to be completely intact based on what we can tell from his defensive stats and as he pointed out his offense did not really drop off last year as much as one might think. Yeah, so there are two ways you could try to look at it.

Kinsler, his surface numbers got a lot worse last season relative to the year before. But then if you go to the trusty baseball savant, expected performance, expected Woba, his performance in 2016 and 2017 was virtually identical. So that means either Kinsler underperformed in 2017 or he overperformed in 2016 i think it's more likely that he sort of overperformed in 2016 but the the point is really that this does not seem to be a player in rapid decline like his other numbers would suggest and so if you figure kinsler for the longest time has been like a four or five win second baseman which is really good and he's probably not that anymore but if you figure he's probably two and a half or three,

and he's replacing what was practically a replacement level situation before, this is just a big upgrade for the Angels. It was relatively easy for them to do, because there are a lot of second basemen out there. And because of Shohei Otani, the Angels' need was amplified, because adding a second baseman didn't just make them a little bit better. It makes them look like a really strong team that still needs a better bullpen, but they'll work on that. Yeah, and there were many, many, many relievers signed this week.

I don't know whether we need to talk about any of them specifically. Happy that Fernando Rodney has a job again. He will be 41, I think, in spring training, which he will spend with the twins. And yeah, obviously, you know, Cubs signed Steve Ciszek and Mets signed Swarczak and Rockies signed Brian Shaw and Jake McGee and the Astros signed Joe Smith and Hector Rondon. And it went on and on. You know, they're relievers. They're all sort of the same. So sorry to just label you all with a very broad brush, but there's only so much you

can say about most reliever moves. So, shall we talk about the continued teardown slash fire sale of the Marlins and Marcelo Zuna going to St. Louis? Yes. All right, you do it. Okay. Well, the Marlins are tearing down. They are getting rid of... I think maybe I shouldn't sneak ahead. So, we know the Marlins traded Giancarlo Stanton last week. They traded him because they have too much debt or something, and he is looming over their heads. He has a giant contract.

And so it was pretty evident from the beginning the Marlins were going to trade Giancarlo Stanton. We also already talked about the Dee Gordon trade where they sent him to the Mariners in exchange for the Mariners' best pitching prospect, which means a player about as good as you or me. And so he is now property of the Marlins. And so when you subtract like that, you remove Stanton, you remove Gordon. It leaves the Marlins as not a very good baseball team.

And so at that point, it makes all the sense in the world to just kind of go whole hog, keep tearing down. Ozuna only has two years left of team control. So there was really no objective reason for the Marlins to keep him. So he's gone. He's going on the Cardinals for a, I don't know, somewhat controversial return. But it's fine. And the best part of the Marlins situation now, I think, is that they say they want to build around Christian Jelic, who's under control for, I think, another four or five years.

Maybe it's five. But they say that they're going to talk to Jelic to see how he feels about it. And he's probably already packed up all his things and left. Because why would he want to stick around? I don't know. I can't speak to Jelic's personal ambitions and interests any more than I can speak to Otani's. But he probably would like to go. I know what Don Mattingly had said said that he wants yelich to be

like the marlins version of jose altuve the guy the astros kept around the whole time while they were bad but altuve was like 22 when the astros were terrible he was up and coming yelich is already up and came he's already good he doesn't and he's like 26 or 27 years old there's there's really no reason for the marlins to keep him around doesn't mean they have to move him right now but it means that he should be the next Marlin on the block unless you count like Dan Straley, who should definitely also be traded soon. Yeah. You figure that if Yelich stays, he's going to be tweeting occasional things about how upset he is to be a Marlin the way that John Carl Stanton used to be. So maybe it is better for all involved that they find some taker for him.

But do you think that the Ozuna trade, like where does it fall on the salary dump slash fire sale spectrum? Is it more of a we're getting talent back trade or is it more of a we're just getting rid of everyone and clearing as much money as we possibly can trade? I wasn't familiar with the prospects, really, who were changing teams in this trade. I don't know if you were or if you've read up enough about them to have an informed opinion. I've become familiar. So there was a five-player trade, Ozuna being one of them. He's good. Two of the prospects going over are, you know,

write-offs. Third and fourth prospects don't need to know them sorry families of them but the the package was headlined by sandy alcantara and i'm not going to know how to pronounce this magnuris sierra magnu help me baseball reference magnuris sierra let's see okay give me a pronunciation guide the answer is magnaries magnaries okay so sierra m sierra is going to the marlins so alcantara sierra alcantara is a starting pitcher prospect but the cardinals used him for eight appearances last year in relief and he threw like 98 99 miles per hour big fastball he's had a big fastball for a while is a issue which is not uncommon is he doesn't really know where the fastball is going so if you can't control your fastball you can't control control the other stuff. So he is a big arm, makes him a project, interesting kind of guy

in the way that, you know, Brandon Moore used to be interesting, and he turned it around and he was 34 years old. So you just have to give him 12 years. And as for Sierra, Sierra is an unusual player in that he, even right now, he's only 21 years old. And if memory serves, he went straight from A ball to the major leagues for a brief amount of time which doesn't happen very much and you wouldn't ever want to see happen again but sierra is a speedster i think he has 80 speed as a center fielder who you figure should be able to turn into a pretty good defensive center fielder but he sure doesn't hit the ball hard or at all so he's an athlete who is a he's a grand ball hitter in

his brief major league stint he did not acquit himself well to the stat cast exit velocity leaderboards he was hanging around the bottom with names like julio tehran and r.a dickie these are great companions if you are represented by an agent but worse companions if you were a hitter so who knows if sierra is going to hit but it seems like he should be a plus defender, probably a plus base runner. So, you know, toolsy project is what the Marlins have picked up, and they are probably like the first and third best prospect in the system now. And in response to that move, in part, the Cardinals made another trade involving an outfielder.

move in part. The Cardinals made another trade involving an outfielder. They sent Steven Piscotty to the A's for a couple prospects, including Carson Sestouli favorite Max Schrock. And this one, we heard that Piscotty maybe partly ended up going to the A's because his mother unfortunately has ALS and he and she are from the area. And so he'll be closer to her. Although, you know, that seems to have been more of a tiebreaker thing like this wasn't a giveaway purely a sympathetic move made but more of a well we can help ourselves and help the player sort of thing so Piscotty's kind of an interesting player because of course they gave him a big extension I mean mean, you know, not big, big, but a fairly big for most people. Coming off a good season in 2016, he got a six-year deal, $33.5 million, and he was like hitting cleanup early this year, this past season, and then ended up having sort of a disappointing season and now

is no longer a Cardinal. And he looked like he was going to be one of those guys who would be a very long-term Cardinal. And, you know, he was kind of like average at everything, sort of, which is not super exciting, but is very valuable. And now I guess his reputation is tarnished somewhat by this season. Although again, given what his mother has been going through, maybe that's been weighing on him on the field as well. Anyway, he ends up with A's. How does that affect them? I know that you're often, you've been like more optimistic than the consensus about the A's, I would say, over the last year and a half or so. Just because of their young pitching that they had going into this season.

Although that didn't really, didn't end up materializing so well. You you can't see me but i'm tugging at my collar yeah but other things went right for them that were encouraging too so are you still feeling somewhat high on the a's relative to whatever we gauge the consensus to be and does piscotti improve that projection it's funny going into last season i was high on the a's because of their young pitching and now i think the young pitching is very bad and i'm high on the a's because of their young pitching and now i think the young pitching is very bad and i'm high on the a's because of their young hitting so who knows i think that they they're not in a great position because of course the astros are very good and other teams in the american league are very good but the at least the thing that the a's have on like the mariners or or the rangers that the a's

are young and biscotti doesn't hurt them in that regard and I think they're on a positive trajectory and with Piscotty it costs the A's some prospects Yara Munoz is an interesting young infielder and of course Schrock is according to Carson Sestouli going to be Josh Donaldson someday so yes who knows but I mean with with Piscotty you take someone who the Cardinals of all teams believed in enough to give him six guaranteed years like eight months ago which is fairly significant and now i don't want to talk about this in a way that sort of i certainly don't want to be insensitive about biscotti's circumstances but if i think it's completely fair to say well you know his 2017 shouldn't really be held against him not only was he dealing with a few injuries but of course he had the off the field concerns

his mother is fighting one of the most insidious one of the worst diseases that exists on on the planet and of course biscotti's head would have been somewhere else now i mean you could you could say well he's probably not going to get less distracted right which is not how i want to be talking about it but it's a it's a reality if you just want to talk about this in a baseball sense but i don't know the fact that the cardinals are able to send him closer to home makes them look very good even though the a's were not the only team that were in the mix there was another team i heard that was very close to trading for biscotti so of course the cardinals were choosing between a few offers here but maybe they gave the a's like a five percent boost just because they do care

about the player somewhat so i like the move now you you were right when you say that biscotti was basically average at everything two seasons ago at this point and he was one of the candidates for being the most interesting player by being the most uninteresting player of 2016 which is uh piscotti's upside is probably not as a star and teams need stars but the a's did need an outfielder and and now you look at them and of course matt olson matt chapman are very interesting young position players and franklin barreto as well jed lowry just had a big year and dustin fowler could be coming back and he could it's from his horrible major league debut and he could have a great rookie season and buke powell had a good

year last year now biscotti's in a corner and chris davis is a really good hitter this team should be able to hit pretty well and it should also be able to defend better than it's defended in quite a while but yeah I don't know who's actually going to get the outs right so I guess really the the story of the winter meetings was even more so than the things we've talked about so far things that have not actually happened yet but might namely Manny Machado also Garrett Cole I guess who's been rumored to be on the block as well but mostly Manny Machado who's been rumored to be on the block as well, but mostly Manny Machado, who to resign, or at least if you wanted to try to resign or extend him, the time has probably passed already. And the Orioles probably even with Machado are not quite good enough to go anywhere this year, especially given the buildup that is happening in the AL East. Stanton now in the AL

East. Red Sox interested in acquiring other prominent players. So seems like it's going to be hard to win that division or even get a wild card if you're the Orioles. Obviously, they have defied expectations before, but I think that it makes sense to trade Machado. Even with one year left on his deal, he's going to be worth a lot more as a player than he will be paid. And so he still does have quite a bit of surplus value. And, you know, maybe we've passed the point at which the Orioles can really get a huge head start on the rebuild that they probably have to do by trading Machado, just because there's only so much value you can

get out of one year of a player, particularly a player who is, you know, well into his arbyers and going to be making some significant money. But I think it's still a move that makes a lot of sense. Now, it seems as if Peter Angelos really does not want Manny Machado to end up on the Yankees and does not want to trade him to the Yankees and does not want to trade him to someone else who will trade him to the Yankees. So there have been a bunch of teams rumored. And if you Google Manny Machado trade, you'll find like 50 posts at various sites about where Machado

should go or where he fits best, including one by Travis Sochick at Fangrass. Does any of the rumors that we've heard so far strike you as the most credible or least credible? I guess the most surprising was the White Sox rumor, maybe, just because, you know, it's somewhat ambitious. I think White Sox are maybe closer than most people think, but I don't know if they're 2018 close, even with Manny Machado. And I don't know that it would make sense to trade for him now and then trade him away again at the deadline when he'll have less value remaining. So I don't know. Does that compute for you or does that seem like hot air? There are two really weird but credible rumors out there at present. One being Eric Hosmer going to the Padres and the other being Manny Machado going to the

White Sox. They're credible or they're weird because I think they're self-evidently weird. The Padres and White Sox are bad, but they are credible because, well, yeah, the Padres would do that. And Ken Rosenthal is the one who reported on the White Sox and Machado. And Ken Rosenthal is great and right about everything. He doesn't get screwed around by agents or other representatives. representatives so i think the idea that he wrote about with the white socks is that the white socks would trade for machado and ask for an extension window to try to talk to him about a long-term deal which manny machado would not sign with the white socks because why would he not test for agency at this point right so i think realistically if the white socks were to get involved they would just turn around and flip into the yankees that's just how it would go and then they would tell the

orioles no we're not of course we're not going to flip into the yankees and then three days later they would flip into the yankees because what do they care about what the orioles have to say and the manny machado fits on the yankees very well he might fit on the yankees better than he fits on any other team hold on i'm just going to do a quick mental accounting here no no no no no no no yep nope yankees it's the yankees yankees don't have a second baseman or third baseman really they just traded their second baseman and third baseman or one of their corner infielders and the other todd fasher is a free agent so they do need someone to play those positions so it's the yankees or the angels the angels of course can't really trade for manny machado right now so or maybe they can i don't know i couldn't think of the last time a really valuable player was traded with one

year of service left of course we've seen players like i don't know johnny cueto moved with a half a season left so even less but moved at the deadline and this is different but i i just can't i wish they were easier to research and i could be missing some really obvious names, but this is an unusual circumstance for a player like this. Yeah, because usually, I guess, either you think you have a chance and so you want to keep the guy and make one more run at it with him. And, you know, then that doesn't work out. It looks like you're not going to make the playoffs. So you trade him at the deadline or you look far in advance and you know, we're not going

to be going anywhere in the next two or three years and we should get rid of this guy while he's still cheap and while he'll still bring back a lot and the Orioles were kind of in that position or at least a lot of people looked at the Orioles and said they were in that position and they did not see it that way or didn't want to see it that way so I guess this does fall into a strange kind of middle ground where they're not really likely to be able to go for it this year, and yet they weren't willing to let go earlier. So yeah, probably fairly few recent precedents for this sort of thing. And I know Machado didn't have all that impressive a season last year, if you look at just know just war or fangraphs war or something i

mean his what what he was at like three wins or something like that which is you know obviously he's coming off to back to back like seven win seasons and you know that was partially i think his defensive stats declining somewhat which you know who knows what to make of that and it was partially the fact that he was essentially a league average hitter last year and i think a lot of us had the sense that he was about to break out even more if anything like you know it seemed like maybe he was getting more selective in certain ways or pitchers were starting to fear his power more because his power had increased and so if he could keep the power up

and manage to make pitchers stay away from the heart of the zone and yet also take those pitches away from the plate then he could go from being like a 130 wrc plus guy to being you know maybe like a 150 guy or something like that and then suddenly you're talking you know best player in baseball non-trout division and instead of happening, he actually kind of went backwards. And I think early in the season, as I recall, there was a lot of bad luck involved and his like, you know, expected Woba minus Woba. He was at the, after that, like on a full season level, I think it ended up being about what you would expect, or at least that's my vague memory from when I looked at this at some point late in the season. I could be recalling that wrong, but I don't know. Does he fall into that kind of Kinsler territory or Mookie Betts territory that we've talked about where a guy really does get bad bounces for a full season?

He ended up with a 265 babbitt which is you know not at all what you would expect from him so i assume some of that was probably in play here yeah so if you look at the expected wubba minus wubba machado was by this one measure unlucky he had the 12th worst difference i guess you could say out of 301 players so that's meaningful he didn't end up with even his expected well but wasn't like amazing it made him roughly as good as let's eyeball it here hanley ramirez or kendry's morales those aren't great names to compare them to but they have been in the past but machado also just ranked 11th overall in average exit velocity right behind oh kendry's morales again okay well i'm getting the vibe here so machado hits the ball super hard he is an amazing defender he is a great player i don't

really buy him as i'm not too worried about the down year that he just had the 2.8 war season he's he's better than that i would comfortably consider manny machado a five win player he is one of the few available stars no reason for the orioles to hang on to him because he will leave he will leave he will never resign with the baltimore orioles so they should trade him but this is going it'll be a situation probably similar to the giancarlo stanton trade where that trade was deemed underwhelming because the marlins couldn't get much because stanton's contract was so bad or at least so big and when machado goes he won't bring back that much, probably because his contract is differently not great. It's because he doesn't have much of a contract left at all. So he'll go, and the rumors have said

that the Orioles are looking for two young, controllable major league starters, which, well, good luck. You're not going to get them, unless you're asking for some really low ceiling. The Mariners could get them for Marco Gonzalez and Erasmo Ramirez. Go nuts.

But that's not what the Orioles are after. It's kind of what the Orioles have been after for the last several years. So maybe they do just want a younger version of the old and mediocre guy. They always can't just have that guy for longer, but not actually better. I don't know. Yeah, that's what they could use. Obviously, pitching has been their problem for years now,

starting pitching specifically. I wonder, I wonder how the Orioles feel about Lucas Giolito, who I don't like very much, but who the industry probably still likes plenty. And that would be if the White Sox were actually involved.

Now, I don't, look, I don't know how much to buy this. If Machado isn't going to grant an extension window, maybe the White Sox were actually involved now I don't look I don't know how much to buy this if Machado isn't going to grant an extension window maybe the White Sox just back out because of course they wouldn't care about what he can do in 2018 they want him for the long term maybe they can't have him for the long term but if they just wanted to get him in a prospect exchange you can give the Orioles I don't know Lucas Giolito to headline the package then some other clown that you throw in who can throw pitches and then the orioles are like great and then the white socks turn around and effectively trade their giolito prospect for a better prospect from like the yankees or at least the process that they like they like more i don't know something to watch but the winter meetings i i realize in now in

retrospect they were active in that every single reliever signed for eight and a half million dollars a year yeah but it still felt really underwhelming now ozuna did get traded and i mean well okay that was kind of it but there were plenty of moves but it just i guess i don't know what we all wanted out of them i get maybe like a chris archer trade because last year we had the chris sale move that kind of dominated things in the year before there was a crazy shelby Chris Sale move that kind of dominated things in the year before. There was a crazy Shelby Miller trade that was laughably nuts. And the year before that, the Dodgers made about 47 trades within the span of about 48 hours. So that kept us all on our toes.

So I don't know. I don't know what was missing this week. But I did get the sense talking to pretty much every single writer and even team person that I talked to this week came away saying like, yeah, kind of boring. And I don't know what was supposed to happen. Yeah. Well, I mean, just coming on the heels of Otani and Stanton, I don't know that it was ever going to measure up to that Friday, Saturday sort of back to back biggest baseball moves of the offseason being made. So it had a tough weekend to live up to there. Anyway, I think we'll probably see some more exciting moves made. I don't know if maybe next week, potentially after that, things usually tend to slow down a bit over the Christmas, Hanukkah, New Year's type period. So we'll see. Anyway, I think that we have covered most of the important moves that happened and you've got a chat any closing thoughts any

anything else we have not mentioned from our days apart why do the padres want to give eric hosmer so much money i don't get it question i mean i get there i get what the reasoning is and we'll talk about this more at length probably maybe a full podcast if and when it happens i understand what the padres think they're trying to do but i don't think they're trying to do what do you think they think they're trying to do i think that they see hosmer as a culture change kind of guy they see him as this is a guy we want to build around this is a guy who's going to bring a winning attitude this is a leader and this is our one opportunity to spend a lot of money on like an anchor of the lineup

long-term position player long-term hitter looking at the the markets ahead i don't think that there are a lot of premium free agent bats that the padres could realistically expect themselves to be in on you know they're not going to sign bryce harper they're not going to sign manny machado and you look down the line there's just not a whole lot there and so they think well here is a young free agent who has a very limited market at this point in time we could conceivably get him and you know if he hits a little better then he hits a little better and you know maybe maybe we're higher on his defense than all of the numbers have literally always been since he started being a major league first baseman i think the padres see hosmer as this guy is going to be our guy for the next i don't know five or six years and then after that he's just an expensive washed up has been but

i mean how soon do the padres think they're going to be good and that is that's an interesting conversation that's one we'll have i'm sure in february or march whenever we do our our team preview but the padres with with probably Dennis Lynn. They're on the upswing, but like their team is bad. Just keep that in mind, AJ Preller. Yeah. All right. You've got to go.

We will talk again very soon. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. Five listeners who've already pledged their support include Adam Miles, Ezra Thompson, Nathan Daigie, Tim Morton, and Sam Curry. 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. Keep your questions and comments coming for me and Jeff at podcastfancrafts.com or via the Patreon messaging system. Thank you to Dylan Higgins for editing assistance. And as mentioned, we will be back very soon.

Got to stick to our three pods a week schedule. So look for us in your feed at some point this weekend. I can't wait to meet you. I can't wait to meet you. I can't wait to meet you. I can't wait to meet you.