Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1157: Angels GM Billy Eppler on Winning the Winter

Episode Date: January 1, 2018

In the first episode of 2018, Ben Lindbergh talks to Angels GM Billy Eppler about the Angels’ active offseason, touching on Eppler’s blueprint for building a team around Mike Trout, winning the Shohei Ohtani sweepstakes and his plans for the potential two-way star, the Angels’ elite infield defense and Eppler’s run-prevention philosophy, signing and evaluating […]

So I say I would start something, and you start something, too. Rock and roll is not good, I'm so in the way, this was all a mistake. Hello and welcome to episode 1157 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I'm Ben Lindberg, a writer for The Ringer. My co-host Jeff Sullivan is on vacation, so I've got a guest, and a good one. On December 15th, Fangraphs writer Travis Sochick declared that the Angels had won the offseason. Maybe December 15th seems a little early to declare a winner to the offseason, but if there were a winner, you'd be hard-pressed to pick any other team. The Angels have not only re-signed and extended Justin Upton, won the Shohei Otani sweepstakes,

traded for Ian Kinsler, and signed Zach Cozart, plugging two of their most glaring holes from last year's roster, but they've also begun to replenish their previously barren farm system at the same time. MLB.com's Jim Callis just named the Angels' farm system one of the five most improved in 2017. In addition to their major league signings, they also picked up Braves shortstop Kevin Maiton, the best known prospect who was set loose in the wake of the Braves international spending scandal. So they've improved on all fronts. They've done it without taking on payroll. They're at about 142 million right now, which would be down more than 30 million from last year's team. And the architect of all of that

activity is Angel's GM, Billy Epler, whom I met some time ago when I was an intern in the Yankees front office and he was scouting director. He has since gone on to great things and I have gone on to host podcasts. But as of today, I'll also have gone on to be a podcast guest because I am joined now by Angels GM Billy Epler, who unlike me and most major league teams this year, got most of his holiday shopping done early. Hey, Billy, how are you? I'm well, Ben. How are you doing? Doing very well.

So I want to get to all the activity that you've had in the last couple months and Shohei Otani and all the rest. But if we could just go back in time a couple years, you just hit your two-year anniversary as Angels GM a couple months ago. And to flashback to that time, you obviously inherited Mike Trout, which made you the envy of every other GM, but you also inherited a farm system that was consistently among the lowest rated. You had a bunch of contracts, a bunch of veterans, guys who in some cases weren't even on the roster anymore. And so you definitely had some constraints to work with. So what was your blueprint, I guess, or what was the vision that you sold to ownership and interviews that you kind of came into the job with? You know, how are we

going to build a winner while Mike Trout is here and under contract? What was sort of the grand plan if there was one? I mean, what we laid out, you know, what a lot of the conversations were surrounding were, you know, putting together a contending club while also building the infrastructure. And, you know, everybody realizes, you know, how the club is doing, right? That, you know, I always refer to that department, right? Because I tend to speak in departments a lot, but I refer to that department as the face. You know, that's what everybody sees outwardly. They see the 25 guys or, truth be told, the 45 guys that you're going to use

over the course of the major league season. They know your managers. They know your coaches. That's how you present yourself outwardly. But as important as that are the, you know, I kind of break it down into eight different departments, but as important as that are the other you know, I kind of break it down into eight different departments. But as important as that are the other seven departments that are, you know, the lifeblood of the organization and can kind of make that face look attractive or conversely make it not look so great if those departments aren't functioning well.

And so we really, you know, assembled a group in our front office that focused on that infrastructure and building that infrastructure while trying to make moves, you know, at the major league level that would allow our club to contend. And, you know, had the unfortunate circumstances of, you know, some injuries, as have a lot of clubs that have kind of derailed what that might have looked like, you know, would we have been able to keep the majority of our, you know, starting pitching healthy? It might've led to a little different outcome, but a lot of the focus was player development and domestic scouting, domestic amateur scouting and international amateur scouting, and then professional scouting and building a, you know, an analytics group that

was sole responsibility was to do baseball research and then, you know, assembling a player performance department and really trying to focus on the standard of care for our players and both at the minor league and the major league level. And so a lot of that, you know, infrastructure building or the underbelly required a heck of a lot of effort and required a lot of, you know, personnel to be hired or personnel to be reallocated to, you know, to address certain areas. And so it's definitely been an all hands on deck and an endeavor by, you know, my front office group, or the office of the GM, as I like to refer to it so often. So that's what we laid out is how do we improve all of these departments and all of these entities, you know, while making the face as

attractive as possible. You often hear writers say something like, well, when you start with Trout, when you start with the best player in baseball, you just have to sort of surround him with a 500 team and that gets you to the playoffs. Is that a way that it's at all helpful to think about it when you are that team, when you are putting together that roster? Obviously, you're happy to have him, team when you are putting together that roster? Obviously, you're happy to have him, but does it simplify the job in any way or dictate the job that you do in any way that, say, having two players who are good but not Mike Trout level would? I tend to not look at it that way because when you're looking at the player pool, if I take that of that approach, then I would only look

at a certain area. And I, you know, I don't want to say this, I don't want this to come across how it might, it might sound, but that, that tends to try to put you more towards aiming towards mediocrity. Like, Hey, if you just shoot for average, well, that's great. But that's not really, you know, that's not really in my own makeup. I want to shoot for as I want to aim for perfection, knowing that it's not attainable. But if I aim for perfection, then I got a chance of reaching greatness. And if I aim for greatness, then I'm probably going to reach good. If I aim for good, I'm probably reaching average. If I reach for average, I'm probably, you know, achieving below average, so on and so forth.

And so I've always kind of set sights high. And, you know, oftentimes that doesn't fall that way. You don't execute the perfect trade or you don't sign the number one target in free agency, but it doesn't mean that I'm not going to knock on those doors and aim for that. And so that's kind of more of the approach that, you know, myself and our staff, you know, that we take. And, you know, in certain areas, there's opportunity cost. And, you know, there's all the risk assessment that goes on. But, you know, as we sit down and look at those things, that's more of that you necessarily could have used as the foundation for a five-year plan or something. You don't know if he's going to come over. You don't know if he's going to choose you out of the 30 teams who would be happy to have him if he does. And then it falls into your lap, and I don't want to make it sound like you didn't play a part in that because, of course, you had to convince him to come.

And so from the outside, you know, we read that he says he felt a connection to the angels. And it's not completely clear without being in that room, without talking to him, what it is about the angels that made him choose you over everyone else. And from your perspective, you probably don't want to overanalyze it too much. You're just happy it happened. But can you give us a sense of the preparation that made that possible, whether it was you're scouting him for years, you're having pre-existing relationships, you're coming up with responses to his survey questions that intrigued him, whatever you think it was that led to that

decision. I'd love to hear about it. Yeah. I mean, you know, I, I do, you know, I do tend to, to just appreciate the fact that, that he's here. Um, and, and I, to your point, I don't, I don't overanalyze it. You know, I know that a lot of clubs put their best foot forward and ultimately, you know, like I was talking to our owner during the process, a lot of this is out of our control or all of this is out of our control right you know ultimately he's going to have to feel comfortable and you know the the way that we went about it and then i know a lot of clubs you know had you know a particular or a similar presentation or maybe a maybe a different way that they went about it but but from our standpoint

we just tried to let him see what this organization would be like through the eyes of a player and talk to him a little bit about, you know, how we do things and our processes for doing things, how we evaluate things, how we manage our players, you know, and, and how we, you know, the tools that we do provide and how we go about teaching our players how to use those tools. And so that was a little bit of, you know, the 10,000 foot view of how we went about it with him. You know, I, I'm sure that, you know, being on a club that, you know, has resources, but is also in the desirable place to live and so on and so forth. I'm sure some of those things came into his, in his thought process, but at the end of the day, you know, I never sat down with him and say, what was it about us? Why

did you choose us? You know, I mean, he kind of, he let me know, like, I feel very comfortable here. I feel very comfortable with, you know, all the people, you know, around, around the Angels and I'm looking forward to, you know, playing at the major league level. And it just kind of, it just kind of went from there. And, you know, I know that we've got months to go, obviously, before even spring training, let alone opening day. There's so much that has to be settled and decided before we find out how he'll be used. Can you talk about any of the considerations, at least, that will go into this, the things that you'll be looking for over the next few months that could help determine that, whether it's how he prepares in spring

training, how Albert looks in the field, all the factors that could go into this decision. Yeah. I mean, ultimately, you know, we have all of our players end up connecting with, you know, our player performance department and what we're trying to just, what we're trying to analyze is how they're feeling, right. How, you know, to use this, you know, this race car analogy, how the race car is performing. And, and Shohei, obviously there's unique demands on him from both the pitching standpoint and the position player standpoint. We've connected with a lot of his staff in Nippon Ham, and we're actually making a trip over to Japan here shortly

to sit down further with him and ask some specific questions and do a little bit of an assessment on him at that moment in time. But how we're going to approach it is exactly that. Just get a sense for how his body's feeling, what his normal routine is. But ultimately, you know, we've laid out a number of different schedules, some that have, you know, a six-man rotation, some that have, you know, a five-man rotation. And we've looked at a number of different permutations and how to best, you know, manage the workload of all of our players.

And it's not a secret that we haven't had starters that have clicked the 30 start number in the last couple of years. And so what's our best way to do that? And is that realistic? And should that still be our goal? Or should our goal be 28 starts or 27 starts and so these are conversations that are still ongoing and and a very fluid between myself and mike socia and charlie nagy and bernard lee our director of performance and adam neville our head athletic trainer and and steve martone and john and strangio my two assistant gms and we're having this this dialogue pretty regularly to really

understand how we want to go about doing this. And, you know, fortunately, we're not in a position where we have to make a decision right now, but we are laying the ground work, you know, with our players and with our staff, you know, that this might be, you know, an avenue that we pursue. And in the weeks leading up to the signing, it seemed like every other question we got from a listener was about some crazy hypothetical loophole where you could sign Shohei Otani and somehow sneak some extra money to him under the table. And we kept saying, guys, the CBA is pretty strict about this. It doesn't seem like there's a way around it. Plus, it doesn't seem like money is really his primary concern here. Has there been any extra

scrutiny in the wake of this signing relative to a typical signing, just sort of MLB doing its due diligence to make sure that everything was above board? No, not to my knowledge, no. You mentioned the six-man rotation possibility, and you mentioned the injuries that you've had in the rotation over the past couple of years. Is there any kind of concerted plan that you can come up with at this point to say, well, you know, obviously no one in baseball has figured out how to prevent pitcher injuries, but it seems like some teams are at least trying some things, doing some research. Is there anything that you have put in place this winter that you're hoping to put in place this season to kind of curtail that? Or,

you know, when you put together this roster and you put all this work into constructing a team and then injuries happen, I would imagine there has to be something of a helpless feeling as you watch this happen and be unable to prevent it. I mean, it's funny because in our roles as general managers, you know our our best remedy is depth right because we don't have the answer for keeping guys on the field so the the best thing to do is just have enough guys that you're comfortable with knowing that inevitably you know in a great year you're only going to use eight starting pitchers right that's a great year right and then in a you know a trying year you might be running 13 14 15 different names out there for a, you know, a trying year, you might be running 13, 14, 15 different names out there for a start.

You know, I think last year, I think it was 13 for us. And so those are, those are trying years. And I'd love to sit here and tell you that, you know, we found this plan to make sure we're only going to use eight starters, but, but the best remedy, or at least the best action plan here today is, is just managing your depth. Now, this is going to sound, you know, painfully obvious, but, you know, the best way to not get a pitcher heard is not to pitch, right? But that's, I mean, that's, well, how do you really go about doing that? That's impossible because they're talented and

you want them out there throwing downhill at relatively max velocity and, you know, let everything kind of fall from there. And, but we know that the forces of the valgus force that that's creates and just everything that, that comes with that. And then as you kind of dive deeper into the kinematic chain and, and understand, okay, you know, if things go on in the hip or things go on in the shoulder and things go on the elbow, just the connectivity between those things, you know, between that sequence, then, you know, you're trying to ask yourself the question of, okay, how do I lessen the forces on, you know, on these individuals? Or how do I allow biomechanically for more time to go by where

they might be able to handle that consistent load or that consistent or increased volume and so on and so forth. So we're always studying the relationship of that. And I have people that went to school for things like that and people that are way smarter than myself looking into those things and then, you know, giving me the dumbed down version so that I can understand it and, and sit down and really start to digest it. But, but we are looking at a number of different things as our, as our, a lot of clubs, you know, we're not unique in this. There's, there's clubs that have spent a lot of money and resources in this. And, you know, but at least from our approach and the things that we can control is we can control how much our pitchers pitch and

how often they pitch. And so trying to focus on what we can control and how that relationship can help those forces and that impact on the body, that's what we're looking into. and help those forces and that impact on the body, that's what we're looking into. Because Otani is such a generator of interest, is there any point at which a business angle enters the conversation? Attendance hasn't been a problem for you guys. You drew very well last year. But with someone like Otani, who fans are so eager to see, obviously they'd be more willing to come out to the park if he's playing four or five days a week instead of one day a week does that at any level at any point become a conversation or is it purely just about how the roster stacks up we just have to focus on

winning baseball games and the story you know we imagine he's going to contribute in you know in an important role as will you know 24 other guys with our club so um our focus right now is just winning as many baseball games as possible and you know trying to to put together a club that can they can get into october and go deep in it so as you make each of these moves does it make subsequent signings any easier? For instance, if you bring back Upton, you sign Otani, you've got Kinsler, does persuading someone like Zach Cozart to come to the team, does that become a little bit easier once you've put together the rest of the roster that seems strong enough to get to the playoffs when you have a veteran guy who hasn't been to October in a few years? Is that an easier sell when you have some of these other guys in place already?

Yeah, I mean, generally guys, you know, want to play for a, you know, a winning club or a contending club or a club that's going to, you know, get to the postseason. That is attractive for, you know, I don't want to say all, but for the majority of players. And, you know, I used to kind of take this mindset when I was more on the player development side is that, you know, that last month of the season, when that calendar turns and you're not playing for, you know, a play with us in New York and hear some of these conversations about winning in the minor leagues versus development. That's a conversation that goes on a lot. Someone told me one time that they said winning in the minor leagues is a nice event. You can have that happen. That's great. But most importantly is when it turns that month into August, because, you know, they

generally end, you know, September 1, September 3, somewhere in that window. When you turn into August, you want that club to still be in contention. And so, you know, because it drives players. And so, you know, minor leagues, major leagues, it just stands to reason that our calendar turns into our final month into September. You have a club that's in contention or within striking distance of a playoff spot or even better holding the lead in the division. That's exciting. And that's what, that's what drives players. That's what inspires players. So if you can present that, then it stands in, you know, again, it stands to reason

that having conversations with free agents, you know, they're sitting back going, yeah, this club, this club, I'm going to be playing meaningful baseball all year long. I like that. Right. And so, yes, it does help that cause a little bit. And with Cozart in the fold, regardless of who ends up getting the bulk of the innings at first, with Cozart, Maldonado, Kinsler, Simmons, you have the makings of just an all-time defensive infield here. And this was already a strong defensive team and that seems like the hallmark of a lot of moves you've made in the past couple years is prioritizing defense is that a philosophical thing that you prefer a defense oriented team or do you think that the market is still undervaluing defense relative to maybe some flashier skills you know i i think

that i'm basically taking the approach with with my staff that all we're trying to do is just grow the differential, right? And we're not necessarily gravitating one way or another. It does, I mean, everything has, you know, the butterfly effect, right? So if we're playing better defense, that would lend itself to less pitches you know thrown by our pitchers because we might be converting more balls and playing out less balls thrown by the pitchers might end up you know like back to our workload management aspect might lend itself to less injury exposure right yeah however if you're completely built on defense generally you're completely built on defense. Generally, you're playing close games. You play close games. Close games mean the high leverage relievers

get used a little bit more often or are pitching in more tense situations. And we've also come to realize that all pitches are not created equal. So if all pitches are not created equal and you're pitching in these tight games, that means more stress on the pitch. More stress on the pitch,

therefore means more load on the arm and, you know, the whole kinematic chain. So it's a chicken egg conversation. So we try to keep it very simple and just take the approach of let's try to grow the run scoring and the run prevention numbers, you know, in opposite directions as great as possible. And that's simply what we're trying to do. And sometimes it's manifested in a little bit more defense, and sometimes it's manifested in a little bit more offense on clubs that I've been a part of. And in this particular case, we actually like both the offensive contributions of these players as well as the defensive contributions of these players. And lo and behold, it seems like we maybe have found some balance.

So how do you evaluate someone like Cozart, who was a valuable player, even as an average or below average hitter, but obviously took an enormous step forward at the plate this past season? And this can be kind of a blind spot for public projection systems that will just sort of progress and look at the past three years. And, you know, the projection system at Fangraph says, well, Zach Cozart is a league average hitter in 2018. And if he is, that's fine. He'd still be valuable. But how do you decide the difference between the guy whose breakout at his age will be

sustained and the guy who's going to fall back to earth a bit? What kind of factors can you look at that maybe are a little harder to evaluate from afar? I mean, some of the predictive analytics that we run or look at are going to drive into some of the batted ball profile and things of that nature. But Ben, I'll tell you,

a lot can be uncovered when you start talking to players and you have interviews with guys and you start to present some of these things, you know, so I, I never, I never want to ignore that aspect as I'm trying to, to get as complete of a picture as possible,

you know, on a, on a player. And so, you know, while we looked at some things from an analytic perspective and, you know, the data gave us confidence that,

um, you know, he's an above average playerverage player, above-average offensive player. Also, presenting him and having an opportunity to sit with him and ask him questions about what he did on his end lends itself to giving more confidence to what the numbers were showing. He gives you another right-handed bat in a lineup with a lot of right-handed bats. Is this a significant concern for you? I always tend to think, well, it's great if you can have a perfect balance, but probably it's more important just to get the good hitters in any order. So

right now as the lineup looks, and of course it can change, you've got Valbuena and Calhoun would be the lefties and Otani, however much he's in there, but it's, you know, fairly heavily right-handed. Is that something that you would like to correct or that you see all else being equal as a disadvantage or do you not lose a lot of sleep over that? You know, a lot of our, a lot of our guys have had, you know, pretty productive, you know, splits against both handedness. We don't really have a glaring hitter that's susceptible one way or another. And so it's not, you know, this significant concern on our part, you know, I know that, you know, if you're talking against, against a right-handed pitcher,

you know, Mike Trout hits all pitching, um, Justin Upton hits all pitching, you know, Val Buena is a north of an 800 ops guy against against that cozarts you know near an 800 ops albert pools north of a 750 ops kinslers you know i mean so in that vein i mean you have productivity and again to kind of go back fall back on what we were just talking about that defense shows up no matter who, you know, on the other side too. So if we're, again, trying to just grow that differential, you know, having those guys out there on the defensive side of it as well is extremely important rather than,

well, maybe I should try to grab a left-handed bat to couple with said player here because, you know, I want to play the handedness in the batter's box, yet I'm yielding something on the defensive side. Because, you know, to your point, and to our analysis, pretty much an above-average defender everywhere around that infield, it's not elite. You know, above-average might be underselling some of these guys. And I want to ask you about your bullpen building, too, because every time a big reliever contract is signed, people like me will say, well, you don't have to sign that guy for 15 million. You can go find that guy. Teams find these guys seemingly out of nowhere every year. And that's

easy for us to say, but you actually did it. And you built a bullpen last year that was one of the most effective in baseball without a lot of household names, without a lot of big contracts. What is the secret to the extent that you can divulge to finding arms who maybe are just out there freely available or inexpensively available talent that can pitch in in late innings and be as effective as that group was i i mean i actually think that a lot of it goes to soch and his you know kind of willingness to sit down with these relievers and talk to them about their usage and letting them just kind of understand our approach to leverage and leverage situations.

You know, we're looking for pitchers that have a particular set of criteria that they kind of fit our philosophy. But outside of that, you know, we're just approaching it with a mindset of, you know, communicating as well as we can with the player, letting them understand that, you know, we're just, we're just approaching it with a mindset of, you know, communicating as well as we can with the player, letting them understand that, you know, our approach to in-game management and going from there and having the buy-in from, from those guys to do that. So, you know, that in and of itself is kind of the biggest slice of the pie of how we had a successful bullpen last year. And, you know, we're, we're continually trying to, you know, turn over rocks and see if there's

something that can be, you know be made of a particular pitcher. And maybe it's something as simple as throwing a particular pitch more or less. Maybe it's something biomechanically as far as positioning on the mound. There's a number of different elements. And we are trying to actively look to make players better. And this, again, kind of falls back to the Otani thing. to actively look to make players better. Because one of the things that, and this again kind of falls back to the Otani thing, one of the things that we always talk about is continued development.

If our players are not developing, no matter their age, if you're not developing at age 31 to age 32, or if you're not developing at age 23 to 24, then probably not the best fit playing here. Because we're going to continually try to evolve our players and we communicate with them and let them know those things. But we are definitely about growing and learning and everything that we do. I want to ask you about Mike,

because you brought him up, you give him a lot of credit, I know. And you came into the situation where you took over a team where the manager was an institution and, you know, a lot of GMs get to handpick their people and Mike was already in place. And it seems from afar as if you guys have worked really well together, which hasn't necessarily always been the case with this team in the past. So I'm curious about why that relationship has, has flourished as it has and what you see as his strengths. And now as we enter a year where he's in the last year of this very long contract and he's going to be facing some challenges that no manager has for quite some time with trying to figure out how to deploy Otani and find playing time for everyone. So I'm curious about how you see that situation playing out and what kind of security, if any, he is looking for, what conversations you've had.

Well, the one thing I can say about Mike, he is someone that is, you know, the point I was just making, he's someone that's always looking for another tool in his tool belt that can help. And that is a testament more to his character and his own DNA. He is always looking for ways that he can be a better manager or that his coaches can be better or that he can make players better. And you don't see that a lot, especially with, you know, a guy who's the longest tenured manager slash head coach in, who's the longest tenured manager slash head coach in, you know, the three major sports,

maybe even four major sports, you know? And so, you know, that, you know, really understanding that kind of DNA characteristic is I think how we've hit it off because, you know, I will come down or Steve Martone or Jonathan Strangio or Andrew Ball or whoever will go downstairs and sit in his office and just have conversations with him. And so we have so much regular communication with him. I'm probably about an hour to an hour and a half a day. Some of that's before the game, and then some of it's after the game, win or lose. And I think that there's just developed this kind of camaraderie, but also this common goal that he's trying to grow. We're trying to grow.

He sees that in us. We see that in him. And that's what's made the relationship, you know, a positive one. And so, you know, that's what I could say on that. You know, I will tell you that when I got over here, you know, I mean, you know what you hear and read and so on and so forth. But those are narratives. Right. And so you kind of walk in the door and you just go, Hey, you know, let's get to know each other as well as we can. And so we spend a, we spend a ton of time together. I mean, I don't really even think I go, I don't really think I go into my office in spring training. I pretty much, I walk in in the morning and I put my bag down in his office and sit down there pretty much the whole day. I don't go up there until he goes out and does his media session and the team stretch. And then I go up to my office. So my first three or four hours, three hours of the day are

with him in his office, just hanging out, just talking, sometimes not even talking about baseball, you know, and so it was just developed this relationship and that's how we've gone about it. So you've been one of the busiest, if not the busiest GMs on what has been a very slow market. And, you know, you've been talking to everyone else. You've been talking to other teams. To what do you attribute how slowly this market has developed? Because in November, we all thought, well, maybe it's just Otani and Stanton holding things up, and maybe there was an element of that, but things haven't picked up a whole lot more since they have had their transactions. So do you see other factors that are holding things up in your conversations with your counterparts? I mean, I thought about this, and I had this conversation with a couple agents as I was driving to work or at work or what have you, you know, over the last month, you know, I actually, you know, thought that the calendar had something

to do with it as well. Right. So the GM meetings were, which are usually, you know, kind of the, the green light of the, of the off season where a lot of the conversations start, those were a week later this year. Right. So you had the GM meetings falling, you know, the week of the 13th. And then normally you have Thanksgiving a full week after the GM meetings. Well, people got back from that and then they go right into Thanksgiving. And then you have the two weeks between Thanksgiving and then the winter meetings. And so I was thinking to myself, you know, I really expected a lot of activity to kind of pick up right before the winter meetings. And then there was, you know, in our particular case, it was just, it was all Otani from our standpoint, you know, from about Thanksgiving till the point where he signed. And, and then you also had that, you know, the Stanton, the Stanton stuff going on as well. And so I've read so many different narratives out there, and I'm sure that each one, you know, plays a factor into it. But ultimately, I really couldn't tell you, Ben.

You know, I think, you know, maybe teams just generally are more pragmatic. You know, maybe it's, you know, a lot of the big fish, you know, that are out there in the marketplace are still out there. And so there's some people drafting off of them. And so that's, what's tying up. I have no idea. I couldn't tell you. And,

and I, and I guarantee you this, this, I can tell you it's not one thing. Yeah. I can, I can promise you that it is not one thing. So it just is what it is.

And, you know, eventually, you know, clubs will build up charts and players will find homes. And that's just the way it'll happen. So yeah, it'll take place. Yeah, I agree with you. And I wonder, you know, just we've coming off a season when baseball was so stratified, it seemed you had these several elite teams, and then, you know, you had a big gap between them and a lot of the

league and their teams that are kind of looking forward to the future and other teams that are seemingly set almost the day the season ended. And I wonder whether there's just a scarcity of teams that are kind of in the Angels position where you're in that part of the win curve where every win really ups your odds considerably. And if so, I guess you guys have taken advantage of that. So while everyone else has been kind of dragging their feet for whatever reason or many reasons, you've been busy. So I guess it's worked out well for you. So I just want to end, I guess, by asking you,

you know, you were assistant GM for years, you were working in scouting for years, you were learning from Brian Cashman for years. I'm curious about what, if anything, you still take from your time with other organizations, with the Yankees, watching Cashman and experienced GM work as sort of an apprenticeship before you got the big job. What you take from that time that still helps your decision-making now? Yeah, I mean, by far and away, Cash is my biggest mentor in the game. I mean, a lot of people from Bill Schmidt to Damon Oppenheimer, you know, really helped shape me and grow me.

But speaking to somebody that prepared me to sit in the seat I'm currently in, working right next to Cash during that time, was extremely valuable. And so, you know, I'm sure you can remember, you know, all of the games, you know, where I'd be sitting there and Stick would be coming in, that Gene Michael would be coming into the office, and he and I would sit together during games

and so on and so forth. And Stick taught me a lot about, you know, the relationship between, you know, the front office and the coaching staff. And then, you know, but watching Brian and how he went about everything that he did, it was always with the mindset. And I remember him telling me this

a couple of different times that like, I have to do everything in my power so that if I'm not here, I leave this place in good shape, right? And he never lost. That was that was almost his beacon. Now, his ability to handle crisis is like so far beyond anything I've ever been around. I mean, this guy, when there's drama and there can be drama in New York a lot, that's the guy you want leading you. Because he's so he's so great at crisis management. When, you know, everybody's panicking or overreacting and things he just he

always seems to be able to stay right on course and right on point, you know, so his ability to do that and then his ability to kind of grow, learn, adapt and evolve in this era. You know, if you think about when he started in New York and how he kind of came through all the way through the internship channel, all the way up, you know, to that chair and sitting in that chair, you know, during a dynasty period and everybody knows dynasties end and then having kind of the vision and having the vision and knowing how to bring people together to kind of compliment him, you know, to then continue on, you know, with a team and almost rebuild another dynasty

and keep a team that's been contending forever while he's been in that chair is really remarkable. Absolutely remarkable. And so my takeaways from him are just he always stayed on point. He was very direct with people and so didn't beat around the bush a lot. So I try to take a lot of those same characteristics is be direct, be available, be sincere, but always do what's best for the organization. Put them first, put that entity first, and you'll always sleep well at night. So those are my biggest takeaways from him. All right. Well, I know I've been postponing your son's trip to the playground, so I will let you and him go. But, you know, it's been fun to watch you work this winter because you've gotten so much done and clearly have improved the roster. But not only that, have just built an extremely watchable team, which, you know, may not be your primary concern. I'm sure you'd be perfectly happy to have a boring 92-win team with average players

at every position, but the fact that you've built this team that not only has Trout, but also Otani and then Andrelton Simmons, who's maybe one of the most watchable players in baseball, even in years when he hasn't hit the way that he did last year. This is the team, I think, that a lot of people are going to kind of have as their MLB TV go-to when their team isn't playing, just because there's so many intriguing storylines and guys who can generate highlights on this roster. And that has to be exciting for you, even if it's just sort of a byproduct of trying to make the team better in any way that you can. Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, we just want to play really good baseball. And I think that in and of itself is something enjoyable to watch. So if we can play good baseball and have a very finely tuned process of how we go about doing things, then that's all I can ask for. All right. Well, Billy Epler, good luck with the rest of your winter. And thank you very much for the time.

Thanks, Ben. I appreciate it. Take care and a happy new year to you. You too. Carl and Daniel Tilling. 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. And please keep your questions and comments coming for me and this week, Sam Miller via email at podcastfangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system. I will talk to you later this week. Happy New Year, everyone. They say they're running out of angels

They say I'm running out of time Though you don't have to be lucky It is easier than trying Now they're bringing down the hammer On anything that sells I suppose you're winning Because they're running out of angels