Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1590: How to Find a Minor League Late Bloomer

Episode Date: September 14, 2020

Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller talk to Justin Hollander, the Seattle Mariners’ vice president and assistant general manager in charge of baseball operations, about how the Mariners have discovered and signed overlooked talents like Austin Nola and Dylan Moore, how much preparation the front office does for minor league free agency, how to blend stats […]

The midnight I met you Imagine all the things we might do Both while we're young While we want to But I don't even know your name But I'm gonna find a way I begged you to dance with me It was the spark of everything

Good morning and welcome to episode 1590 of Effectively Wild, the baseball podcast on Fangraphs.com brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Sam Miller of ESPN along with Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Hello, Ben. Hello. And we have a guest today. I'm very excited to have this guest for this topic. We're talking to Justin Hollander, who is the vice president and AGM of baseball operations for the Seattle Mariners. Hello, Justin. Hey, guys.

The reason that we have Justin on is this show here, we have an affinity for minor league free agents and the minor league free agent pool and minor league free agent process. Every year we draft minor league free agents that we think might make an impact in the majors and we do fairly poorly. And a year and a half ago justin was in charge i correct me if i'm wrong about that description but was in charge of the minor league free agent process for the mariners and had an off season for the ages and we're going

to talk to him about what i would consider one of the more impressive achievements in the sport during my lifetime so justin, welcome. About seven years ago, Carson Sestouli wrote a piece for Fangraphs looking at what the expectation is for minor league free agents, what like basically what you can expect from minor league free agents. And what he found, he looked at 1600 players over a three year period and found, so 1,600 players, he found 18 of them in those three years produced 0.5 war or more in the following season. So 0.5 war in the following season would qualify you as a tremendous success, six per year out of a pool of about 600. And only nine of those 18 were over one war and only two were over two war and nobody was over 2.3. So we're not

generally talking about difference makers. In your minor league free agent process in 2018, 2019 offseason, I'm going to start slow. I'm going to bury the lead here. But last year you had Brandon Brennan and Zach Grotz, who were both from that pool. And they were both over.5 war. They were both effective relievers for you. They were both over.5 war. So if we expect six players out of the pool to hit that the next year, you hit two of those six. Would that have been enough to get congratulations from the rest of the office?

Would you feel pretty good about that? So the beauty of me volunteering to oversee it was I was aware of the low bar. So the failing to meet those expectations wouldn't have felt like a big deal and exceeding them would have felt like a really big deal. So yes, we would have absolutely considered those two guys a huge success. Okay. That was our whole class. All right. So in that class, you had Brandon Brennan, Zach Gr zach grods huge success two players over 0.54 you also had tim lopes who was a positive war player for you last year although i don't think he got over 0.5 and you had dylan moore who was a regular for you last year and is now like kind of a star dylan moore this year is 34th in the majors in war. He is currently tied with Juan Soto,

Dominic Smith, Nolan Arenado, Carlos Correa. I would say that there's a pretty good chance that Dylan Moore will get named on MVP ballots this year. Maybe not 100%, but a pretty good chance he will be named on an MVP ballot. I think if this were a full season, he would be talked about as an all-star at this point. And then you also had Austin Nola, who was a one-point-something war player last year, so even rarer, a third player at that threshold. And this year was one of the hottest players on the trade deadline. And you traded him to San Diego for what I think got a lot of attention as a very big haul, including Taylor Trammell, the prospect who a year earlier had been traded as part of the

Trevor Bauer deal and is a top hundred prospect. And Ty France, who had a big hit for you today and has been just crushing the ball. And Luis Torrens, who is a catcher with Major League Experience. And then you also got the pitcher. Remind me of the pitcher's name. Andres Munoz. Who was a 20-year-old, effective 20-year-old reliever in the majors in 2019. So big haul. All right.

So we have now established that this was really, like, remarkable. You got two players who emerged as stars. So, all right. That's the, that's, that's like what we're talking about here. That's what you did. That's the record. So now we're going to talk about how it all happened. So you said that you volunteered for this role. What does that mean exactly? How does, who, who does, does it always require a volunteer? Well, you also forgot Tommy Malone, who pitched very well for us last year as well. No, I've heard you take credit for Tommy Malone, but I don't see him on the official minor league

free agent list. And so I'm not giving you credit for that one. That's fine. I won't quibble at this point. So what does it mean to volunteer? I guess what it means is if there's going to be a meeting, you run the meeting. If there's going to be a process where certain people in the front office are assigned to contact players and agents, you are that person who hands out the assignments. And then generally speaking, you make sure you don't sign more guys than slots you have available and give people the rough authority to offer a certain salary in the process. So that's what it sort of means to volunteer to oversee the process, at least for the mariners it does. And you've been in front offices for many years with the mariners, with the angels before then. So had you done this before or had you been sort of peripherally involved in this process? I should say no, because then it makes it sound like I'm

just dominating this process, even having never done it before. But yes, I had been involved during my time in Anaheim, either on the periphery or my last couple of years is more of oversight in the role. And then when I got to Seattle, we sort of shared responsibility. And after the 18 season, I volunteered slash was volunteered by the group

to oversee it and run the meetings and make sure our process was as good as it can be, knowing that we were rebuilding and we had a ton of spots to fill and a lot of opportunity for those players. Is it generally a job that is taken seriously? Or is it I mean, you know, these are I don't know. I don't know. You don't like like we said, you don't expect to get a whole lot here. I mean, is it is it that different than, for instance, keeping a sort of a rough eye on who's available on, you know, I mean, there's hundreds of players who are available all the time. They're, you know, out of work. They're constantly being released,

and then they float around and they go to independent leagues or, you know, they're just, they have an agent, someone who calls every once in a while and sees whether they can get a job. just they have an agent, someone who calls every once in a while and sees whether they can get a job. Is there a big difference between that group of several hundred former minor leaguers and this group of several hundred minor leaguers who are available as free agents? It's hard for me to speak for how seriously it's taken elsewhere. We've always taken it really seriously, mostly because it's virtually certain that some of the guys you're going to sign are going to appear in the big leagues. It's not as if you're just using them to fill out double-A rosters, sort of an exercise to make sure you have enough guys on the team or something like that,

somebody who plays an A-ball once every week or filling a gap, or if you have an injury in the middle of the season. When you're approaching minor league free agency, six-year free agency, mostly you're filling in at the AA and AAA level. And you're doing it with players who are at the age and at the experience level where there's a very good chance that if you do it right, a lot of these players, you can immediately see in the big leagues. Whether it's winning a job out of spring training or a couple months into the season like it was with NOLA, coming up and taking hold of a job or even filling in for two weeks while someone's hurt. And, you know, finding players that are representative major league players in this process while not easy. Also, like, as you can tell, plays immediate dividends for your roster. If they're really bad,

it hurts you. And, you know, I don't think anybody ever thinks they're getting a star for the most part, but if they're representative or turn into, you know, utility players or relievers who help you get through a period can really make a difference in your season. Yeah. Have the teams that you've been with done studies on the profile of a typical successful minor league free agent, or is it just sort of looking at the needs of your roster and who's available on that market? Like I remember when I was an intern with the Yankees many years ago, they gave me the task probably because they didn't know what else to do with me, to just study Rule 5 drafts and see what's the profile of a good Rule 5 pick. And that's something that we always study here or try to figure out when we do our minor league free agent drafts. Do you want to get like a lefty reliever, let's say, or do you want to get someone who's

maybe, you know, this is not really applicable to you, but we look at like, is the playing time available? Is it going to be a good team? Do they have a lot of depth? Is this person going to be blocked? That sort of thing. But, you know, do you get a utility player who can play a lot of positions? Or do you look for someone who already had big league experience or someone who, I don't know, is versatile in some way or is young or is experienced better? I don't know. Do you look for certain types of players? And I guess if you do, I'm asking you to give away your strategy on this podcast. Yes to all those things. I think all those things, and I'll answer your question by giving you a non-answer. Yes, all those things matter. Being able to play multiple positions really matters because if you have an injury or someone is failing to perform a player

who can fill in a number of spots like Dylan Moore can super valuable a player who has a special trade or a special tool that you can hope to like you know galvanize in the big leagues or get max out on some change in instruction or a new environment like those things are are valuable and you know those are the typical profiles that you look for somebody who you know has been well thought of in the past somebody who had draft pedigree or international signing pedigree um and maybe hasn't quite gotten over the hump yet there isn't like a single profile that is this is what the mariners are looking for but look at the the history or the pedigree of that player um look at the type of skill set that is likely to provide value on a minor

league roster and or a major league roster, and then look at the particular narrative of that player and see if there's anything about that player that you think is likely to lead to more success than they've had in the past. All those things come into play and every story is a little different. So I don't want to like pretend that we cookie cut, this is the minor league free agent we have to sign because he checks box A, B, and C, but usually they check one or more of those boxes. And do you have, when you open up this list, I mean, I don't know, you probably, well, maybe you are, but you probably aren't looking at the Baseball America list of 600. You probably have like a spreadsheet or something, but when you open it up, do you know all these names? Do you have opinions about all these players of the 600?

I guess, how many do you figure you have an opinion of at the beginning? Uh, uh, half of them. Uh, that's like, that's like a lot better than us.

Like, I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna read some of these names. This is the, the 20 New York Mets minor league free agents that year, Jamie Callahan, Nabel Krizmat, Nicholas DeBora, Logan Taylor, Buddy Bauman, Matt Gage, Matt Perk, Jeff Glenn. So those are like the type of names. I mean, these are names that probably very few people

listening or hosting have heard of very few of those names. So we signed Krizmat as well that year. So I mean, like I said, 50% or so that I have some sort of preconceived notion about, but I will say that me along with our entire group and front office analytics, scouting, our scouts in the field, our PD people, we comb through all the names. Like we generally do some sort of deep dive on everybody. And then when we get together, we combine all our recommendations and we put video up on the screen and almost treat it like a mini draft room and probably take it, you know, more seriously than history says it's worth. But we, we get familiar with all of them or roughly all of them through the process.

Krizmat, by the way, is no longer a Seattle Mariner, but this year is a major leaguer as well and has had four appearances with St. Louis, has not allowed a run, four strikeouts, one base runner, and 17% whiff rate. So kind of another hit. I don't get credit for Malone, but maybe I'll get credit for Krizmat just a year too early. Yeah. So you do, you say a mini kind of a, you said it's kind of like a mini draft room.

How many are we talking about? Like, I mean, if you could kind of estimate how many employees are putting in how many hours on this list of 600 names? Probably 15 to 20 employees. And I can't speak to how many hours each individual person puts in, but you know, 15 to 20 people, I would imagine anywhere from five to 20 hours each, depending on what we're asking them to do. So it's a lot of hours. We spend a lot of time on it and we send our recommendations to our high performance department

to do a biomechanical eval on the guys that we think they might like or that we think we might like. PD also gets involved. If in someone like Austin Nola's case, what do we think we can do to help make him a better receiver, to help catch? He didn't have a lot of experience. So we thought he'd be pretty open to making changes if we asked him to. What were those changes that we'd like him to do? So we got our catching coordinator involved as well. So it's a lot of people. And how much more do you know about your organization's minor leaguers than

other organizations' minor leaguers, whether it's the extent or the quality of the data available? A lot of it is shared, of course, but not everything. And then when it comes to, say, makeup, all the things that you might get to know when someone's in your organization for years that you either have to guess at or use the data or try to talk to people who could fill you in. I think that is the single biggest difference. When you're around your own players, you know everything about them or almost everything about them, I should say. You really are, I don't want to say guessing, but you really have to do a lot of digging to find out about the inner workings of what makes someone tick, how adaptable they're going to be, how much buy-in

they're going to have and the things you're going to ask them to do or the changes you might ask them to make, what kind of teammate they are. And those things really matter in this process. You don't want to bring in someone who's going to negatively affect the culture of the organization. And in a perfect world, you want to bring in someone who brings out the best in everyone around them and also buys into everything that you think is important. I think Noah is probably the best example of that. Complete buy-in on everything we asked him to do. Maybe the most unbelievable work ethic that we've ever had in a player, minor league free agent, major league free agent, or homegrown player. And just a willingness to challenge himself to get better every day. And

I would say we, like, we shouldn't take any credit for that. Like we, we had educated guesses that he was wired in a certain way but that's all a player uh and obviously you know him taking advantage of the opportunity that we had in terms of the the data available to the extent that you can say i mean i know that say minor league track man information is shared across teams so you would have that for other players just as you have it for your own, but are there certain things that you can divulge that you might not have that would be nice to have, whether it's high-speed video or bat sensors, swing sensor stuff, other biomechanical data that maybe you have on your

own guys that you don't have on others? Why don't I just use your examples and say those things would be great to have on everybody and uh on top of that i think you if a player is making an adjustment or has made an adjustment you are more keenly aware of that adjustment if it's your own player if you've watched him go through the process of adding a leg kick or taking away a leg kick or changing a delivery or a grip on a pitch you generally have a record of when that happened and can track the performance or the underlying information much easier than you can when it's an outside player and you don't have any context on the performance. You just have the performance. I have been speculating lately that

there could be an opposite effect in modern baseball where players are more likely to succeed with new teams because there's 29 teams that, you know, are looking at that player and the team that likes that player the most or that sees perhaps that sees something that they can do with that player is a lot more likely to cause the sort of mid-career changes or make those mid-career suggestions that like Ben and Travis wrote about in their book. So like for these players that you signed, I guess like, I know that you probably wouldn't be able to necessarily answer this, but

how much do you take credit for the fact that they got to your organization and that it was specifically a match that you thought was going to work and that maybe if those players had, you know, stayed in there or in their original organization or been somewhere else, there might not have necessarily been those changes made. Well, I think there's a couple of different things that you hit on there. Like, how much do we, the Mariners, take credit? Some. I think, you know, ultimately the players bought into what we're asking them to do, or they were here and a light turned on and something got better. How much do we take credit for that versus a player leaving X organization and coming to any other organization

other than the Marys? It's hard for me to answer that one. I think if we were that good at it, we would do it every year. So some of it is luck and some of it is circumstance. I do think there is an element of change of scenery and also of the lack of fatigue. If you've had a player for five or six or seven years and he hasn't done the things you're hoping he will do uh and he's stalled out to some degree i think there's a certain element of front offices scouts coaches everyone who will sort of i don't know if it's the best way of saying is getting fatigued they're just fatigued by watching the same thing and somebody else may look at it from a different view and say oh i i see see all the positives. I don't see

any negatives because they haven't been around maybe a lack of adjustability or a lack of success when the adjustments do happen. So there is some benefit to not having been through the maturation process and only seeing what exists today. There's also the fact that you were able to offer these players playing time that maybe they wouldn't have been able to get if they were in other organizations during, you know, those other organizations competitive windows. But did you, I guess, particularly with more Nola, who have really emerged as not just minor league free agent successes, but like truly like, like high quality all star type players. Did you see in your imagination, any of that happening with them? Did you have an idea that like with

X, Y, and Z, with playing time, with a few tweaks, with the right coaching staff, that this level was there? Or were you just thinking that, well, they're the best of the bunch and we're trying to get the best of the bunch. We're picking the best players that we can see and we don't necessarily go that much deeper than that. I think it's a double-edged sword. If I say, no, I didn't see this coming, I don't believe in the players and what they've done. And if I say, yes, I'm a lunatic, because this is such not a normal process that happens when you sign minor league for agents. We absolutely liked the players and we believed in their skill sets. I think we were more hoping for a backup catcher or someone who could grow into a part-time catcher

and a utility guy who could move around the field and had some tools and then had success at almost every level he played at. Beyond that, we didn't spend a lot of time thinking about like, you know, could they become like down ballot MVP candidates like they both probably are this year? I just don't think that's realistic. And if you'd said that in the room, people would have thought you were crazy. I do think you hit on something interesting in the lead up to the question, though, which is we were going through a rebuild and we had at bats to those two guys in innings for the other guys to offer. And that is it's not the money that gets the players to choose you over someone else. Typically, it's the at bats or the innings to offer and their belief that you can help them. So it's seeing what our player development has done with people

and our ability to give them playing time is really what helps recruit minor league free agents at that level. And we had both those things. So some of that is good fortune and some of that is a great job by our PD group. Yeah, I was going to ask about that because when we do our annual minor league free agent draft, we just draft a guy and he's on our roster. It's as as that but it's not as easy as that for you you not only have to figure out which guys you want but then you have to persuade them to sign with you and i know that maybe there are some different strategies when it comes to that i remember maybe six years ago now kylie mcdaniel wrote something for fan crafts about how the yankees

were sort of flexing their financial muscle at the time when it came to minor league free agents as well as major league free agents, and that they were outspending teams in that area too. So is there a ton of competition? Do there tend to be like a few minor league free agents every year who are covered by everyone and everyone's bidding on them? Is that, you know, everyone's lining up to call certain guys on day one? Or do you wait a while? What does that look like once you decide which players you're interested in? How do you reach out to them? When do you reach out to them? And then how do you persuade them to sign with you? We're typically pretty aggressive with at least our top group. We usually go through the players, line them up, and then divide them into tiers based on how soon we want to call and how aggressive we want to be with those players.

And both Moore and Nola, for example, were like first minute calls. I believe, if I remember right, Jerry took Moore and I took Nola and we called their agents right away. We had relationships with both their agents and begged and pleaded and sold opportunity for both those guys. I think generally the money, again, like I said, is not a huge separate at this point. A lot of teams that are on the best minor league for agents offer similar things. It's really about their trust in you to give them playing time,

to give them a chance. If they're leaving their current organization, it's because they don't feel like they've gotten a chance to show what they can do. So it's really about putting your best foot forward in terms of opportunity more than it is about dollars. And for the players that we have in that top tier, we're usually pretty aggressive with those players.

And is your track record with previous minor league free agents or just free agents in general, if you are able to say, hey, we signed Moore and Nola and look what happened with them, or we signed this guy and we made this tweak and he did this. Is that something that helps you sign guys and do you attempt to ascertain whether those players would be receptive to certain tweaks before you sign them or do you just sort of have to take a leap of faith there depends on the player i hope it carries over i hope we have a good message to sell for the next group of minor league for ages that we will if we say we can

do x y and z in terms of playing time and you know we have a track record of making positive adjustments that they'll buy into it and give us a chance i know for a lot of years oakland and tampa bay the yankees and the dodgers have been popular destinations for minor league players because they've delivered on their opportunity and their the ability to help transform those players into something more than they were before they got there and i'm hoping we can be thought of in that light going forward you know in terms of like how much we sell that and the best way to sell it and the best way to connect with the player and their willingness to make adjustments usually with minor league for agents you talk to an agent first and then you end up getting on the phone with the

player and whether it's myself or jerry napoto or scott service or andy mckay our farm director or if there's a particular coordinator like if if it's a pitcher we're trying to make some adjustments with we'll put max wiener our pitching coordinator or trent blank one of our pitching strategists on the phone with the pitcher and just talk through we've set up in-person meetings with those players in the past if they want to come by the complex and have a sit down and talk to us and see what we have to offer and how we do things we'll send them our player development focus points book if we feel like it will resonate with them really you're trying to find a way to connect with that player and make them feel like there's a reason you're choosing them and

it's not to fill a spot it's because you believe in them and you believe they can offer something more than just you know help in triple a or help in double a that year you said for they were first minute calls do you like mean literally said they were first minute calls. Do you like mean literally like the first minute that you were allowed to reach out to minor league free agents, you were on the phone with their agents? Correct. And what time is that? I think it was like nine o'clock West Coast time.

So like midnight, midnight Eastern. Yeah. So in Noah's case, his agent was West Coast based. I don't think I would have called his agent if it were midnight, but it was nine o'clock and just reached out. I actually think I remember I sent him a text saying, don't want to do the late night phone call. But if you're willing to talk about Noah, I'd love to have a conversation, whatever is convenient. I think we ended up talking that night and then he signed quickly. It was over the next couple of days. I know he had offers from four or five teams that were really similar.

And he ended up talking to several people in our organization before he chose us. But yeah, it was like a 901 text, if I remember right. And is that 901 text, is that like kind of a tradition? Is that like, does everybody do that? Is it kind of a cliche that you didn't want to do it? How come you didn't want to do the late night call? It seems silly to call someone late at night. I didn't think he was going to sign at 902. But I just wanted to like in a way that I could convey that he was at the top of our board and we really wanted to have him and let him know that I like to touch base first thing in the morning. And then we happen to talk that night into the next morning. But I wasn't particularly worried about him signing by 905. I just wanted to convey

our interest right away. And how many how many do you know how many people in your front office made a 901 contact? Like, cause, cause it, it seems to me that if, if people know that you contact the ones you really like at 901, then there's now there's a real cost to calling someone at like 945. I think it was just those two guys that year, to be honest. I think that was everybody else we called the next morning. And it was one of the few times that the West Coast actually worked to our favor. Typically, when these sort of things happen, it ends up being like a 6 a.m. deadline. And I'm forced to get out of bed at 515 or 530 in the morning to be the East Coast 901 if it's in the morning. So this one worked out to our favor.

And so these players were free agents because they had been in the minors for six years and they were not on a 40-man roster, right? Correct. helps players who maybe could start in the majors keep from getting blocked, get a chance with a team that really appreciates them. And they basically don't lose their career because a team had too many prospects ahead of them. I guess I'm a little surprised to find out that there is as much bidding on these players, or I guess that they're as in demand as they are. And so do you have the feeling that there are lots of minor leaguers that could be major leaguers out there or that could have like you know long and successful careers but uh just because of the the kind of roster crunch at the levels above them they never get a chance and they

end up getting buried through their their primes do you do you see players like a lot at double a where you think oh that guy could be a major leader on our team right now? I think everybody, when you go through this process, you have a player pool and you always get excited about whoever is the best player in that player pool. You want, like I said before, you want to be realistic of what the history of my league for agency shows. But, you know, when you're having a player pool of 600 players or however many are in each year's player pool, there are guys that stand out. Like I said, I think our group does a great job.

Some of our analysts come up with a list of like 50, 60, 70 guys that they're interested in. Some people are a little closer and they'll come up with a list of 10 or 15 guys they're really excited about. We want them to like players in this process. If we go through the minor league free process and only talk about the holes in everybody's game, you're going to end up not liking anybody because of what you said. And most of these players have been in the minor leagues for six or seven years. They, like, for whatever reason, stalled out at AA or AAA or sometimes even A-ball. So you don't want to spend a lot of time focusing on their deficiencies.

Like, find the positives, find out in ways in which you think they can contribute and focus on those things and then separate them that way. I don't think it'd be a particularly healthy exercise to start comparing them to the average big league player pool and pointing out the deficiencies that they all have. And I think our front office group that participates in this along with our scouting group does a great job of that. Like I said, people like Forrest Diamond in our analytics department or Austin Yamada in our scouting department will come with a list of like 40, 50, 60 guys into the meeting that they are excited to talk about. And I read a quote from your boss, Jerry DiPoto, after you guys completed the recent trades with

San Diego. And he said, as many phone calls as AJ made to me this last week about Austin Nola, I have made as many to him over the last couple of years regarding Thai France. And I assume that Jerry and AJ probably make more phone calls than the average general manager. But I assume that there are players that every team likes that are in some other organization that they just have their eye on. Maybe they tried to draft them and missed out on them. Maybe they tried to acquire them in some other way and just haven't been able to. So are there players that you'll think, oh boy, I can't wait till he makes minor league free agency if he does, or he's on track to be minor league free agent

in 2022 or whatever, and you just kind of have a mental note that when that guy is available, you're going to be first in line? Probably not like two years out, but we do start, I would say, in June or July of the year preceding their free agency, making sure we have reports on them, making sure that we're familiar with the player. If we need to do a last second look at that player in a year where we would actually have live looks, we would do that, or we'll do video looks on that player just to make sure we have a recent scouting report in. So it doesn't happen, it doesn't start when the season ends, we typically get ahead of the process and start looking at it, you know, a third of the way

through the season or halfway through the season. And a lot of the best players that are eligible end up getting added to rosters when the season ends. And that is always a hard thing when you have a big list and you start just crossing out names on the list that got added to somebody's 40 man, most of which you expect to get out of, but some maybe surprise you or you thought were close. And then the transactions for that day come across and it says, you know, Joe Smith selected to roster of whoever team and you just cross that player off your six year free list. And how forthcoming do teams tend to be about their former players who just reached free agency? Say if you wanted to reach out to this guy's former organization and say, hey, what's this guy like? Or what have you done with him? Or what has he tried to do? Or what

should we know about him? Will they be open about that? And I assume there's some exchange of information. So you tell me something about your player and I'll tell you something about my player if the situation is reversed at some point. And probably you want the best for someone who is in your organization. Even if they didn't find a spot with you, you'd like them to go on and do well somewhere else, even if he comes back to bite you at some point. So can you get good intel that way or are certain teams sort of cagey about sharing that kind of information? Typically, that will go like scouting group to scouting group or scouting group to player development group. So if we are interested in a player who played for, let's say, San Diego or Tampa Bay, and one of our scouts has a connection to the staff that coached the player the previous year or even the year before, just

to get a handle on the human being and the type of person that they are. Somebody will make a background call to try and get info from the person or a college coach or a former teammate, somebody that has a connection to that player in their past. So what's going to happen this year then? Because all these minor league free agents that are about to hit the list, they haven't been playing almost entirely. They haven't been playing this year. You haven't been able to see them. You don't have their stats. Even. They haven't been playing for almost entirely. They haven't been playing this year. You haven't been able to see them. You don't have their stats. Even their teams haven't really been able to see them. Is it going to be harder? Is it going to be boring? Are you guys going to have a bunch of names that you want to go after? What will happen to these poor players who were going to be kind of unemployed

already and now don't even have a kind of a showcase year i don't know i um like everything else this year it'll probably be more complicated we'll do the best we can if nothing else we have a year ago video uh and scouting reports on all these guys and we'll update them with what we have i think it'll be harder is the easy answer, just because you know less. Anytime you know less and there's more uncertainty, it makes it harder. Maybe that will make it more variable and that there'll be more chance that you hit on somebody because somebody will make a mistake without an extra year's worth of data. Or maybe it'll be worse because we'll just all make horrible decisions based on data that isn't relevant to the player anymore. I'm not really sure, but I know it'll be harder. Do you have a, you've been in front offices for a long time,

so probably you do, in your, what, 15 years of experience or so, do you have an example of a minor league free agent that you lost, that your team lost, and that you watched become something? When I was with the Angels, we had Ryan Vogel song um in salt lake i think it was the year before he became a good big leaguer and we had him at the end of the season in salt lake and he was he did fine for us it wasn't spectacular uh but he did fine and we kind of gave him a pat on the butt and said thanks very much and then he signed with the giants and pitched in the big leagues i think for like four straight years after that it was really good that's the one that springs to

mind i'm sure there are a lot of others, whatever it's worth. Well, yeah. What's the experience like from the other side? Do you feel like you missed something or is it like easy to say, well, you know, he wasn't, we weren't on track to get that out of him. So might as well have seen him go somewhere else. Some of both. Usually you try and convince yourself that there's nothing you could have done differently. I think it makes you double down and just ask, are we sure? Are we sure we're doing everything right for this player before we let him walk out the door? And I think that's minor league free agency, major league free agency. There's always an element that you hit on where it's like the chip on someone's shoulder, their willingness to

do something extra to prove the team that let them go wrong, the circumstances that led to them getting a little bit better and or, you know, finding their place in the big leagues. Like a lot of that context is out of our control, but we probably just whiffed is the answer to your question. And we should have done better and we didn't. Yeah. Do you find that players are typically more receptive when they come to that point in their career, when they're several years in, when they weren't able to break through with that first organization? Are they much more willing generally to be approached and to tweak things and to say, well, whatever I've been doing to this point has not gotten me to the big leagues? Maybe some of them think that they should have been up and weren't, but others might think, well, I've got to change something because

whatever I've done has not worked for me so far. It seems like players now more than ever are more receptive to change. There's more players than ever going to private academies and trying new things and doing different things. I have no evidence to support this whatsoever. I suppose players who have been let go by an organization or have been told we don't have a place for you anymore theoretically should be more receptive and they've just been told you're not good enough and are willing to do extra things to make sure they stay in the game.

I don't know if that's true. I think in general today, players are more receptive to trying new things and more open to making changes. And it's also easier to measure whether the changes are working now, which I think is really helpful. And could you talk about what you saw in Nola? Or, you know, you mentioned that you thought maybe he could make some changes as a receiver, let's say defensively, but for him to

come up and hit as incredibly well as he did at that age, it's pretty unusual. And so did he have that ability all along and just didn't get the chance? Or were there changes that he made that maybe the Mariners helped him make that were really key to that? I mean, it's just, it's rare, obviously, that someone comes up in their age 29 season and just plays as well as he has just from day one, especially when he hasn't gotten any chance before that. So what was it about him? The biggest things that I think we saw were from a purely scouting analytical lens were really good contact skills. Made a lot of contact, knew a ball from a strike. And then from a pure

scouting lens, his ability to move behind the plate was a big positive. We didn't see anything that he was doing that we didn't feel like could be made better fairly quickly. And then behind the scenes, we've done a lot of work and the makeup that we got was off the charts good. And that was probably the most vital piece of information that proved valuable. Beyond that, everything was a credit to him from the day we signed him. I think we do an off-season game calling call that Dan Wilson and Tony Arnorge put together for our minor league catching group. It's a great program at last all winter and just talk about game calling call that Dan Wilson and Tony Arnorge put together for our minor league catching group. It's a great program that lasts all winter and just talk about game calling and different elements of catching. And I think before he even passed the physical, but after he agreed to sign, he was on the call the next day. It was like diving into our process. How can you get

better? It's true A makeup. It's someone who wants to get better and will work and train in ways to challenge themselves to constantly get better and that is an ideal candidate for someone to come out of age 29 season never having done this before and then do this and make it be real our makeup info was correct and the contact skills held true everything else is just about his ability to make adjustments and get the most out of his physical toolset. And that's, you know, it was, it was great makeup background and information that we'd had, but taking any more credit than that would seem silly because it's all about him.

It really is. I mean, like we didn't even draft him in, in our minor league free agent draft. Like none of us named him. Dylan Moore was my first pick, I think. And then Jeff got Brandon Brennan. And so those players, at least something was, you know, on our radar was apparent. But like Nola, he was coming off his age 28 season. I don't think he had ever had an OPS higher than 750 anywhere at any level in seven years. I mean, makeup, normally you'd say makeup is great, but when you're 28 and you've never hit, you wouldn't think that makeup is what's going to be the solution.

Like you add the makeup all the time. And now all of a sudden he's slugging 500 in the major leagues after, you know, having a better year in the majors last year than he had ever had any other time. So I guess that it just, i guess i don't have a question there it just is like it's un it's really like it's impossible i don't know if i'm supposed to not answer or answer your question with or not question with a with a response except to say it's again 100 credit to him i don't think there's anything he's doing now that strikes me as not believable now. If you had told me this was going to happen two years ago, I would have probably said that's likely not believable.

But again, he did it all on his own with the help of our player development people and their willingness to challenge and him willing to challenge himself. So when a player gets drafted, the name of the scout who signs him gets attached to him for like the rest of his career. And you'll see his name, you know, the scout's name listed beside him, you know, various like pages on the internet for him, or maybe like when he's elected to the Hall of Fame and, and everybody sort of knows who signed the good players. Do you, you, nobody knows. I mean, your, your, your name is not going to be attached to Austin Nola in any way. So are you always kind of trying to slip into conversation that, you know, you were part of the minor league free agent process?

Are you sort of like, do you have any ways of subtly getting notice for this besides appearing on podcasts? This is my number one way for making it known. No, I think that would be someone that is very annoying to be around. I think that our entire group does a great job on this. And my handing out the assignments and like roughly setting a meeting time really doesn't deserve my name. My name next to Austin Nola this good, along with Tony Arnerich and Jared DeHart and Connor Dawson and our player development staff people, way ahead of the person who called the meeting time and said, what time are you going to take lunch that day?

Yes, exactly. I don't even think I reserved a conference room, to be fair. So I don't want to take any more credit than having been the person who was on the phone with his agent. Really, our group does a great job, and I would prefer it stay that way. Is that the greatest joy of being a baseball operations executive?

I mean, you've done just about everything it's possible to do in a front office. Is that the thing that is the best? I mean, obviously, like winning the World Series would probably be the best, but in terms of transactions or in terms of your sort of day-to-day duties, if you play a part in signing someone who's just not really on thinking of and then he turns into

a star even if you know he gets most of the credit and should get most of the credit just in terms of the personal satisfaction and feeling like you contributed is that right up there with anything else oh definitely like as you mentioned winning world series making the playoffs like the team accomplishments those things are way way way, way more fun. I presume I've never won a World Series, but having been to the playoffs, like that's way, way more fun. I will say this about minor league free agency, just to take it full circle, signing a major league free agent to a huge contract or making a big trade, or even like being the advanced guy and recommending a certain sequence or a pitch

usage that night, like those things can all go horribly wrong and you'll get noticed in a negative way for it. Nobody really notices most of the time if you just bust out on minor league for agency and don't do well that year. So this whole process is mostly all upside, and all of it's fun. Like, all of it is super rewarding and very fun. This one just happens to come without the downside of someone should throw a 2-2 curveball, and then they do, and then sit out of the ball out a ballpark or we should give you know a nine-figure deal to this player and it doesn't work out as well as you hope and then you have to live with it for a long time so like those things are also

a lot of fun they just have more downside and this doesn't have a lot of downside and usually not this much upside but you know it's it's all fun yeah i mean it mean, like, Zach Grotz was, he was a low A minor league free agent. He was 26 years old, and he had never pitched above A ball. And then you sign him, and he's a major leaguer. And I feel like the turnaround in his career is, in some ways, like, that's like the highest stakes in the sport. is in some ways like that's like the highest stakes in the sport. Like this guy was going to make like $18,000 in a seven year baseball career and then try to figure out how to what to do when he was 28. And now instead he's a major leaguer. He's making a half a million a year or he did last year. And, you know, he'll probably be able to kick around in at least the higher minors,

if not the majors for you know a number of years just because you guys called him and if you hadn't called him then you know there's there's not that much there necessarily like that his career might have just ended and so like i don't know how much that means to you but it feels like it would be like you you kind of feel like you're like uh making a difference or something Like it feels, obviously you're just doing this for your own selfish reasons. Like you're not doing this because you're a philanthropist. You're just like trying to win baseball games and get money. And so it's all very selfish, but also like it matters to Zach Grotz.

Like you made a life for that man. It's really kind of cool. I think Joel Fuhrman, who's our assistant director of analytics, is the person who made a life if we're going to start putting that on people, because he was the one who really believed in Zach and pushed him in our meeting. But it's awesome to see those guys. We had a lot of those guys make their big league debuts last year. Again, like I said, opportunity for at-bats and innings is super valuable. And when you're rebuilding, you have a lot of those opportunities. know we had guys like Ryan Court and Zach Rhodes and Tim Lopes make their big league debuts after long journeys and

through the minor leagues and it is so awesome when those guys get to the big leagues and they're on the field after the game with their families taking pictures and you know it's for those people plus their families their girlfriends their wives their parents like they have put in a lot of time and energy and money and effort to get to that point. And to just sit back from a distance and see that or even be like a very, very sliver, tiny part of it is really, really cool and super rewarding. But again, I'm super reticent to say like, we gave them this or they like they took it, they took the opportunity and ran with it. And I think that is, you know, like overstating our impact on that, like they did it, we gave them opportunity to with it. And I think that is overstating our impact on them. They did it. We

gave them opportunity to do it. Yeah. Is there any opportunity cost when you are putting in all that work on minor league free agents? I mean, is there something else that you're weighing? Like, well, we could be devoting these resources, all this time and effort to this other task, but we're prioritizing minor league free agents. And maybe some other organization would look at the historical success rates and say, well, we could actually use our time in some other way. Because I just wonder, because of the makeup of the Mariners 40-man roster right now, just because of kind of where you are in the competitive cycle and the ongoing rebuild and everything, I think you have the second least homegrown 40-man right now, according to Roster Resource, just in terms of players who originated in

the organization. Because you've been so active and successful with minor league free agents, with trades, with waiver claims, that's a lot of extra work that maybe if you're in some other organization that is promoting a bunch of guys from within at this particular time or is just spending at the top of the market signing whoever the biggest free agent is that maybe you might not have to do. So I wonder whether you're just busier because the Mariners have their hands in all of these markets.

Well, certainly when we got to the end of 2018, we knew what direction we were going, and it probably wasn't going to be shopping at the top of the free agent market. So if you have the pie of all the time you could spend in different parts, you could lop off a section of the pie knowing that we were going to rebuild. We were going to take a step back and focus on trades and focus on young players and focus on minor leagues for agency and ways to subtly impact our roster, or at least what we thought was going to be subtly. And that gave us more time to do those things as opposed to time spent on, you know, high end major league for agents in that period or other things that might go on in the winter. All right. So today the

Mariners won seven to three and one of the stars of the game, maybe the star of the game, was Jose Marmolejos, who had a couple of hits, drove in a run, scored a run, and was a minor league free agent that was signed this winter. Did you call the meeting? Yes, I did. Oh, my goodness. You did it again. Another good winner. Marmolejos is the Mariners cleanup hitter now and is slugging over 500.

And so kind of looks successful. Although, yeah, I mean, that's all. So you have another good year. Are you bragging? I called the meeting. Austin Yamada, who's one of our front office scouting assistants, was a big internal supporter of Jose Marmolejos and insisted that he could both play left field

and could really hit and would be a valuable addition to the organization. So if we're going to put someone's name next to mine for calling the meeting, Austin Yamada from the Mariners deserves to put his name next to that. Yeah, the Mariners have a few people, I think, who showed up in our minor league free agent draft this year. And I guess last year, I know Meg took Jimmy Iacobonis,

who's now a Mariner, although not via minor league free agency in your case. And Brady Lail was on my team. He was on the Mariners earlier this year. So I guess in some ways, we're seeing what you're seeing. But in in other ways we're totally missing it because we did not see hasta nola yeah i mean we did we didn't have 15 people spending 20 hours a piece yeah that's on it that's a lot of time i i feel like if he'd said if justin come on here and been like you know i really put almost a whole day into this. I'd be like, okay, I could probably do that. But it's 15 people. Yeah. Yeah. We don't have the resources. And Marmolejos was on your team, Sam. You took Marmolejos. So yeah. Oh yeah. No, I mean, I discovered them all on my own. Not like I asked somebody, hey, who's good in this list? And they told me. I totally,

totally did that work all on my own. Yep, yep. And I guess the Mariners did not listen to our minor league free agent draft and say, hey, let's look into this Marmolejos guy. He sounds good. We listen intently every year. It usually happens after minor league free agency starts, so it doesn't do us a lot of good.

But we do listen every year. Okay, well, that's good to know, I guess. I really feel like if we could just get every year okay well that's good to know i guess i really feel like the if we could just get every team to tell us who their their first minute calls were like the people they call one minute after that would probably be like you know like you guys are all probably pretty good at this and probably most teams the the two people they call right away that probably pretty much covers the good ones, right? I mean, you led with that we're all bad at this.

So I don't know that we are actually that good at it. Oh, that's true. But again, if you ever want to know, just ask. I will happily give you our first two-minute call after we make them. Yeah. What would it take to feel like this was something you were good at or your organization is good at? Like this is a strength of our group that we're good at finding minor league free agents. Because even if you have one incredible year like you had or

you have additional success, it's all small sample and you never know if you got lucky with someone. So what would it take to say, yeah, this is something that we have shown an actual skill at? Probably just in a large sample, not in a given year, that you signed enough players that gave your major league team protection. In the case of an injury, someone came up and filled in admirably in a utility role or a backup catcher role or, you know, was your seventh or eighth starter in a given year and made 10 starts for you and kept their head above water. Like, if you can do that year over year, roughly, like, I think you're killing it in this process. I don't know that's a super realistic

expectation, but that's what we hope to do. All right. I'm out of questions. Me too. You want to ask us anything? I would like your first two picks for next year's minor league free agent draft before we start this year. I won't share

them with you individually. Do we have a deadline? When do you need to know? Yes, by the time the playoffs end. Okay. All right. Well, we'll be busy, but we'll try to do some research. It's going to be tough this year.

Everything's going to be very strange. Do you feel like you know what your own players are up to, let alone other teams when you're coming to minor league for agents? Just, you know, you've seen the players in the alternate site, but everyone else is kind of off the radar to a certain extent. I think we know what our own players are up to. I wouldn't feel confident telling you I know what they would be doing if they were playing in an affiliate this year. I have no idea what the players and other orgs are up to. Obviously, that will make it a huge challenge for the ones that aren't at

the alternate site but we'll we'll do the best we can hopefully we we keep our head above water in next year's group because i think that you know the way that you thrive this year over year is to make sure that you have holes filled i don't expect you guys to spend 10 hours each on it but um uh i do expect two names before we uh get to the playoffs two names each two names each and i will not share them i will not share ben's name with ben's names with sam or sam's names with ben because i do not the last thing i'd want to do is impinge upon the integrity of the the minor league draft process all right that's it's always a point of contention like how much research we're allowed to do because i've been mocked in the past for getting tips

from people. Sometimes I do a lot of prep and Sam just comes in cold and I don't know, it seems like there's almost pressure not to do too much research at times. But knowing how much work you all do, I think makes it more acceptable for us to invest. I will say that I have not come in cold for the last few years and i mean if you look at our results they have gotten better as we have taken this slightly more seriously the first year was really just like i i mean it was just picking names that we were familiar with and then i think the second year it was just basically maybe sorting by like strikeout minus walk rates and then and then i then I went through a winter league phase

where I got really into players' winter league stats, but that won't help me with answering Justin's request because the winter leagues won't have begun by that point. Yeah. Oh, I have one last one because that reminds me, one of the things that we always look at when we're doing this draft is who got a major league deal, right? Because certain minor league free agents will get major league contracts. And that always seems like, okay, that's a great sign. If some team was willing to give a major league contract to this guy, then we should take him. What goes into that? How do you decide if you need to give someone a major league contract? And then how does that affect their odds of actually being on the team? Mostly guessing on what you think the marketplace for that player is going to be and how you carry

them internally if you think they're immediate major league help and you have 40 man spots available which we have had in the last couple years yeah you you're more apt to give someone a major league contract obviously you don't want to be handing them out uh just to hand them out because they're on your roster then they pick up a spot I don't know that it really makes a huge difference except in that they're on the 40 man roster and they're easy to recall at that point but if someone is performing that well and Noah's case he wasn't on the 40 man roster but he was performing we needed a spot we created a spot it's usually not that difficult to create a spot on the 40 man in season for someone if they're performing well all right well we have been talking to Justin Hollander,

vice president and assistant general manager in charge of baseball operations for the Seattle Mariners. He has shared some, but not all of his knowledge and wisdom when it comes to signing minor league free agents. He has presumably kept some of the secrets to himself for the Mariners advantage, but Justin, thank you very much for coming on and giving us the behind-the-scenes look

at this thing. Thanks. I did not tell you what time I scheduled the meeting. So that will remain Mariners' secrets. Okay. See you guys. All right. That will do it for today.

Thanks for listening. And thanks to Justin for coming on. Always enjoy talking to him. If you'd like to hear a little more from Justin, Michael Bamman and I had him on an episode of the Ringer MLB show about four years ago when he was the Angels director of player personnel. And he told us about the unsung grunt work that prevents front offices from making major administrative mistakes. So he told us a little bit about more behind the scenes operational details. Some of the things that we don't know or think about typically that front offices do to make sure that things function smoothly.

That they're dotting all their I's and crossing all their T's with transactions and rules and all the rest. I also talked to him a few years ago for a Ringer article about Mike Trout's debut season and what it was like when Trout came up with the Angels. So I will link to that as well. One thing I miss from past years when we would prep for the minor league free agent draft is that I would check out Chris Mitchell's projections of minor league players which were published at Fangraphs. Unfortunately for us the twins hired Chris and he's now a pro scouting analyst for them so they get to see all of his projections for minor league players which are pretty predictive even though those are different environments and not every player translates his minor league performance to the majors. It's still very helpful to have and I'm sure the Mariners use a projection system of their own. Anyway, you can

listen to episode 1173 if you want to hear Chris talking about his projections and going back and forth with Kylie McDaniel and Eric Langenhagen about their scouting insights on prospects. And if you want to go back and listen to our most recent Effectively Wild minor league free agent draft, it was episode 1474. I will link to that too. And I will also link to the spreadsheet where we keep all of our drafts and competitions, including all of our

minor league free agent drafts. You can, of course, support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some small monthly amount

to help keep the podcast going and get themselves access to some perks. Paul Campbell, Brad Abel, John McGovern, Mark Neuenschwander, and Mike Carlucci. Thanks to all of you. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. Keep your questions and comments for me and Megan Sam coming via email at podcastfangrass.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter. You can also join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. And we will be back with another episode a little later this week.

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