Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1627: For Your Aggressive Listening Pleasure

Episode Date: December 10, 2020

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about “listening aggressively,” “progressing past just talking,” and other winter rumor terminology, contemplate what the “virtual Winter Meetings” look like, then break down several rumored or completed trades or signings, including Lance Lynn and Adam Eaton to the White Sox, Raisel Iglesias to the Angels, Carlos Santana and Mike […]

🎵 Buster Olney's column on Wednesday. Listener Anthony flagged this for our Facebook group members. This is a phrase in Olney's column, which is about Cleveland and Francisco Lindor and trade rumors. Olney writes that by all accounts from sources around baseball, Cleveland is prepared to listen aggressively. Prepared to listen aggressively. And this, I think, might be a new entry in the rumor-mongering lexicon. I haven't done a Google search or looked for previous instances, but listening aggressively is an interesting one. I don't hear that one every day.

And in this case, it's prepared to listen aggressively which sounds even less aggressive to me prepared to listen aggressively yeah what would aggressive listening look like to you yeah that strikes me as the sort of thing that that like a parent would say to a teen who had broken curfew and been caught i am prepared to listen aggressively to your justifications. It doesn't strike me as a particularly useful way of characterizing one's propensity or willingness to listen. We're all encouraged to be active listeners, right? Yeah. I was thinking, I think of some listening as a passive activity. I mean, you can't help listening.

You're just sitting there and you're listening to things that are going on around you. But active listening, yeah, that's a phrase too for when you're really focusing and paying attention and trying to be a good listener. But listening aggressively, just when you listen, you're just sort of motionless, right? Maybe you're cupping your ears. You're just trying to be quiet. And something about the juxtaposition of listening with aggression just doesn't really work for me. No, because I think that what we encourage people to do to be sort of more engaged and supportive friends and co-workers and partners is to, you know, to really take the time to think about what

someone is saying to you rather than preparing to respond, which is what a lot of us do when we're in a conversation, right? We're kind of listening, but we're also getting that zinger ready. Yep. Especially when you're doing a podcast. Sure. You know, Ben, I will tell you that there are times when I have asked you to say it again because I started thinking about my response and then I lost the back end of what you said. And I acknowledge that that means I'm likely back before I post it, I will be sort of surprised by something that maybe an interview guest said, because when we're doing the interview, we're so focused on, okay, what's our next question? And who's going next? And is it my turn or your turn? And do I have a follow-up? And how am I going to segue from this to that?

And sometimes you're just thinking about all of that, and it's hard to pay attention to what the person said. And you want to pay attention to what the person said. And you want to pay attention so that you can ask follow-ups or so you don't make them repeat something or so you can ask, you know, an appropriate next question. But I am sort of surprised by how much more I retain when I go back and listen to it a second time. Well, and I think that what Cleveland is really indicating here is like, oh, we're really going to try to trade Francisco Lindor. We're really going to do it. We're committed. Right.

And so what they're trying to emphasize is the aggressiveness of their purpose and action rather than the listening they will do to facilitate that trade. But yeah, it is sort of a funny little turn of phrase. And I think you're right. I think that's the first time that I've encountered it as a way of describing possible trade talks. Because usually it's an active phrase. It's like they're shopping the player or they're dangling the player. It's either active or it's passive. You hear listening a lot, but listening is like, well, they're coming to us and we're just going to listen to what they say. But listening aggressively is like, you're taking the action. You're the aggressor here, but yet you're listening. It's trying to split the two. And it's kind of like when hitters or hitting coaches will preach

selective aggression, be selectively aggressive, Take pitches, don't swing at balls. So be selective, but when you get a good pitch to hit, be aggressive. It's a blend of both. It mostly makes sense in that context, but in this one, it doesn't really seem all that apt. It's more like listen and then act aggressively. Two separate actions. To me, like aggressive listening, that's like eavesdropping. That's like tapping your phones or something. That's like Chris Correa was

aggressively listening to the Astros when he hacked into their database and looked at their trade rumors. That goes beyond just waiting to see what someone says. Yeah, it seems to run counter to the purpose of all the work we do when we're encouraging people to be active listeners, because what we do when we're encouraging people to be active listeners because what we're trying to heighten is like collaboration and communication right we're trying to better that back and forth and it it does have sort of an inherently collaborative affect and aggressively listening feels like you're being domineering in a conversation which as an aside like if you're trying to trade one of the better players in baseball, I don't know what the appropriate tone to have is. Because on the one hand,

you employ a player that presumably every team wants, although your team should also want him. But you know, you are also asking for something. And so you're in a position of a sort of a diminutive position from that perspective. So it's a it's a tricky bit of business i suppose that we we don't have a particularly robust vocabulary to describe trades like this and perhaps that's optimistic on our part because we hope that they don't happen very often yeah maybe buster's just running out of ways to characterize what Cleveland is doing with Lindor because it's years now. Probably only has been reporting on rumors, trade rumors about Lindor for a long time. So maybe he's just mixing it up. He's just looking for a new way to describe the same old thing or, well, now they're really determined to do it. So now they're listening aggressively or they're prepared to listen aggressively. So I think the upshot is that Cleveland's probably going to trade Francisco Lindor sometime in the not too distant future. for writers of any stripe trying to diversify their vocabulary for the same, both the same action and within the context of the same story over and over again, because I have a finely tuned ear for repetition in writing. And it is one of the things that I

think grates the most severely on a piece and my experience of it as a reader. So I applaud Buster for trying to come up with something new. Although the tricky thing about finding good synonyms for stuff is that you don't want it to cloud the meaning. But then we got 10 minutes of podcast banter out of this. So really, we should be sending him a little thank you note. Yeah, it's creative. At least it makes you stop and think, huh? What does preparing to listen aggressively mean? Anyway, we will soon find out. So while Cleveland is listening aggressively or preparing to listen aggressively, other teams have been even more aggressive. They have been acting. And I still have yet to completely understand what virtual

winter meetings are. I keep reading that phrase, that virtual winter meetings are taking place, because this is the week when the actual winter meetings usually take place. And this year, MLB announced, no, it's going virtual. I still don't know exactly what that entails. Like, is Scott Boris spouting off nautical analogies on a Zoom call somewhere? Like, What exactly is happening? Are some of the minor league trade meetings that typically happen, like the booths and everything, is that online? Or is this just like executives are texting and calling and emailing each other, which

is basically what happens all the time. We've been in virtual winter meetings for the past eight eight months or so at this point it seems like i know that for us at fangraphs what it meant was that last night we got on twitch and um it's made me a streamer ben yeah you streamed i didn't see that coming i thought it went great i mean i had two bouts of irritating internet technical difficulty which i found to be both annoying and embarrassing. But after that got sorted, I thought it was nice. You know, we tried to replicate the cocktail hour vibe that can happen at winter meetings.

And I will say, I think to our credit, we failed to be as sloppy as those can be, which is nice because, you know, no one needs to watch that online. And I guess in winter meetings tradition, I don't know if you were interrupted by any transactions because that is often what happens at the winter meetings. You're out at a nice fancy dinner and someone made reservations and then all of a sudden people's phones ping and they all have to rush back to blog about someone who just got signed which they could have done from the comfort of their homes but they were able to expense the nice dinner which was interrupted by the transaction yes it is uh it is not unusual

at least in my experience for for certainly for me to have to rush out of a dinner there is a there's like a whole branzino that I think about, Ben. I think about it still. I love a Branzino. I don't know how good it was. It looked amazing, and I didn't get to have any of it. It's always good. Never had a bad Branzino. Never had a bad Branzino.

I think the only deal that ended up breaking while we were streaming was actually the news that Mel Rojas Jr. is going to NPB. I guess, after winning the KPO MVP award. Yes, yes, which congrats to him. He had quite a season with the Wiz. But yeah, I was very nervous that, speaking of aggressively listening, that Lindor trade news would break while we were streaming. And then I'd be like, oh, this is very dramatic.

Everyone can watch me go quiet as I edit on stream. Yeah, you were prepared to assign aggressively. Yes, exactly. So there have been some moves made though. The stove is sort of hot. It is snowing and freezing where I am in New York, but there is some actual transaction activity here. I don't know if it's because it's the virtual winter meetings

and everyone's on Zoom calls and that is facilitating things happening or whether it would have happened anyway or whether teams are just wired to do stuff at this point in December because it's when a lot of things typically happen. But we've seen some moves, some signings, some trades. So maybe we can briefly discuss them before we perhaps get to a few emails. So I guess the big one, the headliner, is the Lance Lynn trade. The Rangers traded Lance Lynn to the White Sox for Dane Dunning and Avery Weems. And this is a pretty big one. Chris Young, new GM of the Rangers, coming in and dealing Lance Lynn right away. I don't know if he actually had the

final say. There is still a John Daniels working above him. But there was, I think, some consternation about the fact that Texas didn't trade Lance Lynn at the deadline when presumably there was a lot of interest and there were offers and he would have been available to some team for multiple pennant races. And Ken Rosenthal reported after the trade this week that evidently Lynn and his agent told Daniels that if he was traded to a team that he did not want to play for at the deadline, he would have opted out of the rest of the season. And I don't know if he would have made good on that, whether it was just kind of almost a way to get a no trade clause in your deal without actually having a no trade clause, just saying, well, I won't report. But that made it difficult, I think, for Texas to deal him because they couldn't

trade him for good players knowing that he had warned that he might opt out. I think that would have been very poorly received by a trade partner if he had indeed opted out and it had become known that he had said that he would do that beforehand. So I think that kind of limited the market, according to Ken, and that's maybe why he didn't get dealt then. So a few months later, we now know the answer to the mystery of why the Rangers didn't deal Lin then.

But they dealt him now. And Lin has been like a top 10 pitcher over the past couple seasons. Like more to my surprise than anyone's, I think. I mean, I felt like I knew what Lance Lin was, which was a good, you know, solid, durable,-eater, mid-rotation type. And then suddenly he had Tommy John surgery and he came back and he made a few changes to his pitch mix and he turned into an ace over the last couple of seasons. By whatever metric you want to use, he was a top 10, top 5 pitcher through the most innings of anyone and has really ramped up his performance so he's now going to be what 34 next year but he has one year left on his deal at a very team-friendly rate of eight million dollars

and so that had some value yeah craig edwards who is i would say the the lancelin enthusiast on the fan graph staff yeah there are some real lancelin fans in the media craig and michael palman of course has uh adored lancelin for years like before lancelin deserved the adoration i think that that michael lavished upon him but i guess he sensed that there was more in lancelin to be fair like lynn had a couple really good years with the cardinals too so yeah maybe i was underrating him as much as Michael was overrating him but he turned out to be more right in the long run well and then he had that funny season where like all of his peripheral stats were really good but his

ERA was bad right and he split the year between the Twins and the Yankees and then like you said he sort of retooled his pitch mix so he started to use his cutter and his four seamer more and he was generating more strikeouts and he's just been very i think quietly for a lot of people very good i appreciate like i appreciate how deep into games lynn typically goes like he is a guy where you look at him and you're like i'm probably gonna see seven innings of lance lynn yeah and i think that we both enjoy starters who both can go long and are allowed to go long by their teams, and he certainly falls into that category.

So that combination of workload plus quality, I think, has to be really appealing to the White Sox. I mean, Giolito is Giolito, and he's fantastic. I think Craig noted that there are only eight teams that have two pitchers at the top of their rotation projected for at least three wins next year, and Chicago falls into that bucket now. But he also allows you to kind of stabilize that rotation

because Keichel had a nice bounce back, but Delancese's year was really weird, and I think we don't really know where Kopech is at the moment. I mean, not like physically. Well, physically too. I don't know where he is but like he you know he had tommy john and then he opted out of the season so he didn't pitch last year and lopez is kind of up and down and might work better and relief uh in the long run so i think that it makes a ton of sense for the White Sox and then for the Rangers I think that you know they tried yeah and they were surprisingly effective with a couple of pitchers including Lynn who I think we

thought were more middling than they proved to be but I think that with Houston and and Oakland sort of firmly in the driver's seat in that division they uh they're gonna have to do another reworking of their roster so that's a bummer for for rangers fans but but fun for white socks fans and i wish that we had focused on on this trade um for even one minute longer because boy are people really excited to talk about the the other signing that they made this week. Yes. Yeah, we can talk about that too. Yeah, it's, Lynn, I haven't done the research, but I would guess it's unusual for a pitcher to have his first showing on a Cy Young ballot and, you know, get Cy Young votes for the first time at age 32 and 33 and to do it in back-to-back years having never done it before then. So it's just an unusual

kind of trajectory. I mean, he was a 39th overall pick, so he clearly had some promise, but he was never a top-ranked prospect. And it still sort of mystifies me how he misses as many bats as he does or at least as he did in 2019 when he struck out almost 11 per nine innings because he barely throws breaking balls. I mean, he mixes in a curveball every now and then, but it's really four-seamers and cutters and sinkers. And I guess he's cut back on the sinkers and dialed up the four-seamers and cutters and that has produced more whiffs. But still, it seems like it's hard to strike out as many as he does throwing as few off-speed pitches as he does. So that's pretty impressive. And, you know, aside from the Tommy John surgery, he's been dependable and consistent. And the White Sox, I guess, will have to figure out their long-term rotation and what that looks like post-Lynn and post- Keichel but for now it's just a very solid starting rotation to go along with a really exciting and deep collection of position players so White Sox are just gonna be a lot of fun I

think I mean I don't know how Tony La Russa's presence will affect that or how Adam Eaton's presence I'm so nervous yeah but they're almost like La Russa proofing the roster right now if they keep adding to this. And I should say, look, Lance Lynn broke into the big leagues under Tony La Russa with the World Series winning 2011 Cardinals. So they have done it together before. Anyway, it just seems like, you know, no matter how things go with the manager manager if they keep stockpiling and adding good players like this they just seem deep enough now that particularly if cleveland's aggressive listening translates into a trade you'd probably have to think they're the favorites in this division or or would end up neck and neck with minnesota if lindor is not in the AL Central. So they're in pretty good position right now.

Yeah, I think that they're in excellent shape. And we're all just going to sit here and cross our fingers that we don't have any La Russa related drama that derails our enjoyment of what is going to be just a terrifically fun team on the field, in the broadcast booth, over the radio, every which way. Great fun. That's true. Right. You can listen to the broadcast with Jason Benetti or Len Casper, and that'll be a lot of fun.

And yeah, with the Rangers, I guess the consensus is that Dunning is probably more of a back of the rotation, mid-rotation, back of the rotation starter. And Weems, I think Eric has said, is probably a long relief bullpen guy ultimately, although some prospect people like him quite a bit. But it's not a bad haul. I don't think it's a pretty decent return for one year of Lynn, I guess, with all the uncertainties that come with this upcoming season. But it has been hard to pin down what exactly the Rangers are doing because they have resisted embarking on the teardown rebuild. Whatever you think of that as a strategy or the aesthetics of that,

it does enable you to pin down, okay, where is this team? What's their timeline? Where are they in the competitive cycle? When are they going to get good again with the rangers that's all been very unclear because they have made some feints at contention and they've had a couple teams that weren't really expected to be good that started off well and made it look like maybe they could make it and ultimately didn't but kept them in contention at least enough enough to be interesting. And they have had successes with some pitchers they have rehabilitated or gotten more out of. So they've

been a respectable team. They haven't truly terribly bottomed out, and yet they haven't really seemingly made a ton of progress toward a new great young core that you would count on to be a perennial contender so i don't exactly know what their timeline or outlook is but trading lynn seemed like it had to be a part of that at some point yeah and then it makes you wonder what the fate is going to be for the remaining pieces on the big league roster that are still productive like you know what what is joey gallo's future now right like does he stay in texas but yeah they have they have quite a bit of work to do they have work to do on the big league roster that farm system is not really anything to write home about so i agree i think that this is maybe the first really clear signal that we've gotten from them in a little

while as to what they view their path to be but i would imagine that if this is you know truly the start of a of a teardown that we have we haven't seen the last transaction involving the rangers this offseason so or at least into the trade deadline next year i suppose that um there's the possibility that they wait to move someone like gallo if that's what they end up doing until into the 2021 season but it's really just such a shame because they have that I don't know if it's a beautiful ballpark it it strikes me you know I haven't been there we have we have asked this question or at least I have asked this question of many people because i feel like jeff on the

podcast yeah because i feel like um i feel like that ballpark changes in the light when i see it on tv so i just don't know what it looks like really it does strike me as having sort of a similar vibe to chase field where you're like oh i'm watching baseball in a really nice costco but regardless of that they have this new ballpark, beautiful or not, that was paid for by the good people of Arlington and Dallas and what have you. And they don't seem like they're going to be fielding a particularly good team and not a particularly dynamic one.

So that's kind of a bummer to have, well, one, to have your new ballpark open in the midst of a pandemic but then to have it open when you're sort of on the downswing as a franchise and probably won't see a really good competitive rangers club for a couple of years so yeah and in other white socks news they signed brought back adam eaton and adam eaton's a player i used to really like and i used to feel like he was underrated because he was good at certain things that you don't typically think of like a left fielder or a corner outfielder being that good at like he was not a great power guy but he was a good on base

guy he was fast he had great defensive ratings and so for a few years there, like War had him as a four, five, six win player. And he wasn't really thought of that way. Like in 2014, he hit one home run and was still like a four win player, according to fan graphs. And then he started powering up a little bit more, as did everyone. But still, it was a nice sort of mix of you know all-around player good on the bases good enough at bat got on base and and good in the field and then the white socks traded him as part of their rebuild and boy that trade looks great in retrospect it's like almost exactly four

years ago four years ago this week they traded adam Eaton to the Nationals for Giolito and Reynaldo Lopez and Dane Dunning. And gosh, like almost any one of those guys alone would have been an okay return in retrospect for Eaton, but they got their ace in Giolito or, you know, co-ace and then Lopez, who has been, you know, inconsistent coming off a rough year, but has been a valuable starter for them. And then Dane Dunning, who did some good work for them and then also brought back Lance Lynn. And that was all for Adam Eaton, who went to Washington and, you know, got hurt in multiple seasons and really was only fully healthy in one of those seasons. And that was the season when they won the World Series and he contributed to that, but he was not great for them. And at this point in his career, I don't know what the White Sox can expect out of him because he's 32 and he does not have a great track record for staying on the field. And at at this point it seems like you're hoping I guess for like an average season out of him and yeah maybe there's still some upside there like you know I don't

think his 2020 with the 260 Babbitt is representative of his skills I think there's more in there if he can stay on the field but I think some White Sox fans are maybe a bit disappointed because they were said to be going after a starting pitcher and a corner outfielder. And I think a lot of White Sox fans envision someone like Lance Lynn maybe or like one of the top free agents on the starting pitcher market. And they got Lance Lynn. But then I think they were hoping for George Springer or Marcel Azuna or Michael Brantley

or even like Jock Peterson or you know someone in that tier and I think Eaton at this point you know you're you're just kind of hoping he can stay healthy and be competent and he's sort of an infamous red ass type too and I don't know how that mixes with the whole clubhouse atmosphere and La Russa and all of that like he's uh he's back from the chris sale cutting up jersey days and drake laroche drama days in white socks so is it someday i want like a narrative podcast like a 12-part podcast about that whole drake laroche soccer and what was going on with that team every day i want that then the truth will come out but yeah i think you know in that light if that's what you were hoping for as a white socks fan a little bit of a letdown to

have adam eaton come back but given the strength of the rest of their lineup and defense and everything you know i think they can compete with him it's just maybe not quite what you would have wanted yeah i think that this team is is certainly talented enough that like adam eaton is not going to be the difference between them making the postseason or not but i i think that white socks fans are right to both be very excited about their team and just hope for a little bit more like you said it doesn't necessarily mean that you have to go after Ozuna or Springer. Jock Peterson is a better player.

And certainly he's had a couple dings here and there, but has been a more consistent player in terms of his availability. So I get why people are a little bit fussed about it. I think the part that I find the most not concerning but disappointing is just the the potential culture clash because I just want to be able to enjoy things yeah in a in an unreserved way but you know this White Sox team like led at least by our metric led the majors in war among its position players and had a 114 team WRC plus. So this is already a very productive offense,

but it does seem, you know, it's like it's only $7 million. So that's not precluding them from making further moves. But if this ends up being the sort of sum total of their big off-season push, you're going to be like, well, couldn't you have done a little bit better than that? Yeah, they'll be entertaining one way or another.

If there's clubhouse harmony and they're just a bunch of really good, exciting players, that's entertaining. And if it's a complete clubhouse train wreck, I hope it's not because I just kind of want to see this team strut its stuff and do its thing over a full season without any of that. But one way or another, there will be news. There will be things to talk about with the white socks this year i think and and yeah i mean if you were if you had your heart

set on springer or something like you know i don't know that you should ever get too tied to one player because that one player might get a better offer somewhere else might just not want to play for your team for whatever reason might not want to play a corner outfield spot, who knows? And speaking of creative words to use for rumors in the offseason, I read a report by Sportsnet like a little over a week ago that the Blue Jays and George Springer were, I guess I'll quote, had progressed beyond just talking about a contract, which I don't know, like progressed beyond just talking. What is what were they doing instead of talking? Like, did it get physical?

Like what's happening here? All of my jokes are inappropriate. None of them are OK. Yeah. I mean, like it seems like you're talking right up until the moment when you're signing, right? Like, I mean, you're texting, you're emailing, you're calling, you're Zooming, whatever. But, like, what else can you do beyond talking? Like, a tour?

You could tour the Rogers Center? I don't know. Well, Ben, when a team and a player love each other very, very much. Yeah. I don't know. I guess like is there work visa paperwork that has to go on? Maybe. There, I don't really know.

I have so many jokes and I can't, Ben, can't say any of them. I will leave it to your better judgment. It's not worth it. I mean, it would be good for the podcast, but sometimes you have to take care of yourself, you know? Or at least mind your Twitter mentions. So I don't know what that means. I know that I think Emma Bachelary has written about some of this.

I would love for someone, and maybe I should should just do it whether it's me writing it or me assigning it i would love for someone to do a deep dive on all of the sort of romance and dating adjacent language that goes on and sort of surrounds both free agency and and the trade market i want to tell my joke Yeah because often you hear That like a team is eyeing Someone which just sounds very Lurid Sam did a whole article

For BP once where he riffed On the language that like So and so is drawing interest And he like drew Things he did actual sketches About those players That was yeah weird wacky bp era sam and uh so there's uh you know certain tropes that you hear in off-season reporting and not all

of it really makes sense so maybe it's just like hey we're just talking you know we're just talking it's just casual we're not exchanging figures or anything we're just talking. It's just casual. We're not exchanging figures or anything. We're just bantering about whether we have mutual interest. And so when you progress beyond just talking, now you're exchanging numbers or proposals or you're countering. I mean, that's still talking probably one would think or at least writing. But it's more serious. It's more likely to lead to something anyway that report was like 10 days ago that they had progressed beyond just talking so it must be

getting really hot and heavy over there man uh no no okay moving on elsewhere in the ale central the royals assigned carl santana to a two-year deal that was on the heels of their signing Mike Miner to an almost equivalent two-year contract. So maybe an unlikely destination for veteran free agents. It's almost

like they're trying to be the entertaining tanking team that we were talking about last week. Like how can you make a tank entertaining? Not that the royals are really trying to tank they might be inadvertently tanking you know i think we can maybe distinguish a little bit between what they're doing and what like the orioles are doing but they're not good right now and it seems like they've made attempts to make themselves interesting like i was briefly actually excited about the Royals going into the 2019 season.

I remember. Yeah. As it turns out, I was entirely too excited about them. But it seemed like they were trying to build like an old school, like 1980s stolen bass machine. Like it was, you know, Billy Hamilton was on that team and Terrence Gore and Alberto Mondesi. And there was just like a great collection of bass stealing talent.

And it just did not materialize. Whit Merrifield, Chris Owings, Brett Phillips. Like there were so many guys. It's like, are they going to steal 200 basses? Are they going to steal 300 basses? And they ended up stealing like 117. It was just not exciting. Like they didn't steal that often.

They didn't steal successfully all that often. Some of those guys didn't even last the season for them. So it was not fun, but it looked like maybe they were trying to be fun. If we're going to be bad, at least let's be entertaining and try to win in a weird way. And now they're not doing that, but they are signing guys like Santana and Miner, who you would not necessarily think they would be the leading contenders given where they are. And with the Royals, I never know if they really accept where they are or whether they have the same picture of where they stand compared to other teams, many members of the media or their opponents do. Like, not sure if there's some denial going on here if they think they're ready right now to be good or not. But they're bringing in, like, competent players, veteran players people have heard of. So I guess in a sense, you know, good for them for trying, even if they're not going to be good right away yeah i find myself

having a bit of a crisis of conscience when it comes to the royals because we we have spent all this time and as you noted very recently have spent time encouraging sort of if one is going to tank one's franchise to do it in a way that is is fun and gives fans something to watch and hold on to and i think that that is generally the way i would like teams to behave and it is undoubtedly true that carlos santana makes the royals better in 2021 and yet it is i think a kind of weird fit and i was trying to to isolate exactly what about it i found so odd and i think that you know part of this ben clemens covered in his piece for us at fan graphs when he wrote up the trade which is that mike minor is he's sort of he has a fungibility to him

that pitchers have where you always need more pitching and he can pitch out of the rotation or out of the bullpen if it comes to it and he's he's sort of you know a necessary whether it's him or a player like him a necessary complement to the existing roster but you don't necessarily need an endless supply of good but not super great cornerbacks. So there are a lot of those. And so what you might get for someone like Santana in trade is going to probably disappoint fans who are excited and want their team to be good all the time. But I don't know, like he's a good player. And I'm glad that there was a market for Santana and that players like him are continuing to get deals. But it's not as if even if all of the young guys on

the Royals roster sort of take a step forward and all of their pitching is sort of ace level, that what they were missing in that picture was you know a carlos santana and so aren't they glad they signed one just in case they get upside out of the rest of their players on that they weren't necessarily expecting there's still such a gap between where they are even if you are anticipating you know some percentage of upside performance above their current projections and where they would need to be to really be a contender in that division which you know as we've noted has other teams that are quite good even if cleveland is about to trade its best player away so it's just sort of an odd

thing but i don't think oh it doesn't do any harm you know if you're gonna add a player that isn't gonna push your team forward i'd rather teams do it in free agency so that they aren't trading away any of their young players that might be part of the next really good core like all this costs them is money so it's not a bad signing yeah it's just a little bit of an odd one yeah it's it's kind of like a deal that five years ago or so yeah and and five years ago like the Royals were good. So I just mean a generic team really. But in an earlier era of baseball coverage, and we've talked about how the way that we've talked about these things has changed. In the past, we probably would have said,

what are the Royals doing? Why are they committing to multi-year deals for guys in their early to mid-30s at this point when, you know, I don't know if they're actually blocking anyone. It doesn't seem like it. But why are they going after these guys? You know, why are they not just hardcore rebuilding or whatever? Do they understand how close to contention they are or how far away they are? And now we're just like, hey, teams are spending money. That's good. Which is sort of a simplistic way to look at it, I guess. If we just automatically say every signing, oh, kudos to you, team, for signing someone.

And yet when we've seen the opposite of that so many times, it's sort of refreshing. And Carl Santana is the type of player you would think would not fare particularly well right now. Like on MLB Trade Rumor's predictions, they had him at one year and six million. And Craig on Fangraph's top 50 had him at one year and eight million for expected contracts. I think the crowdsourcing was a little closer, but people were not expecting him to cash in because he is a veteran corner guy and he's coming off a year that was his first below average offensive season, almost entirely because he batted 199 on a 212 BABIP, which seems very fluky and small sample 60 games and all of that. The underlying skills still seem to

be there he doesn't strike out a lot he walks more than almost anyone and the contact was fairly good even though the results were not great so it seems like there's still plenty there and that he could bounce back and he's been very durable he never misses many games and until this shortened strange season he'd been you know an average or better player pretty much every year for the past several years so he's a good player but like why the royals and so i guess when we're celebrating a team spending that doesn't seem like it's in the the prime spending position it sort of depends depends what comes after that, of course. Do they just bring in the recognizable named veterans so that maybe they win 70 games instead

of 60 or something, and that's nice, but then do they not invest later when they actually have a chance to really make the playoffs and surround some of the young players with good veterans. Like, you know, is this it? Like, is it just occasionally tossing out a veteran deal so that you don't truly bottom out? Or do you then use that as a justification not to spend later? So it sort of depends what happens after that. But it's, I guess, kind of nice in the context of the larger free agent market, which we all expected to be very stagnant, that a team like the Royals, which was not at the top of anyone's list of big spenders, has actually come out and spent so far. Yeah, it just makes me wonder what's the next move for them. Right, yeah. Yeah, and you can compare that to, say, the Reds, another team that has been busy but going in the other direction. Right. And they just traded Rysell Iglesias to the Angels, who have now acquired multiple Iglesias this offseason.

Iglesii. So, Rysel has been one of the more dependable relievers, dump Ramirez had a decent past couple years too But it seems like Iglesias was in line to make nine something million And the Reds non-tendered Archie Bradley And maybe Trevor Bauer will leave And they have reportedly been prepared to listen aggressively to Sonny Gray offers, although it has not been framed that way. And it seems like they're under a little bit of a mandate now to cut costs, which in their case, I find it hard to get on them too much, I think, just because they've been one of the more notable examples of teams that really have been trying to spend and get better. And they were in line to have a record payroll in 2020.

And they really invested in that team and kind of had a terrible time because no attendance and no revenue sharing. And that seems to have hit them hard. And so I'm sort of more understanding when it's a team like the Reds that has not been behaving that way lately and maybe got hit hard by these circumstances than when it's a team like the Reds that has not been behaving that way lately and maybe got hit hard by these circumstances than when it's some other team that seems like it would be able to weather this just fine. I know, but it does just bum you out because they were one of the few teams, like you said, that seemed just really committed to trying to win baseball games. And I understand the circumstances and I understand that the Reds aren't the

Yankees and they're not the Dodgers. And so they're probably less well positioned to weather a revenue decline. But, you know, whenever you lose a team, that's like, Hey, let's, let's go out and try to win a world series. And it's not that there's no talent on that roster left, but when they're trading away relatively inexpensive pieces of the bullpen, it makes you pretty pessimistic that they're going to, say, invest more money in the offense because the problem with the Reds last year

wasn't the pitching, it was the hitting. So if they're not going to be willing to to eat nine million dollars of rossie la glacis like they're probably not gonna go sign george springer yeah you know so that part of it just in terms of what it signals about their off-season approaches is a bit disappointing even if it's a touch more understandable than it would be either with a team that had not been so recently committed to trying to win or that was perhaps in a slightly larger market and maybe a little bit better position to handle this stuff you don't have to they don't have to pay tom brennan next year can't they use that money that's true yeah he has to get paid by the puerto rican winter week now for some reason but yeah i guess we can describe the Reds as rice sellers.

Ben, I want it noted that it was you and not me. You were maybe thinking of it, but not saying it. I don't know. You would have gotten there eventually. Anyway, yeah, it's kind of a bummer for the Reds. Like if you make your big buildup and it happens in 2020, it's like, you know, it's kind of a bummer for the Reds if you make your big buildup and it happens in 2020. Yeah. It's like, you know, it would have been nice to at least see that team for a full season.

And as it turned out, like, I don't know whether you say that the Reds, like, got lucky or got unlucky because they ended up sort of sneaking into the playoffs just a little bit better than 500 and wouldn't have made it if not for the expanded playoff format. On the other hand, if you had had a full season, I tend to think that they would have been better than they had been up to that point. And maybe they would have made the playoffs with a non-expanded playoff format. I think I picked them as a playoff team before I knew that it was going to be a 16-team year. So I would have liked to at least see that staff get to do its thing for a full season. And maybe if they do make the playoffs and get the attendance boost that comes with that and everything, then they could have kept it going and not have had to make these deals and maybe break up this roster a little bit. So it's just sort of sad that they built back up. They made

the playoffs after a long absence from the postseason, and maybe it's just a one-year thing. I mean, you know, there's still plenty of talent there. It's not like they're out of it or anything, but the fact that they are seemingly subtracting rather than adding at this point, having just broken through, is a bit of a disappointment. Yeah, I agree. And then I guess the last move, which has not officially been made as we speak, but has been described in a lot of terms that make it sound as if it's imminent, is the Mets and James McCann.

Yeah. And the rumor mongers are using all sorts of language to express the state of these negotiations. Ken Rosenthal said the Mets were getting close with him and Anthony DeComo repeated that language and Andy Martino said that details are still being worked out. They're haggling over exact terms, talk serious, will be surprised if it doesn't get done. And if it does get done, these people are saying that it could be a four-year deal. And that too would be kind of encouraging because I think he was projected for smaller deals than that. I don't know what Craig had him at, but I think MLB Trade Rumors had him at like two years and 20 million. So I don't know that many people saw a four-year contract coming for James McCann. So that's also kind of a nice thing about the state of the market. Craig had him at 214, actually, and the crowdsourced figures were very similar to that. So if he were to come in at four years, that's nice. And you can see why the Mets would be interested in him because they currently rank 25th among major league teams when it comes to catcher. According to the fan graphs depth charts, they just don't have really anyone to play there right now.

to play there right now and so that would be quite a big upgrade and and mccann's another guy who you know kind of like lance lynn i felt like i knew what james mccann was and then he upgraded he got better and it seemed like he was just you know an okay backup for a while and then sometimes catchers develop later than players in other positions and in the last couple years he has been one of the better catchers in baseball a 2019 all-star and was even better in 2020 he's been a good hitter and uh notably improved his framing this year like uh i think he had been below average in framing every year of his career up until that point, and then suddenly was better than average. And he's just another one of these guys who set out to be better at framing and figured out how the metrics work and changed his setup and got lower in his stance and suddenly

was getting more calls. And so teams are more interested in him now. And speaking of the White Sox, framing was a big part of their success in 2020 because by Fangraph's framing runs, they went from the second worst framing team in 2019 to the very best framing team in 2020, thanks to Yasmany Grandal and the much improved McCann. I don't want to downplay the step forward that McCann has taken or his worthiness as a player or a free agent, but it is surprising. I didn't know for sure clearly, but I think I was really operating under the assumption that the catcher spot in Queens would just be filled by Real Muto. So that part of this is almost more interesting to me than McCann's fit because the Mets need a catcher. As an aside, so do the Phillies.

Yes. Yeah. But the Mets need a catcher and McCann is good. And so that pairing absent the presence of Real Muto makes a ton of sense. But what better way to splash around the cash that you have said you want to spend on your team than not only the best free agent at that position, but arguably either the first or second best free agent available on the market in Toto by signing RealMudo. That almost rhymes, and I didn't mean it to. So that part of this is really interesting to me, as is the duration of the deal. I would imagine that this is going to spread the value of that contract out in a way that we will find kind of surprising, again, given the

Met's insistence on their sort of excitement about spending. They didn't say they're aggressively listening, but they seemed ready to aggressively spend. But yeah, i will be very curious to see one if this materializes because as you've noted like the deal is not final and we haven't seen money yet so we don't really we're not able to necessarily assess it on those terms but yeah if you had told me in let's see 2018 that james mccann would not only be where he is as a player but would be a coveted free agent, I would have said that you were lying. Right, yeah. I mean, at age 30 to think that a team would be willing

to go to four years for him in this market, it would not have computed at that point. But now you'd have to say that he's the best catcher available other than Real Mudo on the free agent market probably. So, yeah, you can see why that is. Like if you can suddenly hit better and become a good framer, all of a sudden teams will be lining up. And I'd be curious to see if that ever stops being the case like before we move to robot umps like will it ever seem like robot umps are such a certainty in the short-term future that teams will stop preemptively paying for framing like right

you know probably it it affects more like who gets drafted or how players get developed that sort of thing because you could project down the road and say well this high school kid like by the time he's a veteran big leaguer, probably will have robot umps and then it won't matter if he can receive pitches well. But when you're a major league team and you're bidding on a veteran player, then, you know, if it's not going to be implemented in the next year, then maybe you're not thinking about it. But if you're going to four years on someone, that's the range where it might start to seem realistic i don't know i don't know whether that has been set back or moved forward by the pandemic year and all the rules

changes and everything like on the one hand there's just been such a deluge of difference that maybe mlb might say okay let's pump the the brakes and not pile robot umps on top of seven-inning doubleheaders and three batter minimum and automatic runner rule and all the rest. Or they might say, well, the doors are open now, so we broke the seal on changing stuff, so let's just change another big significant thing that a lot of people would be in favor of. But I think it does require some minor league testing beforehand. And so it was probably set back by the absence of a minor league

season in 2020 because they were planning to test it at some lower levels, right? And then those lower levels didn't play baseball. So that didn't happen. Yeah. I think that we've probably bought at least a an extra year ben of getting to appreciate one of our favorite things yeah the holdouts like you and me who love to look at the catcher framing leaderboards buy ourselves some time all right so that covers uh all the major moves and almost moves so maybe we can end with an email or two here. So Dylan, listener Dylan wrote in to say, I recently came across this great exchange between a heckler and Jose Bautista. I'm dying to know what Bautista did in his next at bat. The scoreboard is at least

partially visible. Do you think there's any way to get to the bottom of what happened next and so dylan linked us to this video which i will link on the show page and i'll also play a little audio excerpt of here it is a video that was uploaded in 2015 and it is of a heckler behind the on-deck circle heckling jose batista who is preparing to bat. You got strikeouts. I'm trying to make check, but you don't get it in my back. What? Oh, yeah! Okay, so I don't know what you think, but I would not say this was a grade-A heckle. I would not say this was really that quality a heckling attempt. The heckler is going after Batista for something he has in his back pocket, and he is needling him about the idea that maybe it's his checkbook.

He's got such a big wad of cash from his earnings as a star that he can't even fit it into his pocket. I don't know what's actually in his pocket here. It's not his batting gloves because he's wearing his batting gloves. I'm guessing it's like his sliding mitt or something. That's what it looked like to me too. Yeah yeah so it's not a checkbook pretty clearly or it could be snacks you know sometimes they need snacks yeah the sunflower seeds or gum or something i don't know what it is but it's uh it's not a checkbook it doesn't look all that unusual really you see a lot of players with

that so i wouldn't say it was an inspired attempt I would say that Batista's comeback was quite good. I think that was very good, saying that his checkbook is too big to fit in his back pocket. I like that. My main takeaway from this is that we should not let people drink in public. Yeah. Yeah. I'm anti-heckling in general. I mean, I know it's a baseball tradition and there is a form of heckling, like, you know, good-natured heckling that I think is probably okay, like, if it's not mean-spirited. And I don't know if this was mean-spirited. It's sort of silly, really. Like, what are you, you're taunting the guy about making a lot of money. It's not really that great a put down. But on the whole, sometimes it's mean. Sometimes people say things that they probably shouldn't say in public. And also often it's just not very inspired because people have been drinking and their creativity is somewhat dampened by what they've been imbibing all game long. creativity is somewhat dampened by what they've been imbibing all game long and they all it often will have you know not always because there are some times where like a heckle a guy who gets

heckled is done it's done in a way that's like a you're like wow good burn from that guy right but first of all i think most people like jose batista yeah So he's an odd target of a heckle. And I realize that within the sort of rationale of fandom, his place on the opposing team is probably sufficient for many people to just heckle him for a day while they're at the ballpark, even if they otherwise have positive associations with him as a player. But there's so much energy behind the heckle in this particular clip. It made me very uncomfortable.

I wanted to be like, you need to relax. People can hear you. We're trying to have a civilization here, man. So I didn't care for this heckle at all. It felt oddly personal. Who cares about the money? I do think that you're right, that Batista's response is just terrific.

Were you able to identify what game this was? I was, yeah. So it didn't require a lot of deep digging, frankly. The video was posted on July 9th, 2015, and this is the game from July 8th, 2015. So I didn't really have to look very far. As Dylan mentioned, the scoreboard is partially visible. They are playing the White Sox in this game. Josh Donaldson is batting. You can see him in the background. So pretty easily identifiable. Zach Duke is pitching, and the score is tied 6-6. So yes, it was the game on July 8th. And this is a

game that the White Sox ultimately won 7-6 in 11 innings. And here's the thing. So Dylan was wondering what Bautista did after delivering this comeback. But I think one thing that makes the heckle worse is that it's factually inaccurate. the heckler says that uh batista can't buy a base hit he's got everything except a base hit well he had a base hit in that game yeah so and you can actually if you listen closely you can hear someone else who is not the heckler mentioning that in fact he did drive in a run earlier in the game so so that takes the heckle down like an additional notch in that uh this was the ninth inning and the heckler is correct that he did strike out earlier in the game actually he struck out multiple times early in the game and so maybe that is what the

heckler was recalling but uh but he did have a hit rbi single so this was the ninth inning he came up in the first he struck out looking in the third he struck out swinging in the fifth he singled to center and drove in a run and then in the seventh he struck out swinging again so to be fair he had struck out three out of his four plate appearances to that point and so he comes up here in the ninth with the score tied and i regret to report that he lined into a double play no yeah to end this inning so donaldson ended up walking and batista came up and actually swung at the first pitch and lined a double play so that uh unfortunate. I think I'm sure that the heckler resumed his heckling at that point. There's no follow-up video, fortunately, but I would guess

that he got on Batista again after that, and ultimately got the last laugh, I guess, because the White Sox won the game. But defending Batista's honor, he did have a hit in an rbi in that game and i like how he delivered the comeback like there was no rancor there was no visible anger or anything or no real emotion at all he was just kind of very casually showing that uh this meant nothing to him it just rolled right off his back and he had the perfect comeback prepared i have two things that i will say the first of which is my my opinion of heckling would change dramatically if every heckler came with a fact checker yeah like a live fact checker to be uh excuse me uh sir i hate to inform you but jose patista actually has an rbi in this game it was the result of a

base hit so that's the first thing I would say. The second thing I would say is, and I just want to confirm, this was from the 2015 season, right? Yes, yes. Okay, so I think that while in this moment the heckler may have gotten the last laugh, the Blue Jays went 93-69 in 2015, and the White Sox were a 76-86 team.

So on balance, I think the Blue Jays had the upper hand there. Although I suppose that my opinion of heckling is also in part determined by the relative state of affairs between the two franchises. And I think that it is always better to heckle up rather than down. And so if you are a fan of a team that is worse, it is very much acceptable to heckle players within the confines of polite society who are players on teams that are better than your team.

But it's just there's something very rude and sort of unknowing about heckling players for teams that are worse because they already feel bad enough about themselves. You don't have to make them feel worse so yeah i think those things it is funny though because like in 2015 jose batista was like by our metrics uh five win player and had a 148 wrc plus so he he was very good in 2015 what he was what are we doing here? He had 40 home runs. It's almost like a form of impotent rage. It's like if you can't get the guy out and okay, they had gotten him out and they were about to get him out again.

But it's really a recognition that this is a star player who's good, right? You don't bother even heckling someone who's bad or maybe you do if you're very cruel or you just boo or something but like you know if you're the target of heckling from an opposing team's fans and and it's not like some storied rivalry it's like blue jays white socks you know not like a ton of bad blood there at the time that i really recall and And as you noted, this is at a time even before Batista was known for the bat flip or for the fight with Odor. That hadn't happened yet. So I feel like Batista was a pretty fun and popular player at that point. So yeah, I don't know. It's

just factually inaccurate and not very clever and also just immediately shut down by a far superior response from Batista. So even though he went up there and followed it with a double play, which would have been nice if he could have just like added, you know, injury to the insult by launching a homer and bat flipping as he walked past the heckler or something but like he probably forgot about the heckler by the time he like made it back to the dugout it's just you get heckled a lot if you are a star baseball player and i'm sure he's heard better than this i just want to remind everyone that you'll never find yourself regretting being mostly sober in public you're just never gonna regret it i think it's fine to flirt with the line we all go out and have a nice time and as long as you have a way of getting home safely that doesn't involve you driving like you know you should uh enjoy yourself on your on your days off but you're just you're never gonna look back and be like i really

wish i had been wasted in public you'll never never think that. You just will never think it. So, you know, when you're having that second or third IPA, and you're like, do I want a fourth? The answer should be no, because you probably don't. Yeah, and this was the ninth inning. So, like, the libations had been cut off for a little while. Yeah, I didn't even think of it. That's quite concerning.

I hope that despite his heckling, that that gentleman made responsible choices as he made his way home home because you don't need to mess with that business. Bad business. Coherent. It was not clever, but it was coherent. Yes, but clearly lubricated. I guess we can wrap up there. And we do plan to talk about the minor league. I don't even know what to call it. Calling, reorganization, reshuffling, contraction. As long as we don't call it an invitational, I'm good. Yes.

We'll figure out what to call it on our next episode. But the 120 teams that are actually going to be a part of Affiliated Baseball in 2021, or at least got invitations to be received their invitations officially on Wednesday. And so we've been planning to, once that happened, have an episode where we talk to a guest about what it all means and the long-term and short-term implications. So expect that next time if all goes as planned. Okay, that will do it for today.

Thanks, as always, for listening, aggressively or otherwise. And thanks for supporting the podcast on Patreon, which you can do by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild. 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. Alex Sante,ael cuillard elijah steve smeaton and lex potter 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 meg coming via email at podcast at fangrass.com or via the patreon messaging system if you are a supporter you can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectively wild. Thank you to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. And as noted, we will be back with one more episode before the end of this week. Talk to you then. on the floor. And when I win, it'll pump my adrenaline. My record is undefeated, and I'll win again. I'll never lose or hear boos

from the audience, cause they participate and applaud me since. I bring them what they want to hear, and they'll fill up the atmosphere with people that came to party and have a good time. So when I'm gone, I'm sure you understood the rhyme, because I promise to accomplish the mission.

Cause I keep Omega to listen