Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1883: Know Your Value

Episode Date: July 30, 2022

Ben Lindbergh, Meg Rowley, and FanGraphs writer Ben Clemens banter about a flummoxing fun fact, Justin Verlander’s career vs. Max Scherzer’s career, and Max Meyer’s Tommy John surgery, then (24:55) discuss the Andrew Benintendi trade, Joey Gallo’s struggles, and the biggest questions surrounding the trade deadline before (45:53) reviewing “other” Ben’s work on the annual […]

Hey everyone, Ben here. Just so you know, the episode you're about to hear was recorded prior to the Mariners acquiring Luis Castillo from the Reds for a package of four prospects, including the Mariners' top prospect, shortstop Noel V. Marte. You will hear us talk a little bit about how the trade deadline has been slow to start. You will also hear us speculate that maybe that has something to do with teams waiting to see where Luis Castillo would go. So, if that was one of the holdups, then maybe we will see more action soon, but this is a major move by the Mariners. They're going for it. They've gotten maybe the best pitcher available at the deadline. They're trying not only to end the playoff drought, but to do some damage in October when they do. I had a feeling that there might be a move made before we could post this podcast. Probably not the first time that Jerry DiPoto has been faster to a trade than we were to producing an episode. That said, the rest of our discussion should still apply.

Castillo was not ranked on the trade value series we're about to discuss. He is eligible for free agency after next season. But I imagine Meg will be pleased by the moves, so we will discuss it next time. For now, we should proceed before Jerry makes any more moves. So let's get started. I can't bring a golden crown set with pearls and rubies rare But I can bring a rose and place it in your hair I offer you these things that come from up above. I give them and my love to you. Hello and welcome to episode 1883 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters.

I am Ben Lindberg of Fangraphs. Wait, hold on. Breaking news here. Whoa. Nope, not true. I do not work for Fangraphs other than in this podcast capacity. Still at the rigor. Trade.

Yeah. All right. I'm not going to do that over. We will just leave that in. We will. But Meg Rowley is here and she does actually work for Fangraphs. I do, yeah. That's true.

She holds a pretty important position there, as I understand it. Well, you know. We are also joined. Now, this is why I was confused, I think. Right. Because we do have a Ben who works for Fangraphs on this episode. It's other Ben, Ben Clemens. He does indeed work for Fangraphs.

Hello, Ben. Hello, Ben. Hello, Ben. I have not replaced you. Don't worry. We have a quota for Bens. I think all the baseball Bens need to fight and establish a Ben prime. And given who you all are,

you could probably do it playing video games or Magic the Gathering or something and streaming it. It would be fun. Some nonviolent nerdy way of settling disputes. So I regret to inform you all that the mad genius behind the at stats by stats, stats perform Twitter account is back with a new fun fact. New fun fact dropped. Ben, I don't know if you saw the old fun fact that Meg and I discussed last time.

Ben, I don't know if you saw the old fun fact that Meg and I discussed last time, but this Twitter account on July 24th tweeted, there have been over 10,000 days in MLB history with 10 or more games. Today is the only one of those where nobody hit two plus homers in a game. Nobody had two plus stolen bases in a game. Nobody scored three plus runs in a game. Nobody threw a complete game. No team scored 10 plus runs in a game and no team won via walk off. What? Yeah.

They just kind of stacked qualifiers until they figured out a way in which that day of games was unique. Well, here's the latest work. I'm going to assume by the same person, although these tweets are unsigned, unattributed. But this was from Thursday, and it goes, Tonight in MLB, there were four shutout wins by scores of 1-0, 2-0, 3-0, and 13-0. The last time there was a 1-0, 2-0, 3-0, and a 13-plus run shutout all on the same day was on August 12 12th 1890 that's so close what if it was four to nothing i would be interested if it was four i thought that was where it was gonna go when i

was reading it i was like okay that's the natural progression one two three what comes after three four no 13 in this case so just in case like, look, we get some random out there questions from our listeners. Love our listeners. But anyone who has heard our stat blasts before knows that sometimes these are things that you can't imagine anyone ever thinking or caring about. And yet we do and our listeners do. But even for me, this is a stretch. The last time there was a 1-0, 2-0, 3-0, and a 13-plus run shutout all on the same day, August 12th, 1890. This is like, you know the cliche about how, well, you never know when you go to the ballpark or a new day of baseball, you never know you're going to see something potentially you've never seen before. This is not what people mean, I don't think, when they say that. But that is how this twitter account is choosing to interpret it and i am amused and so i sort of support it the ones that um the ones that require all the games in baseball instead of just one game yeah i feel like they need to be really good

to actually be interesting to me yeah like one nothing two nothing three nothing four to nothing would have passed that bar for me yeah i think so think so. So close, and 13 is not it. It would have a pleasing and aesthetically pleasing escalation, but instead it's just nothing. Instead it's just nothing at all. And I will say I resent these coming this week because we are all very busy with the know, like we are all very busy with the deadline

and we are vulnerable. I feel like we are vulnerable because we have brain soup. And so we're like, does this mean something? And we're going to ponder it for a second. So you got to be judicious

with your fun facts, particularly in moments where people are prone to not know what's going on or what day it is. Yeah. I mean, this is not like a posting Twitter account.

This is not like the stats by stats. Twitter account isn't like an edge board. No, it's not like at bad fun facts, which I would follow, by the way, if someone wants to make that, maybe it already exists. But many of the facts that that this account tweets are reasonable and interesting and make you go not wow necessarily, but at least, huh, at least, okay. You know, just like looking at a few of the recent ones. Tonight is the first time in the modern era that an 11-0 or better pitcher, Tony Gonsolin, lost to a team that came into the day with the worst record in MLB, the Nationals. Okay, it's win-loss record, but that's kind of interesting, I think.

And then looking at just the two most recent tweets before the one I started this segment off by citing, the Blue Jays are the first team in American League history to have a seven-plus game winning streak under two different managers in the same season. First, Charlie Montoyo, now John Schneider. Okay. That one's neat. It's fine. Yeah. And the other one on that same subject, John Schneider of the Blue Jays is the first manager to have a run differential of plus 50 or better over his first nine career games as

an MLB manager since Jim Price did so for the New York Gothams in 1884. Fine. Interesting, right? But this one, I don't know. So I don't know what the mandate for this Twitter account is, whether it's like, well, every day we have to find some way in which this day was either unique or the first time since the 19th century, which that would kind of be an interesting prompt. Like that's sort of an interesting thought exercise. Like if that's the running bit here, it's like every day we're going to find some way in which this day's games was unique. Okay. But I don't know that they have announced that. And so I just wonder if like this is an intentional strategy, like let's sprinkle in terrible fun facts here or there just so that

we could get talked about on podcasts that police fun facts and we will bring people's attention to this Twitter account, which if so, I guess it's working. So kudos. They seem really into the string of unrelated but rare things. Like I'm looking at one from earlier this week, and it was tonight the Blue Jays scored 28 plus runs on the road, hit an inside the park grand slam, achieved the home run cycle, and had a player with six plus hits in a nine inning game.

Those four feats had never all occurred in the same MLB season, let alone by one team in one game. See, they could have just done the score, the inside the park grand slam, and the home run thing. And those are like, you know, those are of a piece. They're just all together. They sit nicely in a little basket.

And you're like, wow. But instead, we're like doing this other stuff. I don't care that it's on the road. Why does that? Has it happened at home? I guess it's a little harder to do on the road. I think it implies that it's happened at home. Yeah.

Can't you just say the Blue Jays scored 28 runs tweet yeah inside the park grand slam that's cool i would like yeah sure i mean that was weird about that yeah it's just like if you scored 28 runs i feel like you don't have to go looking for ways in which that game was weird or rare. It's like they scored 28 runs. Like that was weird. That was rare. We don't necessarily need to stack additional conditions onto this. I wonder how many games a team has scored 28 plus runs and not had a player with a bunch of hits. Oh, see, that's a more interesting question.

The answer is probably none. Now we need another game with 28 runs. Yes. And inside the park, Grand Slam. Oh, gosh. Stat Blast. No, not really. I do have one later, but not about this.

So we are here ostensibly to talk about trades and trade value because, Ben, all week long, you have been running your trade value series at Fangraphs, an annual tradition, and you handled it solo this year. After, I guess, your apprenticeship last year, you did it as a tandem with Kevin Goldstein. He has since departed, and so you have done it all by your lonesome, just following in the fine tradition of Craig Edwards and Dave Cameron and others who have handled this storied series at fangraphs always a favorite and usually we talk to whoever is producing it on this podcast because always interesting stuff to discuss well just remind people that like kevin went to the twins he didn't die yeah i said he departed he's not like the dearly departed or yeah but it sounded like he had left this mortal foil behind. He owes me some music recommendations, so in the

off chance that he's listening to this, Kevin? You don't want him. Frankly. Kevin's musical taste is mine. Just don't jibe often. I'll give you some. So, I have a couple things to mention before we get there. You know, Meg, how we have done

these head-to-head matchups between players who have had very similar careers and are great and superstars and probably all Hall of Famers, but we've kind of wondered who you got, which one has the edge here. So we've done Nolan Arnauto versus Manny Machado. We've done Freddie Freeman versus Paul Goldschmidt. Now I was just wondering, Justin Verlander versus Max Scherzer, who you got? Obviously, both, ideally. You want both. They're both excellent. But they are kind of close. I mean, they're the two best pitchers of this era, I suppose, the defining pitchers of this period. And they match up in a lot of ways. I mean, Scherzer has three Cy Youngs. Verlander has two Cy Youngs and an MVP. They each won a World Series. They've been All-Stars a gazillion times. I think nine times for Verland use, their wars at baseball reference and fan graphs are very similar. So Verlander has a lead in war by, what, like six or seven, I think, which is really not a lot over a long career.

And he's also a year or a year and a half older and he's pitched in 17 seasons. Scherzer's pitched in 15 seasons. So there's a bit of an innings gap there where Verlander has pitched 3,100 innings and Scherzer has pitched about 2,600 innings. So a lead of almost 500 there. So probably Scherzer has been a bit better on a per inning basis. But Verlander gives you a bulk and endurance, and he's known for that. So if you had to give an edge to either one here, and we know that we can't close the book on these careers because they're still somehow going extremely strong, even though Verlander is 39 and Scherzer is 38 at this point, and they've obviously had injuries. I guess I was thinking of this because Scherzer just turned 38 this week, actually, on the 27th. Happy birthday, Max. But they have both come back from injury to be basically as good as ever. And there's just no end in sight. Verlander is talked about wanting to pitch till he's 45, which when he said it, it was like, sure, Justin, okay.

And then he had Tommy John surgery and now he comes back and he's pitching at a Cy Young level still. And basically, so is Scherzer, other than the fact that he missed some time. So do you have a favorite here? Ben, I did the thing where I built a custom leaderboard for them, and I just did from 2008 to 2022, so that we're only getting the time when they were both active, and there's still an innings gap here, but it worked out. They have the exact same war. Exactly. They have the exact same war.

They have both accumulated 68.5 war from 2008 to 2022. Yeah. So Verlander just got a little head start there. And since Scherzer showed up, neck and neck. Perfect. Yeah. I mean, even like, obviously this doesn't cover Verlander's entire career, but it's just, it's fun when that works out. It seems like it happens a lot where there's a lot of stat line up there. It turns out good players are good.

Yeah. So I don't know how to split these hairs then, because they're exactly the same, at least during the time that they have overlapped. But, I mean, how would you even, I guess, like, let's see, Scherzer, if we wanted to go by postseason resumes, Scherzer, that's the thing. They've both pitched a lot in the postseason, too. So, like, Verlander has basically another full season of postseason pitching, 187 and two-thirds innings with a 3.4 ERA. 187 and two-thirds innings with a 3.4 ERA. Scherzer, again, I guess it's sort of similar. Fewer innings, 128 and two-thirds, but better ERA, 3.22. I mean, they've both been great then also. So that doesn't really help. It'd be convenient if one had a great postseason resume and the other didn't, but no, that doesn't really do it either. Well, and it's, you know, you can't credit one for being like a guy who's with the same team forever right they've both ended up having nomadic stretches um you know often at

times through no fault of their own but you have the like common detroit thing which is so fun yeah they were teammates for five years i think yeah so it's like, man, it's really a shame that Tigers team couldn't win a World Series. Oh, boy. Baseball isn't fair. All their pitchers went elsewhere and won Cy Young Awards, I think. But I guess Verlander did when he was there, too. And so did Scherzer, actually. But, yeah, I don't know. Like, I guess one way is like, well, if you could choose one for one game, maybe. Or, like, if you wanted to watch one for one game is either, like, more pleasing as a spectator experience.

Or I guess maybe Scherzer has the edge there, right? Yeah, I think so. Scherzer is my favorite watch. Yeah. Right, just because of the intensity and the attitude and the eyes and everything although we do the eyes thing where the two eyes and they're flashing so good right although i really do enjoy verlander just being unique or very unusual in just his trademark right which is like saving something for the end of his outings which maybe was true more in the past than now but that was

always special when he would just conserve some strength and then just come out firing in the seventh or eighth inning knowing he was about to be pulled and still having something in reserve there so each of them has something to recommend them just on a like pure are they fun to watch level yeah i i enjoy you know they're they're competing narratives that are so fun here too right because you have verlander having that stretch where we were like i don't know maybe justin verlander's career is kind of done like right he's not going to be able to adjust as he ages and then like the velo came back and he ended up being amazing anyway and we all felt very silly and so that's a fun narrative to engage with. And then you look at Scherzer and he's like,

if you could design a contract that was perfect for both sides in terms of the amount of production a player generated and what a team paid for it, that is Scherzer with the Nationals. So that's kind of a cool little twist to his career. I think it depends what you're assigning to dollars per war, what number you're using. But I think that it kind of comes out exactly. It just doesn't happen very often and doesn't have to happen to be a good deal.

But it's just a funny little fact about him. I think you can make an argument that it's the best free agent contract of all time. Yeah. And that's pretty cool. Yeah. make an argument that it's the best free agent contract of all time yeah and that's pretty cool yeah so they both have compelling narratives that are really cool i don't know like why do we why do we do this to ourselves we're like you must choose between two things you like why can't they be two great tastes that quite literally at one time tasted great together. Yeah, well, they can and they are, but still it's kind of fun just to try to choose.

I guess another difference maybe, like Verlander was a bigger prospect, right? Like he was a top 10 prospect number eight, according to Baseball America in 2006. Scherzer peaked at number 66, according to Baseball America heading into 2008. And then Scherzer took longer to establish himself, whereas Verlander was like getting Cy Young and MVP votes in his first full season. Right. Whereas Scherzer was not until several seasons into his career when he just won the Cy Young. He went from never getting a Cy Young vote to winning it.

And he had great stuff, but it was like, can he put it together right? And obviously he did, but there was a little more uncertainty there. So like maybe if you wanted to look at things that way, I guess Scherzer has sort of exceeded expectations by more, but I don't know, not really, because it wasn't like you expect any prospect to be Justin Verlander. So it's really hard to choose there. But, man, I mean, just the career numbers are so impressive.

And obviously I hope that they have a long way to go. You never know with someone at this age. But the fact that Verlander also was like one of the oldest players to get Tommy John surgery. Verlander also was like one of the oldest players to get Tommy John surgery. Right. And then to come back from that and be basically as good as ever is pretty extraordinary as well. So I guess like if I had to choose when we did this with players who were maybe less close to the end of their career and it was more about like projecting who's going to be better the rest of the way. about projecting who's going to be better the rest of the way. If we did it that way with these two guys,

I guess if you wanted to bet on who will have had the more valuable career when it's all said and done, I guess you would go with Verlander just because he has a slight lead probably in career value, and he is older, but he also just seems sort of indestructible in a way that Scherzer maybe doesn't. just seems sort of indestructible in a way that Scherzer maybe doesn't. Like Scherzer has had, he hasn't had like the severe injury that Verlander just had and came back from, but he's had more of a series of nagging injuries that have cost him time here and there. So I guess I would bet, like even now, I guess I would bet on Verlander lasting longer than

Scherzer and he has already lasted longer than Scherzer. So if I had to give it to one of them, it's a photo finish. It would be appropriate if they both wrapped up at the same time, hopefully a few years away still. But if they both wrapped up at the same time and went into the Hall of Fame together, that'd be kind of cool. I guess Scherzer also has like kind of I don't know if it was precedent setting or mold breaking, but his contract is notable to right going for the short term deal, right? So he was involved in the CBA talks and everything. So I guess you could give him a little extra there for being involved in that way. Yeah. Well, there's no loser here, no clear winner either, but it is striking, I think, just how similar their careers have been and both superlative. So enjoy them while they're still

here and while they're still pitching at this level. Because you just never know, which is something that I thought of this week when Max Meyer had Tommy John surgery. Like, after his second outing, which I don't know, like, what the most deflating time to have Tommy John

surgery is. There's no good time. But so many pitchers have it. I mean, in the draft this year, like so many of the top pitchers who were selected were having it or had already had it. It's just almost routine at this point. But to have it at that point when you are one of the best pitching prospects in baseball, you were called up, you make your major league debut, you have a first start that goes so-so, but whatever, you're're there you're in the big leagues and then your second start you have to leave with an elbow ouchie and it turns out to be Tommy John that's

it sucks I mean maybe it sucks less than like having it before you get there like if he had had it in triple a or something and you never know if he's gonna come back and be the same pitcher at least he made it but still it's like yes my career is just beginning i have made it my dream has come true and we're all excited to see max meyer and then oh he's gone now for who knows how long it's especially rough because it happened to seekstow too right yeah right i mean on the marlins shoulder wise right yeah less tj specifically than like catastrophic injury yeah I guess the good... If you want to find a silver lining out of the timing, him going down while on the big league roster

means that he's on the big league IL, and so will make big league money. And that part, I bet he's... Chris Service Tide. Right. And so that part, I bet he's stoked on. Yeah. That's a good point. That, you know, yes, this perhaps meaningfully alters his career trajectory, but at least in terms of how the next while unfolds, I think his material comfort will be meaningfully better than it would have been if he had blown out, you know, in AAA. Right.

But yeah, it definitely sucks sucks i don't know where if we made ben rank the worst times to get an injury i don't know where exactly it would fall in the top 10 but i think it would run on the last day it would i think that and the alex reyes one where he yeah that's like what the first day of spring training yeah i think that's right he's gonna like make his full season debut that'd be up there there's no good time but there's no good time but there are worse times the hype prospect goes down when he's about to deliver on the hype or maybe yeah it's definitely the worst feeling one yeah that part definitely sucks well that sounds like a much less fun series than the trade value rankings So we should talk about those and trades in general because, hey, we've got a trade deadline coming up next week,

Tuesday, August 2nd, for some reason. Yeah. So let's talk, I guess, what has happened thus far, which is very little. Joe Sheehan wrote a piece this week in his newsletter about how this has been a very slow lead-up to the trade deadline relative to recent years. And I think he wrote that mostly before the Benintendi trade, but that is still

the biggest, most notable deal that has happened thus far. So there hasn't been a huge one. There haven't been many trades. And all of this, I guess, is sort of a referendum on, oh, well, we've got this expanded playoff format and we all debated what this would mean for teams trying to get better. And so is this a reflection on that format or is it not? Or will we see a flurry of major moves being made? So of the things that have happened yet, I guess maybe briefly we could talk about Ben Attendee, who is not one of the top 50 most valuable trade chips, according to Ben Clemens's ranking, not even an honorable mention. And that was reflected in the fact that the Yankees got him for three pitching prospects

who were not among their best pitching prospects and are not even among the Royals' top prospects. Although in their case, I think a lot of people sort of offered condolences to pitching prospects who went from Yankees organization to the Royals organization, given that organization's recent track record when it comes to pitcher development. They all had really interesting names, so that was something. Beck Way. Beck Way. TJ Sikama.

Sikama. And Chandler Champlain yeah that's two ch's with different pronunciation yeah sounds like a uh like a senator from a southern state in a novel or something i assume i have not heard this pronounced who knows maybe he goes by champlain chandler champlain he's a champ could be chandler. Shandler. Shandler. Champlain. Who knows? See, now I'm going to get it wrong for the rest of his career.

Sorry. This is like when I goofed up. This is like when I goofed up Bauman around Mitch Hanager and it took him two seasons to recover. How did you say it? Hanager, maybe? I think I maybe said Hanager because I was unaware of how wrong I was. And then Bauman was like, is that?

Have I been? I don't know what's going on. So I guess the interesting takeaways from this trade are that A, not being vaccinated, apparently not an impediment to a trade to a contender. There's been various reporting suggesting that Ben Tendi might get Vax, but he came out and said he still has the same stance, that he hasn't made a decision yet. So I don't know if they're waiting a while, like if he's waiting to like make it less obvious that, oh yeah, I wasn't going to get Vax for the Royals, but now that I'm with

a good team that's actually going to go to the playoffs and could potentially play the Blue Jays in meaningful games. Now I will. I don't know. Maybe like there's peer pressure because that entire clubhouse is vaccinated as opposed to the Royals clubhouse, where a significant portion of it was not and is not. Anyway, that apparently wasn't a deal breaker because that deal got done. I guess the Yankees only have like, what, one series left in Toronto, I think, for the rest of the season. That's right. And probably that will not have division implications unless the Yankees keep slumping and the Poochies keep streaking.

Who knows? Incredible comeback. they could play Toronto in the playoffs, but are maybe less likely just based on the seating and everything to have an extended matchup there where they could potentially play a lot of games in Toronto. But anyway, that was sort of surprising because I think one of the initial news items in the wake of the Royals, just everyone being unvaxxed, revelation was that teams were out of the Benintendi market now, or even specifically the Yankees were. And that was not the case, I guess. You know, maybe he was listening to team leader Whit Merrifield, who said, if what was standing between me and the playoffs was this vaccine, I would consider getting it. Exactly. I didn't say I would get it for another team or

wouldn't get it for this team. It was simply the point I was showing about how much I value playing in the playoffs. Yeah. So the other interesting thing is that the Yankees wanted Andrew Benintendi despite already having Joey Gallo. I know that both of those guys were in the lineup, I believe, in the first game that Benintendi was with the Yankees playing the Royals, which is kind of awkward, I guess, although maybe it saved him playing fair. I don't know. But that is interesting just because entering the season, you probably would have said, well, I'd rather have Joey Gallo than Andrew Penitentiary. So now Gallo is probably on the market, which that's got to be an interesting

trade discussion too. It's like, hey, do you want Joey Gallo? We are a contending team and we just traded for someone we like better, it than joey gallo so uh what will you give us for joey gallo the guy that we a contending team no longer really want to play but it's interesting because like even if you go by the projections like joey gallo still projects to be as good or probably better than ben intendee right right? Like just going by the Fangraph's depth charts, offensive projections right now, Gallo still has a higher projected WRC plus than Benintendi. So you could say this has been like the worst possible Gallo

that we could imagine and the best possible Benintendi. Like, you know, Benintendi has a 362 BABIP this year. Like he has a high batting average, especially in this era. He's got a good on-base percentage, but very little power. And so if the batted ball stopped bouncing as well, then maybe that value falls a little bit. And if Joey Gallo could regain any of his former gallowness, then he could be good again. But apparently the Yankees are betting on that not being the case, it seems like.

So it's like, well, we got swept by the Mets. Let's make a deal. Let's get Andrew Benintendi. I mean, it meant that they didn't have to get Tyler Naquin. Yeah, right. So I guess that's good. That's the guy you get when you win that series, when you sweep the Mets. Right, you're like, listen.

We don't really need Benintendi. Yeah, you know what the cherry on top of this is is naquin yeah naquin cherry yeah so like what are the odds though that benintendi outproduces gallo like for the rest of the season because like i know gallo has looked very bad and he hasn't really struck out way more than he has struck out in the past which is a ton but he just hasn't hit the ball as hard and i guess he hasn't really struck out way more than he has struck out in the past, which is a ton. But he just hasn't hit the ball as hard. And I guess he hasn't been quite as selective. And maybe he's been pressing a little bit.

And so, you know, like Joey Gallo has always been a low average slugger. But now he is a low average guy who is slugging 339. And also his average is 159. So even his isolated power is not that great. Like, you know, even if you're Joey Gallo, you probably need to bat above 160 to make things work, even in 2022. So it hasn't been great,

but like he has a track record of being quite a good hitter for quite a while. He is, I believe, the same age, basically, as Benintendi. So it's kind of an interesting swap. Like, they didn't trade them one for one or anything. But if it's the Yankees are saying, well, we traded for Gallo last year, and now we've decided that we want Benintendi instead. Like, I wonder how big the actual true talent difference between them is. I know I'm not supposed to believe in this because of where I work and all, but can't

he just not play in New York? Doesn't it just sound like he can't play in New York? Gallo. It doesn't seem like he... It doesn't seem like a comfy spot for him, no. It's like path dependent, right? It felt like he'd be good, but he just struggled at the start.

And people seem to really not like him. Yeah. I remember talking about like when he first got there. I think we talked about in this podcast, like how was Joey Gallo not here before? Right. Because he was like immediately embraced and the whole like Italian thing. You know, Lindsay Adler getting the great photo of him. Yeah. Right.

And it was like, oh, Joey Gallo, like he's destined to be a great beloved Yankee. And then, no, not so much. Yeah, yeah. I was ready to be doing like, hey, I'm slugging here, like memes for years and years. And then it just didn't work out.

I think the line from Dan's write-up of this trade that I found the most like, is that Gallo has been about 80% more likely to swing at an out-of-zone pitch this season than he was last season. I mean, you brought up the pressing point. I think that we can look at last year and attribute some of his underperformance after the trade to weird BABIP stuff,

but it does seem like the approach has fallen apart in a pretty meaningful way when the margins around contact are as thin as his. I don't know. I don't know that this trade, I don't know that they had to replace Gallo to matter in the postseason. This is the Yankees team from 2022.

They're really good. I don't know if Benintendi but yeah you know like makes a super meaningful difference but I think that given what little they gave up from a prospect perspective particularly for an organization that just seems to be able to churn out good pitching prospects whenever they want to like if you think that this is a marginal upgrade like i think that that's fine and he's pen and tendy was apart from soto like probably the best outfield that available question mark yeah maybe yeah i mean i saw that some people were saying like oh he fits well in that lineup because they have all these sluggers and this is a guy who will like set the table and he's

just more of a contact guy and you know gets on base and everything and Aaron Boone was asked about that and he said it's fake news he said it's fake news that we have too many power hitters too many sluggers that's fake we've got savages in the lineup and really good hitters Benintendi's a great hitter Boone I think to his, has consistently over the years refuted the idea that having a lot of power hitters is bad necessarily. I know at the margins, if you were to simulate it, there might be something to like, if you had a bunch of low average, high strikeout, high power type guys in the lineup all back to back to back, maybe there would be some marginal disadvantage to that.

But when most of the hitters are as good as the Yankees are, then it probably doesn't matter all that much. But just some of those guys haven't been hitting of late. Like the Yankees offense has been slumping. The Yankees as a whole have been slumping. That's fine. It just means that they may not challenge a single-season wins record or anything, but they're still in pretty good shape, I would say. But there was one email we got from a listener and Patreon supporter, Jeremy, who had a theory about Gallo.

He said, Joey Gallo has had a pretty miserable season. That was not the theory. That is fact, I would say. I'm curious how much of that can be explained by better pitching or better scouting slash pitching approach in a better division. Would we be able to find any trends from previous seasons Wow, really? than the average hitter. And I guess there's some support for that hypothesis, that it's not like he can't play in New York, but maybe he can't play as well against good teams, which is basically he does have a horrible career line against Houston.

160, 265, 346. That is a 54 TOPS+. So that is his worst production against any opponent he's faced in more than 50 plate appearances career, which like the Astros have been really good during Joey Gallo's career. So I don't know that it's like that big a surprise, but he has been really bad against them. unusual split against power pitchers versus finesse pitchers as baseball reference defines those things so he is a tops plus career of 71 against power pitchers and 126 against finesse pitchers compared to like 84 and 112 respectively for the league as a whole last year or 85 and 111 this year so among all hitters and then yes i use the stat head tool. So among all hitters, and then, yes, I use the stat head tool for this among all hitters with at least 700 career plate appearances against power pitchers, his OPS against those power pitchers divided by his OPS against all pitchers is 33rd lowest ever.

So maybe there's something to the idea that like good pitching can get Joey Gallo more so than bad pitching or that he's more liable to feast on bad pitching. I don't know if that's enough to establish that conclusively, but I suppose it does lend a little support to Jeremy's hypothesis here. So I'll give you one quick counterpoint to the Astros point, which is interesting. Another team that he's done very poorly against in a big chunk of at-bats is the noted pitching powerhouse the baltimore orioles they play in a stadium at least until this year that was 10 feet by 10 feet and have a bunch of bad pitchers who aren't like really major league caliber but are just there anyway because the orioles don't want major league pitchers or in the past and yet he's done really poorly against them i feel like those splits are just kind of often noise.

Like I know last year I looked into Tyler O'Neill not being able to hit good pitching. And it was like, oh, this year he's been really bad against good pitching. But then I looked at the previous year and he'd been really good against good pitching. And it doesn't really feel like that's very stable. Yeah, no. It wouldn't shock me if someone like Gallo was the way you could prove it because he's so extreme. Yeah, right. And he does have more than twice as many play appearances against the Astros than he does the Orioles, but it's still 309.

So I don't know how much you can really read into that. Well, and also isn't part of the question about better sort of scouting and pitching approach stuff from AL East teams, right? and pitching approach stuff from AL East teams, right? So I would imagine if the acumen mismatch there is what Jeremy is thinking. I'll say this to pick on Jeremy. Sorry, Jeremy. You know, like the Yankees famously play in that division and have their own like scouting and advance work.

So you would think that they would have been like, oh no, Joey sucks. Why would we trade for him? So I think it's probably just unfortunate flukiness around a player who doesn't have the same margin for error because of the extremity of his approach that some other guys might. So is it notable at all that the Benintendi trade, at least as we speak here on Friday afternoon, is the biggest that has happened thus far that not much else has gone down.

There are rumors, obviously, like, you know, we're going to talk about trade value and some of the most valuable trade candidates and very few of those, if any, typically get dealt, although this year might be an exception. But what do you make of this market as a whole, Ben, if you make anything of it, just in terms of like, is it going to be interesting? Is it going to be busy? Are there like teams whose decisions in the next few days intrigue you especially? This is only partially because I'm a Cardinals fan. I think the Cardinals are in a really interesting spot. They're perhaps the team where I feel like they have the most writing and the most likely to

change. It's definitely no coincidence that they're literally flying the entire front office and ownership to DC this weekend for their series with the nationals. I think it's a coincidence that it's the nationals, but they clearly intend to make a lot of moves if they're doing that, as opposed to just working in St. Louis where presumably they all live. They're actually like taking the traveling circus on the road. I think that suggests that they'll be making a lot of trades and talking to the team and all that kind of stuff. They seem like they have interesting decisions to make.

The Padres, same kind of deal where I don't actually know if they need to make decisions, but it seems like they want to. And the Mariners should, I think, try to improve because that would be fun and they should really make the playoffs. I don think try to improve because that'd be fun and they should really make the playoffs i don't get the sense that this year is there have definitely been fewer trades i yeah i haven't looked at the numbers but i'm confident that's right and like you said joe was writing about it i do think that uh some of this thing maggie's told me repeatedly and i agree with her is that soda's holding up the outfield market a little bit

yeah i think he's gumming up the works here like Like, you don't really want to trade for Ramon Laureano. Get him. And then the next day, Soto gets dealt. And you're like, ah! Like, Ramon's nice, but I like Juan Soto more, and I was trying to trade for him. And I feel like a lot of teams are seeing whether Soto moves and then going to trade for outfielders after that.

And I wonder if kind of the same deal is happening with pitchers and the Reds guys, and to a lesser extent frankie montas but i don't know there's usually good players at the deadline and that hasn't held us up in prior years yeah i i do wonder how much soto is affecting not just the outfield market but also the the broader market among the contenders generally because and we'll i imagine talk about this when we talk about his placement on the top 50 but like that it would be very surprising if the team that trades for soto is not a contender this year like not firmly in their competitive window and those are also the same clubs that i think are going to have the greatest incentive to, to try to get someone like Castillo and the exact prospect hole and mix of,

of big leakers that move for Soto obviously is going to be, I imagine meaningfully larger than it will be for Castillo. But like, if you're, I don't know if you're St. Louis and you want, want Soto, but you also wouldn't mind having like another, you know, really good pitcher lying around. Cause your, your staff is thin and injured at times. Some of the guys that you would move for Soto are also the same guys you might move for Castillo, and you can't clone them.

So you need the Soto stuff to resolve before you know where you stand with other meaningful sort of marquee guys. What do you think the playoff format does to the market, if anything? Because you wrote about that in a forward-looking sense, I think, when various playoff formats were being discussed. But just the fact that, obviously, there are more teams that are theoretically in the running or aren't so far away from the nearest playoff berth. And then you also have a lot of incentive to win the division. You get a bye through that first round. You also, I guess, have the potential for a three-game series as a wildcard team instead of just being one and done.

So there are a few different things that could affect your willingness to go in for things. So if you're, like, the Giants, let's say, who are, I think, three games out of a wildcard spot, you know, like, is that worth something to you to go after that? Is it not? There are a lot of teams in that mix. So has this depressed the market or has it actually enhanced the market or neither? Or is it too soon to say? I mean, I guess it's too soon to say just because like last year was a similar deal where everything happened on the last day. Yeah. And I don't know how exactly things will shake out after August 2nd.

Having it later is also a little bit weird. I don't know how much that matters, but it is just like later in the calendar mathematically. I guess the season started later too. So it does feel like the whole calendar has been shifted slightly i thought dan zimborski did a really good kind of mathematical look at this after the format was announced and found that it was pretty close to the other format that it was like a good 12 game format for incentivizing good teams to get better and also didn't meaningfully change the incentives of the wild card adjacent teams so i think from perspective, that would imply that it should be around the same. Maybe more teams will do like what I would consider the Dodgers strategy of taking your

already good team and trying to improve it because that gives you a lot of playoff equity. But I don't think it's going to be meaningfully different than before. I do like the system a lot giving rewards to the top two teams. I think that's smart. Yeah. Joe said in his piece, I expect that we'll see either a return of the waiver deadline or more likely moving back the main one to the middle of August to account for the increased uncertainty more wildcard slots create. Front offices don't want hard decisions. They want decisions made for them by the standings. I think it was Emma Batchelor tweeted the other day that it's on August 2nd at all because Rob Manfred in the new CBA has some ability to choose the day. Yeah, I think he has a weak range that he's able to put it in.

And I don't know why he decided on that particular day because it could have been even a day later, I think, right? August 3rd, I think, was the latest day it could have been. It's toward the end of that range. I don't know if this is why, but I could see why just because there's such a jumble. We were talking just earlier this week, Meg, about what do the Red Sox do? And it's like, well, maybe it depends how they play this weekend or something. So just trying to wait until the last possible second to get as much information you can, especially if you're making some major move potentially. I could see why people might want to wait a bit.

Just, you know, like the waiver change because teams can't really make the same sort of trades that they used to make later in August. You'd think that that would front load the trade activity that we'd be seeing more happen. But that hasn't been the case at least so far this season. So I guess we will see and we'll be talking early next week or middle of next week about what actually happened, but we should talk a little bit about the trade value series. And Ben, just to refresh everyone's memories, do you want to lay out what the conceit is here and summarize your process. Yeah. The conceit of the trade value series is that it's fun to rank,

like, the players in baseball who had fetched the most in a trade for the last, I don't know, like, 11 years, 10 years? Something like that. Yeah, something like that. I think it's been at least 10. Decade-ish. Yeah. Fangraphs has done that around the trade deadline every year.

It doesn't normally need to sync up with the trade deadline because in an average year, it's like Mike Trout number one. And like, okay, cool. The Angels aren't trading him. He wants to stay there. And most of the top players never get traded. But the idea is just through some combination of data and my opinion and like some cross checking with teams, I would say a variable amount over time.

What are the best trade chips in baseball? If everyone was put up on a trade auction tomorrow, who would people be willing to trade the most for? It is inherently pretty speculative. You know, teams don't actually probably have this list because why would they? It's not particularly useful for them. Like it just doesn't matter where Jose Ramirez falls now that he's not being traded. And I think it kind of happens on a case by case basis with teams like,

Oh, this guy's available. Let's see how good we think he is. That kind of thing. But it's fun. It's fun to put everyone on one list. And yeah, that's basically the point of it is to put everyone on one list.

Like, Hey, if you, if your guy could have this guy on his current, if your team could have this guy on his current contract and you get one, who would you want? And okay. Like, is this guy on his current, if your team could have this guy on his current contract and you get one, who would you want? And okay. Like is this guy better than that guy? Everyone loves saying is this guy better than that guy basically. And that's the genesis of the list about my process. So actually I want to tell you about a new method I invented this year that I think is

really solid and that more people should use when making lists in general. Okay. So the first thing to do is do a lot of data gathering and research so in my case i cajoled dan zimborski into giving me five-year zips projections for the top i don't know 100 110 or so players in baseball i took a bunch of projections that i found various places i used some research i'd done on average arbitration payouts to make kind of an expected salary grid and i use that with some random weightings not random but like some was weighted in terms of like whether a player would deliver excess value relative to free agent market some was how good they're going to be next year because

i think teams care about that and the better you are next year the more they're willing to give up some was uh length of team control and that matters a lot as well so i blended those and came up with a like kind of a metrics based first pass okay so this is the important step uh the next step was that i drank two beers that's actually really key to this and i i ranked them one through 50 and then i saved that in a spreadsheet and then I forgot about it for a weekend. I actually went on vacation to Hawaii. I'm liking a lot of the parts of this process. Going to Hawaii part sounds great. Sounds great.

Then I came back. And without looking at that old list I'd made, I made another list of 50. And then I looked at the comparisons of the two. And I think that gave me a good, like, hey, why did I think this about this guy? Why did I think that about that guy? And they mostly agreed. Like, they agreed in large in large part and like the the top was the same and the cuts were in roughly the same place where it's like these guys are incredible these guys are pretty good these guys are top 50 trade values but very clearly not in the top 10 but the differences

really kind of helped sharpen my mind and also i feel like when i'm making a list there's some like i guess path dependency is the right word we're like because i put this guy here then i put this guy here but if i had looked at them in a different order i might have put them different places so by doing it twice and like not completely remembering the first time like being a little buzzed in a different state of mind that actually helped i think quite a bit can i ask who benefited the most from two beers do you remember why i'm trying to think i i think uh o'neill cruz benefited the most from two beers that's great he's just so big and fast i there was a comment this week that you gotta you gotta look skeptically at some of the guys who don't have good stat cast metrics in the majors so far like o'neill cruz and i was like what what he's mr stat cast um yeah but and from there i i sent it to some people that we know who work for teams i sent some people we know who are baseball

analysts in the public side i sent it to the fangraph staff kind of just socialized the list around and had them tell me where i was being stupid or where i was overrating or underrating someone by a lot we tried to figure out names i was missing because it's just there's just so many baseball players yeah just so many there's so many good baseball players too right that it's fairly i think our greatest fear with this exercise is not that we have like wildly misjudged the value of a player but that we have forgotten someone entirely who should be on there. Like that is the thing that keeps me up at night before we go live with the honorable mentions. Because once that happens, we're like locked in to a population of people.

Right. Yeah. So it's not one for one, a list of the best players in baseball. There's no Aaron Judge on this list, even though he is on pace to hit 63 home runs, which is ridiculous. That would be the American League record. I am looking forward to following that over the next couple of months. But those couple of months are the only months that stand between him and free agency. So if the Yankees were for some reason to decide to trade Aaron Judge right now, which would be quite controversial, I think. We have interbenitendi now. Who needs Aaron Judge? Yeah, I don't think it works that way. But if they thought, well, we cannot re-sign Aaron Judge, we tried to sign him to an extension and it didn't work out,

so we're just going to deal him. Well, you wouldn't get as much as you would for the players you ranked, even though he is unbelievable and is in the middle of this incredible record chase. He is about to be a free agent. So a lot of this skews toward team control years. And so, like, O'Neal Cruz is a good example, right? Because you noted in your blurb for him that it was really hard to place him. And that's because it's hard to figure out what O'Neal Cruz is going to be. And we talked about this when he first came up.

He had that great game where he just like ran really fast and hit a ball really hard and threw a ball really hard. And all of those things were really impressive. But as we noted at the time, like they don't undo his weaknesses and vulnerabilities as a player. We know he has these great physical skills and tools, but he also has some issues with his game. And those have shown up because he's actually been a below average MLB hitter so far this year. So, like, how do you decide where to put him? Because he's so talented and he's just so under team control that you have to have him somewhere. but he could end up being one of the best players in baseball or he could end up like making you look silly a few years down the road

because it turns out that he doesn't have the plate discipline or whatever to actually be a star. Yeah. I did a few things to try to account for that. One is I look at past trade returns and see the styles of players that teams tend to covet the most, which is to say like I think teams want big upside when they have like team control guys that are less established, but also like kind of cheap.

People really like high upside there. I take projections into account. I think you kind of have to because like that just matters. Like, yeah, O'Neill Cruz has a pretty decent track record of minor league success prior to this year. And it's fair to wonder how much of this year was just kind of weird for him knowing that the team essentially specifically said, we're going to keep you down to work on your outfield defense, then didn't play him in the

outfield because it was obvious that that's not why they were keeping him down. I could imagine that messing with his mind state, but either way, like even accounting for this year, the minor league projections are pretty good. I think at the the end it's just always going to be a bit subjective that is a reason in favor of just making these tiers instead of uh specific numbers but people love numbers i don't know if you've ever tried to make lists before ben i assume you have just like and if you publish the two beers slash hawaii method although i'd like to. That is a method that I highly recommend, but I think it's proprietary to me until now. I've never told anyone about this before.

But people don't like tier groupings as much as they like lists. They like lists. They want to have one guy, and then he's next to another guy, and you can say, I like this guy more and this guy less, and no, I like this guy more and this guy less. So I think that O'Neill Cruz fits squarely in this tier of like really high upside. And like Riley Green, I think is actually kind of similar. Really high upside.

And we don't actually know what he's going to be like. He could be unplayable in the majors. It's certainly possible. Same with Cruz. Or they could be superstars. Those two kind of stood out and made the list when other prospects who easily could have been in the same group didn't. Largely because I feel like I have a better grasp of how people value them. I bet you there are some prospects who I included as honorable mentions who are actually in the top 50.

But I just have less information about those people. There's less information available to you when they haven't debuted in the majors and seen some of the data, basically. And teams just have way more information than I do. And they're also not going to tell me if I call them up and say, Hey, who's your favorite prospect? Who should I put in the top 50? Like, I don't actually think I would get meaningful responses there. And so I kind of discounted them, even though maybe they would fit in and Cruz and Green were just the ones who kind of snuck through because they have some major league track record and they have unique profiles. I wanted to ask about the honorable mentions because, you know,

as we try to take pains to say when we put out both the honorable mentions and then the first couple of tiers of players, like as you noted, there isn't necessarily a ton of difference between the 35th ranked player and the 50th. And if we extended the rankings further than that, probably not a ton of difference between the 40th ranked player and the 50th. And if we extended the rankings further than that, probably not a ton of difference between the 40th ranked player and the 60th or even 70th. So the margins can get kind of small and ordinal rankings make them seem like they're a lot bigger. Of the honorable mention set,

does anyone stand out to you, you know, other than the prospects where we have this information mismatch? That's really hard to say. I tried two times. We're going to leave that one in. But like, that was hard for me anyway. And we are just not fully aware of how teams are valuing them. Is there anyone in that honorable mentions tier who you anticipate either being an obvious inclusion next year or you're worried was perhaps a miss that you'll look back on and say,

ah, I should have had that person at 50. Yeah, I wish I had Chandler Champlain in there. Just to try to make me say it. Basically, yes. There are three players who I'm most like, I wonder if that guy could have been on the list right now. One is Michael Harris II, and he was not that far off the list. I think basically if I had started compiling it three weeks later, he probably would have been in like the 46 to 50 range.

And there was some anchoring bias to the fact that he's been good in those three weeks. He was good in those three weeks since. that that definitely kind of affects my perception there but i think he would have been right at home in there and i don't think he has the same kind of upside as green and cruise but upside is inherently tricky to forecast you know like anyone who really says they know who has the most upside is kidding themselves so just putting him there as a person who has succeeded in the major leagues, who is young and will be on the team for a long time. I would not be angry if I had done that.

I don't think there's really much difference between where I ranked him and where I would rank him if I could do it again, but it's the kind of name where you could sneak him onto the top 50, take off someone kind of boring, no offense to whoever I would take off for him. Randy Rosarena, maybe boring now because he's no longer a postseason joe dimaggio and just have the interesting guy on there in case he pops next year uh so i would put him on there terek scoogle for the same reason he also we didn't put him on

the honorable mention list not because he wasn't an honorable mention but because when i went and grouped all these people up there wasn't a group that he fit into and then he just kind of fell onto the cutting room floor and didn't get into any list i don't i don't think he would have made the list to be honest but he probably should have been on there and i lied i'm actually gonna give you two more people uh one rafael devers yeah i'm not gonna lose sleep over that one because he only has a year and a half left on his contract and i think that will really limit his trade return but he's great and I think I should have done more mentioning that he's great I guess I called him Juan Soto with every lever turned down

slightly in the honorable mention write-up he did so you know that's nice but yeah I think Devers could have been on there and I wouldn't have looked weirdly at it and Andres Jimenez was on there and I took him off at the end and yeah I don't know if he was 48 maybe people would have complained less about him not being on there I I think he's pretty good. Kind of doubt the power is real. I think those are the guys where in a year I'll be like, oh, like they were probably top 50 people and I should have made it a top 54. But unlike Eric, I don't like making lists of non-round numbers. So speaking of unique players, you did have to put Shohei Otani somewhere and you couldn't split him into Shohei the pitcher, Shohei the hitter. You had to figure out how to put the combined Shohei Otani, who theoretically is also on the trade market. I know there was a report in the New York Post by John Hammond and Joel Sherman on Thursday, which basically amounted to the Angels are not hanging up the phone. which basically amounted to the angels are not hanging up the phone if people are calling them to ask about Otani now. It still put the likelihood of an Otani trade at the deadline as very slim or almost zero, but it is not impossible.

It sounds like one of the executives who's quoted here anonymously said they want something like your top four prospects, which I guess makes sense, but does that change your of of where he would go and where did he go i guess we should say that too yeah i believe i had him 26th i think i mentioned this in my write-up i left him off of all my first lists because i don't know like it's just if i'm sending this list around to people and trying to compare it they're talking to other players it's just like so impossible he's nothing like anyone else and one of the best methods for doing this is to think like for like like oh would i rather have sean murphy or will smith well will smith obviously so like okay let's separate them and i'd like much rather have will smith so let's separate them by a decent amount like who's like shohayatani yeah no one so it was very difficult i don't have any confidence in this ranking.

Why would I? Like, it's an unprecedented trade situation. I don't think that war necessarily does a great job of capturing his value. I don't think that years of service are, like, service time left is as important with Otani because he's just, like, so unique. as important with otani because he's just like so unique and i very much hesitated about projecting into the future because like he's like a fragile beautiful snowflake it seems really hard to do what he's doing and it would shock no one if he started pitching less frequently or like took some more days off dh it's incredible how he's doing what he's doing and you can't really forecast him for that reason but it wouldn't be shocking to me if you were in the top 10 for trade return because again like there are no other shogunatani's right so i just i just don't know uh if he gets your top

four prospects that means that either the white socks got him or he should be higher on the list i don't think that he will fetch that the white socks farm system is not great sorry yeah that's the that's the joke if people are like, why is Meg laughing at that? It's because, yeah, that farm is bad. And it also doesn't have any obvious spike top end like some of the other bad farm systems. I don't know. I don't think he will move.

I think that request is more of a, you know, somebody calls you up and they ask what you want for I don't know, your favorite t-shirt or something. I don't know why they would do this. You just name something arbitrarily up and they ask what you want for, I don't know, your favorite t-shirt or something. I don't know why they would do this. And you just name something arbitrarily high so they'll stop bothering you. Someone calls you up and asks you what you would want for the first pick in a fantasy draft.

And you say, well, I'd want your first pick and your second pick and your third pick and your fourth pick. So, like, okay, then they don't call you anymore. I kind of get the sense that what would it take for Otani? Well, let's start with your top four prospects is kind of that. get the sense that uh what would it take for a tani well let's start with your top four prospects is kind of that like stop calling us with these crappy offers for like a guy at the back end of the top hundred plus a team control outfielder right yeah i mean i don't know the angels are just so unwatchable without him right now i mean not only is he the reigning mvp and possibly a leading mvp contender again this season. But he's unique, as we said.

He's making all kinds of history left and right. And he is a star and would probably be a bigger star if he were to go almost anywhere else. And he does increase attendance and would be a draw. So he helps you in that sense, too. And he's just not paid much at all still. And so he's extremely valuable but it's almost like if you're the angels yes i guess it could be tempting like if you do decide well we just

give up like we we tried to make a good team with otani and trout we just couldn't do it and it's not going to happen and now trout is hurt too we might as well just like get a head start on actually trying to build a good team again but i almost feel like with him it's just he is so much fun to watch and such a great fan experience especially if you're a team like that with with trout out and rendon out and everyone they're missing it's just like it's such a boring bland team except for this one guy who is just the most entertaining player like ever potentially it's just that lineup i mean it's just like full of like replacement level guys and every day there's like a new jonathan vr or like magnuri sierra or like phil gosselin's back it's just like oh boy and hey magnuri sierra is is getting you some minor league free agent draft points. Oh, well, that's true.

Keep playing him. But yeah, I mean, it's just like if you are giving your fans the experience of getting to watch this guy do things that no one has ever done and may never do again, then it's almost like, well, what else are we offering as an entertainment product right now? So like that seems very reasonable. I think that's kind of an issue with valuing stars in general, where they maybe get underrated if you're just doing a dry accounting of it. If you do a dry accounting of it, Otani shouldn't be on this list. He's only under contract for another year. And there's no one else on the list who's only under contract for another year. But he's like a circus, and it's awesome.

He will bring fans out, and he'll make your team interesting. And if your team is in the playoffs, it's going to be the biggest draw, and it's awesome. Right. And he will bring fans out. Yeah. And he'll make your team interesting. And if your team is in the playoffs, it's going to be the biggest draw and everyone will root for you. Yeah. I think a lot of that stuff matters. And trying to figure out how much front offices care about it and how much different front offices care about it, because obviously they're all run differently, is not easy. Right. Yeah. It's like if he were traded to a good team right now, I know it's extremely unlikely. Pick one.

Like just a random one. Like you could pick the Seattle Mariners this one. Sure. You could be like, hey, you know what's a good team? The Seattle Mariners. What would make them better? Show Ohtani. They should do that.

Well, imagine how much fun that would be. Because like I think the vast majority of the fun of Ohtani is the same regardless of where he's playing. If he were playing for the worst team in baseball, and he's not far from that right now. I was going to say. In this extraordinarily unlikely hypothetical where he's playing for a terrible team. No, I mean, we have seen that. But he has been the most fun player that I've ever seen regardless of the fact that he has not been on a good team yet in the majors. And I think if if he were on like I don't know if he were on like the mid tanking Astros or Orioles or something like that'd be hard for them to be that bad with him.

But still, like the vast majority of the enjoyment I get from him is just him doing his thing, whether he's doing it surrounded by other good players or not. It's still amazing. But if he were doing it in a place where like he got a little more competitive juice out of it, because it's not just testing himself, but also a team effort and then also potentially getting to see him do it in the playoffs, that'd be fun. That would be a lot of fun. So I don't think that'll happen, but it would be a lot of fun. Yeah, I totally agree. It just, I think that's what makes this inherently kind of difficult. I'll give you an example. If the twins called up the angels and said, I'll trade you Luis Arise for Shoya Itani, the angels would say, no, bye.

Thank you. Nice call. If you were to look at it in terms of like, how many war are you going to get? What are you going to pay for it? Arise is clearly a better bet because he's just he's going to be there a lot longer and but i don't know like otani is just so unique and different teams would probably value that differently but i bet you every team would give up a lot for him and i did one i did worry that i put him too low for sure because he's just so unique yeah and so great i don't know i think

we're just all saying the same thing yeah i will say like the contrast between otani and kirk is just funny it's like funny to have them back to back um so i think it's probably time for us to talk about juan soto now now it's probably time for us to talk about juan soto because as ben lindbergh noted like it's very unusual for us to have a guy in the top 10 who is like actively on the market in that moment that doesn't happen very often because once we get to that point a lot of those guys are just either not going to move or they're not moving at the deadline but then we have Juan Soto who's probably uh going to move is definitely the biggest name on the trade market right now and so I am curious

how you thought about placing him because we know him to be actually available. And we have all seen the somewhat serious but also somewhat joking trade packages that have been circulated in conjunction with him or attached to him. So talk about the Juan Soto of it all. Yeah, I think Soto is probably a unique case in like analytical baseball history, like since the time where we've had as much information about the players as they play on the public side as we do now, where someone this young and this good will get traded.

I guess you could say the Miguel Cabrera trade is somewhat similar, but not really. And there's just not much like this. So that was always going to make him a tough placement. On the other hand, we do have tools for thinking about how to value valuable players and stars. We've had people this good on the list who weren't likely to be traded before. And I think it's pretty clear that his production and the fact that you would get him for two and a half more years, that's a lot. That's not nothing.

You know, it's not like he's going to be a free agent next year. And so this is a rental of a very great player. It gives you kind of a rough idea for an area that he should be in, which is among the top 20 players. I think if you didn't put much value in the fact that he is available versus most of these people aren't, or the fact that he's the very best projected player by the blend of projections we used, but also by zips, if you didn't put any value for that, I think he would be a pretty squarely top 20 somewhere guy. And so then the question just becomes, well, how much do these soft factors matter?

Uh, one thing that I, I thought about a lot and that people also mentioned to me as being something worth thinking about, which gives me confidence that it's real is that you should value at some number, some non-zero amount of value. The fact that you get two and a half years to convince one soda to sign an extension with you,

right? Because he's on a hall of fame trajectory and like an inner circle hall of fame trajectory now will he stay on that trajectory obviously too soon to tell we we don't know that and that's that's kind of the interesting thing about all this but a player the likes of which you've never been able to acquire and trade before there's a chance that you'll be able to acquire this guy and trade without having to have been lucky enough or skilled enough to have on your team and then hand him some money and then he'll stay on your team for forever. That's a rare thing in baseball, right? Like it's an exclusive negotiating window with one of the very best players of our generation for sure when he's 23.

You just don't get that unless you're lucky enough to have him on your team and so you should value that at something if you look at the way that good teams operate these days well there's a lot of different ways to win but one model that i think people don't credit enough is what i'll call the cardinals model but it's really the dodgers model too and really a lot of teams with both budgets and smart front offices do this. The Astros model, you know, you can give it a lot of different names is if you're very good at developing useful players, and I guess the Giants kind of fit into this too, but lots of teams fit into this.

If you're good at developing useful players and you have money, well, shouldn't you just trade for the stars that you know are stars? And like, you're good at developing useful players. You'll be able to surround them. You're're not the angels let's take that as a given here you're not the angels you're good at developing average players like the tommy edmonds of the world he's better than average but that kind of guy or uh like you can turn trace thompson into a useful player etc etc you're good at finding dustin mays i don't know i don't there's lots of teams that are good at finding players who can play in the major leagues.

And I think that the Cardinals are the best example of this because they've been bad at developing stars. They just don't have any homegrown stars of note in the past several years. But that's okay because they went out and got the two NL's war leaders this year, Goldschmidt and Arnauto, in trade. And that's awesome. If you can do that, you should, because you already know they're great. And so there's a bunch of value around Soto in that sense that, hey, if you can put some useful players around him, he's going to be great. And you might get to keep him for a long time. The combination of that and the fact that you're going to get three postseason series with this guy and also there's no other Juan Soto on the market so if everyone were up for trade all at once I

think you'd have finished lower on the list because you could just go trade for someone else like Juan Soto who will be on your team for another year like you go go get Jose Ramirez except obviously you can't right right the The Guardians aren't trading him. He's staying put. He has a full no trade clause and literally said he wanted to play his whole career in Cleveland. So he's not moving. But Soto is. And I think that if you assume that all of these guys are great bargains for your team, like that it's worth making these trades. And I think that that's kind of a given at this point in the list these guys are awesome then you should be willing to offer a bit more because there's no one else who you can get to replace him now i i'm not confident in that theory it seems very speculative and trying to put a hard number on it it's

difficult but i considered that in my ranking of soto i don't think that he is the uh he would fetch the sixth highest return if every player in baseball were forced to be traded tomorrow. But I do think that his status matters for that. Now, will he be traded? I don't know. I think one interesting thing I saw a discussion going on in the comments about this is, well, is he the best player or is he just the best hitter or maybe the second best hitter after Jordan Alvarez or third after Trout, let's say, somewhere in that range? Or is he more of a well-rounded guy? Because it's been tough to tell from year to year, right? Like his defensive stats are as variable as anyone's.

We talk all the time about, oh, single-year defensive stats and how they can fluctuate. But his, like just looking at his percentile rankings in outs above average, according to StatCast, like just looking at his percentile rankings in outs above average according to stat cast from 2018 to this year 7 89 14 90 1 he's been as high as the 90th percentile like twice basically and now literally first percentile like one of the worst defenders and we know that he hasn't been a good base runner either his sprint speed is down so it's weird because like last year it looked like oh not only is he an incredible hitter but maybe he's good at defense too and this year he's been abysmal it seems like so is that just like clearly he he seems to have the the level. So is it an effort level? Is it a self-preservation type thing? It reminds me, I remember writing about Bryce Harper's outfield defense his last year with the Nats before he was ready to hit free agency. And he was just not hey, you're about to sign in a huge contract here. Like, maybe don't hurt yourself or what.

But he did not seem to have the same effort level or results. And so with Soto, I don't know if it's that. I don't know if it's something else. But, like, you can't really find fault with his bat very much. I know he got off to a slow for him start this year as he did last year. And he turned it on then and he's turned it on a bit now and he has a 147 wrc plus with a 242 babbit so like yeah he's amazing yeah so like is he a bad defender or does it just like depend on the year or like hey he's with a bad team now

and maybe he's just not going all out i don don't know what it is exactly. But that makes it hard to project, like, how is he going to age? Like, I know Zips projects him to be, like, the best player in baseball, right? And it's— Yeah, narrowly ahead of Otani. And it's hard to do that if you are just a hitter, even if you are a great hitter. And so, like, Jordan Alvarez is projected to be one of the best players in baseball, too, but, like, not the best, even though he is maybe the best hitter. So that's the only question, I guess, about Soto. Is he, like, one-dimensional, even though that dimension is amazing?

So I have two things to say about this. First is that every time I talk to someone about this list, the first question I asked them when we got to Soto was, Hey, like, do you think Soto's a DH only, like a really bad defender? Are you worried about how bad he's been on defense this year? And everyone said no. Yeah. So I don't know what to make of that. And his defensive volatility is kind of startling.

Yeah. The fact that it has happened even when he's been on good teams. Yeah. Is very strange. 2018, I had mind a little less because he was, what, like 19 or something? Yeah, he was a rookie, yeah. And hadn't played above A ball, and that's tough. But yeah, the volatility is clearly worrisome

and definitely makes you say, I don't really know what to think of this guy's defense long-term. The other point, though, which I think is more relevant here is, I think whether you're average or below average at a corner is just less important than war would tell you when you're an elite hitter. If you are going to play first base or an inoffensive third base,

and you're a slightly above league average hitter, it really matters which of those two you play. Like you'd be much more useful as a inoffensive third baseman than as an inoffensive first baseman. If you're a, i don't know 110 wrc plus or ops plus or whatever batter where 100s average if you're a 170 batter i i don't care your team doesn't care either because like it's one thing if you play a plus shortstop but if if you're wondering between like a like inoffensive defense at a middling position and worse defense at a middling position and worse defense at a middling position

just no one cares like the the margins are just are not meaningful there i think that war is just maybe overstating like how much teams care between average left fielder and dh or you know the equivalent of that or average first baseman and average d. I don't actually think that teams care very much between there. It's just, there's not much. You're so far ahead of the offensive bar that teams will find a place to plug you in and not care too much. I think that matters for Alvarez too.

Yeah. Where, yeah, like sure, his war numbers will not be as high as if he played league average defense in right field. But, like, so? Does anyone actually think that makes him less valuable to a team? I don't think so. And I don't think teams think that either.

When you're just truly a standout bat like that, I think the bat just matters more. Now, if you're a standout premium position defender, that's very different. Yeah. Like, that's what was so amazing about mike trout when he was younger i don't really know if he's a premium premium position defender anymore but is that he was like an average or even plus center fielder in addition to being that bad right so if soto is going to suddenly start playing center field and you can argue that this is what makes aaron judge so neat is that he kind of can do that yeah right uh then

then we have a different story and there's a reason that everyone thinks Fernando Tatis is so great despite his injury issues it's because you might have that bat who can play a plus shortstop like that's uh that's very tempting but I just don't find the the distinction between average corner guy and DH that meaningful when you're such a good hitter. Yeah. Well, shortly before we started recording, Hector Gomez reported that the Nationals planned to make another offer to Juan Soto, which will be their last. If Soto does not accept, he will be traded before the deadline. So if that report is accurate, then one way or another, we will have an interesting discussion about Juan Soto coming up sometime soon. So you had Soto sixth, you had Alvarez fifth, you then had Julio fourth, and I'm just going to spoil the top three here. It's not spoilers,

it's been published already, but if you want to preserve the suspense while you're reading this list, fast forward a question. But your top three here with Julio at fourth. You had Fernando Tatis at third, Ronald Acuna second, and Wander Franco first. And what's interesting about that top trinity there is that none of them is having a very good year, at least by their standards. Tatis has not had a year at all. Acuna has missed some time, has come back, and has not been his best self. And then Franco has dealt with a number of injuries and is still dealing with them and so you still have them top three which i understand but how did you decide what to do with them because uh i think if a lot of people were

looking at a list like this they might expect to see people who were having better years at the top yeah i would not mind if you took the top five names in this list and shuffled it into any configuration. I think that there's a kind of clear bar there that those are the five guys that I think have the best trade value in baseball. I think you could even make the argument that Jordan is a clear fifth. I like him more than that. And if I were a GM, teams, if you want to hire me as a GM, I'm listening.

Sorry, Meg. Lower level, eh level yeah gm i'm in if you get a gm offer like i'll get it ben i'll understand i'll be sad but i'll get it yeah um if i were a gm i'd value jordan higher but i can understand your hesitation there of those top four guys they all just not warts, that's the wrong word, but they all have question marks. Like Julio Rodriguez has barely played in the major leagues, and he strikes out a lot and doesn't walk very much. He's great, and I think he's going to be great forever, and Zips' projections would, and all projections, honestly, would tell you that. And there's a reason that, you know, he is a rookie who is fourth on this list, and there are a lot of other rookies having good seasons who are not fourth. Like, there really is something to the fact that he is this talented, this young. Yeah.

And he's going to be on the Mariners for a long time yet to come. You could say he should be first. But then you could say, well, I don't know. Like, if he's not as good as his defensive metrics indicate. And I think if you asked scouts coming into this year, they didn't think he was a plus center fielder. They thought he was maybe a plus corner guy but yeah i didn't think that he really was going to be a an asset defensively in center and say oh well he's actually like a 120 wrc plus hitter instead of 137 which is entirely possible and still a good hitter and it's hard to tell

from his like he has really good contact quality and kind of middling approach. I think he's going to be a star, but there's obviously risks there. So is he number one? I mean, definitely could be, but the track record's short. Same deal with Tatis. If Tatis were healthy, he'd be number one with the bullet. I don't think there's any question about that, but he's not. And health is a big risk there.

I could see teams say he's not in my top 25 because he's owed $300 million and he hasn't played in a year. But I could see other teams saying, well, I will never be able to get a Fernando Tatis Jr. at all. And the rate is reasonable, actually, for a guy who's never played at a non-MVP level. It's kind of crazy, actually. If you look at a per-played appearance basis, he's one of the best players ever, legitimately post integration and i don't know like that matters for something too so he was a tough case but i didn't think you could put him number one he's been hurt too much macuna has been bad basically this year he's been fine he's hitting the ball really hard and striking out and walking at reasonable rates just he hasn't been up to his previous level of impressiveness and he's coming off an acl tear so there's obviously issues there with how healthy he'll be. And yeah, Franco has not

figured it out yet. I think this is probably the most question mark laden top four, top five in the list's history. I didn't look at every single one, but none of these players who are slam dunk yeses. And I don't think I could put any of them at number one and not say, I don't know, there's issues in this. In the end, I kind of went with two things as my differentiators. One is just length of team control. I think that matters a lot when you get into this tier of players who everyone pretty much accepts are likely to be good,

and it's useful to have a guy for a long time. And that was one of my biggest uh differentiators and that's the reason that i didn't feel comfortable ranking julio rodriguez first it's just yeah he's great but somehow he's not younger than franco right baffling and also he won't be on your team for as long as franco will and also like franco was the best prospect of all time, and his minor league numbers are better than Julio's, and he's still younger. Like, that stuff matters, and I don't think that his first exposure to the major leagues

was categorically different than Julio's, and so that makes you say, well, like, are we being captive to the moment? Maybe. And that worried me about ranking Julio first, basically. He's great, but I'd just like to see more. I don't think that's unreasonable, and I don't think it'd be unreasonable to have him first next year

if he keeps it up or gets a little bit better. But, yeah, it's very tough to figure out where to place these guys, and more than, I think, last year, where Kevin and I felt fairly comfortable putting Tatis number one. It's, I did not feel good about the ordering of these, and kind of wished that putting Tatis number one. Yeah. I did not feel good about the order of movies and kind of wished that it could be a tier.

It's funny because when we were, you know, people would probably be unsurprised to learn there was a lot of back and forth around this stuff because it's a big series for us and we want to feel good about it. And so we were pretty in the weeds on edits and rankings and what have you. And at one point, I think yesterday, I was like, man, I forgot how young Fernando Tatis Jr. is. So we just haven't seen him play. And the way that the table builder for this works, if a guy doesn't have stats from this year,

you have to manually enter his age because of just the logic in that table builder. And I was like, holy holy like he really is only 23 and and for wander it's like oh you're the same age as julio that's amazing you're the youngest like he was born in 2001 right like you know when when i was in la watching the futures game i was just like wow like wander and julio are younger than a lot of the guys in this game. That's amazing. And, you know, like Acuna is only 24. We're just in this, we're just, we're lucky.

We're lucky. Yeah. Well, a couple other things that stood out to me, and I guess another way in which we're lucky, there were, I think, three guys in the top 15 who have all arrived in the big leagues this season. Julio at number four adler rutschman at 13 bobby witt jr at 14 the highest ranked pitcher on the list sandy alcantara

number 10 so it tends to be a position player heavy list and i would guess that if you went back over the whole history of the trade value series that things have skewed more and more toward position players just as the recognition of pitchers as injury risks and also just as the diminished role of any individual pitcher as all of that has progressed so you have one guy in the top 10 one pitcher and he's number 10 and then i think you have two or three in the top 20 because alec manoa and shane mcclanahan sneak in at numbers 19 and 20 and then i guess four in the no three in the top 20 because Alec Manoa and Shane McClanahan sneak in at numbers 19 and 20. And then I guess four in the, no five in the top 25 because Corbin Burns and Logan Webb are in there. So.

Otani's close. Yeah. Otani is very close too. So it is a very hitter heavy list, but that is appropriate. I think. And as you would expect, I meant to mention,

by the way, Jeremy Pena, number 18, yet another 22 arrival. And you had Mike Trout at 47th. He's been really the patron saint of the trade value list. He's been the person who's there somewhere every year and he's close to falling off there. And I assume you ranked him prior to the back injury news here. So this could be Mike Trout's last appearance on

the trade value list. I hope not. I hope he comes back healthy and is still great enough to play his way onto it for another year or two, but he is close to the cusp there. So any of those things that you want to remark on or anything else that you want to observe about this? I got two for you. else that you want to observe about this i got two for you okay one would be i it wouldn't be weird to me at all if trout moved up this ranking and big contracts like that are inherently difficult to get a handle on because the market would be limited and i don't think trout would necessarily get more in free agency than he would get like on his current deal at this point just because of the injury like yeah especially now like that's changed especially now because of the back injury yeah it's become even more true

since this went live but just generally like because he's having trouble staying on the field no one would question his talent level but you might question how long how many games he'll play for you per year and i think that's reasonable he hasn't played a full season in a while but some team like the yankees could just say, well, so what? Great. I still want Mike Trout and offer more than his spot on this list. That wouldn't shock me at all. Some teams would be like, he's not in my top 100.

Could you imagine trading for Mike Trout? His contract might be underwater. And some teams are very allergic to having underwater contracts. For better or worse, I would say mostly worse. So that one's a really tough placement and same with Mookie Betts where I like Mookie's aging profile and contract profile more and just ability to stay on the field he's had nagging injuries as opposed to uh two injuries that just keep you out completely but I just have no clue honestly like teams also won't tell me what they think of those guys relative to say riley green and so that's just a just a best guess a thing that i think is very interesting

about this list is the top 10 are all international players who did not participate in the draft but were signed internationally all 10 yeah that's pretty neat yeah and i think there are two interesting factors there one is well a lot of them have signed extensions and extensions i would argue are unless they're just exploitatively ridiculous are good for both the player and the team like the easiest way to think about them is hey like here are your projected arb payouts and i will give you those i'll guarantee them to you there's no question of you getting more or less that's nice and in exchange like why don't you take a 10 discount on some free agent years or give me some team options?

And that's a good deal for both sides, I think. Because it both gives the player very likely guaranteed income. And money has diminishing marginal returns. Holding out to hit $70 million instead of $60 in arbitration seems silly to me. I don't know. I would settle for $ 50, actually, personally. And so that both is good for the player, and it's good for the team,

because teams sign lots of players. They have kind of a portfolio effect going on. So if you can get some expected value discount in exchange for guaranteeing certainty, it'll both make the player happy. Players love signing these extensions. And be good for the team. It puts them on the list.

Like, it makes the contract valuable. Like, that's good for both sides. Second is a lot of these international guys have debuted earlier because they've signed earlier and just have torn through the minor leagues and been undeniably good enough to play in the majors. And that has made them become either extension eligible or arbitration eligible or signing free agent deals at younger ages. And so that kind of pushes them up the list because teams care a lot about age.

It just, it is the defining factor that teams are terrified of regression and terrified of age and are willing to offer more to younger players. So I think that's interesting. I don't know if it says anything about the international draft or lack thereof, but I just thought it was neat. All 10 international signings.

Yeah. All right. Well, enjoyed the series as always. I just want to get your thoughts on a quick stat blast to end here, Ben. Thank you. So as noted earlier this week, Stathead, powered by Baseball Reference, is running a big trade deadline sale early next week. So we always recommend the Stathead tool. But go to Stathead.com and check out the best deal on Stathead all year. It's the MLB trade deadline special.

It's $58 for a one-sport subscription and $128 for all sports. And this is running August 1st through August 2nd. So don't get so distracted by Juan Soto trade rumors that you forget to sign up for Stathead. Use the coupon code DEADLINE22 for a single sport or FREEAGENT22 for all sports. Okay, so this StatBlast question was sent in by Mark who says, I imagine it must be quite rare when MLB stars collide in a rehab assignment, but that's what we witnessed yesterday when Jacob deGrom of the Syracuse Mets faced off against Salvador Perez of the Omaha Storm Chasers with a combined baseball reference war of 72.6. Was this a rare So I put this question to Lucas Pasteleris, who does not work for Baseball Reference.

He works for Baseball Prospectus. And so he gave this to me in WARP, Baseball Prospectus' Win Value Metric Wins Above Replacement Player. And he looked for cases where two players met in the minors and faced each other a batter and a pitcher after having entered that season with at least 15 career wins above replacement player. And he was able to go back to 2005 with this query. So it has happened 15 times during those years. And Sal Perez versus Jacob deGrom, according to BP, is not one of the highest ranked just because BP has a much lower warp than Perez. Yeah, because Perez's framing rates quite poorly. And so his warp is a lot lower than his baseball reference were. So he had 17.2 baseball prospectus warp entering this season. DeGrom had 32.5. So that's a combined

total of 49.7. That's quite good, and it is the only time that we have seen a minor league matchup with players satisfying these conditions of 15 plus warp each since 2017. I will get to that 2017 matchup, but it's been about five years since that happened, and I get a kick out of this. It's like the way that Emma Batchelory always enjoys when major league players on rehab assignments are subjected to the indignity of wearing like wacky minor league promotional uniforms. I also like when stars face each other at that level. And it's like, hey, fancy meeting you here. I did not expect to see you in a AAA game or to be in one myself. So almost all of these are rehab assignment cases. I think not

quite all of them. Some of them may have just been players who were in the minors. But starting off in 2005, we had Eric Young versus Odalis Perez. That was a total of 47.3 warp entering that year. And Lucas went with warp entering the year because it's just it's hard to do daily warp. It's pretty impossible to do that. So the next one, 2006, Shannon Stewart and Terry Adams. So they had a combined 35 warp. So 47 for Eric Young, Odell's Paris, 35 for Stewart and Adams. Then 2006, also in AAA, Eric Young again versus Mark Mulder. That was a combination of 44.6.

I don't remember whether Eric Young was just like in the minors at that point or was on a rehab assignment. But 2007, this was in high A, Rafael Fercal and Bartol Cologne, 52 warp. That's a good one. Yeah. 2007 again in high A, Garrett Anderson versus Jason Schmidt. That's a good one. had 44, so they had more than 68 warp combined when they faced off there. Also 2007, AAA, Mike Sweeney versus Chanho Park, 58 combined warp. 2008, high A, Shannon Stewart versus Tom Gordon, combined 59 warp. 2011, AAA, Brandon Inge versus Dontrell Willis, and they just cracked this minimum here. Brandon Inge had 15.1 warp, and Willis had 15.0 warp, so they just cleared the bar. Now 2012 AAA, Manny Ramirez faced Brad

Penny, and that would be the highest combined total warp, because that would be 99.7, because Manny had 77 warp at that point. I think manny was just in the minors that year i don't think he was on a rehab assignment that year i think he was just a minor league player who was just hanging on i didn't check that but if so then we could disregard that one 2012 you said yeah 2012 majors in 2012 so yeah june 2012 yeah Yeah. June 2015, AAA, we had Ryan Hannigan versus Irvin Santana, combined 38 warp. Also, same day, actually, elsewhere in AAA that year, Shane Victorino faced Irvin Santana too. So Victorino and Hannigan must have been rehabbing at the same time. So that was a 44 warp matchup. July 2015, AAA, also a Syracuse team involved here.

Jason Wirth versus Randy Wolfe. That was 64-warp, so that's up there. And then 2017, AAA, Pablo Sandoval and Matt Latos, 34-warp. And lastly, also 2017, high A, Mike Trout faced Scott Casimir. That's an interesting one. That was 60 warp combined at that time in their careers. So that is the full list of players who satisfied those conditions. So Sal versus DeGrom, that was the first time a matchup like that has happened in about five years.

So that was notable. Thanks to Mark for the question and Lucas for the research. Now, what I wanted to ask you, Ben, I'm always fascinated by minor league rehab assignments because it's like the rare time that we get to see a big mismatch in true talent level in theory, because we get questions all the time about like, well, what would this guy do? You know, what would a major leaguer do in high A or whatever, right? What if we cut off his arm?

Yeah. What if Mike Trout was literally all thumbs? One big thumb. As long as he has all his vertebrae, I think it's okay. But we get these questions about mismatches in talent level and minor league rehab assignments are sort of one time when we get to actually see that. So like when de gramme

was rehabbing it was last season right and he was just like laying waste yeah right and they like made it a whole like twitter thing about facing de gramme and like he seems to have no mercy on minor leaguers because he was throwing like 101 i think in this rehab game now de gramme just seems to kind of throw as hard as he can all the time, which worries me. But I am kind of curious about whether you think, and this is a dumb article idea for you if you want one, but do you think that major leaguers on rehab assignments play better than they do if you were to compare their production in the minors on their rehab assignments to their production, let's say, in the same season in the majors, you'd think that they would be better because, well, they're facing a lot worse players. On the other hand, they are on rehab assignments. They're hurt.

They're working on things. Exactly. Right. They're rusty. Maybe they're not going all out. Now, I don't know, because on the the one hand you would think that they would be motivated by not looking bad against bush leaguers basically but also maybe they would in some cases have some mercy on them and just like feel bad showing them up so i don't know whether they would feel worse

about showing up minor leaguers or being shown up by minor leaguers but they are not at full capacity and the minor leaguers you would think are extra motivated, right? They're going to give their all to be good against Jacob deGrom, by big leaguers on rehab assignments, would that be better or worse than their stats in the majors in the same season? If you were to, let's say, normalize for the league run environment and everything, you know, they've used different balls at different levels and you might have just like a higher or lower offensive baseline than you do in the big leagues that year. If you were to adjust for all of that, do you think they would be better or worse i guess one complicating factor is that like if you're comparing to their big league production in that same season that might be slightly diminished too because if they were on a rehab assignment maybe they got hurt well maybe they were playing through an injury or maybe they came back before they were at full strength so

maybe their big league stats wouldn't be quite at their best either. But basically putting all those factors together, you know, like do you think the true talent difference would show out or the fact that these are like diminished major leaguers would actually take precedence? I would guess that they put up better numbers, but I would also guess that they don't put up as good numbers as would be implied if you did Davenport translations or something.

If you downshifted their major league numbers to AA, I think those numbers would be better. But it is something interesting that I'll write about whenever I'm... I don't think I'm going to write a ton in the next, call it three or four days. I guess I'm going to, because it's a trade deadline. That's annoying. But I don't think I would like to write a ton in the next uh like call it three or four days i guess i'm going to this is a trade that mine that's annoying but i don't think i would like to write a ton in the next few days so probably not anytime soon but uh yeah that is very interesting i would have to guess they'd

be better i would imagine they don't strike out very much which helps like hitters yeah okay well but people do get like tooled up to to face them right there's a great story about that the grom rehab start where all the Cardinals were like, oh my god, I'm facing Jacob DeGrom, and then he just blew 101 by all of them. Which I guess would not necessarily be performance enhancing, right? Just because you're excited to face him doesn't mean you'll

be better necessarily. You might be worse because you're like, woo, I'm facing Jacob DeGrom. This is super exciting, and you'll be just so fixated on that that you'll actually be bad or you'd be like intimidated or something. Because the nude does clutch exist. Yeah, exactly. I would like to know the answer.

Me too. And so this is now something that I'm probably going to research. So thank you. All right. Add it to the list when you don't have trade value to rank. All right. So to wrap up with the past blast, this is episode 1883. All right. So to wrap up with the past blast, this is episode 1883.

This past blast is from 1883 and from Richard Hershberger, historian, saber researcher, author of Strike for the Evolution of Baseball. And this is sort of a wholesome one. This is, Richard says, a word picture of youths in attendance at a professional ballgame from the city item, Philadelphia, April 8th, 1883. the city item, Philadelphia, April 8th, 1883. To a student of human nature, there can be no more fruitful field of observation than that presented by the average crowd that attends a ballgame, which is something that you've gotten a lot of content out of, Meg, so I think you probably would agree with that. The natures and dispositions of those in attendance are as varied as their age and social conditions. Of the component part, young America is in the majority. This is a little bit different,

people talking about how young the crowds at baseball games are. Yes. This genus ranges in age from 10 to 16 and finds his way to the ground in many different ways, from being possessed of the requisite cash to an entrance on a return of a foul ball over the fence. There are several players who have gained the title of the boy's friend by their repeated hitting of a ball over the fence,

and the poor boys swear by them and never forget to give them vigorous applause whenever they make a good play. So I guess if you caught a foul ball over the fence, you could come back in with it and say, hey, I got this ball. over the fence, you could come back in with it and say, hey, I got this ball. The boy who gets in on a foul ball return is contented with any location in the field, generally preferring a set on the grass in the outfield. But for style and hard to please youth, commend us to the kid who has the money to pay his way in.

From the time he has gained entrance to the time the game is called, he has changed his location at least 20 times and is loud in his denunciation of the lack of accommodation furnished. But when the game has commenced and the home club is in the lead he is seen at his best and his loud unearthly shrieks

wake up the whole field and is the starter of the enthusiasm that prevailed throughout the game. He is loyal to the home club, however, to the last degree, and no matter how brilliant the visiting club may play, he has no applause for it. If the home club is being beaten, he is sulky and declares that the home players are no good. But as soon as the game is over, his allegiance returns, and he is ready to stake his wealth on their being able to beat any club in the country.

Another specimen of young America is the boy who arrives at the scene of the game early and informs every comer that he is short one cent, and in this way generally manages to secure the requisite amount and makes his appearance on the ground by the time the game has been called, with the air of an old veteran. Say what we will of the boys,

they are almost indispensable to the game as they stimulate the interest and never fail to advertise the best points of the home club and throw charitable silence over its weaknesses. They are ever loyal and true to the clubs of their preference and at all times are willing to fight for it. So I guess that's kind of fun. Other than the fact that they're focusing on boys only here, at least they're talking about youths and it's not about look how old all the baseball fans are. So it was a different time. And all of the boys from 1883, I'm sad to say, are dead.

It's interesting that Mets fans existed before the Mets did. All right. We will end there. Ben can be found on Twitter if you can manage to type in the appropriate number of underscores. It is at underscore Ben underscore Clemens. And we will link to the trade value series. Thanks as always, Ben. Yeah, thank you for having me. for listening. I will note that the flummoxing fun fact we bantered about at the beginning of this episode was subsequently deleted. I don't know if that's because it was inaccurate in some way or because somehow they sensed we were making fun of it on a baseball podcast, but poof, it's gone, except in our memories and in the cached version that I will link to on the show page. Earlier, I mentioned that Aaron Judge was on pace for 63 homers. Well, he hit two more on Friday

night, so he's now on pace for 65 with a little extra. Actually, closer to 66 if you round up, which you can't do with home runs. He also robbed a home run. So really, he was responsible for three net home runs. He's hit 41. I guess we can't count his home run robberies toward that total, but pretty impressive too. Getting pretty excited about watching him down the stretch. And on Friday, Justin Verlander had another fine outing, seven and two-thirds innings, one run allowed. Bolstered his case in the great debate about Verlander and Scherzer. That was his 240th career win. I know he has expressed a desire to get 300. It's still unlikely, but it's less unlikely than it was when this season started. Scherzer's still at 196, so if you care about that kind of thing, that's another

separator there. It's extraordinarily hard to get to 300 victories in this era. So if Verlander were to do that, it would be a fine feather in his cap, although if he were to do that, it would mean that he continued to pitch well for years to come. So that would be impressive in itself. Also, just as a follow-up to our conversation with Evan Drellick about MLB's antitrust exemption earlier this week, Rob Manfred did send a response to the members of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee who had asked the commissioner to weigh in. He sent a 17-page response, in fact. I will link to Evan's breakdown of that response at The Athletic.

But unsurprisingly, I suppose Manfred argued that the antitrust exemption is a good thing, actually, that it benefits fans and players, and that the removal of the exemption would produce, quote, baseball in far fewer communities. It seems like Rob Manfred himself has produced baseball in fewer communities by contracting the minors. But he argued such a system almost certainly would not be sustainable in many communities but for the centralized governance and coordination that MLB currently is able to provide under the baseball exemption. coordination that MLB currently is able to provide under the baseball exemption. Dick Durbin, one of the senators on the committee, responded, It is reasonable to question the premise that MLB is treating the minor leaguers fairly. Commissioner Manfred's response to our bipartisan request for information raises more questions than it answers.

And the discrepancies between today's letter and the reality that minor league players are experiencing reinforce the importance of the committee's bipartisan review of the century-old baseball antitrust exemption. We need to make sure MLB is stepping up to the plate when it comes to fair treatment of players and communities, which is why the Judiciary Committee is planning an upcoming hearing on the issue. I believe that is supposed to happen in September or October. The executive director of the Advocates for Minor Leaguers group also responded to Manfred's statement and said when it comes to the impact of baseball's antitrust exemption on minor league players and fans,

Major League Baseball cannot get its story straight. Just nine days ago, Commissioner Rob Manfred said, I can't think of a place where the exemption is really meaningful other than franchise relocation. This morning, Manfred said the opposite, claiming that the baseball exemption has meaningfully improved the lives of minor league players, including their terms and conditions of employment, and has enabled the operators of minor league affiliates to offer professional baseball in certain communities that otherwise could not economically support a professional baseball team.

Simply put, both of these statements cannot be true. More to come. Also, just to follow up on Mike Trout's back condition, the costovertebral dysfunction that gave me so much pronunciation trouble last time, there's also sometimes pronounced costovertebral dysfunction. I don't know if that makes it that much easier and also seems sort of inconsistent given how we say vertebrae. For what it's worth, our recent guest Jeff Fletcher of the OC Register talked to a spine surgeon who said, no, I don't think it's career threatening. Once the inflammation in the joint

goes down, he'll be able to return to full activity. The most common way this is treated is non-operative rest, Advil, and Aleve. A big role is physical therapy. The surgeon said the only long-term issue could be if something in Trout's hitting or throwing mechanics caused the condition in the first place, in which case it could return, which is somewhat worrisome because Trout didn't seem to know what caused it. Anyway, he's seeing a doctor on Sunday. Fingers crossed. You can support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some monthly or yearly amount to Thank you. Effectively Wild Discord group for patrons, as well as bonus episodes. Meg and I will be recording and releasing one of those this weekend. Plus discounts on t-shirts, playoff live streams, and more.

You can contact me and Meg via email at podcastfancrafts.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. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. You can follow Effectively Wild on Twitter at EWPod, and you can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at r slash Effectively Wild. Dylan Higgins is off for this episode, so thanks to me for editing and production assistance. We hope you have a wonderful weekend, and we will be back to talk to you next week. Timing TBD, depending on trade activity. Talk to you then. Everyone needs, everyone needs, after all it's sin.