Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2041: The Trade Deadline Deals, Pt. 2

Episode Date: August 3, 2023

After the trade-deadline dust settles, Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley break down the big deals from deadline eve and deadline day, starting with high-level trade-season takeaways (reunions, top prospects, hitters vs. pitchers, missing star power) and then zooming in on almost every team as they discuss the Justin Verlander trade, the AL West arms race, […]

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table spreadsheet no ads subscribers will support us vroom vroom fast on your slog to rigor mortis hello and welcome to episode 2041 of effectively wild Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rowley of Fangraphs and I'm joined as alwaysking in the glow of the transaction activity, just asking each other, was it as good for you as it was for me? And for some fan bases, it was better than others, I gather. How was it for you? Because you had a busy day. Wow, Ben, of all the transitions we've ever transitioned, that was sure one of them, wasn't it? It was, yeah.

You don't want to ask me about my cat's butthole? Oh, yeah, how's your cat? That's what everyone was wondering, I think. We need an update on Babs' butt. The headline is that Babs is going to be just fine, thankfully. But I did hear from my vet that, quote, her butt might just always look a little weird now. That's never what you want to hear, personally. I mean, it's better than some alternatives, right?

Yeah. Which might have involved, like, semi-permanent incontinence. Thankfully, that doesn't seem like it's on the table for little Babs. So we're dodging that particular bullet at least better than she dodged whatever claw found its way into her bum. But, yeah. Yeah. better than she dodged whatever claw found its way into her bum. But yeah, you know, cats, Ben, you're a dog person and I feel like dogs don't do this as consistently. Like it seems like one of the things that cats love more than really anything else in the world is showing you their butt and like their whole butt just like real close. So look forward to it. Always looking a little funny

back there. Yeah. Dogs too. Very butt forward forward species both of them really but they don't get up i mean your dog is little so it's different but like big dogs you know they don't get up on you the way cats do whereas like there have been mornings where i've woken up to like just a cat butt right in my face but um anyway i'm glad it's more of a form over function problem yes from the sound of it so that's that's great news, that was the real deadline, headline, really. Yeah. How was the rest of your deadline day? How many discrete pieces of content did Fangraphs publish on Tuesday? 17, 18, if you count my roundup piece that rounded up all our other pieces. And then let's see, this morning we've run, well, we ran two more trade reacts and then two sort of broader summary pieces. One declaring winners and losers and one on some of the notable moves that didn't happen but had been rumored to be in the mix.

So it was a busy day. I think everyone did a really nice job. I think we provided value to our readers and hopefully illuminated a bunch of these transactions. Some of those were roundups, so we covered more than 17 discrete transactions. Yeah, multiple moves in one piece. Yeah, so there's a lot to get to, and we're going to get into it here. We did sort of a part one trade deadline discussion, so we cleared a little bit of the clutter and the backlog, but yeah, many more moves to discuss. And it was a busy day. The deadline rarely fails to be fun. I know that it was perhaps slightly a letdown inzy deadline, even not a deadline with the hugest headliners, it's a ton of fun, right? Because it's just more compressed transaction activity in a day, in a couple days, in a span

of several hours than you're going to get at any other point of the year. So you're glued to the moves, you're refreshing trade rumors, you're on Twitter or whatever you're on these days. And it's just fun to follow, even if some of the blockbusters that you hope will come to pass don't. There is still a ton of activity. Every team made a deal at or near the deadline, some much more underwhelming, less overwhelming, whelming just in general than others. But there were some interesting trades to talk about. There were interesting decisions about whether to get into the market and in what way. Rich Hill got traded to a new team, which was the ideal outcome. But yeah, to paraphrase the late

Dennis Green, the deadline was what we thought it was, I think, more or less, right? We, I think, thought that it wouldn't be the biggest blowout deadline ever just because of the way that the season is set up right there just a lot of contenders not a lot of teams that were out of it and some of the teams that were out of it had been out of it for a while and already had made the moves to place themselves out of it so for, for instance, Sarah Lange had a tweet, five of six divisions led by fewer than three games. That's the second time since the split to six divisions that as many as five division leads

were by fewer than three games entering August. So tied with 2011. We all remember how that season ended. I hope for a repeat. But she also said four of the division leads fewer than two games. That's the most such division leads entering August. So you just didn't have a lot of daylight between the leaders and the second place teams in most divisions. And the wildcard races are crowded, too.

So it makes sense that there weren't that many teams that were in a position to sell off. Right. that there weren't that many teams that were in a position to sell off, right? So many moves, but not many individual moves that project to be major ones involving impact players. Probably the most prominent players dealt were 39- and 40-year-old pitchers, right? Yeah, how about that? And as expected, I would say it was a pretty weak crop of hitters, position players, right? Which we talked about last time, just looking at the market and trying to define where the hitters were. And they never really appeared.

I haven't looked into this, but I wouldn't be surprised if this was either the worst group of position players traded at a deadline or maybe just like the lowest end, high end position players traded at a deadline or maybe just like the lowest end high end position players traded at a deadline like there was some depth but yeah not a lot of star power on the offensive side i mean you're looking at jamer candelario and jake berger and tommy fam and carlos santana you know mark canna if those are your best hitters and position players being moved then that's not super sexy or exciting right yeah some good pitching was dealt and some pretty good prospects traded too, which was maybe something of an upset because we've talked about the trend toward teams being more reluctant to surrender some of those guys and some of them were moved. They're just like hugs.

Yeah, which makes it more glaring that at least a couple of teams with maybe the most prospects to trade did not. But we will discuss the Orioles and Reds a little later. And then I guess the other big deadline storyline was reunions, right? Players going back to their previous teams, which was sort of sweet, right? You got Justin Verlander and Kendall Graveman going back to Houston. And you had Joe Kelly and Kike going back to the Dodgers. And we talked about Randall Gritchek and CJ Krohn going back to the Angels.

And then Kendall Ario back to the Cubs and Trace Thompson back to the White Sox. So a lot of, oh yeah, this guy's back again. Some nice meeting of teams and minds once more. Yeah. Where do you want to start, Ben? Because yeah, those are all the things. Which of them shall we discuss in greater depth first? That is a great question. Well, I guess unlike last time when we led with Nikki Lopez and your cat's butt, don't want to underrate that storyline. Yeah, we should defy one of those trends. Should we maybe start with Verlander because he was the most meaningful move? Yeah, because we talked about Babs, so maybe we should talk about some major trades instead of more minor, however interesting ones. So yeah, Verlander and the Mets in general,

right? Because if not for the Mets deciding to sell off to the extent that they did, this might have been a bigger snooze of the deadline, right? I mean, the biggest names traded here were Mets. So Justin Verlander, one of those reunions, he goes back to Houston for centerfield prospect Drew Gilbert, who was the Astros' 2022 first rounder. He's a double A. He's sort of a speed and defense and on-base guy. And then first base outfield offense first prospect Ryan Clifford. And then similar to the Scherzer trade, which we talked about last time, the Mets are paying down a lot of Verlander's deals. So yeah, $35 million of Verlander's salaries for this season and next season, and then half of the $35 million that he'd

be owed in 2025 if his vesting option is triggered. So they're sending something like $35 million that he'd be owed in 2025 if his vesting option is triggered. So they're sending something like $70 million away to pay other teams to play Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander. And we can talk about the rewards that they reaped there. But for the Astros, who we should also probably mention, threw a no-hitter. Kind of got overshadowed by all the other activity on deadline day. But also, for everybody else, threw a no-hitter. Yeah, he sure did. So that happened.

But rotation depth was an issue heading into this season. I think it's something we talked about on the preview pod. And I think maybe we questioned or took the asterisk to task for not bringing back Justin Verlander or making more of an effort to have a deeper rotation. They could have brought Verlander back for just money instead of prospects. Of course, Dana Brown, Astros GM, had not been hired yet when the Mets signed Verlander. So it's not like he made different decisions. And then Verlander was hurt to start the season and only recently really rounded into form. Right.

But yeah, they're going for it. Like last time we talked about the Rangers going for it and getting Scherzer and Montgomery and Stratton and then subsequently Austin Hedges to form some sort of catcher framing superpower with Jonah Heim. And the Astros, not to be outdone or not to be outdone by as much, they went and made some moves too. They saw the Rangers, their Mets ace or former ace, and they matched, right? So each of them going with the former Mets ace, which is a strategy that the Rangers had tried before with Jacob de Crom. So maybe

this will work out a bit better for them than that has thus far. Yeah, but they have time for that to kind of come around too, right? Verlander's season is, I don't want to attribute the entirety of his struggle in those first nine starts to rust from the injury or maybe lingering seven starts have been, you know, a 149 ERA and a 318 FIP, which feels a lot more like him. You know, he's walking more guys and there's been a decline when you look at sort of the ratio of his strikeouts to walks. So he's not like quite what he was, but he looks a lot more like what he was lately than he had before. And I'm imagining that that's something that teams, including the Astros, were aware of. You know, he's also been avoiding hard contact much better of late than he had been in the early going of the season. So, you know, like that seems good.

If you're an Astros team that, you know, despite the no hitter, you know, never really got to enjoy the services of Lance McCullers Jr. this year and Las Garcia to Tommy John. And, you know, I'm sure has been conscious of like how many innings JP France is going to be able to throw for you in his first year up and is like, you know, looking at Valdez and Javier and Urquidy and Urquidy hasn't been his usual as effective self. So like they needed rotation reinforcement, right? I do like that the Mets were like, what if we started a bidding war in the AL West and then we got to get some prospects back? I don't want to give short shrift to the Astros side of this, but it feels weird to be like, how does Justin Verlander fit on the Astros? It's like, we know the answer to that question. Like we have very recent data. Not the first time they have traded for him at a deadline, in fact, that too. So,

yeah, I think I am more optimistic about Verlander than Scherzer for the rest of the season and beyond, even though Verlander is the older of the two. Just his recently looking more or less like peak Verlander, whereas Scherzer has not quite looked like peak Scherzer. And also Verlander won the Cy Young Awards last year, right? He's been more recently elite than Scherzer. So I guess maybe they won the battle of trading for top of the rotation Mets pitchers. It is sort of like this circular thing. It's like the Rangers signed DeGrom, which then prompted the Mets to

sign Verlander. And then the Rangers traded for Scherzer, which prompted the Astros to trade for Verlander. Kind of a strange little incestuous situation here where they're trading pitchers and competing against each other. But I love the drama potential of Scherzer and Verlander. The old guys still got it, fronting teams that are neck and neck fighting for the AL West title, which has real stakes because you're competing for the difference between having home field advantage and just getting to go straight to the division series or going on the road to play an AL East team in the wildcard rounds.

I mean, that's a pretty big difference in terms of your World Series odds. So there's some real stakes here down the stretch. This is just a good old-fashioned shootout at the OK Corral. Just like I'm stretching the Texas team's analogy here. But just, you know. Can you imagine the graphics packages we're going to get? Oh my gosh yeah the six shooters and the holsters and just the facing down in the dusty street yeah the old

gunslingers going at it here hopefully they will pitch against each other head to head when these teams match up i think in september that would be fun that would be fun i guess i should note in my description of the current state of the Astros rotation that Urquidy has been injured for quite a bit of the season, but he's set to come back soon. Yeah. And of course, they lost McCullers and Valdez had had a calf thing recently. Right. He seems to be okay, I would think. He seems to be okay. Yeah. I feel like they, especially relative to the other maladies that have befallen their rotation, they got off easy with what he's been going through.

But I was talking through sort of winners and losers with Ben Clemens a little bit yesterday because he was preparing to write his piece on that that ran today. And, you know, we have talked on this pod about the Mets wanting to sort of establish themselves as Dodgers East, right? That that's the vibe that they're going for and sort of the organizational philosophy. And I think when you take their deadline moves in sort of concert with one another, they have taken a really meaningful step toward that. Not just because the farm system is so much better today than it was a week ago, although that's absolutely true. I think one of the things that the Dodgers have done really, really well over the years is to look at sort of the distinction that we made last time between assets, meaning money and talent, and recognizing that like cash is super fungible and baseball players aren't. Good baseball players are harder to grow than like cash is as a solution to throw out a problem right and the way that they

approached moving both scherzer and verlander and as you mentioned and as we have talked about before being like look we could settle for just offloading these contracts and i'm sure that they would have found some purchase for that right but we're going to eat it on the financial side in deference to the goal of getting better prospects in return for these two. That's a very Dodgers-y move to say money is money, and Steve Cohen has a lot of it. can. And if we can sort of amp up the sense of urgency that one of the prime bidders for Verlander might have in the meantime by dealing Scherzer to a division rival, awesome. Like, you know, I'm sure Houston was much more motivated after seeing Scherzer go to Texas than they may have otherwise been, although they probably had good motivation to try to reinforce that rotation regardless. So that doesn't mean that like the Mets farm system is, you know, gonna be as good as LA's for as long.

Like you still have to develop players. I think that the Dodgers are so good at what they do in part because they are able to, after many, many seasons of drafting pretty low relative to other, you know, perennial contenders, like they can just grow good pitching right they can develop arms they can develop hitters and use those guys to then you know trade for other big league players when they need to like that piece of it the mets have to demonstrate a capacity for right and they've had varying success especially

on the pitcher side when it comes to that like there's a reason that paul seawald was like a good trade piece for the mariners we can talk about if they maximize their return there and we should but like you know he wasn't paul seawald when he was with the mets he had to go to another organization to get sort of turned around in his career so they still have work do. But viewing money as a thing that you can like use in dynamic ways to either, you know, sign free agents that you're really excited about or get better prospect return when you have to unload those signings, like that's very Dodgers-y. So good job, Mets. Feels weird praising the Mets in a season where they've been so disappointing relative to expectation. But knowing where your organization is at and then pivoting on the fly and doing a

good job of it, that's an important thing for an organization to be able to do if they're going to be in a position to compete in what is a very tough division. So good job, Mets, even though your sellers, I think they did really well for themselves. Yeah. Bad job on a seasonal level. Good job on a this week level, maybe. But yeah, it is kind of a making lemonade out of lemons situation, although it's probably for Mets fans in the immediate aftermath, more bitter than sweet, I would imagine. Not only did they ship off a bunch of guys, but they also just lost on a balk off, which was not fun just to punctuate the day of divesting themselves of older pitchers. But given that they were trading mostly 38, 39, 40-year-old pitchers, right, and the consensus among the prospect people seems to be that they did quite well in one of those deals, especially the Robertson trade, maybe.

Yeah. Just getting bang for Steve Cohen's bucks there on the prospect market in a way that they have not at the major league level with wins and losses so far. And they are now on the board at Fangraph's 11th on the farm system rankings, which, given that they graduated some guys this year, is pretty good, right? And the Astros, by the way, after the Verlander deal, dead last. So they have actually fallen below the Angels, who were last time we talked and then managed to scrape together more dregs from that farm system

to trade for Dominic Lyon, another Met, who was on the move, a little less notable. You're not going to make me talk about the Dominic Leon trade, are you? I am not going to make you talk about it. Because look, I'm a sicko, Ben, but I have my limits. I'll tell people all day about my cat's butthole, but you're not going to make me talk about all of the reliever trades. Justly overshadowed by the other pitchers that the Mets traded. But I am impressed by the Angels just continuously making trades despite having very little prospect capital.

Anyway, the Astros obviously have shown a knack for development that the Angels and the Mets have not. So they have had many guys go on to be productive big leaguers who were not big prospects. Do they still have that skill and strength? And can they continue to defy that ranking? I don't know. They are sort of scraping the barrel here, but for a good reason, because they're a good team and they're going for it. And that's fun. So, yeah, with the Mets trading all these guys, last time we talked, it still wasn't clear how much of a step back they were taking. And we read the Billy Epler quote about

this isn't a fire quote about this isn't a fire sale and this isn't a rebuild and it's not a liquidation and everything. Well, Max Scherzer sort of blew up Billy Epler's spot a little bit. Yeah. So we should talk about this. Scherzer talked to Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic and Scherzer relayed what he says Epler told him because Scherzer had to decide, do I want to go? Do I want to commit to not exercising my option and becoming a free agent? some of these moves impending free agents david robertson he's going to be on the market anyway it's not like trading him affects your prospects for 2024 but now we're getting into some moves for some players who were expected to be part of next season's team so scherzer continues he goes no we're not basically our vision now is for 2025 to 2026 25 at the earliest, more like 26. We're going to be making trades around that. I was like, so the team is not going to be pursuing free agents this offseason or assemble a team that can compete for a World Series next year. He said, no, we're not going to be signing

the upper echelon, guys. We're going to be on the smaller deals within free agency. 24 is now looking to be more of a kind of transitory year. Yeah. Scherzer continued, I'm not itching to jump ship. I don't have to chase the ring. I made a three-year commitment with New York. I would honor that if we were going to try and win in 2024. But that wasn't the case. What was being communicated to me was that there were a lot of pieces being moved for prospects to try to make the 2025 team better. As we record, I have not seen whether Billy Epler confirmed or denied the exact substance of Scherzer's conversation there. I don't know whether Epler expected that there would be a little bit more of a GM player confidentiality pact there or a veil of secrecy,

or whether he was prepared for Scherzer to come out as is his right and relay what the team told him. Because Scherzer said, I'm going to go talk to the front office. And now he's telling us what the front office said to him, supposedly. So I saw some people suggest that maybe this is what Epler told Scherzer, but not necessarily what he actually intends to do. You know, do the Mets actually plan to sit out the Shohei Otani sweepstakes? Are they not going to be a bidder for Otani? That seems unlikely. We don't know whether Otani wants to go there or not, but I think they'd be in the market at least. So was he saying what he had to say to Scherzer to get that deal done and get Scherzer to acquiesce to the conditions there?

to get that deal done and get Scherzer to acquiesce to the conditions there? Possibly. That is possible. But there could be truth to it. And obviously trading Verlander, who could have been a big piece of next season's team, lends some credence to the idea that they're OK not fully going for it next year, which is interesting because everyone remembers the famous, infamous Steve Cohen quote from November 2020 when he bought the team and said, if we don't win a World Series in three to five years, that would be disappointing. Well, if we're going out to 2025, that's the

outer range of that three to five years. And if they're talking about 2026, then that's beyond that. But I mean, if he just concedes that this has been disappointing, then I guess it's just reflecting reality. Right. And trying to make the best of a bad situation. in that moment is to get an attractive deal done. Now, the particularly attractive deal that he was trying to get done does line up with the timeline that he told Scherzer. So those aren't like mutually exclusive things. The prospects they've gotten back have not necessarily been major league ready guys, right? Right. They're further out. And so it does sort of fit with that to, I think, a meaningful degree. Now, I think that there is still a way to view what they're trying to do in this coming offseason as compatible with Otani, because maybe what Billy O'Farr meant was that outside of Otani, there aren't any really good free agents, which is true.

Yeah, actually, Zach Crammond in his winners and losers piece for the ringer pointed out that that could be a big part of why the hitter market was underwhelming at the deadline. There aren't a lot of impending hitter free agents who would be right because we've talked before about how weak the upcoming free agent class seems to be in general, but particularly on the offensive side. So there aren't any guys who are about to hit the market who are really good. And so they weren't available as rentals. Right. And so I think there were a lot of attractive sort of mid-tier complementary pieces available. And, you know, I think Tommy Pham and Mark Cannon, even Candelario were had like pretty cheaply considering what they've been able to do this year, right? And sort of how they can reinforce a team.

But you're right, like Soto didn't get moved again, right? Like the Cardinals took Arenado off the market. And I think that there wasn't anything to backfill that in part because there weren't like there wasn't a tranche a tranche of hitter between like the superstars that weren't made available and you know some of the like more middle class bats right there wasn't like a good yeah there aren't like unless you're really excited about matt chapman or Cody Bellinger, I guess, you're kind of in this weird in-between. So I imagine that they will go for it when it comes to Otani.

I'd be shocked if they didn't try to make a really competitive offer. But there isn't a lot there that can really move the needle in terms of the hitters. really move the needle in terms of the hitters like they kind of played in that space already in that market and chose to prioritize the pitching which made sense given the hitting that they had but now it's like okay you gotta like go do some work and then i guess hope that i don't know jeff mcneil has better babbit luck i hadn't like really grappled with how bad his season has been until we did the replacement level killer series. I think I already said this, but like it bears repeating. Wow. Not the best. So anyway, I don't know. Like I'm sure Epler knew that Scherzer would say something like that because you'd be kind of a goofus to not think that he might be candid. He's a candid guy. He tends to, he tends to let

you know what he thinks, you know? Yeah. Yeah. So I do wonder whether this new way that Steve Cohen is using his piles of cash will upset other owners more or less than he upset them just by spending a lot on major league payroll. I think it will upset them more. Yeah, because we heard before the season started other owners and executives grumbling about the Mets and the Padres. We can talk about the Padres in a second. Just kind of blowing up the gentleman's agreement that definitely wasn't collusion. It was just a general understanding about the kinds of contracts that you hand out or

the kinds of payrolls you can run in a market like San Diego, et cetera. And obviously, those concerns were seemingly misplaced at the time, but also have turned out to be a bit overblown. It's not like the Mets and the Padres are breaking baseball this season. They are just breaking basically. So now you can't necessarily say, oh, they're buying a championship, which was always kind of ridiculous in baseball, but you could say they're buying a farm system. And perhaps that is a little less visible. It's the part of the iceberg that's below the surface. But it's obviously a part of the iceberg that owners really pay attention to and covet because it allows them to put inexpensive, productive young teams on the field.

Unlike the older, expensive, not so productive team that the Mets have been running out there this season. older expensive not so productive team that the Mets have been running out there this season so if they start to feel like now Steve Cohen is flexing his financial muscle to hoard all the prospects that we want so that we can pay them not very much relative to the value they provide then it's like oh now he's not just blowing us out of the water in a market that we probably weren't going to play in any way but he's coming for our model here, like the Dodgers have done, I suppose. Yeah. I think that part of the ownership sort of cabal that is both keen on operating inexpensively, cheaply, one might say, and has a tendency to be loud about that in ownership meetings, I'm sure we'll have something to say about this. Because it's bad enough when you have one Dodgers, but if you end up with two,

get out of here. We're not going to tolerate that. It's like when a mob family moves in on another mob family, you go to war over that. And then they make movies about it and men think weird stuff about masculinity for their whole life. So I like the Godfather. Everyone relax. I'm Italian. Come on. Come on. Don't accuse me of nonsense, but like grapple with the text, right? I've kept it together pretty good for a podcast where I'm exhausted and I've talked a lot about my cats. But anyway, what I mean to say is that this is on some level like a much more fundamental threat to the clubs that want to be able to benefit from guys who are really underpaid relative to what their value would be on an

open market. So I imagine we will hear something to that effect in the coming months, especially as we get into the offseason. But those people are silly. And if they can't afford a baseball team, they should sell it to someone who can. So I don't say it to be dismissive because when those clubs get feisty, we tend to see them sort of capitulated to. And that's bad for the sport. But I don't think that we need to take them seriously. I mean, we do. But we don't need to say, well, you got a good point there. They don't have a good point.

They have an annoying point. We shouldn't say that. Not allowed to. Don't in fact have to hand it to them. kind of optimize this. And if their approach is to deploy financial resources just to build the farm and then they don't end up going out and spending in free agency, like that would be bad. We want them to do both, right? You really want them to Dodgers it. You want them to do both because that's good for the sport. But they did well here. Yeah. Just wanted to say, I mean, if there's any consolation for those owners, I guess you've got a Dodgers West, maybe you've got an incipient Dodgers East. Doesn't seem to be any Dodgers Central on the horizon. Good Lord, yeah. There's that. I mean, I guess the Cardinals have been the closest to a Dodgers Central in the past,

but not so much this season. Also, before we move on, 93 pitches for Frambois in that no-hitter. And also, before we move on, 93 pitches for Frambois in that no-hitter. That's the fourth fewest on record in a no-hitter. I think the fewest since David Cohn, maybe. So it's been a while. I think that's right, based on the piece I edited that Jay Jaffe wrote. I think you are correct. One walk away from perfection, face the minimum.

And the Astros, I didn't realize I read this at Baseball Perspectives, now have five no-hitters in five years, which is the most ever in a five-year span. Although this is the first solo Astros no-hitter since one Justin Verlander in 2019 because they've had some combined ones, which we don't cut into quite as much. So we talked about the Mets. We should talk also about the team that has often been lumped in with the Mets this season, including just a moment ago, the Padres, because they took a different approach. They did. A preller approach. They did. You could have said that they were in similar positions. Now, the Padres not quite as long a shot as the Mets.

They're not as out of the division race. They're pretty far back, but the Mets are more than twice as far back. And then I think the Padres were maybe a game or so closer to a wildcard slot as well. And the Padres have just been better if you look at the underlying performance than the Mets have this season. So more reasons to be optimistic about the Padres than the Mets in 2023. But they were still considered a candidate to sell. You heard Blake Snell. You heard Josh Hader. You heard even Juan Soto, right? All these guys could potentially be moving. And in the end, nope, the Padres kept all their guys and they added some. So they got effectively wild legend Rich Hill, who now is tied with Octavio Dottel for the second most teams played for, trailing only the legend Edwin Jackson. And by the way, Hill has subsequently said he has all intentions of playing next season.

Legend. my heart to hear that. And that means that he hits free agency again. He could check off another team. He could climb to the top of that leaderboard and then he could get dealt at the deadline next year and take the lead. There is a pathway to Rich Hill just playing for the most major league teams ever. Anyway, he wasn't the only guy they got. They got Jimen Choi in that same move for three prospects. They picked up Garrett Cooper from Miami. They got Scott Barlow from the Royals. So a little bit of a first base platoon, first base DH dealio they worked out there. So they were adding. And I guess that is just Preller being Preller and doubling down and maybe feeling like the

underlying talent on this team is too good to blow it up and hope that their luck regresses in the good way over the next couple months. And obviously, none of these moves, they're not trading really highly touted prospects. These are mostly mid-tier players, if that. No offense to Rich Hill. But they decided to rearm instead of doing what the Mets did. They decided to rearm, Ben, because they got some arms. They did. I mean, even the guys who aren't pitchers, they have arms.

Also have arms. Yep. Same number of arms. You know, it's the thing you can say. Look, do I think that this changes the outlook for who's going to win the NL West? You know, probably not. Like, I imagine if you're the Padres, you get a bigger boost from, like, just playing better

and, like, winning any games in extra innings. Any games, Ben. Yeah, even one would be progress. Even one game, you know? When you have the bases loaded with no outs and extra innings and you fail to score and then lose, like, that seems dramatic. But that's the thing that happened to the Padres just this very week.

But do I think that, say, G-Man Troy is an upgrade to the horror show that has been the DH position for them? Yeah, I do. And I think that, you know, Garrett Cooper can reinforce things. Do I think Matt Carpenter is super long for this roster? I mean, maybe not. But does it hurt to have more relief pitching? No. Should the Royals have sold on Scott Barlow sooner than they did? Yeah, you could argue that. But here they are. We picked on the Royals last time, but you could continue to pick on them if you wanted to. It's an aside.

It doesn't have to be a protracted thing, right? Yeah. Their approach was perplexing, the way that they were like, we want major leaguers back, right? They didn't get major leaguers back in every case, but still they seemed to see themselves as closer to contention. Contending. Yeah. And they were sort of expected to make progress this season. Instead, they stepped back. Anyway, didn't want to derail this with a Royals aside.

We don't. So I think that these were the moves they had on offer given a pretty depleted farm system relative to prior positions and certainly not having a desire to sell and move, you know, Snell or Hader or certainly Soto. So I liked what they did. I think that they got the best that they could out of a market that was sort of pinched. And, you know, would they have benefited from there being more, like, impact bats who are soon to be free agents? Yeah, I think they would have, but I think they did pretty well considering.

And I don't know. Also, G-Man Choi's just so fun. Like, I just enjoy G-Man Choi. I enjoy Rich Hill. Like, I can't wait to see the ultimate dad don't know also g-man joy is just so fun like i just enjoy g-man joy i enjoy rich hill like i can't wait to see the ultimate dad on the dad's i know yeah my only regret is that nelson cruz is no longer a padre because if you had had two 43 year olds on this roster just reminiscing about the 80s together incredible that'd have been yeah it would have been really great but we'll settle for what we got and i think that the padres Padres did pretty well. And, you know, it's so funny. Like, this, I think, gets lost in our memory of each deadline. But wow, if you just have like a really good week right before the deadline, sure makes a big difference. Like, think about the Cubs. You know, if the Cubs hadn't gone, what, like nine for their last 10 right before the deadline, Cody Billinger's probably wearing a different uniform today.

Right. But they won a bunch of games. So it didn't. You know, the Padres have been doing a little bit better. The Diamondbacks look vulnerable. The Giants are the Giants. In a year when the NL West looks winnable, I think you should try. And I am glad that they're continuing to do that.

So here we go. Yeah. Their climb is still uphill. Oh, yeah. Still a steep ascent. But I think they improved their position a little, partly because the teams ahead of them didn't do a ton. Right. The Giants did almost nothing. They got AJ Pollock. Hooray. I was going to say, how dare you insult AJ Pollock like that. That is a shocking statement. Yeah. And then the Dodgers tried to do some stuff, right? They had a trade in place for Eduardo Rodriguez, which would have been a big addition. He had the Dodgers on his no trade list. He blocked that deal. We don't know why exactly, but. Oh, no, we know. Oh, do we? Did he say why? There's been some reporting subsequent

to that. Okay. Fill me in. He, I think, cited proximity to his family being important. His wife and kids are in Miami, and so he wanted to stay closer to the East Coast so that he was closer to family. Okay. Well, that's a perfectly legitimate reason. And he was also away from the Tigers for a period last year dealing with some personal stuff, right? So whether this is related to that or not, I don't know. But look, it's disruptive to your life to pick up stakes in the middle of the year and move to another city and another team. Usually players do it either because they're given some incentive to or because they want

to go to a contending team instead of the Tigers, right? But hey, you get a no trade clause in your contract, then you are entitled to exercise it. So the Dodgers didn't get Rodriguez. Instead, they settled for Ryan Yarbrough, I suppose, and the previous moves that they had made. Yeah. And then the Diamondbacks, they did some stuff, but they got Seawald.

We could talk about the Mariners, I guess. Maybe this is a segue to the Mariners conversation. Let's do the D-backs part of it first. Yeah, so they got Seawald, which I suppose made Andrew Chafin more expendable. So they arguably, that's the way they saw it, I guess. Yeah. Don't think it could have hurt to have both. Yeah.

Yeah, so they got Seawald, gives them their closer, maybe a closer than they had. Yes. And then they dealt Chafin to the Brewers and the Diamondbacks also got Tommy Pham. Right. And what else am I forgetting? There are just so many moves that they make. They got Chase Peterson i guess that happened right so not huge moves right so i'm just saying the teams in front of the padres didn't change their roster strength significantly but you can talk about the diamondbacks go ahead yeah well i'll just briefly say that i liked the seawald of it all we have talked on this pod a good amount about how i felt that they needed like a screw you guy at the back of their bullpen because I thought that their bullpen options as they were currently constituted are good, but they were being put in leverage scenarios that did not fit their talent level. position is really important in the closer role. And by that, I mean like the guy who's going to face like the highest leverage moments, even if they don't come in the ninth. But I think it matters like some, I think it matters something. And I think that Seawald has that. So I liked that for them very much. I liked the Tommy fam move for them very much. I found the decision to ship out Chafin to be kind of surprising because he's, I think, miscast as a closer at this point in his career, but he's like a useful reliever

and he's good now. And I agreed with Ben who wrote up the fam and Chafin moves for us that like, yeah, the guy they got back from the Brewers is like, I think interesting and good. And like, he's certainly under team control for longer, but like that matters a little less to me with relievers because there's so much variance to their performance year to year or tends to be. So I thought that was curious. Like if it had been me, I would have held on to Chafin personally, but maybe there was like salary stuff there that I'm failing to appreciate. Or maybe they were just like, like hey we have Paul Seewald now and he's really good so we're kind of content with that like maybe that was the rationale and you know that's defensible even if it's not the tact that I personally would

have taken but I don't know Strzelecki is like a really fun name to say there's that yeah underrated value to picking up a player like that you get to say their name for years to come. But the Seawald side of things, I think when people saw that, they thought, hey, whatader Jerry DePoto make before, right? Just dealing a closer. And I think it's defensible in the abstract because, look, the Mariners seem to have a knack for building bullpens and finding bullpen guys. So trade from that strength. The Diamondbacks have not had that knack of late. I think the Diamondbacks have not had that knack of late. So if the Mariners have one weird trick to manufacture bullpen arms, then might as well just keep developing them and churning them out and trading them to other teams to get some stuff back. It is kind of reminiscent of the 2021 Graveman trade where the Mariners traded Graveman at the deadline.

And there was like a clubhouse revolt, according to reporting at the time. But it kind of took the long view. And, you know, you remember, hey, relievers in two months of the season, how many innings are they actually going to pitch? Like 20 innings or something? And I think with that trade in particular, the guys they got back actually outperformed the guys they gave up in that season, I believe, because they traded Graveman along with Rafael Montero, who's gone on to do good things for Houston. But they got back Joe Smith and Abraham Toro, who I think outweared them over the rest of that season. So sometimes closers don't last a long time. Sometimes they make a little less of an impact than you expect.

last a long time. Sometimes they make a little less of an impact than you expect. And sometimes a team like the Mariners seems to just keep finding free talent and turning them into policy world. I don't know if you can do that forever, but taking advantage of that skill or trait to get some long-term value, I sort of see the rationale. I guess it's just of a piece with a disappointing approach to the roster just in general this season and obviously disappointing results coming off the highs of making it back to the playoffs last year. You can speak to that more personally than I can. Yeah, I agree with everything that you just said. I think that like in the abstract, Seattle has demonstrated a real talent for developing arms and they have not demonstrated a similar talent for developing hitters. I think like Josh Rojas is sort of a whatever for me, but like, you know, Ryan Bliss is kind of interesting and I think Canzone is kind of interesting.

So there's that piece of it. I think that it is a little surprising given the return that say the Mets were able to command for Robertson that this is a good transition to my frustration here, which is that I think that it's clear they were prioritizing either big league or close to the big league talent on the hitting side. moved prospect for Seawald, they got a poo-poo platter of hitters who are, you know, going to be able to presumably contribute something to the big league club right now. That's less urgent a need if you spend more in free agency the offseason prior in a class that had a lot of good options. Not all of those options have performed well, right? So would they be scrambling if they had sort of ponied up for Trey Turner? I mean, yeah, maybe. Does he have the same season in Seattle that he's having in Philly?

I don't know. But, you know, it's not like all of those guys have been great. Like, look at what's going on with Carlos Correa. So I think that if you read the performance of those guys in the 2023 season back into the decisions over the offseason, then Seattle looks like they were maybe quite justified in their choices. But I think from a process perspective, like, you just came off your first playoff appearance in 21 years you know you have julio locked in for a long time you extended

castillo why are you limiting yourself to colton wong and to oscar hernandez right it's not like they did nothing but in terms of like impact let's go get at the time the Astros, now the Astros and the Rangers moves, they didn't entertain any of those. And they certainly didn't get very far along with any of them. So when you decide to play in the middle to lower tiers of the free agent market, you set yourself up to potentially have to take a suboptimal return for an impact reliever who has another year of team control because you need whatever Dominic Canzone can give you because you need whatever Josh Rojas can give you, which in the last little bit hasn't been very much. So I don't have any problem with

dealing relievers. And I think there's something to the idea of trying to get what you can, but if that's what you're going to do, then you should try to maximize that return just from a pure talent perspective. But they can't do that because they need big league hitters now. So I just find myself frustrated. It's like, you know, they talked big game coming into the season about it. We're going to go win a World Series. And it's like, are you? Now you have two really good clubs in your own division. And like the stuff that Texas as a state, both of those clubs, right, are willing to do to compete is like in a different stratosphere than what Seattle is willing to do right now. Right. Like, you know, I've mentioned this before and I don't have to like pat myself on the back for being clever because this stinks for Seattle fans. But it's like I said in the offseason, you need to do sorry for doing a swear like it. Let's go moves to compete against the Astros. And like people were like, what do you mean?

And then, like, hours later, Texas signed Strigrom, right? And, of course, he's hurt. And so he hasn't been able to do very much. But their approach in the face of that disappointment has been to say, our hitters are good right now. And we want to be good right now. We're going to go get good right now. You know, we're going to go get Max Scherzer, who isn't what he was, but he's still like pretty useful. And then, of course, Houston responds to that by going, oh, and then going and getting Verlander. Right. So it's like, you know, this is what you're up against in your division. So they need to decide, are they a serious organization or aren't they? And like, that's a lot to pin on like a Paul Seawald trade, in fairness.

But I don't think that I'm wrong. Like, what do you understand yourself to be? Because you're not playing in the same waters as them. And if you want to win a World Series, you either need to get really good at developing hitting all of a sudden, or you need to spend some effing money. And now they're in a spot where it's like, who are they going to be able to sign this off season? Who isn't Otani, who is going to appreciably alter their trajectory for the 2024 season.

Right. It's not Matt Carpenter or whoever, you know, like pick a guy, but there aren't impact names on the market this year other than otani and if you aren't willing to spend on like the trey turners and xander bogarts is and carlos correa's of the world you're telling me they're gonna put up enough money to go get otani i hope hope I'm wrong. I will eat crow. I'm not going to make a weird bet because I hate it when people do that.

But I will be very happy to say I am totally wrong. Good job, Jerry. Well done, John Stanton. But I am highly skeptical that that is how they understand themselves. But I hear they opened a very nice bar and grill across from T-Mobile. I think you should pull a Jake Mintz and bike to Seattle if the Mariners sign Otani. Absolutely not. First of all, can you imagine how absolutely irritating our podcast schedule would be? Second of all, I have to run fan graphs. Third of all, I have the advantage and experience of age, which is you don't make bets you aren't willing to lose. And

I am not willing to lose that. Are you crazy? I mess my back up sleeping. No, sir. I do think it's really funny that Paul Seawald had to like come to Arizona, experience some of the worst heat the state has ever had. And it has chilled out a little bit, so that's good. But they were like, no, go back to the Northwest, you know, breathe the air, feel a normal ass temperature. And then they're like, get on a plane and go back to the desert, young man. Although I guess he's going to the Bay Area, so he has like a, you know, transition period because that's where the D-backs are right now. Yes. So a couple other headliners here we should touch on. We talked about the Cardinals last time, one of the most active teams. We talked about most of their moves. Subsequently, they also traded Paul DeYoung to the Blue Jays, who had already picked up a Cardinal Jordan Hicks.

And then they traded Jack Flaherty to Baltimore. I want to talk about Baltimore, right? So none of this unexpected from St. Louis's perspective, right? We kind of knew these were the guys who were available. DeYoung, I guess, for Toronto is sort of Bobachette insurance, although it seems like he's okay. But the Orioles get someone. They got Flaherty here. And I think maybe some people were more excited than that. Merit's just based on an outdated idea of how good Jack Flaherty is because he was good a few years ago, right? Yeah, very good. He's like a league average starter, right? Which is fine. Good value in that. Helpful to have.

But the Orioles have been short on starting pitchers who are better than that. And they still are the sort of starter who would sort of scare you in a playoff rotation, right? Of course, they have to get there. Flaherty will help them get there. But if we want to talk about prospect huggers, Mike Elias is the most, I don't know how to describe him, but the most hug prone, the longest hugs, like uncomfortably long hugs, I guess. I mean, that makes it sound a lot worse, you know? Yeah, no, there's nothing wrong with hugs. We're pro hugs and we're also pro prospects.

But Michael Ayes, it's just, it's kind of like he's someone who won't play with his action figures. He won't take them out of the plastic, you know, he just, he sees them as investments. He wants to let them appreciate, which is fine, I guess. But also it's fun to take them out of the box and get to play with them or let them play. And, you know, last year at the deadline, when the Orioles actually sold a little, I thought it was defensible, you know, like certainly from a clubhouse perspective, that team takes a leap. And then instead of saying, we believe in you guys, it's like, oh, we don't think we're quite ready. But they probably weren't quite ready.

And they were fringy contenders. And some of those moves have worked out just fine for them. This year, they're in first place. Like, it's time, right? It's time to add to the Orioles core. And it is a great core. And it's a young and cheap and cost-controlled core. And it is a great core and it's a young and cheap and cost controlled core. And coming into the season, I didn't think the Orioles had done as much as they should have. I thought they might

squander their opportunity with the young, talented players that they have. And I think they may have thought that too, because there was a John Angelos quote back in February where he started to say, like, now we all know this year could. And then he sort of stopped himself and said, who knows what will happen this year? And that's fine. But we've done what we've done talking about the lack of investment in the roster and sort of acknowledging the possibility or even the likelihood based on historical precedent of taking a step back when you get that much better in one year. And so it seemed like the Orioles, in addition to just Angelosian miserliness, maybe felt like they weren't quite there yet, but they're there. They've exceeded my expectations and most expectations. They need reinforcements.

They're in a stacked division. They're fending off the Rays and they really need help. And they were well-equipped to go get that help, right? I mean, no one has more prospects and more expendable prospects in the sense that they just have too many good, young, promising players for the number of positions on a baseball field. To not roster them all. Yeah. And I'm sure Elias recognizes that intellectually, but he really does seem to have this mindset where it's tough for him to flip the switch from, okay, we're compiling, we're accumulating, we're amassing talent, to, okay, it's go time.

We got to trade some of these prospects to win now. Right. I mean, he said after this Flaherty trade and this trade, like I don't think they gave up any of their top 25 prospects. Right. They didn't really surrender any one of note here. And Elias said, when you're on the buy side, you tend to kind of lose every trade because you're giving away years and years and years of future for a very short impact.

But that's part of trying to win and the focus on the team that's in a good position. And it's true. You might lose those trades from sort of a projected surplus value long-term war perspective. But you don't have to present it or regard it as losing the trade. You could win the trade by, a World Series, winning a division. Right. That is also a way to win an extended playoff run. Yes. And some other quotes of his from past days. So if you go back to early July draft time, he was asked about the timing of the draft and the major league team playing so well. He said, and I think he was kind of joking, but he said, we're promoting so many

of these guys, I'm starting to worry about our farm system ranking. And again, I think he said that tongue in cheek, but there's got to be a little bit of truth there. And all credit to him. I mean, he's built up a hell of a farm system here and a hell of a core. And there were doubts about whether they could do that again. And yeah, they did it by tanking and being terrible for a few years, but it's still no cinch that they would get as good again as they got and seemingly be as well positioned for the future. And it's one thing to do that in 2013 with the Astros. And it's another thing to do it several years later when you're not the first mover anymore. And it has worked again. They're

in great position. Obviously, they have a long way to go until they have Astros-like success at the major league level. But the building blocks, the ingredients are there. And it does seem like there's part of him that's just sort of savoring the prospect ranking, which I'm sure a lot of Orioles fans have been when they had nothing else to root for. But now it's time to flip the switch. He also said July 28th, the Orioles could, quote unquote, reach if they see a deal they think could make a big difference for the 2023 team. But, quote, I can't set the minor league system on fire just because we're in first place. Now, sure, I'm not saying give up everyone to get anyone, but there is a

big gap between setting the minor league system on fire and what they did, which is barely singeing the minor league system, right? So again, I don't know what talent was out there and how many more impact moves they could have made, but they had the guys to deal and they didn't do it. And will that come back to bite them or not? I don't know. But at some point, they've just got to have a mindset shift to, hey, we're like the class of the AL East here. Like we got to supplement our core. We got to spend. We got to trade some of these prospect redundancies to go get good veterans at positions where we need help. So I don't know if or when they have that in them. that he's drawing here, which is that if we look around the league and we look at the kinds of pitchers who moved, right, most of them were guys who were either, even if there were additional years of control, like the Scherzers and Verlanders, like older, obviously not going to be, they weren't necessarily top of the rotation guys anymore, or they were rentals. But Baltimore had

the prospect depth to blaze a different path. They could have probably put something together that would have pried Logan Gilbert free from Seattle. They might have been able to go and get Dylan Cease, right? So there was an option here where they could have, yes, spent more, right? They could have traded higher profile guys. I mean, you take Jackson Holiday out of it. They still had this really great, impressive system, right? They could have traded higher profile guys. I mean, you take Jackson Holiday out of it. They still had this really great, impressive system, right? And they could have consolidated some of that and gone out and gotten a young, under team control for a while guy. And I'm not in the room. And so it's a little unfair of me to say, well, they could have done that. But like, if any team

was going to be able to do it, it was probably them, right? Even more so than Cincinnati, just because of the depth involved and who some of the specific teams were. Like, someone was like, do you think that Seattle and Cincy are going to get together on one of these pitchers? And I'm like, what are they going to do? Send Noel V. Marte back? Like, Seattle knows what he is now, and he's a less valuable prospect than he was last year. So anyway, all of that to that to say like they could have gotten a guy who was better and would have been around for probably a couple of years if they had wanted to do it and they decided not to and this gives me an opportunity to quote from ben clemens's great winners and losers piece a moment the orioles are run by a sharp group of people who get no objection from me on

that score they're surely aware of the perils of constantly looking to the future it's not a deep secret but subconsciously i think they might be struggling to change mental models constantly dreaming about what players might become in three years leads to systematic mis-evaluations of how important the present is at any given time concentrating value into windows of contention by adding at some deadlines and restocking at others is the way that teams with good process convert their farm systems into titles the orioles will figure it out but i don't think they've gotten the math right just yet and i think that's right like how many more seasons are they going to have

like this where they not only have the position player talent that they have, but they are in such a good position in such a hard division. Like, we talked about how the Yankees might be in a bad spot for a while, but like the Rays are good. The Blue Jays are good. The Red Sox won't be like this forever, right? Like, they should go for it. They should have gone for it. And I don't mean to slight Jack Flaherty. I think that given particularly some of the innings limits that their young guys are going to bump up against soon, like it's good to have a starter, but it's not like Flaherty has been like the, you know, paragon of health over the last couple of years. So he could break tomorrow and then they're just going to go into the postseason with like kyle gibson yeah really like you know so i think it was a big missed opportunity and i think that if they tell their fans like hey we don't want to compromise the future like the future can still be bright and you can reinforce the present and they opted not to do that and who knows maybe like chic said, we're not trading cease unless you give us Jackson Holiday.

And maybe Seattle said, we won't give you Logan Gilbert unless you trade us Jackson Holiday. And, you know, they hung up the phone. But I'd be surprised if either of those organizations didn't look at the rest of their farm system and say, like, you know, we can get something done here. So I don't know. It seems like a big wasted opportunity, Although I don't have to pretend to be excited about Colton Couser playing for the Mariners. So maybe it all worked out for me. Yeah. I think I've seen, I don't know whether I saw Flaherty described as an innings eater. I know Aaron Savali was described as an innings eater. I was pondering this because it seems like people

are using innings eater now to describe any unremarkable starter, just someone who's not given you, you know, like. And it's like, no, they have to actually eat the innings. Right, right. You know, like Noah Sindergaard's not an innings eater. I mean, yeah, any pitcher who is throwing any amount of innings, I guess, is eating innings. But like, really, you have to have some track record of durability. That's an innings eater where it's like on a per inning basis, the performance is not that special. But you can count on him to go out there and he's going to take every turn in the rotation and throw a solid.

He's going to throw seven innings. Yeah. Now, I guess part of it is that no one's an innings eater anymore relative to earlier innings eating. Like the recommended daily allowance for innings has declined precipitously. So maybe it's just that because we've lost that framework, I mean, there aren't even that many 200 inning guys anymore. So it's like there's kind of been an inflation, I guess, in how we describe innings eaters or a deflation. So maybe we've just lost our bearings when it comes to that. But you have to have some track record of durability in addition to just. Yeah. So I'm seeing term creep with innings eater. And yes, I don't know. Maybe we just say no one's an innings eater anymore. It's like only the aces are innings eaters. Now they're the only ones who throw enough innings that they actually have innings totals that resemble what we once would have said was an

innings eater. Anyway, it's that and people calling the trade deadline the hot stove season, I guess that brings out the pedants in us. I saw Emma tweet about that, so it's not just me, but I think she's right. It's a hot season now. We don't need a stove now because it's so hot out. We need the stove. We need to gather around the stove over the offseason to keep warm while we talk about trades. Now, it's just, it's hot. It's the middle of summer. It hit the headlines here. Just a few other things. So we talked about the Tigers not trading Eduardo Rodriguez. They did trade a starter, Michael Lorenzen, all-star starter, Michael Lorenzen, to the Phillies, who might use him as more of a swing man, maybe. And I guess another NL East move, Brad Hand on the move yet again to the Braves. I do kind of like what the Brewers did on the whole. The Braves, I do kind of like what the Brewers did on the whole. You know, like no single move that stuns you, but just getting Carlos Santana and getting Canna and getting Chafin, you know, just shoring up some weaknesses.

While the Reds didn't do much at all, which I guess we could kind of lump them in with the Orioles, sort of. They are maybe a bit more ahead of schedule than the Orioles are. They're almost like the Orioles last year, maybe, but similar in the sense that they're in the thick of a division race. And they do have redundancies when it comes to having a lot of prospects, maybe not quite as many as the Orioles do. But they didn't do much. as many as the Orioles do, but they didn't do much. They didn't do much at all while the Brewers were making small but meaningful upgrades. The Reds got Sam Mole.

They got the Moleman, right? So that's pretty much it. So obviously, they and the Orioles have supplied their own reinforcements internally. The Cavalry has arrived through promotions of minor leaguers. But again, they were a team that seemed to be in a position to potentially add and elected not to or ended up not doing that. So maybe that's sort of disappointing to Reds fans who've had a lot to be excited about this season, just not on deadline day, unless you're a huge Sam Mole fan. Yeah. But I mean, like probably his family is like a big fan of him. I mean, I don't want to assume sometimes families, they don't get along. Yeah. That's okay. But yeah, it appears that they

are hoping that the NL Central of it all will like be enough. But I think that if we are sort of grading them relative to the Orioles, that the lack of activity is less egregious. Yeah. And two other teams hoping that the central of it all will be enough, the Twins and the Guardians, right? Particularly the Twins, who really didn't do much at all, at least on deadline day. I guess there was an earlier reliever move. There was that Twins-Marlins underperforming reliever swap, but that's it. And then the Guardians made some moves and sort of some interesting moves, but maybe not moves that made them better immediately, right? So we talked about

the Rosario-Cinderguard swap. And then they also made a trade with the Rays where they traded Aaron Savalle to the Rays for Kyle Manzardo, who is sort of a big bat prospect, the sort of prospect that the Guardians need. They need some big bats there. its face, I guess, just because the Guardians have like their entire opening day rotation on the IL are unavailable for one reason or another. And then they're resorting to acquiring Noah Sindergaard, who did decently in his first start for the Guardians. But they're also then shipping out Aaron Savalle, who his ERA is probably deceptive, but has not been bad. Right.

Right. And the Rays, they've been kind of desperate for pitching too. They've had their fair share of injuries as well. But yeah, the combination of getting Cindergaard back for Rosario and then trading away Savalle, again, seemed like maybe more of a long-term oriented move for them, which might be good. They also traded Josh Bell to the Marlins.

We can talk about the Marlins in a second. But yeah, sort of lateral or long-term oriented moves. So neither AL Central contender has, I hate to say that they haven't looked like they're trying to win. I'm sure they're trying very hard to win the players that they have. It's just that their rosters are not so great that it seems like they're trying to win by getting great players. And they didn't do that at the deadline either. So they're both just kind of trusting that the other is mediocre enough that they could get there, particularly the twins who have been leading largely.

Right. Yeah. You sit there and you're like, how many like the the Guardians basically got rid of all of their sort of notable offseason signings. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Like not yesterday. They had already DFA'd Zanino, but they traded Bell away. And then, yeah, like the Twins could use they really need hitting. They really do. And I don't know, maybe you look at some of the sort of mid-tier guys and you're like well we're crowded in the outfield and we think that the gap between like tommy fam or mark cannon our existing guys is narrow enough that we don't do anything but it still feels like they could have used i don't know a bigger anything yeah a bigger anything Ben I think that the AL Central teams

always it's not that they never do anything and like the twins you know did some stuff in the offseason right so they're in a different category for those reasons and say the Guardians are but I always find myself sitting there thinking you know getting to the playoffs is one thing, but winning there is entirely different. And like, you're going up against clubs that are they were sort of competing against, that they'd envision the Rays or the Astros or the Rangers or the Orioles. And I'm sure that the people who work for those teams would say, well, that is what we're trying to do here. But it doesn't seem like it's always reflected in the moves that they make. So that's too bad. Yeah. I don't think I mentioned that the Guardians were on the other end of the Fran Perfantes no-hitter.

Yeah. They were the no-hits. They were a no-hit. I said that the Astros had five no-hitters thrown in the past five years. I think Cleveland has four times being no-hit since the start of the 2021 season. I think that's right. Yeah. So, again, there's a lot of randomness that goes into

that, but also they have not been a great offensive team. So maybe they're trying to fix that long term. But yeah, that's not going to be a battle of the Titans down the stretch in the central. And then, yeah, we mentioned, I think the Cubs got Candelario, they got Jose Cuas, the Brewers, we mentioned their moves. Glad the Cubs decided not to sell to go for it again, as you said, sort of buoyed by their recent results. And then the Marlins, happy to see them making some moves, trying to improve. I don't know about the specific moves that they made. I mean, I don't know. It's good to get David Robertson. Sure, yeah.

They gave up a highly rated prospect for him. They did do that, yep. They got Jake Berger and Josh Bell. Again, they need some offensive help too. How much are they going to get it from Josh Bell? I don't know, right? I don't know. don't know. Right. So, yeah, the specifics of of who they got and who they gave up doesn't inspire that much confidence. But I know I like that they were at least going for it and seemed to identify some areas of need. And maybe there weren't just solutions that would blow your socks off at some of those areas. But, hey, it's nice to see the Marlins attempting to retool instead of being on the other end of deadline swaps. Yeah, I say like A for effort and then the specifics of the strategy

could maybe still use a little work. And then I guess lastly, we should maybe just touch on a couple of teams that didn't do much. We talked about the Orioles and the Reds. We mentioned the Giants earlier. Then you have the Yankees and the Red Sox, right? Teams you think of as wheelers and dealers and would be out there making moves. And they did next to nothing. So there was an Aaron Boone quote, just a lot of really reshareable Aaron Boone quotes these days. But in the hours before the deadline, he said, you could see everything from nothing to guys leaving to guys coming. That does kind of cover all the possibilities. Yeah, it's like a real range there, you know. Yeah.

And in the end, you saw something close to nothing. The Yankees got Kenan Middleton and Spencer Howard. So I don't think that that will assuage or mollify the unrest in the Yankees fan base. And then the Red Sox got Luis Arias they weren't in line for a playoff spot, considered those odds in their reasoning for not making a big trade, which, of course, he should. That is his job. That is something that you should consider, but perhaps it's not inspiring for fans to hear. So both of those teams sort of sat on their hands for the most part. Yeah. And Yankees fans aren't pleased about it again. What?

I don't know that there was a move that they could have made out there that would have addressed their problems in a meaningful way that would have gotten the fans off Boone's back and Cashman's back. They have kind of made their bed with that roster and they do kind of have to lie on it potentially for kind of a long time, as we've discussed recently. So I understand, though, if you're frustrated about the Yankees season, again, this is all relative to the Yankees and their track record of success and their payroll and the expectations that their fans have been conditioned to cultivate. But if you weren't feeling positive about the Yankees heading into the deadline, then you probably were not feeling much better about them post-deadline. Yeah. I don't think that your sense of it is really any different than it was and probably is not satisfying to you. I think that's fair. It's been a disappointing

run and this didn't really move the needle at all. disappointing run and this didn't really move the needle at all so all right did we do it did we talk about every team i think just about i'm sure we may not have name checked certain relievers but i think refuse i will tell you i will start sending you pictures of babette's butthole oh yeah please you know the worst part of having a sick animal is that you like you know you got to send photos to the vet and so then you just open your pictures without remembering that. And it's like, butthole, butthole, butthole, butthole. So many. I want to apologize to everyone who's like, how many times can Meg say butthole?

And then was like, wow, it's so many more than we thought. But I just had so many pics and I was like, I got to get rid of all the butthole pics. You know, got to get them out of here. Yeah. So you got to be careful if you hand your phone to someone and you're like, hey, could you take a picture of us or something? And then they swipe to the side and it's just like cat butts just all the way down. Yeah. This is not a hobby of mine, cat butt photography. This was a clinical setting,

right? So that could give the wrong impression potentially. And I just know, Ben, I just know that at some point in my life, I am going to, in that weird voice that we all have when we're talking to our pets, I'm going to look at her. I'm going to go, oh, look at your weird little funnel. And then I'm going to hate myself, Ben, you know, more than I already do. Well, I think we have just about covered the deadline. We've done the deadline justice. It was not the greatest of deadlines, but look, every deadline is pretty good relative to your baseline middle of the season day. Gave us a lot more to talk about than your typical single day or two in the stretch of the schedule. So thanks, Deadline, for providing content for us. And I'll give you a future blast. Did just want to ask you this, though. I saw this story at Sportsnet that there was sort of a

record-setting run of home losses for the Edmonton Elks. So the Edmonton Elks are a Canadian football league team, CFL, and they lost to the BC Lions 27-0 on Saturday. And the story says that that helped the Elks, or really hurt the Elks, but the Elks, one way or another, took sole possession of the worst run of home losses in North American professional sports history. OK. And the record that they eclipsed here that I'm sure they would have preferred not to was a baseball one. So the loss surpassed the longest run of consecutive home losses held by Major League Baseball's St. Louis Browns, who lost 20 straight in 1953 before becoming the Baltimore Orioles the following season. So I'm just wondering whether you think this is meaningful,

like to compare across sports and to say like a North American record for most consecutive home losses when, okay, it's apples and apples when you're talking about the number of games. So the Elks have lost a CFL record 21 consecutive home games dating back to October of 2019. But it must be different to lose that number of games consecutively in a football schedule than it is to lose that number of games in a baseball schedule where you're playing many more games. Because here we're talking about multiple seasons when they have not won at home, whereas those record-setting St. Louis Browns, they lost 20 straight. Well, you're still playing many more home games than that. So it's not like your fans didn't get to see any games for a stretch of several seasons, right? So I guess it's sort of a strange record to me because the number of games is so different here and the psychological impact, I would think. Yeah. Wildly different, you would think. Yeah. Right? Yeah. Yeah. I agree with you. these things on the same baseline because baseball and football schedules famously quite

different. So much more numerous, the number of games in baseball than football. And then the other thing I wanted to mention is just to follow up on our conversation about dugout punching bags the other day. I heard from multiple sources that there is something close to a dugout punching bag. And the visitor's clubhouse, the bathroom off the visitor's dugout, that is, in Milwaukee, in American Family Field, has a punching bag in it. I heard this from multiple people and listener Randy actually posted a photo of it in the Facebook group, which I will link to.

Now, I don't know if it's only in the visitor's dugout there. I don't know if he visited both bathrooms and could confirm whether it's in the bathroom of the home dugout as well. But there is something like this. I just wonder, though, if it is only in the visiting dugout bathroom, then that would suggest that it's there for a different reason, right? It's almost like a taunt if you're placing it in the visitor's dugout area because you're like, hey, we're going to beat you so badly that you will want to punch things. It's not because, hey, we want to save you the trouble of punching the wall and kicking a cooler and hurting yourself.

Not that they would want the visiting team to hurt themselves, but it's there more as a troll, I would think, than it is to prevent players from punching unless it's in both dugouts. But just the visitor one, then it's saying like, hey, we're going to use you as a punching bag and then you will need to come back to the bathroom and punch a punching bag. So here it is. Who procured it, though? Yeah, I don't know. I don't know the provenance, the Yeah, I don't know. I don't know the provenance, the origin. I don't know.

Was it the same person who thought we should have one of these who then went out and got it? And then they came in the next day and they were like, oh, that's a good idea. Or did someone go, hey, can you run down a Dick's Sporting Goods in front of the punching bag? Yeah, I don't know. But it's been there for a while, seemingly. So they didn't get this idea from Effectively Wild. It predated our talking about the punching bag specifically, though. Maybe not the padded walls.

Anyway, just wanted to let you all know that there is some precedent. So we will leave you with the future blast, which comes to us from the distant year of 2041. which comes to us from the distant year of 2041. And also comes to us from Rick Wilber, an award-winning writer, editor, and college professor who has been described as the dean of science fiction baseball. We've described him as that many times. In fact, when I read that same little brief bio for him on every episode now. But 2041, his dispatch from the. It goes a little like this. In 2041, the collapse of soccer's USL Super League for women players worked to baseball's

advantage. The USL Super League had struggled for years to compete with the National Women's Soccer League, where interest and attendance steadily grew. In a deal worked out over the winter, four of the USL teams joined the NWSL, and the rest either reverted to second division soccer in the USL or folded. Many of the players on those teams found work in Europe or in the NWSL, but a number of them accepted designated runner slots on big league and minor league teams. These players were fast, sturdy, unafraid of contact, and had impeccable sliding skills. sliding skills. Baseball snapped them up for designated runner slots at salaries that exceeded, at least at the big league level, anything they'd been paid in the USL. The Oregon State four from the previous season held onto their jobs and their social media status, but the other seven women sprinters who'd found work stealing bases were hard put to hold onto their slots. In July at the All-Star Game, MLB announced four new expansion franchises, all of them multi-billion dollar enterprises in Charlotte, Louisville, Portland, and San Antonio. The Jacksonville

and Orlando efforts to woo a team fell short, and Florida remained without a baseball team, as it had been since the Rays moved from St. Pete to Nashville and the Marlins moved to Sacramento back in the mid-2030s. On the field, a mediocre Cleveland Guardians team just three games over the 500 mark at the All-Star break went on a tear after acquiring some speed on the bases and trading for the talented young arm of Kenton McLeod, the pitcher who led AAA in 2040 with a 1.09 ERA with his no-nonsense 100-mile-per-hour heater, a slider, and a great curve. Those three pitches won him 12 games during the Guardian streak that ended with a parade down Superior Avenue on a warm November day in Cleveland as the hometown heroes had dismantled

the Omuri Giants in four straight World Series games. So I guess that's when the drought will end, 2041. Something to put on your calendar, Cleveland fans. All right, I will wrap up with an excerpt from some correspondence I had with listener Josh Beck, who was an Effectively Wild guest on episode 1708, when we talked to him about his criminology studies and how they related to punishment and deterrence in MLB's attempt to crack down on sticky stuff. Well, Josh wrote in in response to our discussion on episode 2039, when we talked about Miles Michaelis hitting Ian Happ and subsequently getting ejected and suspended. Happ had seemingly unintentionally hit Cardinals catcher Wilson Contreras with a

backswing and then Michaelis pretty clearly in retribution plunked him. Josh writes, friendly neighborhood social science grad student here again. Meg actually hit the nail on the head with her thoughts on Michaelis throwing at Happ. Not sure if she was digging deep and remembering stuff from Sociology 101 or if she just reads people really well. But the pondering about how much of Michaelis is throwing at Hap was performative instead of being rooted in any real big, strong emotions is actually a really key insight of the symbolic interaction school of sociology. Irving Goffman, one of the biggest names in sociology, actually argued in the presentation of self in everyday life that social interaction is best understood through the lens of the individual acting a role, be it baseball podcast host or baseball player,

and that there are certain expectations of that role. If some red-ass unwritten rule stalwart represents the platonic ideal of what Michaelis believes the role of baseball player to be, I may beef with my catcher, but he's my catcher. It's not about the name on the back of the jersey, but the front, etc. Then it makes sense for him to defer to that archetype. That's how he understands the role of major league starting pitcher to be played. I told him I was remembering our earlier conversation about sticky stuff deterrence when I was talking about the need to eject Mike Liss to show that what he did was unacceptable. Josh says, unfortunately, with Mike Liss, we can probably look to neutralization theory to explain why he likely won't be deterred by the suspension. Neutralization is all about mitigating bad feelings that might otherwise

keep us from doing something we know we probably shouldn't. I ate healthy yesterday, so I can have a cookie today. I just shoplift from Walmart, so it's not like an actual mom and pop store. It doesn't matter, they make billions. I wasn't overly mean to my partner. She asked what I thought, and all I said was that she was acting like her mother. Stuff like that. Michaelis probably wears the suspension as a badge of honor. It's not like the Cardinals need him for a late-season push. It falls into the category of an appeal to higher loyalties. It's okay to hit Hap because he hurt one of my guys.

For better or worse, Michaelis probably considers it the cost of doing business. If the league were interested in curbing this adherence to the unwritten rules, quite frankly, I think societal pressures, let the kids play after all has been doing more than enough, they'd have to do some sort of escalating punishment, similar to sticky stuff or PD suspensions, at least until the cost outwe, hey, we don't do that, along with some punishment, we can't assume he's learned anything from the experience. It's more likely that he's already in a bit of an echo chamber and had dug his heels in on his side of the line. In closing, he says, theories of human behavior matter, and we can use them to understand why people do what they do, whether it's criminal, cheating, or just being a red ass. We have some smart listeners. We also have some generous listeners who have supported the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild.

The following five listeners have already visited that site and signed up to pledge some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going, help us stay ad-free, and get themselves access to some perks. Alan Rosen, Steve Discala, Zach West,

Paul Baker, and Matthew Eli. Thanks to all of you. Patreon perks include access to the Effectively Wild Discord group for patron supporters only, monthly bonus episodes, Thank you. on site, but anyone and everyone can contact us via email at podcastfancrafts.com. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash Effectively Wild. You can follow Effectively Wild on Twitter at EWpod, and you can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at r slash Effectively Wild. Thanks to Zachary Goldberg for his editing and production assistance. We'll

be back with one more episode before the end of the week, hoping to do something fun and deadline-themed. So stay tuned. We will talk to you soon. Romantic, pedantic, and hypothetical. Semantic and frantic, real or theoretical. They give you the stats and they give you the news. It's a baseball podcast you should choose. Effectively Wild is here for you. About all the weird stuff that

players do. Authentically strange and objectively styled. Let's play ball. It's Effectively Wild. It's Effectively Wild. It's Effectively Wild.