Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 211: The Phillies, the Blue Jays, and Selling/The Scary Side of Jose Canseco

Episode Date: May 28, 2013

Ben and Sam discuss the Phillies, Blue Jays, and being a buyer or seller in the multi-Wild Card era, then talk about the significance of Jose Canseco’s internet notoriety.

I ask you to remember just one word, the one word that makes it all possible, and that word is sell. I want you to get out there and sell, sell, sell. I want you to sell your socks off. I want you to sell your socks off. Sell! Sell! Good morning and welcome to episode 211 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectus. I am Ben Lindberg, joined by Sam Miller.

How was your long weekend? It was great. How was yours? Also very good. You sound a little down. I'm not. Okay. Maybe just out of practice.

Yes, I am a bit rusty. Maybe it was so long since we podcast. I've had that extra day off so you didn't sneak in and uh and put something up no i thought about it i really 211 or that hard uh i i was close to to seeing who was online and seeing if we could record a quick episode just to stay on the the multiple of five schedule is there anything. Is there anything that keeps us from just saying that this is 2-1-2? I mean, would iTunes revolt if we put 2-1-2 in the title or something like that? No, I don't think so.

But we wouldn't be true to ourselves. Uh-huh. Yeah, but it'd be a lot easier to keep track. Yeah. Uh-huh. Yeah, but it'd be a lot easier to keep track. Yeah. So anyway, now we're doomed to, I guess, months of not being on multiple of five schedule. Yeah, we'll lose one on July 4th, and we'll lose one on Labor Day, and we'll lose one on maybe Veterans Day. maybe better than today although you know now that I think about it we'll lose

those three and then we'll need one more and we might actually make it until Thanksgiving which would be two days off and that would set us back to one off so yeah you probably should have mapped this out in your head before you decided not to log on.

Well, maybe I'll do two episodes one day. I'll do an extra episode if I can't take it anymore. You are the only person in the world who cares about this, and I barely, barely care about it, and I'm far ahead of the rest of the world, so I don't know why we're talking about this while recording. We probably could have just made small talk before you clicked start click start all right let's go ahead let's okay move forward what do you want to talk about jose can say go okay uh i want to talk about i think the phillies and the blue jays of course yeah we're uh we're going to be reliving the 1993 world series i assume right uh this is all

well 20th anniversary of the 1993 world yeah i guess so that was that's like the first world series i remember watching really because you're a child all right well let's uh let's start with yours okay uh so over the weekend rj anderson emailed uh you and me and some other people. He's kind of laying the groundwork for his annual article of top deadline targets and players who will be available and players who will be traded. And it seemed like the most discussion on that email thread was related to Phillies guys because RJ didn't originally put any Phillies guys

on his kind of rough list of 15 or so guys. And I answered and said, what about Phillies guys? And Zach Levine answered and said, what about Phillies guys? And we talked a bit about whether the Phillies would be dealing or not. And I guess there were a couple of Blue Jays guys on the list also, or at least one. And I guess Memorial Day has kind of traditionally been a time when people size up who the contenders are or who's definitely out of it or who's a seller. I don't know that you can do that anymore with the multiple wildcard system. can do that anymore with the multiple wildcard system. But I don't know. It is a time of year when people sort of take stock of teams and where they stand. And these seem like two of the more

interesting buyer-seller-holder discussions this year. So I guess I'm wondering whether these teams will be sellers and which players they are most likely to sell. So I guess to some extent, I'm asking us to project what will happen in June and July, because obviously if these teams play really, really well between now and then, that could change everything. I wish I'd paid attention last. I probably did and have forgotten, but I wish I remembered kind of where the line was drawn, where the cut was last year's trade deadline. Yeah, between buyers, sellers, and holders, because it is a whole new math that you can't necessarily do. In my head, it was like probably six games was the very closest you could be and still be selling, and that was guaranteed to raise some hackles back in the day. But you would see a team that was maybe within six games at the deadline sell off uh you know with two months to go which is probably a pretty good

um awareness of of the unlikeliness unlikelihood of of coming back but would you know would always it kind of looked bad if you did you know six games back and then you know you probably would say like nine or ten would be like the the the common selling point but But now everybody's, I mean, I mentioned in that same email thread, I mentioned the A's, which, you know, the A's are, you know, they're, well, I guess they've won four in a row. So they were basically at about 500 when we were having the emails. Now they're six over 500. So they were just a little over 500.

And, of course, now there's no chance the A's will sell so they're they're not worth talking about but like the angels were mentioned in the angels were not only mentioned in that that email thread but that i think i did a chat on friday i was asked about who the angels will will trade for if they're buyers and who they'll trade for if they're sellers and it seemed absurd that they would be buyers to me and it seemed like a lot that they would be sellers although they'll trade for if they're sellers. And it seemed absurd that they would be buyers to me. And it seemed like a lock that they would be sellers, although they don't have a ton of pieces that are kind of classic trade-type guys because everybody's signed forever. But the Angels are only five games out of the second wildcard slot right now.

And they're winning a lot suddenly. They are, but let's say they were five games. Is five games out? I mean, five games out of the second wildcard slot is quite a bit because you figure there's like five teams between you and that spot probably, and you're probably not that close to the division, so you're not really probably going to be in a lot of play for a guaranteed spot. And if you get the wildcard spot, you have a coin flips chance.

So would the Angels be sellers if the deadline were right now, do you think? No, I don't think so. I mean, it's kind of hard to have a one-size-fits-all cutoff. That's true. Because obviously teams have different amounts of talent and different amounts of money committed and different projections for the rest of the season. So a team like the Angels that was expected to compete and that is spending a lot of money to compete and would have a better projection than, I don't know, say maybe a team like the Rockies

or something who are actually playing better, but probably wouldn't be expected to play as well the rest of the way. So, I mean, the Phillies, I think, have the third highest payroll in baseball. Let's see, we gave them less than a 10% chance to make the playoffs as of Monday morning, and then they lost on Monday. So, I mean, not much more than like a 5% chance or something is what we're giving them now. They're only, I guess, three games under.500, but they're behind two very good teams in their own division. And then the Blue Jays had a 2.3% chance to make the playoffs,

according to our playoff odds on Monday. They won Monday. So both of these teams are are in single digits roughly i don't know roughly five ish percent chance to to make the playoffs with with a lot of good teams ahead of them uh but the phillies of course still have a bunch of stars. They still have a high payroll. They have Ruben Amaro, who it's sort of hard to predict what he's thinking or planning to do at any time. I think the reason RJ left Phillies off of his initial list was that he just felt like Amaro wouldn't be willing to sell her or that he wouldn't have that sort of mindset to just kind of break it all down and rebuild.

And then, of course, the Blue Jays, I would think psychologically it makes it somewhat different if you've just spent the winter making tons of trades and signings and ramping up to compete in 2013, I would think just psychologically, it must be harder if you're not Jeffrey Gloria to just a few months later decide to dismantle. And of course, they have plenty of guys signed through next season. So it's not as if they have a ton of impending free agents. They have Josh Johnson, I guess, will be a free agent. But other than that, you could see a contending team in Toronto next season, maybe with some better luck going their way or fewer injuries. They kind of have

a core that you could see competing. With the Phillies, it seems a little harder to see that even their young players, and there aren't many of them, but I mean, their outfield is kind of where their young players are, I guess. And that's not been a highlight for them. I mean, Ben Revere hasn't really hit at all. Dominic Brown has hit for some power, but hasn't really gotten on base and and delman young is delman young um so i wonder uh i don't know do you do you expect you expect either one to be a big time seller do you think uh maybe the blue jays would say trade johnson but but hold on to everyone else who's signed for the future or they're kind of in a weird place because they started that process to convert minor league talent into major league talent and that talent hasn't

worked out the way everyone thought it would. So now what do they do? Yeah, so like with the Blue Jays, if they traded for prospect, I mean if they basically broke this down and rebuilt their farm system now, Alex Anthopoulos would just get fired. You would think so, yeah. There's virtually no chance that he would be back to be the GM next year. So do you think that that's the sort of thing that motivates GMs? Do you think there are many general managers out there who are filtering through this sort of self-interest of what's going to save their job?

It has to be a factor. A factor, but is it the factor, do you think? Do you think it's often the factor? Is it mostly the factor? Should it be? Well, you wouldn't want it to be if you were the owner of the team. Would it be? Well, you wouldn't want it to be if you were the owner of the team.

Would it be yours? I'd like to say no. I mean, I've never been in that position, but there would be a point, I guess. I mean, Anthopolis is a young guy and at least up until recently had a reputation as a good general manager. And you would think that he would get another chance somewhere. So maybe it's not the end of the line for him no matter what happens. Maybe that makes it a little less urgent. I mean, I don't know.

You can't, it would be kind of unrealistic, I feel like, to expect a GM to be completely selfless and just put the organization before him and not even think about his own contract status and his family and his earning potential and all of those things. But of course, that's kind of part of the job, I guess, to put the organization before yourself. So I don't know, I don't think a good GM would make really destructive moves just to strengthen his own job security. But I would think if it came down to kind of trying to milk something out of a potential contender as opposed to just tearing it down and basically guaranteeing that you're going to lose your job, I would think at that point it has to be something on your mind.

really the best thing for the organization to tear down and, um, and, and start over. I think you'd probably would have to go to the, to the owner and, or the team president and say, you know, my best advice for this team is to do this. And if that's what you guys want to do, uh, and you want me to be in charge of it, then that would, you know, I'll do my very best. If not, then, um, you know, we can talk about my resignation right now. And I think that you probably should be realistic. The odds are that you're – if you're in that position, the odds are not really that you're going to find an escape hatch anyway. And you might as well go out with a little bit of class and dignity or or class is probably the wrong word, and dignity is probably the wrong word, but maybe integrity is the right word.

So anyway, to answer your question, I think that the Blue Jays, I would expect them to shop some combination of Johnson, Morrow, and did I say Johnson yet? And Burley. I would think that for some reason, not necessarily all three, in fact, almost certainly not all three, but some combination of the three with an emphasis on Johnson. Because I think that Burley probably wasn't necessarily the key cog in that deal. For instance, I imagine that Burley probably to some degree was a guy that they took more than they really wanted,

although pitching depth was such a big thing for them last year that there was also probably something attractive about Burley. But he's not young. He's not young. He's not a franchise pitcher. He's just sort of a guy who fell into their laps more than anything. And so when he starts slow, you figure, well, if we can get anything for him, he's not a huge part of our plans for next year. And Morrow is just, I don't know, I think that it might just be a matter of if they think that he's

you know, if they think that the league's opinion of him is higher than their own, and they have presumably better information, then I could see them getting rid of him before he continues to devalue himself. But I would like to think that they would do, I mean, they're a team that is in some ways in a position like the Rays, even though they haven't had any success. The Rays are constantly trying to rebuild their success without putting themselves haven't had but that they're trying to capture without going back into that long-term rebuild which probably nobody in the area has the patience for so i would think that they would shot those guys but be looking for the sort of players who

are uh more close to big league ready than um you know 19 years old um They might be looking for guys who already have some service time or who are young and who would fit the model for what they're doing but without signaling to their fans that it's going to be 2015 rather than 2014. And then the Phillies,

I guess... Who could the Phillies move that they would want to move? There's Cliff Lee, I guess... Who could the Phillies move that they would want to move? There's Cliff Lee, I guess. Who has been traded four times already in his career, so he's used to it. There's Utley.

There's Papelbon, and there's Utley. There's Ruiz, I guess. Michael Young, who has been decent. He's going to be a free agent agent Utley will be a free agent I guess those are the obvious ones I've heard Papelbon mentioned

in rumors yeah well they traded guys, they were further out last year but they traded veterans last year so it's clearly not something they don't have the constitution for i think right now they're too they would probably consider themselves too close uh but in two months they might not consider themselves too close it's they're they're just a they're just a classic bubble team it's uh i mean i think that their their move will be pretty clear to them and to all of us depending on you know where they are in a month and a half. Doesn't it seem like maybe you could gain some benefit

by not waiting that month and a half? Is there really any uncertainty about whether the Phillies are contenders at this point? They're not so far back. They're not so far under.500. They're not so far back in the standings, I guess. But just kind of evaluating where they stand and what their chances are, I wonder how much more clear that will be really in a month and a half or two months. I mean, if they're playoff odds,

odds and, you know, playoff odds, obviously teams defy them often, but if they are sub 10%, if they're five-ish percent now, I wonder whether you could get more value by trading those guys now, if you could find takers rather than waiting a couple months for your playoff odds to go from five to zero. And meanwhile, you could be kind of the first seller on the market and give a contender these players for two more months of the season and get much more from them than you would for a typical rental in July 31st. It seems like if they were kind of being honest about themselves and what their expectations are, and who knows, maybe we are wrong, maybe I am wrong. Obviously, they finished very, very strong last season. They finished at 500 after trading a bunch of guys. So I don't know.

So, I don't know, but it seems like there's something to be gained by selling early. If you're pretty sure that you're going to be a seller, rather than wait for 100% certainty that you should be a seller, you could kind of just strike before everyone else and get more back. Well, that's probably something that's worth doing some research on. That probably is a decent article topic. First off, nobody gets traded before the June draft. So you're talking about the difference between late July and really mid or late June. And it would be interesting to see what the difference in value is for trades made a month earlier. Because if it's significant, if teams basically are treating these trades rationally and there is some significant benefit to trading in June, then maybe it would show up in past trades and it would make sense for the Phillies.

When a team trades for these guys, I think in their heads particularly, an overwhelming portion of the value they expect to get out of the players is in October. And they're going to get that whether they trade for them in July or in June in their heads. And so, it wouldn't surprise me if the price is essentially the same at the end of July as it is at the end of June. And, you know, if you're a team, really, if you're, I mean, as we've talked about, if you're a team that's, you know, one of the 24 best teams in baseball, you basically at this point want to put yourself in a position to make as many flukish runs as possible. So you don't ever want to give up on a season until you have to.

So I would think that the value of those players would probably be higher to the team like the Phillies that's figuring out whether they're a 5% team or a 35% playoff team than any sort of return they would get but i might be wrong it might be that historically june trades have actually brought back a great deal more value all right well maybe one of us will look into that yeah um you know the other thing is that um that you are assuming that you're going to get some benefit from being the first seller but there might actually be fewer buyers that's true june fewer buyers in June than July because a team like the Phillies might, as an example, a team like the Phillies is obviously not a buyer right now.

If they whipped off an 11-game winning streak around the All-Star break, all of a sudden they are. So teams might actually be playing themselves into the buying market as well. Okay. Canseco? So Canseco is insane at this point. I was talking to a staff member and I didn't get permission to mention him. If I can, I'm just going to say a staff member. we were talking about how Canseco went from being sort of, you know, kind of crazy to

amusingly crazy to scary crazy and not funny at all. And how kind of rare Canseco is as a baseball player who's kind of gone completely over the edge. And of course, the context of anybody's not paying attention. Canseco has, you know, over the last few years cultivated this weird personality on the internet, on Twitter as kind of a, I don't know, almost like the baseball Donald Trump, I would say, like very, no, with no real power. Or yeah, I guess, I guess, personalitywise, that's accurate. He is being investigated, though not charged yet, and he responded to this by naming his accuser, publishing her phone number, publishing pictures of her, and essentially taunting her over the last week in really kind of disturbing and grotesque and disgusting ways that I think almost nobody finds amusing. and he's also incidentally playing baseball again he's I think 49 years old 48 49 and he's playing for the Fort Worth Cats of a of an independent league and he homered this weekend he also doubled this weekend he also in between a double header had a home run derby against his brother Ozzie who's a manager in

the league and, uh, one player on each team. And my favorite detail about this home run derby, because it's the independently, uh, is that there were three rounds, uh, in this home run derby. And in the three rounds, the four players, uh, combined to hit eight home runs. Uh, one guy hit one, two guys hit two and Jose one with three home runs in a three round contest i wish the real one were more like that just it would be over so much more quickly we should probably talk about the home run derby at some point and how we would fix it other than picking better players because it does seem like setting the the moving the wall either 100 feet closer or 300 feet back would make it a lot more fun, one way or the other.

But anyway, the point is just that it seems to me that baseball players are not chosen. Well, maybe they are. Maybe I'm preempting what you're going to say. But athletes in general are chosen for their ability to run fast, lift things, throw things, hit things, and they're not chosen for their personality skills. And in fact, they're often chosen, I don't mean literally chosen, but their skills benefit from having the exact opposite of good social skills, from having almost sociopathic tendencies toward self-absorption and self-improvement. And yet there are 800, 900, 1,000 players in the major leagues,

and very few turn out to be completely insane. And doesn't it seem like there should be more Jose Cansecos out there? Isn't it odd that we have all these people who are idolized from the time they're 13 years old or even younger? I mean, the best player in a little league gets an enormous sense of self as early as probably seven or eight, completely loaded with money once they grow up, loaded with money once they grow up, attention that would probably turn anybody into some sort of a self-absorbed monster as an adult, and then forced out of the sport when they're still very young. I mean, part of what makes Jose Canseco so very Jose Canseco-ian is that he's 48 and

still trying to play, still playing in these horrible leagues. And being, incidentally, I don't know if everybody is aware of this, but he's been doing independent leagues on and off for like six years, and he's been terrible. He's been like a 170, 180 hitter the entire time. People are mostly just signing him as a publicity stunt at this point. They are, yes. Yes, they are.

But, you know, the Conseco archetype of the old player who refuses to hang it up and goes to the Independent League or goes to Mexico, you find out that Benji Gill was playing in Mexico up until last year. To be forced into retirement at such a young age seems like it could have some serious effects on your personality. And yet, very few go full mental. They go fully deranged. Very few go fully deranged. And so I was just wondering, do you think that baseball as a sport, Major League Baseball as a kind of an industry, industry has any uh any blame in jose canseco turning into what he is and or do you think that major league baseball as an industry has any gets any credit for there not being more jose canseco's

out there huh uh i guess i don't know if it gets credit but i i guess uh it seems like other sports or other leagues maybe have a reputation for having more of those guys. And I don't know whether there's a racial component to it, but it does seem like, I mean, people will talk about football players or certain football teams that have had a bunch of guys get accused of things or convicted of things, and there will be sort of a cynical attitude about those players and those sports, and I guess baseball maybe has sort of a cleaner image. It's true. I think that generally speaking, mainstream middle-brow journalists probably are a lot less threatened by southern hunters with guns than by that guy who shot himself in the foot or whatever that guy was. Yes, I would think so.

So there is certainly a gatekeeper effect, I think, in play here relative to other sports. Yeah, so I mean I guess was, I don't really remember, but was Ken Seiko perceived at all this way before, while he was a star, while he was in the majors, before Twitter? Did we know that he was crazy? It's hard to say because I mean he did have, well he was crazy? It's hard to say because, I mean, he did have – well, he was a scandal guy. I mean, like he drove – as I recall, he like drove his car into his wife's car. He had a very messy divorce and like I think he crashed his car into his wife's car. And he, you know, he bounced around so much and that can really go either way.

You can say, oh, well, you know, there were always teams willing to sign him in ways that, like, no one was willing to sign Barry Bonds after 2006. Or you could say, well, you know, he never stuck anywhere for more than six months. But, I mean, you could say that about a lot of players who have, you know, no personality hang-ups at all. I mean, everybody loves Edwin Jackson. I mean, he's completely beloved, I think, in most clubhouses. And he

bounces around a lot, too. So I don't know if there's any correlation there. But yeah, I mean, he was somewhat crazy. I mean, he wasn't Dennis Rodman quite, but he was the closest thing I think baseball had to Dennis Rodman. You know, he dated Madonna. You know, he was, I assume that his steroid use was fairly well known within the game. If he's telling any truth whatsoever, he was sort of a drug their thoughts to the world. So I guess that makes it easier. I mean, there's a perception that baseball players are less colorful as a group than they used to be, that there used to be all these off-the-wall personalities, and that now everyone is just kind of drilled to be bland and not say anything that draws attention to them or to their team in a negative way. And that there's so much money at stake that players are unwilling to say anything interesting, really, just on the off chance that it might offend someone or might bring negative attention to them.

offend someone or might bring negative attention to them. So I guess there are a lot of pressures on players not to be Jose Canseco now in a way that maybe there weren't when there wasn't as much money in the game. But there's also, it's much easier to be Jose Canseco now because you can just get a million followers or however many Twitter followers he has just by virtue of being a famous baseball player and then be completely crazy. And there is no one, there's no PR person standing in your way of saying anything.

There's no reporter maybe not reporting certain things, which may have been the convention earlier in the game, in the game's history. So I don't know whether there will be more of these guys or fewer of these guys because of those two competing factors. I mean, I guess he's not unique. I don't know. I'm trying to think of other people who are kind of publicly like, I mean, just if you I mean, there there have been other sort of ugly baseball player stories like the Elijah Dukes stories are similarly disturbing.

the same player and wasn't at the same level of fame because of that. And there's the kind of Jim Larritz breakdown and the DUI and all of those things. So I don't know. Your question was whether baseball deserves any blame for someone like Ken Seiko? And I don't mean Bud Selelig or anything like that. I just mean in the abstract is what we've set up. Do we all have any blood on our hands or whatever the case may be? Well, I mean, I guess we've certainly enabled Ken Seiko and his craziness by following him and retweeting him

and kind of making him this internet celebrity for reasons disconnected from his playing ability. I mean, and there have been times when Canseco's Twitter was kind of fun. Like he was crazy in a non-threatening and disturbing way. I mean, it was always kind of tinged with pity, I guess, or there was sort of a pathetic aspect to his self-delusion,

or at least, and yet there was, it was always kind of like we weren't really sure whether he was playing a character or not, or whether he had writers writing crazy Can canseco tweets or whether he was doing it to get attention but didn't actually believe the things that he would say like when he was 45 and said he could still be an all-star in the major leagues or whatever um so i don't know i guess if we if we continue to follow him and retweet him and make a big deal every time he says something weird on Twitter now, I mean, if he's found guilty of this or if he does similar things, then I guess no more so than any celebrity athlete or otherwise who kind of goes through a breakdown and sells a lot of tabloids

and is on TV all the time because evidently we like to watch famous people kind of very publicly break down. Yeah, we like to give them that final kick. All right. Let's talk tomorrow. Oh, we like to give them that final kick. All right. Okay. Let's talk tomorrow. Oh, emails tomorrow. Yeah, send us some.

Podcast at baseballperspectives.com, and we will answer them on tomorrow's show.