Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 239: Carlos Gomez and the NL MVP Race/The Cubs and Trading Recently Signed Free Agents

Episode Date: July 9, 2013

Ben and Sam discuss Carlos Gomez’ valuable season and the Cubs’ willingness to trade players they recently signed as free agents.

Does anybody want to buy my shirt? I'll trade you my shirt for a grilled cheese. Good morning and welcome to episode 239 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Prospectus. I'm Sam Miller with Ben Lindberg. We'd like you to send emails to us for our email show tomorrow at podcast at baseballprospectus.com. Ben, how are you doing? I'm healthy. Healthier than you. Sounds like. Yep.

Same old, same old. Sometimes my daughter gets sick, and after about the third day, you see that she just sort of accepts that this is what life is going to be forever. Uh-huh. And I've gotten to that point. It's been, I think, 11 days. Wow. Yeah, I feel fine.

I just have a general air of disgustingness about me. Anyway, before we start, can I ask you something? Okay. Carlos Gomez just stole a home run on the final play of the game to save a victory, stole a home run on the final play of the game to save a victory and joey vato the batter who hit it was sort of uh animatedly motioning out to to tell the umpires make sure he has the ball in his glove and i am in even though carlos gomez did not attempt to pretend to have the ball just the idea that like for a split second somebody convinced me that he might have has given me a great deal of admiration for Gomez whoever the player is that ultimately tries this

uh will will be my favorite player forever because that was just having a ball with him and pretending no no ball no ball no ball just just oh I see okay holds the glove up, runs in, disappears into the crowd. Usually you have to, I don't know. Maybe you don't. I don't know. People usually show it. They flourish the ball. They normally do.

But, I mean, clearly Votto was concerned that Gomez was going to get away with this ploy. If you, I mean, you know, People do crazy things if they act confident enough. There's this British guy who does these things on TV and every, I don't know, 16 months or so, I get completely drawn into watching all of his YouTube videos. It's incredible what you do if you just are confident enough So I imagine that a player could at least conceivably try. I mean, there's a lot of people out there who think they can just do anything. So maybe someone will do it. I think it would be fun. But anyway, my question to you is let's say Gomez did this. Let's say he didn't catch the ball, and he jogged all the way in.

Everybody was celebrating cheering etc uh and the umpire came over and said let me see your glove and he didn't he didn't have the ball um what do you think the public reaction would be like would he be would this be like that time a rod that one time when he like slapped bronson arroyo's glove out of instinct or would it be like the time that he shouted ha which both of us both of us approved of that yeah or would it be more like the time that like you know ryan braun did all these steroids and nobody really cared except for a few journalists like would we basically like, do you think that we would admire his brashness? Or would he be a laughingstock? And I guess a follow up question would be if he got away with

it? Would it change things? Would would that make him totally in the clear? Or would it be in a way? Would it maybe even be worse? I would admire it. I don't know. I guess people would be split probably. You'd have the people who think that he is doing something unsportsmanlike and then you have the people who think that anything goes and that it's fair game. I would like to see it. I wonder whether that would be against an unwritten rule, whether the players would mind, or whether fans would mind it more. Well, I mean, certainly guys have gone into the stands on like a foul ball. Yes. And, you know, rep reposition the ball in their glove

after they landed and we don't remember those guys i mean we don't think of those that as being a big crime but this is a whole nother level i mean this is a this would be a big level right yes it would i guess i mean although really does this does does cheating to get a 1% better edge matter less or more than cheating to get like a 100% better edge in that game? I mean, that's the ballgame. They lose otherwise. So I don't know if that makes it more serious or more admirable that he would do it. Maybe it's actually worse to cheat on small stuff because like why bother right i don't think a rod i i always thought that the glove slap thing was such a weird thing to hold against a rod i mean of all the reasons people hate him

that's so small that just looked like you know he was running whatever it's not like it's not like it was anything covert about it he was you know he gave it a shot what like who cares yeah that was such like not a rod's worst crime i mean that's nothing i think if any other player had done that you wouldn't have noticed at all the ha everything is established the ha is bush league right the hot is even bush league in like slow pitch softball but the glove slap well it was pretty pretty blatant wasn't it i haven't watched it in a while so he's gonna get called out i mean if it's against the rules to do that like that's not an unwritten rule that's a if that's a written rule then clearly like an umpire will see it and call him out i haven't i haven't watched in either, but in my mind, it was like he had a lot of momentum going. You know, it was a spur-of-the-moment thing.

I don't even think that—I don't even really think that he was, like, playing. Like, I don't even—I don't know how much of his thought process was, like, knock the ball out. I remember it as more of an intentional sort of blatant thing. But his motivations were good i guess i wanted to win um so i don't have a problem with that yeah i i mean i think there's a long tradition of of players trying to get away with whatever they can get away with uh so i i wouldn't mind if Gomez did that even if it worked. I'd be curious to see whether I guess what the player reaction would be whether there'd be any sort of reprisal

or whether the players would be kind of okay with it. I mean people certainly try to pretend that they caught a ball that they actually trapped. That happens all the time and no one really gets too upset about that yeah i guess i i honestly can't even imagine it like i remember when i was in high school i would sometimes wonder like like i'd be bored in class and i'd i'd just sort of like wonder like if that kid over there lit a cigarette right now like what would the teacher do i mean clearly the teacher would have to do something it's not you're not allowed to do that in class but it would be so shocking i always wondered like what would he do and i guess i sort of feel the same way like the amount

of the amount of confidence it would take to try to pull off faking like that you have the ball the entire like like that you're gonna run in it's so brilliant too because you're running directly toward the umpires so you're like look how confident i am i'm running right at you obviously i have the ball would i be doing this if i didn't have the ball like i'd be running in the opposite direction i'd be like see you guys but no i mean you're running right at him big smile on your face anyway yeah i don't know if it would work on a game deciding play i feel like if the game were hinging on on whether the ball was in the glove or not, the umpire would probably ask to see it. I would think so.

Maybe it would be better to try it with a three-run lead or something. Just sort of still some sort of leverage to the situation, but not necessarily going to decide the game. Let me ask you this. Carlos Gomez, he's leading the league in at least one war category. I don't know if he's leading the league in ours or in all of them, but at least one, and he's doing it on a last-place team. Traditionally, this would be a case where stat heads and journalists would argue

because the journalists would say, how valuable could he be? His team won 37 games. But I don't know that I get the feeling that Gomez has a ton of support. I just feel like maybe to some degree everybody's just going to agree that he's going to be like a nine-win player and nobody's going to support his candidacy. Yeah, I haven't heard too much discussion about it either way is it

is it he's a plus 20 defender yeah well that's on that's the on baseball reference already and i don't know that anybody's gonna stand up and defend that no like i mean if he ends up at this pace i mean he's plus 20 he'll be plus 22 after tonight. So he'll be on pace to be a plus 35 or so. There's been three or four of those in history. I think at this point, everybody is so cautious about big numbers on defense that I'm not sure anybody's going to stand up and defend it. So he might end up having as much, uh, you know, as, as much as many war as Mike Trout last year and nobody's going to really make

his case. Uh, yeah, I haven't thought about that much, I guess. I mean, it's, it's right to be skeptical about that sort of thing, I think. Uh-huh. It's incredible how similar his season is to Trout's now that I'm looking at it. Yeah. Looks pretty think. Uh-huh. It's incredible how similar his season is to Trout's, now that I'm looking at it. Yeah. Looks pretty close.

Uh-huh. Okay, should we talk about what we... That was your topic. That's my topic. It's over. It's over. What's your topic? My topic was the Cubs and trading recently signed free agents.

Good, yeah. Okay, should I start talking about it? Sure. Okay, so the Cubs have been very active on the trade market. They've made something like four trades already. Of course, they traded Scott Feldman, they traded Scott Hairston, and these were free agents that they signed just over the winter and played for them for a few months. And now they are on their way to another team. And this is something that they've done before. They did this last year with Paul Mahalem and Reed Johnson, I think. Both went in the same trade to the Braves.

went in the same trade to the Braves. So this isn't obviously a completely novel thing for a team that's not really a contender to sign some free agents and then trade them for prospects. We've seen Billy Bean do this sort of thing. I'm sure people have always done this sort of thing. But I wonder whether it's a better way to rebuild now or it makes more sense for a rebuilding team to do this than it would have under a previous CBA.

Whether this is a more efficient way to restock your system and acquire a bunch of just minor league depth and some promising players. If you can't go out and spend a lot in the draft and there's a limit on how much you can spend internationally, and of course the Cubs have been trading for international money too, but I wonder whether there's something to this, whether it's a better route now for a team like the Cubs to do this

kind of thing than maybe it would have been once. I guess there's also the idea that the free agent market is less rich than it once was, which we've talked about. So there are fewer good free agents available. So I wonder whether that means that if you just, if you kind of stock up on some of them, I mean, it's, it's like, you know, Feldman, any other team could have had Feldman a few months ago, but now he had some value. It's kind of a weak market for starting pitching. The Cubsubs had him he had a good first half hairston didn't really or he kind of had an okay uh first few months with the cubs but um and he was someone that some other teams were interested in over the off season but but you get a few months into the season and suddenly all the contenders want this person

that maybe they wouldn't have wanted before and i wonder whether we'll we'll start seeing this more but we've also seen another team like the astros didn't really sign any free agents they've signed you know carlos pena or ankyl or people with with pretty much no trade value so they didn't take this this route they kind of they i. They traded people that they already had to stock up. But maybe if you don't have those tradable commodities, then this makes more sense. Can you explain the mechanism for why this would be a better strategy now than it used to be, I'm not sure what you're saying has changed. Yeah, well, I'm not sure that it makes sense. I'm trying to think it through.

If you're a team like the Cubs and you can't just go out and restock your system in the draft so much because there's a limit on how much you can spend, and there's a limit on how much you can spend internationally, on how much you can spend and there's a limit on how much you can spend internationally so you can't do really a quick rebuild by just pouring money into those areas then I wonder whether I mean kind of the only route to just acquire prospects is to trade people to other teams, right? I mean, it seems like there are just fewer ways to get that talent into your system. Okay. I don't know that this holds up.

I'm trying to think through the implications of it. There's also... I wonder, I mean, one thing that is possible, I don't actually know when the... Well, I don't know if this is true or not, but there's basically a very limited window of time that you have to trade for international bonus slot room. And a very narrow window between when you're allowed to and when you actually need it. And so you really have to have stuff to trade in this few-week period. And I don't know this. I mean, I'm just spitballing.

But it might be more attractive to sign these sorts of guys now because you know you're going to be able to build your slot space at this time of year. I don't know. Like we talked about, we don't really know the value of those slots. I don't know if those were the primary purposes of any of these trades or even if they were more than just afterthoughts of any of these trades. But that's something that has changed at least. One of the things that's odd is that Feldman was not signed. I mean, Harrison was signed in February. So you could definitely see the Cubs going,

well, this guy's cheap, his cost has gone down. Someone will probably want him in July if he does anything. I mean, he didn't do anything. He hasn't done squat this year. He's got a 232 on race percentage. He's hit some homers. He's hit some. All of them percentage. He's hit some homers. He's hit some. All of them at home.

Two. Two is some, man. He's hit a few more than two and not that many more than two. And he's got a 232 on base percentage. So he has not done much. He is like the equivalent of when Jeff Francoeur got traded a couple of seasons ago to Texas. He's just like, whatever. Yeah, he certainly hasn't made himself more valuable than he was over the winter.

Right, right. And so what were we talking about? Oh, yeah. So the idea that, I mean, to a contending team, it's always going to be the case that to a contending team, the value of what a player can do in October is going to be a huge portion of what they're going to give you in the contract. And so if they don't have to invest anything up front until they're pretty sure that there's going to be in October, that's a super cool deal for any contender.

And so you pretty much know that you're going to find some buyers for your guys in July if they're doing anything. for your guys in July if they're doing anything. So you could see a team going around picking up all these February guys who haven't found much interest, but who are name-brand enough that if they just basically stay alive, then they'll be worth something.

But Feldman was signed in November, which is really early. He was one of the first free agents to sign. And you wonder, do you think that the Cubs, like if you told me that the Cubs knew all along that they were probably going to sign Hairston, that it was like, oh, well, maybe we'll take a long shot on contending this season, but, you know,

if nothing else, we'll trade him in July. I wouldn't be surprised, but it's hard to imagine that they were signing free agents in November because, you know, Feldman, I don't know, you'd think that if Feldman thought that he was getting a below market rate deal at that point that he would have held on. So they probably weren't getting him for a real discount. It seems odd that we would lump a guy who was signed in February and a guy who was signed in November into this trend.

Well, there were some quotes from, I think it was Kerry Muscat from MLB.com spoke to Jed Hoyer. And he said that I guess they had an edge for signing Feldman because a lot of other teams weren't willing to give him a rotation spot or at least to guarantee him a rotation spot. So the Cubs, who had a poor pitching staff last year and just kind of had all sorts of openings in that rotation, could say, we will let you start, and that made them more attractive to him. So they invest three months.

They basically invest three months they basically invest three months of their rotation one spot in their rotation knowing that if it works out they've not only got a guy who they can trade

but who they've you know kind of really boosted his value it's almost like the opposite of what you know like how Billy Bean

would just name a guy as closer four months later when he was a proven closer then he could trade the saves away. So this is like the opposite. They're,

they're, they're creating a proven starter out of scratch. Yeah. So, so it's an advantage then maybe to, if you're a team with a lot of holes and a lot of openings, it's, I think she asked whether it would make it more difficult to sign free agents in the future,

that they've traded all of these guys as if a free agent wouldn't want to go to a team that he thinks will just turn around and trade them and make them move and go to a new city a few months later. And he said something like, well, we hope that we'll be contenders soon and we won't have to be competitive right away or doesn't have a lot of depth kind of outweighs that consideration that you could always attract someone like that coming off a down year, give him a lot of playing time, let him reestablish his value and then when his value is higher, which is the case for Feldman at least, then you trade him and you get some prospects back. Well, yeah, I would suspect that for Feldman this is great news because you don't know

in November who's going to be a contender. You want to be on a team that plays in October for the most part, and you don't know what team that's going to be. Especially if you're Feldman, you might not really get to choose the way that like you know if you wanted to zach granky got to choose right um but so for feldman this works out great because he knows that he's gonna get a chance to play every day for three months and he's gonna get a chance to be uh in you know a postseason push if not postseason play uh for the last three months it's kind of awesome for him i mean it it's not like yeah he has to uproot again but he's been in chicago for all of three months. It's kind of awesome for him. I mean, it's not like, yeah, he has to uproot again, but he's been in Chicago for all of three months. It's

not like, you know, his kids are. Yeah, probably didn't buy a house. Probably not. Well, he might have. I mean, the market. He might be a free big spender, Scott Feldman. Investments everywhere. So, yeah, that's pretty much all I wanted to say. More of a thought experiment than anything. Well, I'm glad you did.

And it's a good conclusion because I think that everybody wondered about what the Cubs were doing in the offseason. Not only signing a bunch of players to play on their awful team, but signing a bunch of players at the one place that they were basically full. Like they had more starting pitchers than any team in baseball except the dodgers and so it seemed sort of obvious that this was coming and yeah even even back then it was

like really are they doing this and now that they've done it we can talk about it it worked out well yeah well when hairston signed i think i did i think I did a transaction analysis thing on him over the winter, and I compared the amount that the Cubs had spent on free agents to the amount that the Astros had spent on free agents, which was basically nothing. and rebuilding and trying to get more respectable, but sort of going about it in different ways, or at least one was signing all sorts of free agents, the other was really signing no free agents, but both trying to stockpile as much talent as possible. So I guess now we've sort of seen how that's worked out for chicago dynamite good show ben good show i like this one not a lot of not often that we get to talk about

scott feldman scott harrison uh and the mvp the down ballot i should say the down ballot mvp race that's four months away yes Yes. It's fun stuff. Who are the other? I sound sarcastic right now, but I'm actually not. I'm not being sarcastic. These were interesting topics to me. I'm glad. Yeah.

Still not being sarcastic, by the way. I continue to sound sarcastic, and I'm not. Okay. All right, then. We're done. We already told people about emails right at the top. Loaded it up front so that they'd hear. Okay. Well, that right, then. We're done. We already told people about emails right at the top. Loaded it up front so that they'd hear. Okay. Well, that's tomorrow then, so we'll be back with that.

So long.