Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 27: Revisiting the Dan Haren Trade/Derek Jeter Defies Dire Forecasts

Episode Date: August 23, 2012

Ben and Sam revisit the trade that sent Dan Haren to the Angels in light of Haren’s down year and Tyler Skaggs’ debut for the Diamondbacks, then talk about how Derek Jeter has remained productive at age 38 and examine whether the Yankees are in any trouble in the AL East.

Good morning and welcome to episode 27 of Effectively Wild, the Baseball Perspectives Daily Podcast. The date is Thursday, August 23rd, and I, as usual, am in New York, New York, with the hum of a fan in the background. In Long Beach, California, with the crickets in the background, it's my co-host Sam Miller. How are you today, Sam? Great, Ben. How are you doing? All right. So should we debut our new Corrections, Omissions, and Errors segment? Yeah, sure. uh like a fun adventure

yeah uh so we'll we'll just keep it to our major screw-ups since this is intended to be a brief podcast um and we'll start off with my screw-up from yesterday where in or after episode 25, I wrote about the Stephen Drew trade. And when I wrote about the Stephen Drew trade, Chris Owings was a Diamondbacks prospect in my head and on the page. And then by the time we recorded episode 26, he had morphed in my sleep deprived brain into an athletics prospect, which is how I referred to him on yesterday's podcast. And not one of you called me on it, Fia. Well, one. One person did. Not to me, though. Not to you.

Yeah. You people have to call me on these things. I expect you to point out every slip of the tongue. And as far as omissions, I omitted the incredible factoid that Barry Bonds is a career 429, 613, 976 hitter in Pittsburgh as a visiting player. That is a 976 slugging percentage and a 1589 OPS. This was apropos of nothing, and yet I regret omitting it. 89 OPS. This was apropos of nothing, and yet I regret omitting it. Okay. So what is your topic that we will try to discuss without messing up or omitting anything today? I want to talk about the Dan Heron, Joe Saunders trade, which might go down as the Tyler Skaggs trade in time. Yeah, that's a good one. And I want to talk about Derek Jeter and the Yankees, which is technically two topics, but I will allow it on the grounds that Derek Jeter is synonymous with the Yankees.

Okay. I thought about picking that, but I realized that I didn't have probably much to say about Derek Jeter that hadn't been said before. So I look forward to seeing what you inspire me to say. I'll start. Dan Heron, of course, was traded from the Diamondbacks to the Angels two years and one month ago for Joe Saunders, Tyler Skaggs, Patrick Corbin, and one of the Rodriguez relievers, I believe, Rich or something. I forget which one.

There were a lot of Rodriguez's. We'll figure it out for tomorrow's omissions. And that trade, I don't remember many trades, Vernon Wells trade excluded, that were so unanimously considered a victory for one team at the time. At the time, I was going back actually tonight and reading some of the things that I wrote and some of the things that other people wrote. And at the time, I remember Matthew Carruth had to write the piece for Fangraphs defending the trade. Matthew Carruth had to write the piece for Fangraphs defending the trade. And his defense was like in the first paragraph.

He basically said there is no defense for this trade. And it was really sort of I felt bad for him. Keith Law said that sources in other front offices that he talked to the unanimous response that this was a great deal for the Angels, a bad one for Arizona. The Arizona Republic said the deal drew immediate skepticism from those within baseball. That's the hometown newspaper, which is not the sort of criticism you usually see about a trade in the hometown newspaper the same day. I wrote that from the Angels' perspective, it's not often that you get the most talent now and the most talent next year and the most talent the year after that and the most talent the year after that, but it appeared that that's what the Angels had done. Yet, amazingly, the trade hasn't worked out for the Angels. It doesn't seem. They got a good year and a half out of Heron, and you might

say that that was enough to justify the deal, but Heron has a 106 ERA plus since going to Anaheim. Joe Saunders has a 105 ERA plus since going to Arizona. There's about a 30-inning spread, so it's not huge. And of course, Tyler Skaggs made his debut on Wednesday night and looks like he's going to be very good for a very long time. So I guess I don't really have a question. It's really just more a point of how difficult it is to do anything in this sport and knowing how unpredictable everything is and knowing how difficult it is to judge your team's needs.

It's also notable that the Angels ended up trading for a starting pitcher who will possibly never start a postseason game for them, with the Angels having missed the last two years, not looking like they're in a great spot this year, and having an actual hard decision for whether to pick up Heron's option for next year. So it's just incredible how it turned out, given how certain we were the day that it happened. Yeah, and that snark really persisted for a while, even over this previous offseason.

I remember people making jokes about how Jerry DiPoto had set himself up because he was the guy who made that trade with the Diamondbacks, and he knew he was going to go to the Angels. And so he traded Dan Heron to himself in the future. And even, I guess, even before this season, it still looked as if the Angels had gotten the best of it because the young pitchers hadn't yet arrived for Arizona and Heron hadn't yet had the bad season that he's had. So I guess the tide has kind of turned only in 2012, but it does. Yeah, it certainly has at the major league level.

I'm kind of a believer that it's not really fair to judge a trade based on the outcome in a lot of cases that you know when you can't really judge tyler skaggs on whether he develops into a three-time cy young award winner or not as far as the trade goes because everybody i mean he was not that when they traded him he was a uh he was a very promising projectable starter in low A ball at the time. And I think that's what you give the Diamondbacks credit for getting, not necessarily getting what he turns out to be, unless you believe that they have a very significant scouting advantage over every other team in baseball, which probably isn't true. Maybe there was a lone Diamondbacks scout who saw his true potential when no one else did. Yeah, maybe there is, although I don't know.

I don't know that there was a whole lot of disagreement about Skaggs upside and risk at the time. I mean, I'm just bringing this up because I also was a major contributor to the production of Snark as recently as Jerry DePoto's hiring. And it didn't help, I guess, that at the time, I remember DePoto sort of raved about Joe Saunders and his proven winner. His ability to win. Yes, his winningness, which at the time seemed sort of like him just kind of

trying to make the best of a salary dump and defend the deal that maybe he didn't even originate or wasn't his idea or maybe it came from above or something. And so the best he could say was that Joe Saunders is a winner. And so that kind of drew a lot of snark also, even though it wasn't so much an example of DePoto not being able to value a player properly. It was more just finding a way to say something positive about a trade. But I would suppose, I would assume that he didn't expect it to pan out as well as it has for them either.

Yeah, I think that's probably true. You know, truthfully, we didn't really know who Jerry DiPoto was at the time. Some people did, certainly, but I didn't. I just knew he was an interim GM for the Diamondbacks. I did not know that he was a stat guy to some extent. Yeah, exactly. And going back and reading some of those stories that ran the next day and reading his quotes, it really does seem kind of clear that the primary point he was trying to make is that they had shed a lot of money,

and that was their goal in the deal. And the fact that they got a couple young lefties was the obvious goal. I mean, it is somewhat notable that the Diamondbacks non-tendered Joe Saunders just this past offseason. So it isn't as though Joe Saunders has been the core of their team or anything like that. Anyway, that's all. So we should never pass judgment on anything because we'll probably be wrong.

Probably. I feel bad for these guys that actually have to do things. Well, I guess speaking of things that people on the internet were wrong about, Derek Jeter has not really followed the depressing career trajectory that a lot of people, baseball prospectus authors included, forecasted for him. There was sort of a sense that he was going to continue down a path that by this point in his career would probably make him more of a figurehead or a burden even.

And instead he has turned things around after really a down year in 2010, which at the time he was 36, he did not hit very well, and it looked like that he was just really going to become a problem for the Yankees in that he is worth a lot off the field and obviously is very popular, In that he is worth a lot off the field and he was treated to one of those unfounded uh non-accusation accusations by skip bayless who who did the you have to wonder how he's doing this, but I'm not saying he's doing anything, one of those. And so I guess it's just, it's something that we were pretty wrong about, because it seemed, you know, there were very few shortstops who had managed to remain at anything like this level at his age and it seemed like he was not going to

be the exception and he is i don't know that there's that much more to say about it but maybe have something it seems to me uh to i mean i don't want to turn this into a taking away from jeter's season thing uh this is a small point, but it seems to me that the shortstop thing is kind of a red herring, right? I mean, what keeps most players from playing shortstop effectively into their late 30s is that they can't maintain the defensive skill there, and Jeter can't either. As you and I were talking about a couple days ago, Jeter's career defense continues. I mean, he's given back about 25 wins in defense alone according to most metrics he is um on pace to be worth about 25 runs or 20 run between 20 and 30

runs uh below average this year and uh so the shortstop thing is kind of like you know okay that's cute but i mean he's not he's not really succeeding at shortstop. He's succeeding at hitter. And it is shocking and kind of awesome. Yeah, I mean, this is going to also take it in a weird place, but it makes me wonder whether Michael Young is being given up on too soon. Because in a way, those two guys kind of remind me of each other a little bit. They're both guys with average power or a little worse,

who succeed by having good Babbits using the whole field, good bat control, theoretically being smart hitters. And, you know, I think everybody's giving up on Michael Young right now, and it probably wouldn't shock me if he came back next year and was a league average hitter or better. Because this is kind of the second time around for people giving up on Michael Young, isn't it? Well, I think it's the second time around for people giving up on Michael Young, isn't it? Well, I think it's the second time around for people giving up on Jeter. In 2008, he hit 300, but his power was way down. And he had really the worst year of his career.

Or I guess certainly the worst year since his rookie year, maybe the worst year of his career. And he was 34, and we had this same conversation about Jeter, and then he came back the next year, and he had one of the best years of his career and finished third in MVP voting. And then it was back down a little the next year, and then it was down further or something like that. I'm not sure how well I remember this. But I guess the point just is that if you're a BABIP guy, which both of those guys are, and Jeter is one of the greatest BABIP guys ever, you're going to have some fluctuation.

And what I wanted to say about the Yankees is that I was reading something on Baseball Musings, David Pinto's blog, where he did a post on the Yankees game last night. Chicago beat them behind Chris Sale, striking out everyone and swept them. And he said the Yankees division lead over Tampa Bay is down to three, and New York is starting to approach a big collapse. So I wonder if this is going to become a narrative in the coming days that the Yankees have collapsed in some way, that they've squandered a big lead. And I don't know how accurate that would be if it does become a thing in that they certainly have lost a big chunk of their lead in the East. They certainly have lost a big chunk of their lead in the East, but it's more because Tampa Bay is having an incredible month than it is the Yankees really blowing it.

Tampa Bay, I think, is 15-5 in August, and the Yankees are now 12-9. So they're not exactly falling apart. And I don't know whether, I mean, with the 2000 Yankees kind of blew a lead and backed into the playoffs, having lost a bunch in September and then ended up winning the World Series anyway. And so the question was, did they get complacent and start coasting because everyone assumed they were going to win the division. I guess you could speculate the same thing about the Yankees in that they have appeared to have had the division locked up for a while now. But I don't know. It doesn't seem to me that there's any great choke going on here. It's more a question of the team behind them really turning it on. It's more a question of the team behind them really turning it on.

And also they did get some news about Ivan Nova having a shoulder problem and missing at least one start, it looks like, possibly going on the DL. So there is still, as we talked about in a previous episode, some uncertainty about their rotation with Sabathia and pettit and nova all out at the moment although sabathia should be back friday and pettit should be back not too long after that well thank goodness because there's nothing that's harder to live with than a less than full strength yankees yes franchise no one wants to see that. Well, this has been episode 27. We kind of covered three topics. We cheated a little bit.

We will be back on Friday with our final show of the week.