Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 462: The Singleton Extension and the Franchise Player Draft

Episode Date: June 3, 2014

Ben and Sam discuss Jonathan Singleton’s extension and promotion, then dissect the first round of ESPN’s Franchise Player Draft.

Good morning and welcome to episode 462 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives presented by the Play Index at BaseballReference.com. I'm Sam Miller with Ben Lindberg. I used the play index about five minutes ago. What for? Not for this, for something else. Sometimes I use the play index for things. In this case, I only needed to sort players by career war,

and it just felt like using a spaceship felt like using a uh you know a spaceship to get to 7-eleven you know just i i felt guilty i felt like i should i should do a couple of unnecessary steps because it was just too too easy a task for play index but that's the great thing about play index it is a spaceship that can go to the grocery store. How many spaceships do you know that can go to both the moon as well as the library? That's Play Index. Right. It can fly there.

It never complains. It just does what it's asked. That's true. That's true. Ben, how are you? Okay. Good. So I wanted to ask you about, not for the whole episode, but for a moment or two, I'd like to ask you about Jonathan Singleton's contract.

Do you have any thoughts about it beyond what we always say? Right. Well, the timing strikes me as especially transparent, right? I mean, we know how Super 2 works and how teams keep guys down to delay the start of their service clock so that they don't get an extra year of arbitration. And while they're in the minors, they come up with reasons that are more or less legitimate, depending on the case, about what those guys still have to work on and why they're not quite ready yet. And in this case, it was... And of course, as soon as the player signs an extension, if he signs an extension, then there's no longer any incentive to keep them down.

So you might as well bring them up. But it's sort of... It's very transparent, right, to do it immediately. I mean, the second that he signs on the dotted line oh now you're now you're major league ready we have no qualms about bringing you up whereas presumably the the day before he signed they were still maintaining you know to him to to the media that that he still had things to work on that he wasn't quite ready yet. And it's the same sort of thing with Polanco, where if he had signed his extension, he'd be up right now, but he didn't sign his extension. And so we have to wait and we hear all these excuses.

And it's sort of used as a, I get the sense that it's used from what I've heard as kind of a bargaining chip in these contract negotiations where the team will say, well, if you don't sign, then it could be a while. You might have to stay in the minors for a little while. Whereas if you sign, you can be up here tomorrow. It's just, it's very... It's a protection racket. It's like a great development you've got here. It'd be a shame if something stalled it. Right. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I think that I'm undecided on how

because you're right, it's sort of shocking how transparent it is. You'd almost think they would wait two days or they would have waited two days to announce it maybe or something. So it's sort of shocking how, you know, what they say about how in Washington a gaffe is when somebody

accidentally says the truth. I'm botching that. It's almost like it's sort of strangely, bluntly acknowledging what we're all doing, or not what we're doing, but what everybody's doing. I'm a little undecided because on the one hand, I think I sort of like i don't like that they all pretend that they're not doing it i i kind of like the idea that the astros were like well should we go through with a two-day charade to make it look good and and somebody in the front of us goes no screw it we're just gonna whatever we're not gonna play that dumb game we'll we'll be all open and honest what we're doing and quit going along with this silly game that everybody plays.

On the other hand, it does feel like it's a bit of, I don't know, like I like, I don't like the idea particularly of clubs using their leverage too forcefully against 22-year-old kids. Yeah. And so if it were the case that clubs were using this, there would cross a line where I would feel that it was a little bit slimy. Where basically, the guy who owns the Astros is probably worth $2 billion. And Jonathan Singleton was worth probably $40,000 before today. But on the other hand, I do kind of like the honesty in it. Yeah, I suppose it's honesty.

It's a certain sort of honesty. There's a good discussion of this going on in the Facebook group right now, facebook.com slash group slash effectively wild, where someone posed the question of whether people thought this was shady or not and commenters are discussing it the consensus so far seems to be the the standard line about the astros that they are just taking advantage of a system that is in place and they didn't put it in place and they're doing the rational thing and they have incentives to behave like this. It, it does, uh,

it, I don't know. It, it feels, feels a little slimy, but, um, but it's,

it's hard to say that I wouldn't do the same thing in their position. It's undeniably shady. It's, and I don't, I don't think that the, uh, taking advantage of the rules as they exist is, is an argument on its own,

but the doing what 29 other teams do is. I mean, it's the way that these things go, right? I mean, the Astros took it one step further by negotiating under these sort of unequal circumstances, so maybe that's the new level of shadiness. But, you know, every club does some version of this. I don't think the Astros are particularly agreed. I think that not calling up Springer last September was shadier

because it's one thing to not call a guy up in the first few months of the season, but it feels to me like a whole other thing to not make him a september call up i can't think of a player who was so obviously ready and had to uh the year before and had to wait you know there probably are some but i can't i mean they made him wait like a whole off season without having a pension and that kind of felt shady i mean he was clearly you know their second or third best player last September. And they couldn't find room for him on a 40-man, you know, with the expanded rosters. Felt slightly unprecedented.

But this probably bothers me not quite so much. Bud Norris was out. Friend of the podcast, Bud Norris, I guess. No. No, no, no. Was out saying that it was a joke and it was an awful deal. Can always count on Bud Norris to weigh in with some anti-Aster's sentiment. And various unnamed agents or perhaps the same unnamed agent having made various phone calls also were bashing this.

were bashing this. And I'm not surprised. The potential bargain is incredible, and the risk to the Astros is so low. And so, I mean, I would expect that the interests, those people who have interests in getting money into players' hands would not like this. But to me, Singleton feels like the wrong battle to fight, given his a fairly

recent and fairly um uh well his admitted uh drug addiction um he doesn't really feel like the right guy to um to say shouldn't be signing uh in a situation like this to me it's if i were if i were for instance if i were a drug addict and had admitted it and was grateful for the extra chances that I had been given, I might be grateful that a team was willing to put anything on the line for me. It might be a show of confidence. So Singleton is riskier than most, and probably this deal benefits him more than, for instance, it would have benefited Polanco, maybe.

Yeah. If Polanco had signed a similar one. And he's a guy, I mean, he's been out of shape not too long ago and had some disappointing partial season not too long ago. And even just going strictly by the stats, I saw a Mitchell Lichman comment earlier today just where he projected Singleton based purely on stats you know in his his own projection system and said that he projects to be like maybe an average player or or even worse at his prime according to the purely statistical um system that's not informed by stats and scouting reports

and everything but yeah he's not a he's not a slam-dunk superstar. Yep. Sorry, I was typing something. I had you on mute so that you wouldn't hear the keyboard. That's very considerate. I have three more keys. There you go. All right.

One other quick thing. I think it seems conceivable that tomorrow... Well, let me ask you this. If Kendries Morales signs a contract on day one of the draft, his team is clear, right? They won't have to give up their next pick, whatever the next... Their second round pick? I think so, right? If the compensation round is over.

But some teams are going to lose their second round pick. Like, if the Orioles did it, they would give up their second round pick. So is it conceivable that they could have to give up... I don't know what the deadline is exactly, but... It seems that we're close to the point where Kendrick Morales will be signed. And I just want your very quick response. Maybe we can talk about it later if you want, but your quick response. Will he sign for more or less?

And this can never be proven because we don't know what he would have signed for. But will he sign for more or less than he would have gotten if he had signed in March? Well, it's safe to say that he will not get the deal drew got right where he just gets the prorated qualifying offer amount i would expect that that that won't happen so i i mean did he have do we have any idea what offers he had in march no any offers in march we don't know you're having to you're having to compare against a counterfactual, and that's impossible. It's a challenge. This is a challenge for you, Ben. I'll say on a per-game basis, he'll get more, just because maybe there are more teams with needs right now. Whether it's the Mariners or Corey Hart being hurt, or the Yankees and Teixeira being hurt,

there are maybe spots that have opened up for someone like Morales, or the Royals with Billy Butler not hitting. that have opened up for someone like Morales or the Royals with Billy Butler not hitting. Various spots where you could imagine him maybe making sense, whereas he wouldn't have been a candidate for those spots in the spring when it really looked like there was just almost no one who could use him. Yeah, that seems to me plausible too. I'm not sure that even without the qualifying offer situation

that it wouldn't maybe sometimes make sense for a guy like Kendri's Morales, specifically a guy like Kendri's Morales, to just wait until June. I mean, the Boris philosophy when he holds certain guys late into spring training, he claims that it's because

there's attrition in spring training, guys get hurt. And then his client, who is the only good player who's still unsigned is, is the one that everyone wants to go after. And there's no, there's no competition. If you want a player at that position, he's the only attractive option. So that's probably even, even more of the case in the middle of the season or maybe not because in the middle of the season you could you could have more trade possibilities perhaps yeah there's this there's maybe there's this sweet spot between like june you know june 5th and like june 18th or something where you're uh you're getting ahead of the seller market, where the buyer market has already started to develop.

Because it does seem like there are at least three teams that I could think of, the Royals, the Rays, and the Pirates, who wouldn't have considered themselves buyers, sorry, sellers, who plausibly will in the next few weeks. And so those are three pretty good teams with pretty good players who could all be selling. They're also all small market teams. Oh, yeah, that's right. Well, not today, but plausibly within a couple weeks, yeah. I mean, they probably should consider it today.

Their playoff odds are 7%. Yeah. I don't think they're considering that. I't know no they won't but i mean you could imagine certainly in three weeks if they went say like uh seven and twelve in the next three weeks that it'd be pretty hard to get away from that so yeah maybe uh it's a moral hazard situation for for Moore, probably. Yeah, well, he's probably auditioning for his next job anyway. So show how good you've been. Doing a great job of that. All right. So the topic, the actual topic, which might not carry a whole show, because I really just came out of one specific question but we can talk longer

than that did you see the franchise draft today on espn yeah i didn't didn't study every pick in depth but i i saw that it was happening and and skimmed some of the selections well i just emailed you a spreadsheet that has this year's franchise draft as well as last year's franchise draft side by side and each so each pick you can see where they are uh where they were last year's franchise draft, side by side. So each pick, you can see where they were last year, and each of last year's picks, you can see where they are this year. And so the question I was going to ask you that got me thinking that maybe we should talk about the franchise draft, if we should, is that last year, Bryce Harper was number two,

Manny Machado was number three, and Mike Trout was number one. This year, Mike Trout is still number one, Bryce Harper was still number two, and Manny Machado is number four. He's only dropped to number four, but Machado, of course, had a pretty bad injury late last year, and is having a very poor start to his season thus far. As much as this matters, his defensive metrics are also down a bit, but his offense, he's got like a 600 OPS in 120-ish plate appearances. And Bryce Harper, of course, is out for the year after a somewhat slow start. I think it would be fair to say.

I don't know if slow start is fair to say, but he certainly wasn't on an MVP pace, for instance. 773 OPS, 0.2 war. Also got engaged. Probably not a bad thing, but it is something. So I just wanted to know, do you think that you would rather have, and the franchise draft is 10 years. It's a 10-year draft, I think, if I'm understanding this correctly, and current contract status doesn't matter. Would you rather have Mike Trout or Bryce Harper and Manny Machado? Good question.

I think, leaning toward the two, I think I might take the two. Well, last year would have been an obvious answer to take the two, I think. Even with Trout as good as he was and without quite the little bit of concern that people have about his strikeouts, quite the little bit of concern that people have about his strikeouts. Last year, Harper was still seen as a near-flawless player who was even younger and was going to be insane and awesome. And Manny Machado was having basically the closest thing to a Mike Trout age 20 season that we've seen in the last 50 years other than Mike Trout.

Well, I guess other than Alex Rodriguez. And so I think it was pretty obvious last year that you'd take the two. But this year, did you not hear me describing how they're both damaged goods? You did. They're both broken beyond repair. I don't know that I want either one of them on my team. Under any circumstances the gap between trout and harper right now it seems to me it's like a four or five wins it's four or five wins a year is the gap right now

well yeah it seems like that right now i don't know no i mean it seems like that in pakoda like i think at the beginning of the year i think it was like that in pakoda it seems like that in pakoda like i think at the beginning of the year i think it was like that in pakoda before the injury so yeah it was really down on on harper as i as i recall relative to other projection systems even possibly that's true yeah um so right now uh trout is a uh 6.8 warp projection from pakocota at the beginning of the year. And I think Harper was like 2.1. So that's a big gap. And looking up.

And, you know, so Machado probably, I don't know. Machado doesn't make that up entirely. Oh, Bryce Harper was 2.9. Yeah, and I'm not i mean i'm not sure i i buy that gap i buy the trout projection if anything it seems conservative almost but machado was 3.6 so they were basically equal like the the two of them combined by pakoda standards were basically trout now you're saying that it was too conservative on harper and so that's why you would have picked Harper and Machado at the beginning of the year. And that makes perfect sense.

But Trout has not done nearly as much to damage his, I would say his outlook, as Harper and Machado, well, Harper certainly and Machado somewhat, don't you think? Yeah, I mean, Machado's coming off a fairly serious injury. That's my point. Yes, that's something that should be factored in. But I'm sort of willing to accept that maybe he just, you know, that it's not that the injury significantly decreased his true talent level, but that it, it just contributed to a slow start in some sense.

Um, you know, took him a while to round into form, that sort of thing. So I'm not, uh, that much lower on Machado than I was say when he was hurt at least. Yeah.

All right. Uh, how many pitchers are on this list okay so yeah that's another what okay it's like not a whole lot so we can now go on to other parts are you you're on are you on record as trout over harper and machado then uh i guess this is going to become a new bet for people to keep track of boy um sure okay i it wouldn't have to me i yeah like i said i wouldn't have been and um probably if you hadn't taken a a firm stand uh i might not have felt the need to to take a different stand, but I'm comfortable. Sure, I'll take Trout.

All right, so we'll check in on that in a decade. All right, so are you looking at the list right now? Yes. Where does it lose you? What's the first pick that you slap your forehead? Well, I guess we can link to this in the Facebook group and on the blog post so people can follow along. But it goes, Trout Harper, Kershaw, Machado, Puig, Tanaka, Stanton, McCutcheon, Tulewitzki, Cabrera. I guess Cabrera is where it loses me.

as me so our friend uh our friend sky kaufman has um has made the case the last couple of uh franchise drafts that in fact uh what these drafts tend to do is is way overvalue the young and way undervalue the current producer and that virtually all of our predictive capabilities are in the next five years and that you should really look at this as a five-year draft and that guys like cabrera are usually, I don't know if Cabrera specifically, because as you know, Cabrera has in the past been known to be overrated by certain elements, but that generally guys like Cabrera, guys at that age range are usually taken far too low. Hmm. That could be, sure. Yeah, I mean, my initial inclination was that someone over 30 on a list where we're looking at the next decade

has a disadvantage over, I mean, everyone. I mean, I could see taking Cabrera over, say, to Lewicki, I suppose, just based on the health and track record. That seems fair. So it's not a crazy pick. And then it goes Longoria, Goldschmidt, Darvish, Posey, Felix, Hayward. Sort of surprised to see him that high. Yeah, I was too.

Hayward, sort of surprised to see him that high. Yeah, I was too. Freddie Freeman, Joey Votto, Xander Bogarts, Josh Donaldson, Carlos Gomez, Andrelton Simmons, who I might have higher, I think. Yeah, certainly. You could make a case for him being top 10. Yeah. Certainly, Carlos Gomez seems like you could make a case for him being higher too too you can make a case for a lot of these guys being higher or lower actually that's the point of this and jose abreu then comes next which i mean kind of questionable

if you think maybe that that he will not you know that the league will make some sort of adjustment as he goes and what we've seen from him so far is not quite reflective of what we'll continue to see from him. On the other hand, if this is who he is, then he's one of the best hitters in baseball and he's in his prime. So it's not a crazy, crazy pick. And then Salvador Perez, Michael Waka, Jose Fernandez, Gregory Polanco, Yadi Molina, Byron Buxton, and Julio Tejeron.

So how many pitchers was that? Did you count? I didn't. Let's see. So 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. So 7 out of 30 picks were pitchers. I guess that sounds about right although what 2 of the guys

on this list are currently recovering from Tommy John surgery who's the second one Harvey Harvey's not on this list oh I was looking at 2013 again that's interesting

isn't that interesting yeah isn't it yeah because uh so so this was done before harvey was hurt last year but yeah yeah i thought that uh i thought that jose fernandez was too low i feel like if there's uh it so all pitchers who are doing well are going to be overvalued in a draft like this because pitchers are unpredictable, and whatever you think they are, that's what they're not. But then by that reasoning, it seems like all pitchers who are not doing well or are currently injured are undervalued.

And so actually it seemed like Fernandez was docked way too – like if Fernernand three weeks ago fernandez would have been like the fourth guy taken here right and so tommy john knocks out basically you know four or five months of pitching six i guess six months of pitching for him and uh and gives him you know maybe a 20 percent uh risk reduction but uh it feels like way too low to drop i mean to drop him to basically julio tehran's uh level feels feels off so let me ask you this say you've got two guys one they're both 25 uh and one of them has produced uh one one of them is a hitter and he's produced say 15 wins above replacement over the last three

years uh which is i don't know basically makes him like you know more or less mccutcheon or stanton you know uh how many wins above replacement would a 25 year old pitcher have to have produced over the previous three seasons for you to choose him over the hitter? I'm not sure if he would even really need to have... I mean, I would be less inclined to take a pitcher, but that doesn't mean that I would then want the pitcher to have produced more over those years. I'd be just as comfortable taking a pitcher who had been elite for two years and had produced 12 wins or something as I would taking a pitcher who had been elite for four years and had doubled that number.

In fact, I might prefer the guy who hadn't been at the elite level for as long. Because maybe he broke in later. Maybe he has less strain on his arm or something. So I don't know. I don't think there's really one number. I would be more hesitant to take the pitcher, but I wouldn't compensate by then saying that the pitcher would have had to produce more over the previous X years. So then in that case, Kershaw would have been in consideration for you for number two, presumably.

Not necessarily you would have picked him, but in consideration you wouldn't have ruled him out. Who would have been your number two pick in this draft? I mean, I would have considered Puig, probably. I considered Puig probably, but I might have, I don't know, it probably would have been between Puig and Harper. I probably still would have considered Harper in that slot. I think I would have gone with John Carlos Stanton. Someone asked me just a couple days ago whether I would want Puig, Stanton, or

Batista just like for right now, just for the rest of the season, and I said Puig. So if I would take Puig for the rest of the season, then I would take Puig beyond this season as well. Well, not necessarily though. I mean, the further out you go,

the more makeup matters. Yeah, I suppose. Only five players who were drafted last year were drafted higher this year, which means that basically three stayed the same, and then 22 are worse this year than

they were last year. In fact, 15 of the 30, half of these were turned over. They just weren't on the list at all. Number 7, not on the list at all. Number 8, not on the list at all. Number 14, not on the list at all. And basically, the entire bottom half of this year's list is new. Which makes sense, I suppose.

Or it makes sense that there'd be more decliners than risers because presumably the people who were on the top 30 list last year were overperforming their true talent or they'd been lucky or they'd been healthy or something. Just like you look at any leaderboard in any given year and a lot of those people will fall off it on the following year. Yeah, because this isn't a leaderboard. This should be something that people are able to price in regression. I don't know how good people are at that, though.

Yeah, well, no, we're horrible at it. I mean, I just picked John Carlos Stanton to be my number two pick, and I wouldn't have a month and a half ago. So I probably shouldn't pick John Carlos Stanton to be the number two pick. That would be me making the same mistake. But so does this tell you anything about actually putting together a franchise? Is there a lesson that we should take from this about human nature putting together a franchise is hard uh-huh but somebody's somebody's gonna win right there's 30 guys here somebody's somebody won so who won who's the guy who won

i mean what do you just have to hope that you get you hope that you get trout you're getting trout right yeah is that it is that simple i think so that's the only foolproof way to win yeah yeah i guess so uh and then and then last thing chris sale not taken where was it last year i know he's he wasn't taken last year either i know he's a funny looking guy i know he's i know he's probably gonna have tommy john in the next like week and a half because he was just out with elbow right elbow pain and i know but i mean chris sale is there anybody like i i honestly am not sure that there's any pitcher in baseball i would rather have start tomorrow well not tomorrow because he just pitched like two days ago but i i think one start right now it might be chris sale and so this seems like i don't know is this do you think this is just that we are overreacting to the tommy john

epidemic and are just we we you and i didn't get a pick. The world, though, is overreacting to the Tommy John epidemic, and we just can't take a guy with funky mechanics seriously because we're convinced that it's nothing but doom for him. Yeah, although it looks like the same was the case last year when it wasn't quite the same level of Tommy John hysteria. He wasn't taken then either. He wasn't quite the level level of Tommy John hysteria. He wasn't taken then either. He wasn't quite the level of pitcher at that point though. Yeah, but he also hadn't had the injury.

That's true. Does Julio Tejeron's presence here surprise you? Oh yeah, sure. I mean, when we did our last under 25 starter draft wasn't like he wasn't even one of our top picks on that list i know we got i think somebody yelled at us yes someone questioned whether we were serious about that yeah and i guess we were so and don't call me shirley so that uh that seems that seems surprising that That seems like maybe an artifact of his current sub-2 ERA and 2.15 BABIP. How about Steven Strasburg not being taken?

Maybe that's a Tommy John hysteria product also. And maybe it's not an unreasonable one because he's already had it once and he he still pitches the same way and the the mechanics people will all still tell you that that it's not it's not good so you'd think that it might just uh lead to the same same result eventually once he wears out the the new ligament he was taken last year so last year uh dan zimborski uh looked at the uh he he used i don't know i think he used 10-year projections to see who was the most underrated player who had been picked in this who who was picked too low basically and last year uh the the winner or whatever of that was jerickson profar jerickson profar was considered the best value uh he was taken 24th

in last year's franchise draft and that was enough to make him the best value in the franchise draft and right now jerks and profile how many would you have to go to get to jerks and profile 115 150 uh yeah i'd have to play it out to see but it would it would not be close how many minor leaguers would you take over jerks and profile right now 40 no i don't think so he'll never play again ben yeah you're right all right that's it we did what espn wanted us to do yes we did all, so that's it for today's show. Please send us emails at podcast at baseballprospectus.com, and we will answer some of them tomorrow. And please support our sponsor, Baseball Reference. Go to baseballreference.com.

Subscribe to the Play Index using the coupon code BP to get the discounted price of $30 on a one-year subscription. We will be back tomorrow. I'm Sam Miller with Ben Lindberg, and both of us are here with the support of the Play Index at Baseball Reference. Let's just restart that. I kind of like that you switched it up a little bit.

All right. Keep going. Yeah. All right. I forget what we can restart alright