Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 482: The Astros’ Leaked Trade Talks

Episode Date: July 1, 2014

Ben and Sam discuss the significance of the Astros’ leaked internal trade notes.

Insecure, natural to feel a little insecure Everybody gets it and there ain't no cure Rather than insecure Insecure, natural to feel a little insecure Everybody gets it and there ain't no cure Rather than insecure Good morning and welcome to episode 482 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from BaseballPerspectives.com, presented by The Play Index at BaseballReference.com.

I'm Sam Miller with Ben Lindberg, and that looks like a 1996 Honda Civic that just drove past me. How are you, Ben? Okay, how are you? Pretty good. So, anything, by the way, real quick? Okay, how are you? Pretty good. So anything, by the way? No, don't think so. So today we're going to talk about the Astros leaked trade discussions. The Astros have a, I don't know how you'd describe it, they have an online system where they can enter all their trade discussions,

so they're easily accessible to everybody in the front office. It's a clever bit of information management. You can see how it would be really useful. Kind of useful. You can see how it would be kind of useful, to be honest. I don't know that this actually seems like the sort of thing that is quite as useful as many of the other things that technology is used for, but kind of useful. And one of the things it's very useful for is if you want to hack into their system and find out what they said about everybody, it's all there for you. Somebody did that.

Yeah, I don't even think we need to say allegedly that jeff uh... lunao big knowledge that uh... and so somebody did this posted a bunch of these rumors online deadspin uh... then did an article about these rumors online jeff lunao and uh... uh... did a press conference in which he talked about these rumors being online so uh... it's uh...

it's all uh... real uh... although uh... according to theros, some of the things that were said, according to the Astros, were, quote, embellished. Or completely fabricated. Completely fabricated. So we're going to talk about some of those. We're going to talk about, I guess we're going to, well, we'll talk about the bigger issue. Maybe we'll talk about some of the smaller things. But I guess the first question is, Ben, should we talk about this?

Is it responsible for us to talk about this? Is it ethical for us to be talking about this? Should we feel guilt about talking about this? I don't think so. I saw some people in various comment sections on various sites criticizing the authors for drawing attention to this issue i i mean certainly after the initial report maybe you could maybe you could say that that deadspin shouldn't have done a big post about it and drawn everyone's attention to it i don't know

i don't know how long these files were sitting on this site, Anonbin, the anonymous data sharing site. Well, I guess I do know they were posted on June 28th. So they were sitting there for a couple days and no one seemed to know about them. And then Deadspin did a post on it. Maybe they were tipped off to it by someone. And then it was everywhere. So you maybe... 260, yeah, 264 unique, a thousand uniques on Deadspin, which is very high for them. So even just on Deadspin, a particularly high amount of attention paid to it. And then

I assume lots of people wrote about it and now we're talking about it. Yes. So, you know, if you or I had stumbled across these files two days ago when they were posted, I'm going to guess that we would not have done a big post at BP about them. But, you know, that's not really BP's thing. That very much is Deadspin's thing. I mean, is it ethical? Is it not ethical? I, you know, someone put it out there.

That's what they do to get traffic. That's what they always have done to get traffic. It certainly worked well for them. I wouldn't be completely comfortable with it if I were the one. So I don't know how much. I guess the illegally is the line that not everybody crosses, but of course, many publications feel fine. I guess, I don't know. I'm not sure. I don't know.

I don't really know. I don't know why if we wouldn't publish it, why we would talk about it. I don't know. You don't think there's any difference between being the one who makes everyone aware of it and then just analyzing it after everyone already knows? Sure.

There's a difference between stealing a billion dollars and stealing a dollar, too. But they're both wrong, right? It's just the difference in wrongness doesn't kind of negate the absolute wrongness of each. And I don't feel like this is wrong at all. I mean, I'm asking this question, should we talk about it? Of course we should talk about it. Why wouldn't we talk about it? So there's no doubt we would talk about it.

So I don't know why. I guess what I'm getting at is that I agree. I think if I were given all this, it would be a difficult decision. I don't know what I would do. Maybe the answer is that certainly I wouldn't publish it. I'm not sure, but I don't know exactly what makes it unpublishable. I don't know what the principle is that we are unwilling to cross. But as long as we're comfortable talking about it, I guess that seems fine. Do you have a problem with Deadspin doing it? Not really. No. once it's out there in public i assume it's

just inevitable that someone will draw attention to it somewhere so yeah i mean they didn't break into the house right somebody else broke in um and so all they're doing is what we're doing they're talking about information that has been released by somebody else. Just the fact that they're a bigger entity and that they were in a position to make an impact doesn't change that all they're doing is what we're doing. And we don't feel guilty about what we're doing. I do not. And yet you would feel guilty about doing what they did if you were you. Maybe. And you were us. That's interesting. Anyway, we're not going to get to an answer. I don't think either of us knows what we would really do. And it's an interesting question.

But just making sure that I can waste eight minutes of everybody's time wondering about whether we should be talking about this. All right. Anyway, to get to the point, lots and lots and lots. One of the things that I would say that was most enjoyable about these rumors is that almost every player in baseball was named. Like you get like like obviously Bud Norris, for instance, was the one of the Astros big trade shits last summer. And so, you know, he gets named a lot.

But it's just sort of shocking how many different names are brought up. You like you know that clubs are talking about Bud Norris, but you don't realize just how many clubs like like the braves called just to let them know that paul janish or is it janish was available janish paul janish was available just in case you needed to know the astros did technically have discussions about paul janish they were not interested. So that's one interesting thing, is just how many players are talked about. What did you think was an interesting thing?

I think it's interesting how much of it does not go through general managers. Yes, very interesting. AGMs talking to AGMs. Yeah, which is something I've heard and read that, and it didn't completely shock me. But it was it's interesting to see how much of the Astros trade chatter goes through David Stern, say, or, you know, that that Janusz rumor was a was a Kevin Goldstein contribution. And and there were their counterparts with other teams taking parts taking part in these discussions as well. So, you know,

that's interesting. I guess it makes sense if you have a relationship with someone who is not the GM on another team, maybe you're more willing to talk to someone who's not the GM. It seems a little less weighty if you're not talking to the GM. It's easier to do in an informal way and you know that the information will be passed on to the entire internet eventually. Then it makes sense to conduct discussions that way and not have to have everything go through a single person at the top. And I mean, the other interesting thing, which again, it's possible that some of this is not completely accurate, but the amount of it that you're willing to believe, the Astros were basically shooting for the moon on every player they talked about, every new team they talked to. They seemed to immediately ask for that team's

most attractive prospect even when when the player they were dangling in return was bud norris for instance um i think it was rj said to me rj anderson said to me earlier that the the astros essentially come off like the most annoying owner in your fantasy league, that whoever they have available, they want your best player back. So there are many examples of this in here, you know, when they were talking to the Orioles where Bundy eventually went and, you know, he eventually went for... Norris, Norris. Norris. Yes, Norris. He eventually went to the Orioles for, you know, Josh Hader and LJ Hose and not top guys, but it started with Gossman and started with Bundy. And of course, you know, that was kind of dismissed more or less out of hand. And it's funny to read, just, you know, the most humorous lines are when the Astros ask for someone really, really good, and then the person they're talking to just doesn't respond. Like, the best line—

Was that the Rizzo? Yeah, the best line is July 26th last year. Rizzo called Jeff Lunau to inquire on Lucas Harrell. Jeff Lunau told him we would still need a headliner like Giolito because we still value Harrell highly. Rizzo did not respond immediately. Of course, you're imagining Rizzo sitting there in stunned silence that they would ask for Lucas Giolito in return for Lucas Harrell. And also, I guess we're not seeing all of them, but we did then get to see months of rumors after. And as far as we can tell, Rizzo did not respond ever.

Like, we know that we're living in the future. Whoever put this into the database was not living in the future, so they could only say he did not respond immediately. We could just append an update. Rizzo did not respond, period. Yeah. And it doesn't seem like every update is in here. Again, we don't know what's not real, but it seems like some things that are real just are not in here

because there are some gaps. You know, like when the Astros and Rockies were talking about the Dexter Fowler trade, it seems like one second they're talking and then it's not really mentioned again. But, of course, that trade happened. So, you know, there's no final note. Like, yeah, this is definitely happening, that sort of thing. So and there are some gaps in time where you figure that something must have happened during that period. So there's probably some stuff missing. But the same sort of thing with Boston.

same sort of thing with Boston. Of course, they were talking to the Red Sox too, and they're asking for Bogarts and Webster and Bradley and Owens and all these top people for fairly marginal players. Maybe the most interesting thing is that it at least sounds like Alex Anthopoulos was willing to consider Marcus Stroman in some of these deals, which sets him apart from the other people that seem to immediately reject or propose a lesser player. Stroman is mentioned a couple times. The Pirates, too. Huntington said that at one point Huntington said, am I remembering this right,

that Glasnow was sort of suggested as possible? We don't know. Asked for Glasnow and Heredia or Glasnow and Kegman. Pitt said they wouldn't trade Tylon or Polanco. Might consider one of Glasnow, Heredia, or Hanson. So might consider. There Glosnow, Heredia, or Hansen. So might consider. There's two hedges there. But nonetheless, I mean, these guys are all... Like, might consider is almost...

Like, based on the language that is used in these, might consider seems to be would do it in the next five minutes because these guys are always speaking in extremes. Like, you know, you ask for the best player and you wouldn't consider anybody less. And so if you might consider that probably means, I don't know, it doesn't. Maybe it doesn't mean that, but it's suggestive that he would consider it. He would do it maybe even. So that's interesting. I mean, that would have, but probably, I don't know, maybe you wouldn't consider it because that didn't

happen. And you'd think that the Astros, if the Astros could have gotten Klosnow, you'd think they probably would have. Right. So the Astros were sort of the the butt of some internet jokes for for asking for the world for all of these players who are not marquee players they're you know Butt Norris and Lucas Harrell so uh Lucas Harrell by the way Giolito for Harrell is incredible. Like, that's an incredible, incredible. I mean, like, Harrell last year had, what, like a 5.7 ERA. He led the league in losses. He had 5.2 strikeouts per nine and 5.2 walks per nine, and he was 28. And the idea that, like, they were posturing with Harrell, who, I mean, that's incredible.

Like you mentioned the fantasy, or I guess RJ mentioned the guy in your fantasy league. And my suspicion is that there's a lot of guys like that in baseball who are running teams. But don't you think, like, I hate that guy in the fantasy league. And I quit making him offers. I don't even want to give him the credit of making a deal with him. Do you think this ever matters? Do you think it ever comes down to a team going, I just don't like that guy.

I don't like talking to him about trades. I don't like having this absurd response to my good faith proposal. I'm just not going to call him as much. Do you think that happens, or are these guys, there's so few teams,, every team has so many needs that, uh, you can really do this with impunity knowing that, you know, it's, it's, it's all, you know, everybody knows what you're doing. Nobody cares that much. And you'll always get a trade done when you need to. I think it happens. Not that you would burn the guy's business card and never

speak to him again. But if it comes down to you're interested in a few different players on a few different teams and you know that this guy's going to come back to you and ask for your best prospect automatically, then maybe you just go to those other teams first and maybe one of them gets a deal done instead of this guy. So I would think so. I think that happens. I don't know, just reading from this, we haven't gotten equivalent leaks for the other 29 teams, so we don't know what they look like. We don't even know for sure that all of this is accurate.

So it's hard to say that Lunau is a particularly egregious example of that or not yeah uh maybe everyone does it to a certain extent but yeah i would i would think that certain people have a reputation for doing that and i would think that reputation would hurt yeah and and it should be noted that despite all of these conversations they did trade by norris. They managed to, I mean, you know, it's not like it's not like they asked for you know, Bundy and then just like held to that. They made a trade.

They compromised. In fact, in his press conference I think Lunau suggested that maybe that was one reason that this was leaked or that they were targeted was because they've been one of the most active teams in trade, which would suggest that they are not having a a very tough time getting things done uh-huh um so they traded harold too although not not until this april yeah who'd they get for player to be named uh-huh this is probably could still be jolito. It could be. That would be.

It was the Diamondbacks, but. Yeah, but I mean, it could be that it's just giving the Diamondbacks time to get Jolito. Three-way trade, yeah, could be. Yeah, you have six months to get Jolito and then name him to our trade. So, okay, so... this sort of thing is this a in any way a threat to majorly teams uh... actually making trades uh... worrying that trades are gonna get leaked like this i mean i assume that uh... as much as this will spook some

gm's uh... and uh... luna's uh... mentioned that is uh... discussions with teams today were in pencil and paper uh... my suspicion is that within unit two years uh... or actually put it in two months everyone will have forgotten this two years uh... probably every team will have one of these uh... without much more security than the asses had uh... and so you know that that probably is safe to assume that at some point something like this will happen again if it doesn't happen regularly.

Is it a threat to transactions being done? Probably not. I think we talked once in a listener email show maybe about why this doesn't happen more often or why we don't get more internal leaks from, disgruntled employees who leave baseball? Why don't they just leak all of the hit effects information or something or leak other information about their team or why? Or, you know, is it possible that teams could be trying to hack other teams and trying to get access to their internal reports? And I don't know, I vaguely recall maybe you,

yeah, I don't know exactly what we said, but I doubt it. I mean, if the Astros say they've been working on upgrading their security and telling other teams they should upgrade their security, you don't know how this happened exactly. We don't know. They say they found out about this a month ago and they're still looking, it seems like, for whoever did it.

And it's, I mean, it seems like it, you know, it could have been just a really simple thing. Like when the story about ground control came out in the Chronicle or whatever it was a few months ago, someone sent me the link to like the ground control login page, just the page where you put in your username and password. You know, maybe, maybe someone just sat there and plugged in the, you know, first initial and last name of every Astros baseball operations employee and the password for one of them was Astros or something, right? It could have been, could have been something as simple as that. It wasn't necessarily some kind of break in and dangle from the ceiling

and steal stuff from the hard drive sort of thing. So I don't know. You can't completely protect against this sort of thing, but I'm sure they have beefed up whatever it was and tried to identify whatever the vulnerability was. I think it's every team or almost every team has one of these databases where they keep information on everything. And they're just too useful not to have. And most of them are accessible via mobile devices now. So it makes the workflow so much more convenient

that I can't imagine teams just going back into the pre-digital age because of the risk of this. Maybe there are certain things that you keep in a different place than others. I don't know, but this is clearly the trend, and I would imagine this sort of thing will happen every once in a while. Yeah, and more than anything, I think that probably what will both keep it happening and keep teams more or less doing business as they are despite it happening is that there's not really any consequences to this.

There's some embarrassment, there's some hurt feelings, and it's, there's some consequence to it, you know, in terms of giving away, you know, your hand, showing your hand. But basically, there's not really, right? I mean, we didn't, like, no team really got a competitive edge on the Astros. No team, even if they're sort of frustrated that the Astros' lack of security or whatever it was that caused this, brought some of their business into public, is going to really be able to afford to not deal with them in the future. future, and it's just baseball. This is not exactly international diplomacy here. No CIA agents were outed or anything like that. It's pretty small beans. And so I think that once you get past the one-day embarrassment, probably clubs will realize that this information,

at least, isn't all that valuable. I mean, especially when you think about the fact that they are giving it away to Ken Rosenthal as a matter of course. They are losing two-thirds of this information to Ken Rosenthal without any passwords being lost or anything at all. So it's clearly not that valuable. I guess in the Rosenthal cases, they're maybe in some cases able to use that information in a way that they think is to their advantage by getting it out there. But, you know, that probably is mostly exaggerated too.

So, yeah, mostly who cares? I mean, if it had come out sooner It could have been more harmful I mean It could have, but not probably not really It's still kind of hard to imagine This scenario where it would really make a difference And that's not to say that the Astros aren't right

To feel violated or to be pissed If somebody came into your house And rummaged around your drawers Not to say that the Astros aren't right to feel violated or to be pissed. I mean, if somebody came into your house and rummaged around your drawers and stole the one sock that you don't have a match of, well, you don't really care about that sock, but you're still pretty unnerved by the whole idea. It's still a violation. So, I mean, clearly it's still a violation so um i mean clearly there's it's not they they want this to happen or they don't want to do everything they can to keep it from happening

um but i don't know i doubt a dollar is lost on this probably not no it's it's kind of awkward it's kind of uncomfortable luna said he'd spoken to people with other teams and and maybe if those other teams still have some of the players that were mentioned in here, then those teams have to go to those players and reassure them that they like them and they like having them and they're not trying to get rid of them, which is a hassle. It's kind of an uncomfortable conversation, but probably no lasting damage. And this, I mean, the most recent note in these two files, one of which is from last summer and one of which is from the offseason, is from March where Billy Epler with the Yankees reaches out to David Stearns to say that they are looking to move Ichiro and would be willing to pay his salary down to $2 million.

And so that was months ago. That was three months ago, more three and a half months ago. If this had leaked a few days before the deadline and all those deadline notes about what teams they were talking to, I don't know, maybe there would be some way to exploit that if you were trying to trade with the Astros. But even so, most of the notes are like, we asked for their best player and they said no. So I don't know what to do with that information, really.

One other interesting thing, slightly interesting thing to me was that everybody's top prospects are exactly who we think their top prospects are. Like, if you and I were to name the four untouchables on any team, those are the exact four guys that the Astros would always ask for. It's interesting just to see how kind of homogenous public opinion is about top prospects. I think that probably once you get a little lower, there's a lot of great disagreement. But probably the top 100 or 200 prospects in the game are almost, and I don't know if it's that everybody agrees on them or if it's that we talk about them so much that eventually all of our opinions gravitate toward the consensus.

But it's interesting how few surprises there were in player assessment, player evaluation. Do you, well, can we talk about the Stanton rumor for a second? Sure. Luno spoke to Dan Jennings, this is last November 15th, said we had interest in Stanton. Dan Jennings said he doesn't think he'll trade Stanton, and the only deal he could think of from us that would work would be George Springer and Carlos Correa. And then in one of the

other humorous lines lunao goes back to him and says that wouldn't work but he posits a deal around jared kosar and delano de shields which is not quite the same uh so dan jennings made a statement or spoke to reporters and said that it's completely fabricated that they ever offered stanton to the astros or to any other team he called it laughable of course in this in this little bite that we got of it he doesn't officially offer stanton to to luna he just he says he doesn't think he'll trade him luna reached out to him he says a hypothetical, the only thing he could think of that would work is Springer and Correa. So I don't know that what Jennings said necessarily refutes this bit of rumor that we got here. But so would you have considered this if you were the asterisk, Springer and Correa for Stanton?

I think I'd take it from the Astros perspective. I have the benefit of knowing that Giancarlo Stanton is having a spectacular season right now. If I moved myself back four months ago, I might have had more doubts about him. I can't remember.

I don't know. You could probably talk yourself into either one. it's plausible either way I think what about you yeah well the only thing that gives me pause I guess is that it's the Astros like if you were

a team that expected to contend right away then yes but maybe in the Astros case I mean look how good Springer is already and of course they didn't necessarily know that at the time how quickly he would adapt and be good in the majors but but right now if you're the Astros would you would you still rather have Stanton even though he's been so good this year Springer has also been very good and Correa before he got hurt was playing very well

so maybe if you're the Astros and you're really if you're looking at 2017 then I could see preferring to keep those two players yeah you could although I don't know I wouldn't look at 2017

I think the Astros should be good sooner than that so I don't know that I would just limit myself to 2017 if I were them. I'd be putting myself in a position to make some competitive moves immediately. And last thing, do you think was your initial thought that it was significant that this was the Astros because a few people I, I spoke to today, their first reaction was, Oh, this is, this is the Astros come up. It's like, this is what they get for seeking all of this publicity. They want to brag about ground control in the paper. Uh, well, someone went after ground control. And so there was the suggestion that,

you know, maybe this was one of those people that we've read that resents the Astros for whatever reason. Maybe they don't like how the Astros do business and wanted to get them back or, or thought that the, the Astros were getting too much attention for a team that hasn't actually won anything and wanted to take them down a peg. Was that, did you, did that even occur to you? Did you think about that or did you just say it was the Astros because it happened to be the Astros? Slightly occurred to me, immediately disregarded the possibility. I don't think it has anything to do with it being the Astros. The fact that somebody sent you a link to the login page is why it happened.

Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Right? I mean. Right. It could be. That's this. You weren't the only person that saw the login page. You haven't seen the other 29 teams login page.

To me, that's not a coincidence. And so, yeah. And so that's because they they talked about in the paper, right? Yeah. Is that? I don't know i mean yeah that that was when someone sent it to me then again other other teams have mentioned what the name of their system is and and i haven't seen their login pages so i don't know but uh yeah that was

that was an interesting thing whether it was significant that it was the Astros or not but it's uh it's um you know it's interesting that we get these inside looks now and then whether it was a couple years ago when those financial documents leaked and we found out that various teams were were profitable maybe when they were saying that they hadn't been and and now we get a look at this and every now and then the the curtain gets pulled back just a bit and you get a little glimpse on the whole i don't know that we learned a whole lot from this it was was vaguely embarrassing for for the astros uh it was amusing for us but probably not a not a ton of fallout from it I think that's right, one last thing do you buy the

some of these were embellished or fabricated yeah you only need to just plant that out there and then you can tell your players oh no the one that mentions you that's the one that was fabricated.

But do you – I mean, obviously, we don't know. And so, sure, given the benefit of the doubt. But in your heart, in your soul, what do you think? Yeah, I don't completely buy it, I guess. I mean, because he said that, we have had to qualify everything we said on this podcast. We had to say we don't know that it's accurate or it's embellished, and maybe this is the thing that was embellished. And it just casts a little doubt on all of it. So it seems like a smart thing to say.

Even if it were not the case, it certainly could be the case, but probably smart to say it either way yeah uh yeah the does it bother you at all that there are so many typos yes a little players players players names misspelled yes does that bother you it does they need a better editor to edit their their trade notes it bothers me too. Yeah. And not just because I'm an editor by trade. It actually slightly bothers me. Yeah, I might offer my services to them

if they need an editor for their internal memos. Okay, is that all we have to say about that? Yes, sir. All right. Well, we've gotten a bunch of questions for tomorrow but we could always use more please send some uh to podcast at baseball perspectives.com we will talk about some of them on the listener email show tomorrow please support our sponsor baseball reference go to baseball reference.com use the coupon code bp to subscribe for a year and get

the discounted price of 30 and we will be back tomorrow