Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 5: Foghorn

Episode Date: July 24, 2012

Ben and Sam discuss Ichiro’s trade to the Yankees and the Tigers-Marlins swap.

Good morning and welcome to episode 5 of Effectively Wild, the Baseball Perspectives daily podcast in New York, New York, where it is about to be very hot. I am Ben Lindberg in his Honda Fit in Long Beach, where someone recently asked me if you were living out of your car is Sam Miller. Somebody asked you from my Honda Fit if I was living in a car. That would just be weird. But they were concerned about you spending all this time in your car. Uh-huh.

So a lot of things happened yesterday. Presumably we want to talk about some of those things. What is your topic today? I would like to talk about Ichiro Suzuki. Okay. Well, that works out well since I want to talk about that Tigers trade and was sort of going to start by bringing up Ichiro. I guess you can start then. Okay. Well, so Ichiro. I don't know. The Ichiro trade has taken up a lot more of my interest than I would expect from a trade that has very little baseball impact. long time, maybe ever, that meant so little on the field and yet seems so fascinating and surprising and interesting and everybody is interested in it. I don't really think that he's going to help the Yankees. I don't think that's probably a very controversial opinion. He's probably a good fourth outfielder right now and not much more.

But it's just, it's sort of shocking. I mean, it undid this conventional wisdom that has existed for years and years, probably going back to 2007 or 2008, that there was no way that the Mariners would ever trade Ichiro and that it wasn't really worth talking about it. I mean, it was such conventional wisdom and it has now been so undone that I wonder whether we should start talking about whether it makes sense for the Mariners to trade Felix Hernandez. Yeah, I was going to talk about much the same thing. It was, I mean, unquestionably the most important move made yesterday or the one with the most on-field impact was the Tigers trade, which is a trade from one team that I think is interesting,

that it's a seller for reasons we talked about yesterday, to a team that's barely clinging to a division lead. And there were two guys in that trade changing teams who are better players than Ichiro and have been better players than Ichiro for at least a couple of years now. But it seemed like that trade was completely overshadowed last night by the itro trade which is really uh it's like a replacement level outfielder going from a team that's way out of contention to a team that pretty much already has its division sewn up um so in terms of impact on the playoff races it's it's basically equivalent to barry enright going to the angels which happened late last night uh but races, it's basically equivalent to Barry Enright going to the Angels, which happened late last night. But it's totally dominated the reaction to all the news on what was a very busy day yesterday.

So I was wondering whether that reaction sort of stems from Mit row himself and and his backstory or whether it was in equal parts the lead up to the the trade which was non-existent we're so conditioned now to have heard about every trade it seems for weeks before it actually happens or to have it speculated about that by the time the news breaks, we already have our analysis ready to go, or we've already done it, and it's just, okay, we were waiting for this domino to fall now for a while, and it finally did. Whereas, right, Itro, the thought was that he wasn't going to go anywhere. The Mariners had put out some sort of statement

or there had been some reports saying that they were interested in resigning him after the season. And, yeah, that just kind of completely came out of nowhere. But it did surprise me how much interest it generated since, I mean, he's been with the same team for a very long time, but really it's the norm for players to switch teams now, more so than to stay with the same team for their whole career. It's an unusual time to change teams, though, because he is, I mean, obviously he's going to a competitor and you sense that that's probably what led him to approach team president and kind of, I don't know, ask for a trade is quite the right word, but, you know, to sort of put that out there.

But he's going to a team where he's presumably not going to play as much. He's, Itro, you know, no longer gets 200 hits and bats 330, but he still plays every single day he's played uh he leads you know he leads baseball and or he did he leads baseball and at bats this year and games played this year which has kind of been one of the each row trademarks and uh you wouldn't expect that to continue now that he's in new york and so it is kind of interesting that he would choose to go to a team that isn't going to play him as much, which is not the normal trade request that you expect from a veteran. Normally, you're talking about a guy like Bobby Abreu who doesn't want to take a smaller role and would rather go to a place where he can play every day. I doubt Ichiro will play every day, and it's actually kind of strange

because it seems like he's going to be sharing a job with two other left-handed hitters in some fashion. And so, I mean, it's not clear that he'll play even the majority of the time. He might, but I don't know if he will if he doesn't start hitting a bit better. So the thing about the trade that really strikes me is that it somehow escaped my notice over the past 11 years that Itro has been on a losing team basically his entire career. He made the playoffs his first season. He never made the playoffs again. And so we've kind of been watching an Ernie Banks-style career all along,

and it kind of escaped my notice until now. And now that I see, you know, looking at his stat page, his career stat page, and then looking at the very shallow postseason statistics that he's created, I'm actually really kind of excited for October. I do think that I'll look forward to watching him play in October. And I think I'll probably find myself rooting for him in October. Do you think he's going to have any sort of resurgence now that he's gotten out of that situation? I mean, I'll admit that my first thought when he let off the game with a single and then still a base was, oh man, he's going to be back to real Ichiro for a few months now. Somehow the excitement of playing for a competitive team is going to turn back the clock for a little while.

And then he went 0 for his next three, I guess. And chances are, no, he's still the same guy. But I don't know. Do you see it? Do you think any of his decline has to do with playing with a going nowhere team? I probably don't think so, but that doesn't mean it's not the case. And it doesn't mean that Ichiro isn't a magical wizard who can do magical wizard things even now. I guess we'll wait and see.

It wouldn't shock me, and I wouldn't probably stake my name on it happening. Yeah, Ichiro just, he's so good at all the things that are most exciting about baseball. I think is one of the reasons that that move, even after his decline has really seemed to begin in earnest, could generate so much response. could generate so much response. People just like guys who hit for high averages, and people enjoy watching defensive highlights and people throwing runners out from the morning track and stealing bases and all the things that Ituro has been so good at.

And I wonder with the trend and the way the game is going towards more strikeouts and three true outcomes and less Ichiro-like abilities, I wonder if that's something which will ultimately hurt it or make it less interesting to most fans. Not that there were ever a lot of E-Tros around. E-Tro is just a unique player. So, Tigers. Tigers. Do you think that this trade sealed up the AL Central for the Tigers? I guess they finally went ahead in the division last Friday, I think,

after not having been in first place since mid-April. They were really expected by almost everyone to win the division by a wide margin. And it really hasn't happened for various reasons. And then they made this trade. What do you think the impact is? Well, yeah, I mean, I think that the Tigers, I also probably was guilty of overrating how much better than the rest of the division

the Tigers would be coming into the year. And I'm probably going to overrate that fact now. But just looking at their roster, it does seem to me that they are considerably better probably going to overrate that fact now. But just looking at their roster, it does seem to me that they are considerably better than anybody that they're competing for a playoff spot with, and this only increases that. Do you have a – I don't actually – I haven't sat down and looked at it particularly,

but if somebody asked me why the Tigers haven't run away with the division, I'm not sure I actually have an answer. I don't really quite know where they've underperformed. Do you? Well, I think the rotation has been a bit shaky behind Verlander. The defense, obviously, was something we knew would be weak coming into the season, and it has been. So I think that has a lot to do with it. And this trade sort of fills two holes in that sense in that Infante is actually an above-average fielder, which is a very rare sight in the Tigers' infield,

and Sanchez is a very good starter. And so that sort of solidifies things behind Verlander. And I guess it's sort of a win-now trade, and this is sort of a win-now team. Obviously, they traded Turner, their top prospect, or one of their top prospects. And Infante, I guess, is signed for 2013. Sanchez is a free agent at the end of the season. But I think it's a trade that makes them a few wins better over the rest of the season, which it's rare to be able to say about a deadline trade. I mean, most big headline trades have a bigger impact than the E-TRO trade,

which is incremental, if anything. But there aren't a whole lot of trades every year that you can say really add two or three wins over the course of three months. That's a lot. But the Tigers have really had a complete black hole at second base with Ryan Rayburn, who I expected to be better than he was, and Danny Wirth and Ramon Santiago and guys who just haven't hit it all and haven't really been great with the glove either. So if Infante keeps doing what he's been doing, that's a big upgrade right there.

And Sanchez I believe in, although you're always a little nervous about guys going from the NL to the AL and whether there will be any sort of hit there. But this is a big deal, and it really just got overshadowed very quickly. It was like the Yankees traded for Itro, and also the Tigers got Anibal Sanchez and Omar Infante in much lower font. But I'd be surprised if there was a bigger deal made this year in terms of the impact on the rest of the season

and possibly the postseason. I would agree. Okay. Well, then we agree. So, yeah, I guess that's our quick take on the big news of yesterday. And I hope there will not be a flurry of news like that because when you have to write trade reactions or make sure someone is writing trade reactions, it's a lot less fun than it was when you could just kind of read the news

and say, huh, and that's the end of it. the news and say, huh, and that's the end of it. But yeah, yesterday we said, or I said, maybe the trade deadline would be a dud and then not so much. We're done here.

We are done here. Well, this has been episode 5 of the Effectively Wild podcast and we will be back with Episode 6 on Wednesday.