Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 506: Are Prospects Depreciating?

Episode Date: August 4, 2014

Ben and Sam discuss why so few teams traded prospects at the deadline.

The older guys tell me what it's all about The older guys really got it all looked out Since we got the older guys to show us how I don't see why we can't stop right now I don't see why we can't stop right now Okay, although we got some sad news for fans of Ryan Webb over the weekend. Well, first of all, I would just like to note that sad news is sponsored by Baseball References Play Index, the official sponsor of all Effectively Wild sad news. I don't consider it sad news. Everybody was replying to your tweet as though this somehow as though this somehow like changed the game or something but ryan webb

i mean he is he will lose everything if he gets a save and so at a certain point it makes more sense for him to to you know to sit out the last day of the season basically when he's you know sitting on 400 i i actually am not convinced i think it's probably the case that he needs to pad the lead yeah but i'm not convinced that he needs to pad the lead i see so the the news was that the the orioles traded for andrew miller from the red sox one reliever in means one reliever out and ryan webb was that reliever so he was designated off the 25 menman roster and optioned to AAA. So he's still in the organization. And Buckshaw Walter said nice things about him.

And he's clearly the first guy on the call-up hierarchy. So he'll be back at some point. But for now, his games finished without a save streak is stuck at 86. And Matt Albers can get back in this thing if he can get back on the mound. Oh, yeah. Although I looked with prompting from someone in the Facebook group who made a joke about Ryan Webb getting a save in the minor leagues

while he's down there, and that has happened. Yeah. He has three saves in the minor leagues. Matt Albers does not have a save in the minor leagues. So in a way, he's like the purest candidate. I didn't really have a strong affiliation before. I was kind of leaning toward Team Web. Now I'm kind of switching to Albers because I like that he's never had a save at any professional level.

That's interesting. Yeah. I didn't. Interesting. Yeah. All right. professional level that's interesting yeah i didn't i huh interesting yeah uh all right uh i have a couple a couple of things i wanted to ask you about uh before we get before we get really going did you see the uh the diamondbacks uh you know victory today with nick ahmed ahmed he was he was hit by something, right? Yeah, he basically went sliding in to break

up a double play and his hand was up and the throw hit his hand or some might say his hand caught the ball depending on what you think of his moral compass. No

interference was called and he was uh he was ruled safe well he wasn't ruled safe but the runner was ruled safe at first and and for that reason the diamondbacks were able to to win uh first of all uh knowing what you know do you have a a headline ready to go uh just based on that can you come up with a diamondbacks headline it's too late i the submissions apparently come in real quick because that they've already got their top submissions up for the day but if you have one i'd love to hear it i have one well i mean it would just have to be something about ahmed lending a hand right oh lending a hand, right? Oh, lending a hand. That's good. Mine was Ahmed safe red-handed. Because it probably hurt.

Probably. His hand turned red. Yeah. So let's see. D-backs get a hand and win. Ahmed nicked by throw. Ahmed has a hand in D-backs victory. A lot of hands in these headlines.

But that's not what I wanted to talk about. has a hand in D-back's victory. A lot of hands in these headlines. But that's not what I wanted to talk about. What I wanted to ask you is, I saw people who were mad at him for this. Now, first of all, we don't know for sure. I actually don't think it was necessarily intentional. To me, these guys go in with their hands up all the time. And I don't know, maybe they're all intentional,

or maybe that's just a proper sliding technique. You slide in with your hands up for balance. And so I'm not considering him necessarily to have done this with deceit in his heart. But assuming he did, assuming that he actually went in and tried to catch the ball, block the ball. And similarly, when guys go in and they maybe go out of the baseline in order to break up the double play, I saw people responding to this by saying, oh, well, he's a cheater.

He cheated. He broke the rules. And in fact, somebody made a comment about how his hustle won the game and Keith Law said, you know, it's hustling when you break the rules now, something like that. And I just wanted to – do you feel like that's fair? Do you feel like players have a responsibility to sort of follow the rules? I don't know.

In that instance, Aren't players usually celebrated For doing whatever they can possibly do To break up the double play Unless they're going in With their spikes up or something Or really trying to hurt the guy Everything short of that Seems like fair game to me

Well but they're not celebrated For instance taking Banned substances No They're not celebrated for, for instance, taking banned substances. No. They're not celebrated for corking the bat or for doctoring the baseball, generally speaking. They wouldn't be celebrated, generally speaking, for stealing signs using electronic transmissions or excess effort. Yeah, but all of these things that you're listing involve some sort of outside influence,

some injection or something that you put in your bat or your body that you don't, that's not naturally occurring. This is just heart and hustle. Yeah, I actually it's sort of a loaded question or a leading question or something.

I think that the thing that makes this totally not cheating at all is that it is the umpires, he did nothing that is out of sight. He did not do anything to deceive. He did the act, which was arguably illegal, but he did it in such a way that it is the umpire's uh obligation to call that and it's not as though he did it in any sort of sneaky way he just did the thing and then said well if you want to call it you can call it he didn't lie to anybody he didn't pretend to you know like it's not like pretending to get hit by a ball or pretending to catch a ball that you know you trapped or anything of the sort. He simply did the thing and it didn't get called.

It's not his responsibility to call the error himself. I mean this is why I always thought that it was so weird that A-Rod got vilified for slapping Bronson Arroyo's glove. Because he did a thing and they called him out. That was a pretty simple transaction. He did a thing. The umpire had a job to call him out, did call him out, and everybody went on their way. It would be slimy, A-Rod-y kind of behavior if he had like done it to like i don't

know i'm trying to think if like he had just sort of i don't know like clotheslined the third baseman while he was rounding the bag or something like that and there was no action at third base so nobody was actually watching and he was trying to get away with it when the cameras weren't on him um so anyway i don't think i have absolutely no judgment at all yeah it's it's like in in soccer when people get angry about players diving the response to that from some people was that that the ref could call they could give them a yellow card or whatever if he wanted to i guess the difference there is that there's like one ref for the whole field. And so you're kind of, there's no way he's going to be able to see everything. And so the diving and the acting is a way of convincing him after the fact that something happened that did not actually happen. Whereas in this case, there are plenty of umpires to see

almost everything and certainly that particular action. So there's no real acting component to it yeah i i generally hate the diving but i i hate it much much much much less because there is a rule specifically about diving if if they were just pretending to be tripped so that they could reap the benefits of pretending to be tripped that would um that would be deceptive and probably kind of gross. But the fact is that there is actually a specific rule that you can call against them that changes everything. They are risking penalty in full knowledge that this is a risk-reward sort of situation. Yeah, and the reward is outweighing the risk because that rule is never applied.

Yeah, but that's not their fault. It is actually. Occasionally, right? Second thing, did you see Sam Fold's throw from left field? I did not. Okay. Here we go. While I look this up, you may go read Diamondback's headlines if you'd like.

All I know about Diamondback's headlines is that there were seven submissions from Nora Morse on July 31st. I'm guessing it wasn't that Nora was just feeling prolific that day. I'm guessing that that had something to do with this show and our listeners. I like that he and she had seven top submissions. We don't actually know how many submissions there were. So I'm going to send you Sam Fold. You are literally the only person listening to me talk right now who has not seen it. I can't believe.

It's shameful, man. Okay, here we go here we go from center field what did i say left field that's a pretty strong throw all right uh like i don't know how pretty strong throw i think sums it up it's a pretty strong throw yeah it's okay. Is this a phenomenon or something? Yeah, it is. People were freaking out.

There were all sorts of people comparing it to Cespedes. There were screen grabs of him flying through the air. Well, yeah, I guess that's the thing is that he did one. Oh, right, yeah, we were tweeted about this. Yeah, so he did the thing where he throws and he's not that huge a guy. And he put all of his effort and momentum into it. And he flew in the air and he rolled after the throw. And so maybe that must be influencing people's perceptions of the throw because the throw was good. Not that great. But it was offline a little bit it was up the third baseline it was pretty high it you know like it got some some elevation

on it it was pretty fairly shallow center yeah he's like 35 feet beyond the infield dirt uh so anyway i just wanted to make sure that you were on the same board, that this was not excessive. It's way up the line too. It's a solid 10 feet up the line. It almost got Norris. I mean, you could maybe argue that it, it almost got Norris's clock cleaned. If anybody was,

if anybody was really clear on when they are and are not allowed to, to knock the catcher out of the way, Norris might've gotten concussed on this, but nobody knows. Yeah. knows official position of this podcast unimpressed unimpressed let's see i'm going to check to see if this has made sam fold's wikipedia page uh secondly did you see andleton simmons play yes i did see that what'd you think of that one pretty good uh i don't know if it was pantheon angelton yeah i i it it seems it it's it's impressive um it's definitely impressive and i as as a kind of as an entire choreography it looks beautiful and and i think that it is probably a wondrous play i don't have anything to say against it each individual act itself doesn't seem impossible

and you come away kind of thinking well what was rivera doing like why why obviously simmons only play was going to be at second and why would he have like why would he just be standing there like an idiot? But, I mean, obviously it's great range. Yeah, very, very deep in the hole. He looks at, golly, that's bad pace running. Oh, my goodness, it's bad pace running. Yeah, very deep in the hole, accurate throw, seems to look at two targets after leaping. Like he leaps and is able to assess the whole field while he's

in midair so that's good turns his body well it's a beautiful play i mean it's a it is a great play it's it it would be probably 15 of the 30 short stops in the game will not make a better play this year and it probably will be simmons 15th best play yeah Let me see, do I have anything else? I don't think I do. All right, my topic. I wanted to talk more about the trade deadline if we could. Not really the trade deadline, but kind of about something that came out of the trade deadline. I was on a radio show this Saturday and the first question that I was asked was about prospects and whether... Well, it was kind of weird. The question was like, is Moneyball dead because Billy Bean doesn't want prospects anymore?

That's a weird question. Yeah. Because I don't actually see any connection between those two two clauses but um the the idea was this was a the the host uh is sort of uh thinks the prospects are overvalued overrated that teams like the astros and the cubs that are stockpiling them um with the expectation that they're going to be good are making a mistake, that prospects are just too unreliable, and that Billy Beans sees this and is so smart, and that's why he doesn't care about prospects anymore. And that's just a way of introducing why I'm thinking about this right now.

But it does seem there's always, it seems like there's this kind of constant conversation that we have over the course of 15 years where we're sort of assessing whether prospects are overvalued or undervalued. For a long time, they were undervalued and so that's why you could get the eighth best prospect in the game for a rental of a number three starter in July. in the game for like a rental of a number three starter in July. And then, you know, I don't know, around, you know, maybe around the time that Moneyball came out, it became sort of obvious that this was foolishness and teams started clinging to their prospects a lot more to the point that Billy Bean was sort of even complaining about how hard it was to get teams to give up prospects when he was willing to trade a pitcher and how you had to trade guys a lot earlier in their service time if you wanted to get good returns back now and all that.

And so then it started to seem like maybe prospects were overvalued. I think we've had episodes about this. Teams were too attached to their own prospects and ignoring the likelihood that a lot of them were going to turn into nothing. And so now we have something that's kind of weird, where three of the smartest teams in baseball, the A's, the Red Sox, and the Rays, all made big trades in which they seem to devalue, maybe, we don't know the offers that they got and all that, but they seem to have all made purposeful choices against having prospects.

The A's, of course, traded the number five or six prospect in the game, Addison Russell, in order to beef up their rotation. The Red Sox had two very valuable trade pieces in John Lester and John Lackey, and rather than get prospects for them, as you anticipate in situations like these, they got veterans back, they got players who are experienced and established in the majors, and then the Rays trading David Price instead of getting the sort of classic five- hall that we're accustomed to the, uh, you know, the Dan Heron, Gio Gonzalez,

uh, Matt Garza kind of five for one kind of prospect hall. Uh, they basically got one guy who's in his third year as a major leaguer, as a full-time major leaguer. And one guy who's, uh, had, you know, about one year of major league service time. Um, and then, uh, you know, an 18 year old. So, uh, sort of chose, um, established kind of players as well. And so, uh, furthermore, one other thing, Andy McCullough said that when the Ray, uh, Royals were trying to trade for pitchers, uh, they were, um, one of the things that got in the way was that teams were not asking for their prospects. Teams were asking for their established players, by which I assume he meant Danny Duffy and Giordano Ventura. Maybe not, but I assume that's what he meant. So that's sort of an

indication that the teams that were selling are not interested in prospects anymore. So have we reached a point where prospects are back to being unliked by teams or what? What's going on here, Ben? Yeah, there's something going on. And you wrote about it in one of your transaction analyses. And I noted that too in my deadline winners and losers piece on Friday at Grantland because I was having a hard time coming up with a lot of losers because I didn't really dislike a whole lot of moves a lot of the the trades made sense and so I sort of defaulted to making losers out of teams that did nothing and the common theme with the teams that did nothing. It wasn't just the Royals that were complaining about other teams only wanting their established major leaguers. It was also the Blue Jays.

Alex Anthopoulos said the same thing, that in order to make a deal, he would have had to rob Peter to pay Paul sort of thing, where you make part of the roster weak in order to shore up another part because teams just didn't want the prospects and i think the pirates i think neil huntington said the same thing so this was clearly a trend at at this year's deadline and uh ruben amaro had had a quote about he said in this day and age i think one of the most overcut he said one of the most over-coveted elements of baseball are prospects. He said, I don't know how many prospects that have been dealt over the last several years have really come back to bite people in the ass. I think teams are really kind of overvaluing them

in some regards. So he seems to think they're overvalued, but maybe that's a reaction to the last few years, not so much the present day. But I guess if it means anything, it must just mean that there are fewer teams maybe looking far in the future and more teams looking in the short-term future, right? Because all of those teams that you mentioned, the A's are competing right now. They want to win right now. you mentioned the A's are competing right now they want to win right now the Red Sox and the Rays are are not at the moment winning but they expect that they can be in it next year and and one of the reasons that they think they can be in it next year is because it's it's realistic for almost every team to to envision that yeah because of the second wildcard and how much parity there seems to be right now

and how few teams are completely out of it and even fewer teams that are out of it now look like they'll be out of it next year so when you're in that situation uh there's there's an added allure to major leaguers who are young and productive and are under contract for a little while, but not for a long while because those guys are prospects who have already panned out. So they're the best of both worlds in a sense. Yeah. I mean, there are clearly, there are two teams that are hoarding prospects like there's no tomorrow. And they're the two teams that don't have any chance at winning this year and haven't for the last couple of years.

Every other team has been able to make some movement toward competition. And every team basically has challenged 500 except for those two teams and the Twins. And the Twins are another organization with a very strong system. Yeah, either challenged or delude themselves into thinking they're going to challenge us with the Phillies. So who is the last product you can think of who got traded and came back to bite that team on the ass? And let me just, before you answer, I'll give you some time to think. The first name that came to my mind is Carlos Santana.

And that's a no-brainer, except that was a long time ago, relatively speaking. So I just pulled up for convenience, I pulled up the 2012 top 100 prospects. And I'm going through the list. And here are the guys who've been traded. Andrei Ethier or something? That's a while ago, too. That's a long time ago. I feel like before this came on We were just talking about the traveling Wilburys And Andre Ethier to me is like The same generation as the traveling Wilburys Yeah

So alright Jesus Montero No biting of any asses Trevor Bauer no bite Tyler Skagg Maybe getting toward bite Not there yet you think Ruben Amaro thinks that you think Ruben Amaro would be like

when's the last time besides Trevor Bauer Ruben Amaro thinks Trevor Bauer is some punk kid and hates him Tyler Skaggs I would say no Bite Travis Darnot no Bite Jacob Turner no Bite I would say no bite. Travis Darnot, no bite.

Jacob Turner, no bite. I guess Jared Parker. Will Myers, no bite yet? Well. He was rookie of the year. Yeah, I mean, arguably. Jared Parker, maybe the Diamondbacks trading Jared Parker bit, but Jared Parker is nothing irreplaceable.

I mean, he's been okay. Drew Pomeranz, no. Yonder Alonzo, no. Zach Wheeler. How about Zach Wheeler? Are we counting that one? That's a good one. Yeah, that's a good one.

Yeah, people cite that Beltran deal a lot. Yeah. So that's a Rodas Vizcaeno, no. Mike Olt, no. Randall Delgado, no. Let's see. That's, I mean, Anthony Rizzo's on here

but he was a previous trade. So I'm already up to like number 55. Oh, Gene Segura. There's one. Gene Segura is a bite. And I think that everybody, I think even in the front office,

that hurts. That hurts. I think everybody sort of regrets that one a little bit. So yeah, I mean, the other name I was thinking was like Corey Kluber, but Corey Kluber was like practically a throw in. Like he wasn't a prospect. He was a minor leaguer, but he wasn't a prospect when that happened. So maybe he's got a point or maybe that's just the fluke of one year's worth of prospects that I happen to be looking at.

Jake Marisnyk, no bite. Jake Odorizzi, that could bite. Yeah, maybe. I'm starting to think that he could be a bigger deal than Will Myers in that trade. If I had to bet, I might say that there's a 38% chance that he's the guy that makes the Royals regret that move. But only a 38%. I'm still on Myers, but 38%. Okay.

Only a 38%. I'm still on Myers, but 38%. Okay. So, yeah, I mean, maybe teams do a pretty decent job of giving up guys who they want to give up for some good reason. I guess, but these guys are, I don't know. I know that there's that idea, and I believe that idea, but I'm not willing to give them credit on all these guys. A lot of these guys.

A lot of these guys were, were really good, uh, at the time. And they gave them up because like Billy Bean says, without us in Russell, you, you have to, you have to give up somebody.

Uh, so let me ask you this, Ben. Okay. Uh, let's say that I, I'm going to give you three pieces of information, uh,

about three teams. One piece, sorry, just you three pieces of information about three teams. Sorry, just one piece of information each for three teams. One of the teams has the best farm system in baseball right now, today. One of the teams has the best record in baseball right now, today. And one of the teams has basically the highest payroll, the highest sort of true payroll capacity. So they're the Yankees or they're the Dodgers or whatever. They're the team that you expect is going to be able to spend the most year in, year out, forever.

So you have to decide who's going to be the best team in baseball three years from now. And I'm going to give you – actually, no, next year. You have to decide who's going to be the best team in baseball next year, okay? So I'm giving you 10 chips to bet on this, and you can put all 10 on one team, or you can put, say, 7 on one, and 2 on one, and 1 on the other

to sort of hedge your bets, and that'll just be a way of showing me how confident you are in your bet, okay? So next year, which team is going to be the best team of those three I gave you? I'll take the team with the best current record. And how many chips are you putting on them? I'll put six chips. Okay.

Two years from now. Two years from now. I think I'll I think I'll give them I'll take them again And I'll put Put five Five on them

And who's your number two in this scenario For two years from now Probably the rich team Okay, three years from now Three years from now and probably Every subsequent year The rich team okay three years from now three years from now and probably every subsequent year the rich team okay so you're not picking the best farm system in baseball at any point i don't think so yeah i think i agree entirely with what you said except i might take the rich team in year

two as well uh-huh and we're talking about the ultra rich team here, not just, it's not just like, it's not the Tigers. It's not the Tigers. It's not the Mets or something. It's, it's the Yankees. It's the Dodgers. Yeah. Although the Tigers, I say it, it's not the Tigers just to, to make the parameters clear. The Tigers have been a much better bet than the Yankees in recent years. So I'm not saying anything against the Tigers. Yeah, I think that's probably true. And do you think that there's, is there anything that's changing in the game that makes you question whether that will always be true? Or so far as the outlook of the sport is right now, will it always be basically the case that you're going to take in the short term, in the first couple of years, you're going to take the team with the best major league roster. In the long run, you're going to take in the short term in the first couple years you're going to take the team with the best major league roster in the long run you're

going to take the market forces i think it would always be that case because if it if it were ever going to be different it would be different right now right because this is the period when when payroll has had the least correlation to wins, as we've talked about lately. So if I were ever going to not take the rich team, this would seem to be the era in which I would do that. And I'm still doing that. But I mean, in terms of prospect value, I mean, it's not as if teams are not valuing prospects. Obviously, all of the next generation of good major leaguers, most of them will be current prospects. Teams know that. They're not discounting them so far that they are not still very valuable commodities. going to be the case as long as the current playoff format is in effect that that the smart teams and maybe increasingly every team as as other teams copy the smart teams are going to be more willing to part with their prospects and and seeking and coveting young major league talent

much much more so than i mean i guess if i guess teams have always valued young major league talent much much more so than i mean i guess if i guess teams have always valued young major league talent if you can get a a guy in his second year or something a pre-arb star that's probably always been more valuable than a guy who's years away but um but we're talking about guys who are maybe more established and are already signed for a period of some years so is this gonna continue to be the case then? Is there any reason why this would just be a blip? Or is this the new normal? I don't know.

I don't know. That's more of a stop and think about it for 10 minutes question. So I don't know. It's a good question. Maybe I'll... Ben, send it to me in an email and I'll answer it on Wednesday okay I'll do that alright

so that's the show oh wait one quick thing we talked about David Price and whether we were underrating the cost of paying him next year and did you see where Billy Bean said that the reason that he went after Lester or one of the reasons he went after Lester instead of Price is that

they didn't think that they would be able to trade Price in the offseason? Yeah. I don't get it. I don't understand. I don't know. Well, I mean, I guess he means they wouldn't be able to trade him for something that would make it worth their while. I guess once he's signed for $20 million or whatever it is after arbitration again, and you're not trading

him in the middle of a pennant race when some team is desperate to get the guy who'll put them over the top, that you just wouldn't be able to get a whole lot for a guy who's making that much money? I don't know. But clearly you'd be able to get a whole lot for a guy who's making that much money. I don't know. But clearly you'd be able to get some. You'd get something. Yeah. You don't think that... I mean, because what is Price worth in a one year contract?

If you could get David Price at one of his career peaks and you don't have to give him a seventh year or even a second year for it, and you're going to get a draft pick out of it and you're going to get a year exclusive negotiating window if that's worth something to you. What would you pay David Price for a one-year contract? $35 million? $30? Yeah. $30 somewhere in there?

I think I would pay him $35 or $40. I think I probably would pay him $40, but $40 is such a shock that I don't think anybody would. It's just one of those things like... Depends for some teams that have their payroll, but not all their payroll. Yeah, but he's clearly got tremendous value

though in 2015. I think so. Especially because if you trade him in the offseason, he comes with a draft pick. Alright, so that's all then. Okay, so support our sponsor because if you trade him in the offseason, he comes with a draft pick. All right. So that's all then. Okay. So support our sponsor, Baseball Reference.

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