Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 522: The Season’s Best Unsung Transactions

Episode Date: August 26, 2014

Ben and Sam banter about balls and strikes and then discuss 2014’s top transactions relative to the amount of attention they received at the time....

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 Oh, you'll be there between each line of pain and glory. Cause you're the best thing that ever happened to me. You're the best thing that ever happened to me. You're the best thing that ever happened to me Good morning and welcome to episode 522 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectus. I'm Sam Miller with Ben Lindberg of Grantland.com. Hi, Ben. Hi. You sound enthusiastic today. Well, I'm enthusiastic because of our great sponsor,
Starting point is 00:00:46 Play Index at Baseball Reference. I love the Play Index at Baseball Reference. Makes it easy to come to work every day. Just excited to mention that we are associated with them again. I used the Play Index today to help a reporter, to help a writer out who wanted to know something, and it was very satisfying. Huh.
Starting point is 00:01:06 So did you not tell him? Coupon code BP? Did you tell him to help himself in the future? I will. I will next time. Okay. Did you, first off, do you know who Paul Os? I was just reading about this as you started talking.
Starting point is 00:01:28 I have not read him. I think he might be an effectively wild emailer. Really? Yeah, because he wrote a letter to the sports editor of the New York Times, and it's basically an effectively wild email. Should we answer it i figured we should answer it just uh just because i don't know it's what we do uh so he writes to the sports editor in regard uh regarding in push to shorten game there's no time to waste i would like to offer a suggestion about speeding up baseball eliminate the two
Starting point is 00:02:02 strike foul ball as a neutral play and rule it a strike. To compensate for the advantage this would give the pitcher, allow the batter to go to first base after three balls instead of four. This way, no at-bat could last more than five pitches. Pitch counts would go down, allowing starting pitchers to go deeper into games, which in turn would reduce the dead time caused by changing pitchers, the primary reason games last so long these days.
Starting point is 00:02:24 Traditionalists will argue that this will alter baseball as we know it but if games continue to drag on for three hours or longer baseball as we know it will lose its audience um and it's true that nobody watches baseball anymore right he nails it on the last pointball has never been viewed by fewer people. So first, I don't know. It doesn't feel like it would alter baseball. I mean, it would alter baseball. I mean, if you removed Wade LeBlanc, it would also alter baseball as we know it in a very small way. The question is whether it would alter baseball as we know it in a very dramatic way. And I think this would clearly still be baseball.
Starting point is 00:03:06 What was the question that we answered that one time? If baseball would have changed. Would it be different or would it be very different? Yeah, yeah. If baseball were different, would it be different or very different? And this to me feels like it wouldn't make baseball unrecognizable which is always the line that that you don't want to cross uh it feels like a reasonable enough solution let me ask you this question uh let's say pitch counts did go down allowing starting pitchers to go deeper into games do you think starting pitchers would then go deeper into games or do you think that we would simply see starting pitchers throw only 80 pitches a game
Starting point is 00:03:47 or 60 pitches a game instead of you know continuing to throw their typical 110 and the reason I ask is because there are so many I mean we know that relievers are very good and there are more pitchers than the league knows what to do with it seems seems like at this point, once you get to relievers. I wonder whether pitchers would still go six innings, do it in 75 pitches, and then still turn it over to the dominant 7-8-9 inning guys because that's actually a solution that seems to work. I would think so, yeah.
Starting point is 00:04:22 I mean, I'm sure you'd see more complete games. There'd be more games where the guy just, you know, is pitching really well, and managers tend to leave in a guy who's pitching really, really well, and you wouldn't have to take him out because of that arbitrary limit, or not arbitrary limit, artificial limit.
Starting point is 00:04:40 So you'd see more of that, but on the whole, yeah, I can't imagine managers would give up their 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th inning guy system at this point and probably shouldn't. It's a pretty drastic solution, though. I think there are more subtle ways that we could try to address this problem before we completely change the the ball strike system well that's not the primary outcome that he's looking for he's saying has a secondary benefit i mean he doesn't want to have he doesn't want to have long at bats i guess he wants to i mean it would cut a lot of pitches out of the game and it would by sort of definition cut the non-action pitches out of the game right
Starting point is 00:05:25 foul balls are boring foul balls are uh i would say that the two strike foul ball is more boring than any other category of pitch besides the the 3-0 auto strike uh the uh second and third and probably fourth intentional balls in an at-bat. The first one's still more interesting than a foul ball. And maybe, no, it's actually more boring than the obvious 0-2 waste pitch. So, yeah, they are boring. It would get rid of one of the most boring parts of the batter-pitcher matchup. Yeah, that's true. And it would cut a lot of pitches out, would get rid of one of the most boring parts of the batter-pitcher matchup.
Starting point is 00:06:05 Yeah, that's true. And it would cut a lot of pitches out, and if you accompanied it with the three-ball walk, that would obviously cut a lot of pitches out. I mean, I bet you it would, well, other than perhaps unintended consequences, which maybe we'll talk about, I would bet that it could knock, I don't know,
Starting point is 00:06:26 12 to 18 minutes off of an average game. Maybe more. Yeah, I would miss the long at-bat. I love the long grinded out kind of at-bat. I did that whole series a couple of years ago where I looked at the longest at-bat of the week. I know, I like those too. Those are fun. Once it gets to nine, it becomes interesting. But most of them only go six or seven or eight.
Starting point is 00:06:51 And those are not interesting. Those are boring. Yes. So now here's the problem though. The most drastic change would be that everybody would strike out and everybody would walk. everybody would strike out and everybody would walk, right? It would make the, nobody considers, besides me, nobody considers those to be the most desired outcomes from a spectator's perspective.
Starting point is 00:07:14 And all you're doing is making those closer. You're bringing those closer. And if we've already, first of all, if we've already established that batters want to walk and that's part of what they're trying to do, and if we've already established that pitchers want to walk and that's part of what they're trying to do, and if we've already established that pitchers want to get a strikeout and that's their primary goal, making it more possible for them to get those
Starting point is 00:07:34 will just increase their likelihood of reaching those targets. And then furthermore, if you assume that hitters actually aren't very good at making contact and they strike out because they're just bad at it, and if you assume that pitchers walk batters because they're just not very good at it, removing the margin of error for them would also just make it a lot more likely. So you would have, I would guess, that in this scenario, the three true outcomes uh would go somewhere north of 50 for the league which is currently which is like you know the among the highest in history for an individual player um i would i would imagine that would be the league wide rate and nobody seems to like that style of baseball people want to see andrelton simmons yeah um okay so last lastly who does this benefit if you did this who would it
Starting point is 00:08:26 benefit pitch pitchers or hitters you mean uh yes i didn't give you i just looked at tyler skaggs because he seems interesting to me for me i mean not interesting he seems interesting for being not that interesting he seems like an average pitcher and uh roughly a quarter of his two-strike pitches are fouled off. That helps you. So there's no actual ability to... People say that guys have a higher foul rate on two strikes than they do on zero strikes or one strike. Like they cut down on their swing or something and just waste a bunch of pitches by slapping them away or something. And that isn't actually the case. I don't think the
Starting point is 00:09:09 foul per swing rate is any higher on two strikes than it is on zero strikes or one strike. I don't know if that answers anything, but it's not like, not like hitters can necessarily prolong an at-bat this way uh reliably but i i don't know so what does the skags example tell you i don't know it wasn't a very helpful thing to have found uh i don't know what skags tells me um well so i don't know imagine that every imagine that me. Well, so, I don't know. Imagine that every at-bat went to 2-2. Then now who's in a better... Who has gained more by this rule change in a 2-2 count? If we just limit it to 2-2 counts.
Starting point is 00:10:02 Probably the batter, I guess. But that's not actually conclusive. I don't know, Ben. The fact that we can't say immediately is a good thing, at least. It doesn't seem like it would totally unbalance the system.
Starting point is 00:10:20 I don't consider, I don't conclude that at all. The fact that off the top of our heads, you don't know, does not tell me that there would not be an imbalance. I think there probably would be an imbalance, but who cares? Why do we need balance?
Starting point is 00:10:37 All right. So, Ben. Yes. Do you have anything to talk about? Well, I didn't congratulate you on Sergio Santos returning to the major leagues. I offered my condolences when he was demoted, and then he went down to AAA Buffalo in Toronto's system, and he pitched 10 and two-thirds scoreless innings, struck out 16,
Starting point is 00:11:02 although he did walk six, and he is back in the majors. So I imagine that made you happy. It did, although you also didn't congratulate me on Nate Fryman coming up, and that actually has made me a lot more happy. I had forgotten that he was one of your guys. Yeah, so Fryman's back, and he has against lefties, which I only like him for what he does against lefties. I don't care to see him play against right-handers.
Starting point is 00:11:27 But against lefties, he has one of my favorite lines of the year. He's hitting.250,.289,.667, which is essentially Javier Baez. Yeah. But without the strikeouts. So Nate Freiman and Sergio Santos, two of my guys. Time to update that, I would say. Probably, yeah.
Starting point is 00:11:51 And then the only other thing was, we've talked about Jose Bautista's umpire complaining on this show, right? I think. And so there was a development in that area where he was ejected in the sixth inning of a game for arguing balls and strikes and then um and then uh there was there was a comment by john gibbons after the game who said the bottom line is we needed him in this game say your peace and get the hell out of there we're trying to get in the playoffs we need you on the field he's a
Starting point is 00:12:24 marked man in this game Plate umpire Bill Welke I thought he had a pretty good strike zone today It was steady He was calling strikes He was looking to call strikes But we need you in the game So that's interesting
Starting point is 00:12:35 Interesting that he thinks that he's a marked man Which is something that Batista has claimed in the past And also interesting that his own team is taking issue with his umpire complaining now also interesting that he considers himself to be in a playoff race um yeah they're technically they're in there they're they're close ish and so if i i guess you'd have to know the relationship but if you were Jose Bautista and you knew that your manager was basically subtweeting you,
Starting point is 00:13:10 would you take that as a sign that you need to grow up or would you just be super pissed off? Maybe they've had this conversation already but it really doesn't feel like anything that Gibbons needs to say.
Starting point is 00:13:26 Probably not. Yeah, I mean, right, it all depends on the backstory, I guess. There's probably never a time when you would want the first time that you're raising an issue about a player to come via a post-game comment to a reporter. to a reporter. But if you've, I mean, I don't know, if you've, if you've talked to the guy about it many times before, then I don't know whether talking to a reporter is really going to help either. So maybe it's, maybe it's sort of a no-win scenario. I don't know. Maybe there could be a case where, where you're, uh, where you get through to a guy by drawing attention to it that way. But it seems like probably that would be rarer than the cases where you're just just souring the relationship let me ask you something ben okay if i told you that i had
Starting point is 00:14:12 gone out to you know find out what people think about mike trout and i'd come back and the only quote i got was it's the future of the game with him he can do stuff on the baseball field not too many people can and if they can they can only do one aspect of it. And he can do all of it. Would you say, go ahead, put it in an article, publish it? Well, I don't know that I would have greeted with that article in the first place. Okay. So now if I told you that Mike or John Carlos Stanton said it, would it change your calculus of the newsworthiness of that quote at all? No. I think me too.
Starting point is 00:14:53 Why? I'm reading an article about how Mike Stanton or John Carlos Stanton praised Mike Trout, and that's the quote. I'm wondering why i clicked on this would have been interesting if if he had called himself the future of baseball uh yeah that he's a far more compelling player than mike trap all right ben uh many times this offseason we talked about jacoby elsbury uh and about the significance of his free agency and how significant he would be to the team that signed him. And then when a team signed him, we talked about how significant he would be to that team. And he's not doing that well. He's doing fine.
Starting point is 00:15:33 He's adequate. But he hasn't been a hugely significant signing, despite all the words that we said about him. And I started thinking about how many of the signings that end up mattering the most get no mention at all and in fact don't even get noticed at all and there are various players who have been probably more significant than jacoby ellsbury this year uh both in an absolute sense and in the context of a pennant race uh who uh probably didn't even get mentioned in the newspaper the following day. And so I told you to go find your three most lopsided impact to attention transactions of the last year.
Starting point is 00:16:20 It doesn't have to be your most, but three that you particularly like. And I brought three that I particularly like. And I wanted to hear what you think are the most lopsided attention to impact transactions of the year. So the perfect scenario would be a guy is signed as a minor league free agent and wins the MVP award. That would be perfect. That would be the top right corner of the graph. And it could be, you know, if Robinson Cano were like a 17-win player, it could be him, even though he got a lot of attention. But ideally, a lot of impact, not
Starting point is 00:16:56 much attention. And when you say last year, I was looking 2014 only? Yes. This season. Any transactions that have been off-season or during season. Right. Okay. So do you want to do like a draft? I don't think I want to do a draft, but we could alternate. Right.
Starting point is 00:17:16 Yeah, that's what I mean. Okay. Who goes first? So I'll go first. Okay. And I'm sure that you probably picked this, but Steve Pearce, man. That's a good one. Did you not pick Steve Pearce?
Starting point is 00:17:31 No. So Steve Pearce is 31 years old. He's essentially a quad A kind of DH sort of first baseman kind of guy who in my mind is most notable for being on the Orioles and not on the Orioles in at least part of every season. Right. I think that's why I didn't pick him because I saw Steve Pierce Orioles and he was on the Orioles last year and I just kind of
Starting point is 00:18:05 didn't count it. Yeah, so since in the last three years, three calendar years this is his transaction log. Signed as free agent by the Twins, released by Twins signed as free agent with the Yankees purchased by the Orioles from the Yankees selected off waivers by the Astros from the Orioles, purchased
Starting point is 00:18:21 by the Yankees from the Astros selected off waivers by the Orioles released by the Orioles, purchased by the Yankees from the Astros, selected off waivers by the Orioles, released by the Orioles, and then signed as free agent by the Orioles. And those last two took place within two days of each other. So they released him in April. And then two days later, they re-signed him. And in fact, you're not even allowed to do that. But there was a loophole because of something having to do with Chris Davis' status on the active roster or something. They were able to get away from the rule that says you can't re-sign a player you released within X number of days. And I just feel like there's a great mid-90s Quentin Tarantino knockoff movie about what Steven Pierce did in those two days.
Starting point is 00:19:05 Not that he took some magic elixir, but you just know he got up to all kinds of no good, and he might have accidentally witnessed a murder. He could have done all sorts of things, and it would have been in a disjointed, nonlinear narrative style. And I bet it was really fun. I bet those were maybe the two
Starting point is 00:19:25 best days of his life and at the end of those two days he found love and he also got re-signed by the orioles and since since the orioles re-signed him he is like he should be their mvp candidate except he only has played 80 games in those 80 games 287 349 522 um he's got he's basically having like remember the year that john jay so had with the mariners two years ago he's having that year um and he's been their best player he's a in in 80 games this is incredible in 80 games half a season steve pierce by baseball reference has been worth 4.4 war so he would would be prorated over the course of the year. He would be better than Mike Trout, better than Alex Gordon, and probably, I haven't done the math, but probably Josh Donaldson.
Starting point is 00:20:13 He would probably be the best player in baseball on a per-game basis. He even has Steve Pierce, Ben. Steve Pierce is a plus-17 defender this year. Ben, Steve Pierce is a plus 17 defender this year. So that means that we can't give him MVP votes, which is why you supported the Nick Markakis MVP candidacy over Steve Pierce. Yeah, no, it's true. It is a shame.
Starting point is 00:20:45 Markakis homered tonight, by's true. It is a shame. Marquecas Homer tonight, by the way. He was in like an 0 for 16 or something, and I was feeling pretty good. So these are the MLB trade rumors comments for this move. I went and looked at all the comments for all the moves I isolated, identified just to see if there was anything interesting in them. So this is the tone of them. First of all, there are only eight comments, which if you know MLB trade rumors, they can very easily get 2,000 on a thread.
Starting point is 00:21:12 But nothing but a middle school relationship was one. Then, wait, what? And then, ha ha. And then, and it's gone. I'm sorry it's all gone. Oh, just break up already, you two. Enough of this soap opera. And will this ever end?
Starting point is 00:21:29 And that was it. That was all the comments. Okay, that's a good one. I'll see if I can look up MLB Trade Rumors comments for my moves as I go. So I'll go with JD Martinez as my first guy. And we've talked about him before, just a guy who was released. I think probably my top three picks are all guys who were released. No, but were released, or at we're signed in the last week of march just right right before opening day so so we've talked about martinez released by the astros signed by the
Starting point is 00:22:14 tigers on march 24th remade himself over over the offseason mechanically he's the the ultimate change in mechanics leads to change in performance guy, although he is kind of tanked in August, but he's allowed to have a bad month. And so he's appealing because he was... I like the cases where players don't just say that they are tinkering or they've changed something with their swing. I like the ones where they deliberately imitate another player, a more successful player, like when Charlie Morton remade himself in Roy Halladay's image. Yeah, those are great. I like that because it's just the idea that if you just take the other guy's mechanics,
Starting point is 00:23:00 then you will succeed. It seems intuitive, but it doesn't really work that way because you can't completely mimic everything the guy does anyway so he did sort of the same thing and he's looking at video of Miguel Cabrera and trying to do things that Miguel Cabrera does and then he started hitting like Miguel Cabrera for for much of the season so so that was did he did he did he steal Miguel Cabrera's mechanics before he joined the Tigers yeah it was an offseason oh so this was like uh this was like a Munonori Kawasaki uh Ichiro thing wait was that who it was did you remember that no yeah yeah yeah they he was like obsessed with each row like
Starting point is 00:23:45 he each row is his is his idol and he just he like i think he just wanted to come to the states so that he could play with each row and so i think that i think i'm remembering this correctly so that was a good one interesting story not a lot of fanfare, obviously, has had major playoff implications. So that's a good one. And MLB Trade Rumors comments for that move. Actually, some people praise this move. There was one person who said quantity over quality seems to be the Tigers' M.O. right now. But there were people who said good sign, still has breakout potential. Wish him all the best.
Starting point is 00:24:29 Still think he has major league potential. Saw he was let go Saturday and hoped we'd give him a shot. Cheap, lots of talent, just maybe not quite ripe yet. So only 11 comments, only three more than the Steve Pierce move. But a few of those commenters were optimistic. Yeah, I also was thinking about talking about J.D. Martinez, and one thing I noticed about his MLB trade rumors post is that that was the first time in J.D. Martinez' career that they ever put a J.D. Martinez tag on a post.
Starting point is 00:24:59 Yeah, they had mentioned him in an earlier post, but they didn't tag it. And the URL of that post was like, minor moves, Martinez waved. And that happened like a week earlier. So that gives you a pretty good sense of what J.D. Martinez was to baseball at the time. All right, I will next take Colin McHugh, who is an Astro. And so here's what I knew about Colin McHugh before this year. He started the worst game of the year last year.
Starting point is 00:25:39 Sorry, he started the worst game of 2012, my annual feature finding the worst game played the previous year. He started that game, and I don't think he made it out of the first. So that's one thing about him. And his career major league record coming into this year in 15 games, nine of them starts, was 0-8 with an 8.94 era and i first was notified of colin mccue's existence in the majors this year when i was doing my brand new pitching lines feature of every week and he had the best new line of of a given week he went six and two thirds three hits no runs no
Starting point is 00:26:24 walks and 12 strikeouts. And it was the same week that Jose Fernandez struck out 14 in a three-hitter. And I chose McHugh as the better line. He had a higher strikeout rate, which at the time was the second highest strikeout percentage for any start of that year. And it was by Colin McHugh. And here's what I wrote about him at the time a waiver wire pickup who couldn't crack the astros rotation to start the year in his four triple a appearances
Starting point is 00:26:51 he struck out a total of eight batters a total in four so he he he starts the year in triple a four games eight strikeouts in those four and then he he's been incredible ever since um so he's been he's like 27 or something like that and he's been you know remember last year when we talked about whether it was a successful year for the astros given what we you know what what we knew their sort of long-term goals to be and and i think that at the time i i sort of felt dispirited by it and thought that it hadn't been and then this year in in a way has actually been publicly a much harder year for them. I feel like they've had to defend themselves or maybe they haven't had to defend themselves so much as people have taken to writing think pieces about what it's like to be an Astro. But they've actually
Starting point is 00:27:41 had a number of legitimate major leaguers emerge in a way that that didn't actually happen last year, really. And McHugh is certainly one of them. And, yeah, I think he was waived by the Rockies in December. And that's all. So let me see. Oh, yeah, the other interesting thing about McHugh is that he was 0-8 with an 8.94 ERA in his career, but his first start was almost as good as the one that I had written about. He had one amazing start and then never again.
Starting point is 00:28:17 So he was actually even much worse after that before he got good. Anyway, somebody should write about why he's good now. That's what we should be doing. All right. before he got good. Anyway, somebody should write about why he's good now. That's what we should be doing. Any MLB trade rumors comments for that move? Did that even have a post? It did have a post, and they weren't very interesting. Somebody said that he would always have a problem with hits per nine because of his batting practice type stuff.
Starting point is 00:28:44 And I thought that that seemed like a really unnecessary thing to say like that that he will always have a problem with hits per nine is just not specific enough to count his analysis that's just like saying he's really bad like like you could say oh well he's always going to fight control problems or oh he has trouble missing bats but he is always going to give up way too many hits on a rate basis is just a complicated way of saying he's bad and so that's the only comment that i noticed okay um all right i guess i will go with chris young next tall chris young Chris Young next. Tall Chris Young. Uh-huh, yeah. So Chris Young, another very late spring sign. He was signed, let's see, March 27th.
Starting point is 00:29:33 That's about as late as you can pick up a player. He was released by the Nationals, with whom he pitched pretty well in spring training on March 25th. And he has pitched pretty well in spring training on March 25th. And he has pitched very well, or at least depending on how much credit you want to apportion to fielders or to him for allowing weak contact or preventing hits, which is something that he has some history of doing. He's been good. And I did not think much of Chris Young or the Chris Young signing. He didn't pitch last year.
Starting point is 00:30:10 He missed the year. He was not in the annual this year. And he has pitched like someone who deserved to have a comment in the annual. If you go by FIP or a FIP-based war, Fangraph's war, he has not been particularly valuable. He has a.232 Babbitt, but he also has a.251 career Babbitt, which is interesting. We got a question about that today. Yeah, he was the most extreme fly ball pitcher in the game, and he spent a lot of his career in Petco. So it always made some sense.
Starting point is 00:30:48 And now Seattle and Citi Field. And so he has pitched in exactly the places that Chris Young should pitch ever since he left Texas. So Chris Young. I don't have a whole lot else to say about Chris Young right now. But MLB trade rumors,ors comments like the move. No risk signing. Yeah, I found that actually was a pretty consistent theme.
Starting point is 00:31:11 MLB Trade Rumors commenters like moves. They are the most positive commenters on the internet. They just like moves. They're into the transaction itself. That's why they're there. That's why they're on the site. It's mostly like, heck yeah, there's news. They're like people who just want to see the stock market go up.
Starting point is 00:31:34 They just like to cheer on the economy. My last one is Justin Turner, who was signed to a minor league contract with the Dodgers. And, of course, the Dodgers have signed so many big deals and made so many big trades. And then here comes Justin Turner, minor league contract, backup. Didn't we talk about that at the time? How did Justin Turner get a minor league contract and not a major league deal? Didn't we? I don't't know i remember being surprised about that
Starting point is 00:32:09 i thought we discussed it but maybe not yeah well i mean he was a league average basically he's a league average hitter who could play a bunch of positions you'd think that guy would have i mean that sounds like sean rodriguez to me uh although it's i don't know why. Like, Sean Rodriguez is on the cover of Sports Illustrated or something. Why did I just say that? But his defense has generally been considered poor. His wars on baseball reference throughout his career as a regular were.1,.2, and.7. So, you know, there wasn't any reason to think he was going to break out at age 29, but he has. He's hitting.313,.385,.441, which is, you know, well above average, particularly when you consider that systems rate him as a pretty good defender who's played all four infield positions.
Starting point is 00:32:59 He is second on the Dodgers in war this year, at least among position players, is second on the Dodgers in war this year, at least among position players. And kind of has been, I don't know, he's probably been lost in the shuffle a little bit. MLB trade rumors comment, had the privilege of taking a picture with Justin Turner while he was on the Mets. Cool guy.
Starting point is 00:33:21 That's a good one. Okay. My last one is similar to the the chris young one um aaron harangue so we've we've discussed aaron harangue i guess i wrote about aaron harangue early in the year and how he wasn't gonna probably keep doing what he was doing but he kind of has more or less sort of um he's been a it's been a league average pitcher and is on track to to do that with 200 innings or so and he was a guy who the Braves just kind of brought in because they needed someone they needed someone who could pitch who has pitched before who is a professional pitcher, and he fit that description.
Starting point is 00:34:06 They had seen him and sort of liked him. Their scouts had liked him as much as you can get excited about Aaron Horang. And he was, on the whole, quite bad last year. And no one expected a whole lot. No one expected him to last the whole season in the rotation I don't think but he has he has and he's been pretty pretty decent and the top comment on MLB tremors Jade rumors is well ellipsis I just don't get this yeah two honorable mentions Pat Neshek, minor league deal.
Starting point is 00:34:46 That's a good one. And Mark Reynolds, also minor league deal. We talked about that as even if he's just replacement level, it's a big upgrade over what they had, and he's actually been much better than replacement level or somewhat better than replacement level. So that's another one. Oh, I liked that one too because the comment was won't matter hunter morris will get the job releasing freddie garcia and signing her ring is like taking off a dirty pair of underwear
Starting point is 00:35:14 to put on another dirty pair of underwear that's harsh um and i had a couple honorable mentions also. Jan Jervis Solarte, I think, should get an honorable mention here. Not only for his work with the Yankees when, of course, he was great for a couple months and then terrible for a month and then demoted and then traded to the Padres. And he's actually been pretty decent again for the Padres. So he's been good. He's an above-average hitter, and no one really knew who he was. Casey McGee, maybe. We've talked about Casey McGee. Obviously no one expected anything out of him,
Starting point is 00:35:58 and he hasn't been all that good, really. And he's also, I think, leading the league in grounding into double plays, which is probably making his batting line look better than it is. But Casey McGee. And I had a... Well, I did want to salute the Indians for the Michael Brantley extension.
Starting point is 00:36:20 Not that that's really had an impact in the sense that he wasn't going to a new team or anything. He would have been playing for them anyway. But in terms of just smartest or best timed transactions of the year, that is probably pretty high on the list to extend him right before what appears to be a breakout. to be a breakout. And the closest I came to actual moves that got some interest and attention and people talked about them, and yet they still exceeded expectations enough
Starting point is 00:36:55 or at least have turned out to be positives enough that maybe people didn't talk about them enough, was Nelson Cruz and Tim Hudson. Yeah, I didn't go that route. Yeah, they were far down my list. Oh, okay. Good show. All right, so that's it for today.
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