Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 687: Probably Premature Judgments About Offseason Trades

Episode Date: June 1, 2015

Ben and Sam banter about Sonoma Stompers Opening Day, then discuss the early returns from some of the winter’s biggest blockbusters.

I got it! Now I'll never say good luck on opening night. That's the rule. I'm no fool. What do I say? I beg. What you say is break a leg. Break a leg? Yes! Break a leg! If you're clever, Good luck!

You'll endeavor To never, never, never, never, ever, ever, ever say On opening night Good morning and welcome to episode 687 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives, brought to you by the Play Index at baseballreference.com. I'm Sam Miller with Ben Lindberg of grantland.com. Hi, Ben. How are you? All right.

How are you feeling? Well, there's one thing on my mind. What's that? The Stompers play today. Yeah, I'm dying. I will not sleep tonight. I won't sleep, but probably because I'll be writing. But I won't sleep tonight because I'll be very excited.

I would not say I'm nervous. I was expecting to be nervous. I'm not nervous. I was very, very, very nervous before spring training started. Like I was, I told somebody that day, but I was nervous. Like I wanted to throw up so bad, but not like lean over and throw up so bad but not like the uh like uh lean over and throw up on the ground i wanted to throw up like i wanted to scream and have vomit come out like i

just wanted to screaming vomit like i wanted to have a scream vomit uh-huh i i wanted to just aggressively vomit on the world. I'm glad you got past that phase. And I'm not nervous right now. I'm extremely excited. I can't wait. I just can't wait. I can't wait.

What if they win? They better win. What if they lose? Yeah. Well, I mean, I guess. Yeah, it's true. I hadn't considered that possibility. Yeah, I am, I am, I don't want them to lose. Anyway, so that's the thing. And, um, so that'll happen.

All right, to real baseball with players that people are looking forward to hearing us talk about. Do you have any banter? No, Tim Lincecum was bad again. He was? Let's see, what's the ERA now? I don't know. I'm going to tell you. Lincecum's ERA is three on the nose.

He's up almost a full run since we talked about him last week. So about ten days ago, or maybe like seven days ago, it was actually, yeah, I think it was last Sunday, I had a conversation with somebody about whether, like what kind of odds it would take you to bet that Tim Linscombe would have a lower ERA than Clayton Kershaw at the end of the year. And at the time, their ERAs were separated by like two and a quarter runs. No, two and three quarters runs, I think, or maybe two and a half runs. And they are now three quarters in one week they are within three quarters of a run so the odds would have to be pretty high

on the other hand steven strasburg lasted one inning and then went on the dl with neck stiffness yeah that's true too so we had our our little discussion of lincecum's era and strasburg's era so that one is not looking much better for me yeah yeah uh well or me i didn't i say he was going to be good yeah all right yeah strasburg? Nope. Okay. So I wanted to talk about some of the trades from the offseason, and I wanted to kind of declare winner or loser, but more I wanted to get into the nature of declaring winner or loser and see how confident you would be declaring a winner or loser at this point. Whenever a trade is made, there are some people who will declare winners

or losers. And then there are some people like us who will act way too enlightened to declare winners. And I wanted to see how much conviction we have in that position or if two months in, we're totally willing to declare a winner and a loser. Or are we talking about retrospective winners and losers? Because we're so enlightened that we would never use what actually happened after the trade to pronounce a winner or loser. Right, look. The Brewers, for instance, are losers in this 2015 season.

But it's not like I'm like, they shouldn't have even played. They definitely should have played. I don't know. We kind of told them that this was going to happen. this 2015 season but it's not like i'm like they shouldn't have even played like they definitely should have played they did the right thing we kind of told them that this was going to happen no we they were right to play and sometimes you just hit your 10th percentile projection we are not talking about which front office was dumb for making the trade there are no dumb front offices yeah probably and uh there are we are not we are not so bold as to say they made mistakes in these moves. Sometimes you make a good move and the guy hits his 10th percentile projection and the other guy hits his 90th percentile projection and you lost that trade.

That doesn't mean you're bad. It doesn't mean you're wrong. It doesn't mean you're an idiot. It doesn't mean anybody should fire you. It doesn't mean anybody should judge you. It doesn't mean anybody should mock you. You're smart. We like you. But you lost. You lost. It's okay. You lost. You can lose a coin flip. It doesn't mean you're bad at flipping coins. Right? Right. Okay. So we are not declaring bad processes here. We're just declaring winner or loser. Okay. All right. So I'm just going to sort of start with big ones, and then we'll see how far we go, and I'll be watching the clock.

As soon as we hit 3230, I'm going to type done to you, and hopefully you'll stop talking. My clock is not ticking today. I'm in a different room. All right. So Jason Hayward for Shelby Miller. There were other people involved in that. Let's see. Jordan Walden was There were other people involved in that.

Let's see. Jordan Walden was one of the people involved in that. Tyrell Jenkins. Going to St. Louis. Tyrell Jenkins was one of the people involved in that. Going to Atlanta. So this was, of course, well, before we declare winner or loser, let's try to put ourselves back in the time the trade was made and remember what we thought of it.

So Hayward, of course, was a stat head darling, ourselves back in the time the trade was made and remember what we thought of it so hayward of course was a stat head darling a player who was widely perceived by stat heads to be uh an mvp candidate a um is certainly an mvp ballot type guy who was probably like you know a superstar right a 23-ish year old who was producing five-ish wins a year but only had one more year of service time and the Shelby Miller was a pitcher and a lot of the five wins was dependent on his defense it was but not not a great deal of skepticism I mean when I say five wins he was really like a six win player and you regress that a little and you get to five because everybody did agree he's a master at defense he's

not necessarily a plus 30 guy but even if you regress that you still get a very good ball player shelby miller was a guy who had had a fairly dominant rookie season um and had kind of wavered as the season went on, perhaps because of fatigue, perhaps because he was essentially a two-pitch pitcher. And then his next year was quite disappointing as his peripherals collapsed. He had, I think, four years of service time and was much cheaper, but was kind of seen as maybe a little bit damaged goods. seen as maybe a little bit damaged goods. And so we have, and then Jenkins and Walden are,

you know, Jenkins and Walden, they're not necessarily big deals in this conversation. So right now, Shelby Miller is like a young candidate, I guess, even though his peripherals aren't that much better. But he's been fairly dominant. He has a 1.48 ERA. Jason Hayward has batted eighth a few times in St. Louis and hasn't been very good, although has been picking it up a little bit. And his defense is probably his defense. And in two months, we don't really have numbers that would capture that. So it's hard to cite a war for Jason Hayward at this point in the season. So clearly the Cardinals were hoping to get all their value in this trade

out of the one year they had with Hayward and perhaps their exclusive negotiating rights, while the Braves, seeing that they were not competitors this year, were hoping that Miller would develop into a very good number two or number three or maybe better starter who would be around when they were competitive in the next few years. So given what we've seen, A, is there a winner or loser? And B, how confident are you that there's a winner or loser?

I don't know exactly how to phrase this but like how far how close i don't know like on a if it takes a hundred you know you like imagine that you're like banging a mallet on a bell at a county fair and you got to get up to a hundred how high is that is that thing going up you know what i'm talking about everybody does a test of strength that's right so how high up the strongman bar is your winner or loser bells going it's a weird analogy but i'll accept it you hope to go okay let me try again all right you're at a carnival and you're shooting a water gun at a clay pigeons yeah at, at a thing. You're tossing those rings onto those pointy things? How many rings is that?

I don't know. What do you want to pick? I think it's a big stuffed teddy bear win for the Braves. If it takes you eight corndogs to throw up on the tilt-a-wheel, how many corndogs has this trade eaten? I think Sam Miller projectile vomited all over the Cardinals in this case. I think it's safe to... I think it's safe to... Not safe, but I'm comfortable declaring a winner here, I think.

We're about a third of the way through the season, almost, a winner here, I think. We're about a third of the way through the season, almost, and this was a very, the Cardinals side of this trade was very much dependent on 2015. They were giving up years of control for Shelby Miller, and it wasn't clear that that was such a huge sacrifice, but he, I wrote about him a couple weeks ago, he has changed his pitch selection, or maybe he's gotten a pitch weeks ago He has changed his pitch selection Or maybe he's gotten a pitch selection He didn't used to have one The selection used to be fastball

And fastball again And now he throws a bunch of pitches And obviously he Is going to have a higher ERA At some point this season But he has made some real improvements I think And he's young And there's reason to be

more optimistic about his future now than you would have been a few months ago, even though he started to incorporate a few new pitches down the stretch last year. But the Cardinals, a lot of the value was going to come from Hayward in this year, and we're now, a big chunk of the season is behind us and Hayward would have a hard time catching Miller's value I think at this point maybe you could do a Kershaw-Linsicum sort of thing with Miller and Hayward if he wanted to but I think at this point I mean and part of the value was getting to re-sign Hayward which at this point, is that something you want to do? I don't know. Or he's hurt his value so much, or would if it continues to be this way, that anyone could have gotten him at a discount relative to what he would have been expected to make coming into the year.

So couple that with the fact that Jenkins is in double A and doing okay, and Walden was hurt, right? And so I don't see how you can not call this a win for the Braves, unless you're really confident that Miller is going to fall apart and Hayward is going to be great for the last two-thirds of the season, which is totally realistic. But even so, I mean, if the cardinals make the playoffs as they probably will and hayward hits really well there and they win a world series because

hayward hit a walk-off in game seven or something then i guess that's a way that you could call the cardinals winners here sure yeah and that's one of the ways that you can spin this for the cardinals if you were inclined to, is to say, well, hey, it hasn't hurt them. They're running away with things. They're a lock. So what's happened over the past two months hasn't hurt them. And what's going to happen in the next four months, five months, really, since they're, again, a lock to play in October, is still much more important. And so who would you rather have for the next five months, Hayward orer of course it's not really that simple because they would have miller for the next three years whereas for hayward they're they're probably going to get a pick or perhaps a slight discount

if they extend them you could also say that it was a change of scenery sort of thing and that maybe miller wouldn't be pitching like miller is pitching if he had stayed maybe it's a new pitching coach new whatever and I'll get to Miller in a second but um so well actually I'll get to him right now so the question is in a very simplistic term who would you rather have uh let's take the change of scenery element out of it uh knowing that Miller's peripherals haven't I mean it's not like he's striking out batters like he was as a rookie I mean I, I remember when he was a rookie, do you remember the game he struck out? I think he struck out like, I'm going to botch this.

But it was the same day that Matt Harvey had his insane one-hitter, one-base runner, almost through a perfect game. And I think the same day, or maybe the next day, Shelby Miller threw the same thing. And I want to say he struck out like, I don't know, like 14 or something. And I watched that game, and I don't remember very pertinent details like how many he struck out. He struck out 13, okay?

So I did. And I remember he had this fastball that he was just throwing over and over, and you thought, oh, well, no one will ever hit this. And he looked almost like exactly like harvey like he just could throw this fastball right past people like it was like people had never seen a pitcher before and they didn't know when to start their swing against him and his rookie year i'm just going to pick some some arbitrary dates that make this argument look good all right i'm I'm going to say through August 24th of his rookie year, he had 151 strikeouts in 140 innings at a 290 RA. So like the basic thing was

going well, but he also was striking out like nine and a half, almost 10 batters per nine. He's striking out almost four batters per walk i mean this guy was a fit monster and while he is having a good year he is not that pitcher anymore he is striking out six and a half he's kyle loesch if you just looked at his stats right striking out six and a half for nine the walks have gone down the home runs have gone down and of course the hits have gone way down without looking his i'm going to guess his BAB is like 90. It's like a 202. Yeah, there you go.

And so going forward, I mean, obviously, accepting the three years that Miller has of club control that Hayward does, and then the fact that Hayward costs a lot and Miller costs nothing, who would you rather have from this point forward if you're the Cardinals and you're going for the World Series this year? Who would you just rather have for the next five months? Hayward. Yeah, me too. And so if you made it cardinals and you're going for the world series this year who would you just rather have for the next five months heyward yeah me too and so if you made it through heyward's worst two months and you're no worse for it um and you're looking at winning a ring you know i mean if that was the point so that's one way you could argue for the cardinals

the other way you could argue for the cardinals and this is this is not going to end well for the cardinals but um the other way you could do it is, hey, look, they lost Oscar Tavares. They needed a right fielder. This was like this completely shocking, unplannable, horrible thing to have happen to the organization. They needed a right fielder. They got a right fielder, and you can go, well, who knows what the alternative is? Maybe they end up signing Michael Kadir for five years or something that's much worse than what they did. I think that I don't really accept that because Randall Gritchuk's a big a good ball player and right now he's kind of marginalized a little bit in the current situation and um I mean they have Borges they have Jay they have Holiday they have Gritchuk it's not like they're really hurting for outfielders

and so I don't really think that holds up as an argument for the cardinals but you could use it um a little bit so uh so i agree that this is right now a clear win for the braves from the braves perspective i think it's also probably a clear loss for the cardinals from the cardinals perspective those are two separate questions um however i don't think hayward needs to hit a walk off home run in game seven or whatever hypoth whatever hypothetical you set up in order to make this worthwhile for the Cardinals. I think if he plays like a six-win player from here on out, including October, they could say, that's what we wanted. The first two months are, I mean, you know, if you're the Cardinals and things work out to the point that you're running away with the division,

you're basically building for October. And you don't know what hayward's going to do in october but yeah they you know maybe that maybe they've just gotten lucky lucky to have played super well without hayward to the point that it doesn't matter um but yeah like i agree with you i think that from this point forward for the next five months you'd rather have hayward now the thing is i accepted the three the three years of extra club control that shelby miller has and it is you know more compelling to have shelby miller for the next three years than it was two months ago yeah but not it's not that much more is it like how much more is it i i don't know like who would you rather have let me ask you this who would you rather have for the next Not that much more, is it? Like, how much more is it? I don't know. Like, who would you rather have?

Let me ask you this. Who would you rather have for the next three and a half years? Shelby Miller or Rick Porcello? Probably Miller. Really? Okay. All right. I don't know. Okay, yeah.

So then the Braves win. Okay. Yeah. All right. Yeah, Miller, even when he was looking really dominant in that first year someone who had access to hit fx told me that he was one of the hardest hit pitchers that year and all fastballs yeah and you and you can see that with i mean with the inside edge data at fan graphs if you want to use that as a proxy he has like one of the hardest hard hit percent one of the highest hard hit percentages from that year and yeah the fastballs so many fastballs and then and that was

the year when the cardinals mysteriously didn't use him right when they needed a starter in october and everyone was wondering whether he was hurt and we sort of assumed that he was hurt and hiding an injury and that didn't turn out to be the case and maybe they were just looking at that and not really trusting him even then but i think he's he's different now i think i might rather have kyle loesch version of shelby miller than that old dominant looking version interesting i um that's good information all right so um all right i'm on i'm on shelby miller's side okay all right good call josh donaldson for brett laurie kennel graven oh and barretto yes franklin barretto the other pitcher who's the other pitcher sean no sean nolan yeah sean nolan all right yeah

that one's that's a tough one. So, Laurie has not been good. No. He's not been hurt either, which is the positive spin, but he's not been good. And Graveman, not been good. And Donaldson, been good. Really good. Like, so first, let me ask you this. Is it conceivable that Josh Donaldson is currently the second best player in

base fourth is it third third why not he's been 15 wins depending on your win counter so he was 15 wins from 13 to 14 which is like peak utley and he's tied with trout right now for 2015 yeah so who you taking over him? You're taking Trout. Take Harper. You're taking Harper, which I agree, but on the basis of three weeks. Right.

John Donaldson has been an MVP candidate, like a legit MVP candidate for two and a half years and has been like almost as good as Harper this year. Yeah. Harper turned the corner though harper did turn a corner and we don't know when josh donaldson if he's turning i was so i was talking to um jeff quinton of vp about this the other day there's something about doing it in a second location that feels more more convincing you know like I don't know why there shouldn't be,

but there's something about just seeing a guy who's, like, really good with one team, and then he goes to another team, and he's still really good, that feels convincing. Like, because usually either, okay, he's playing in a hitter's park, and you're like, well, yeah, sure, those numbers are propped up by his park. Right, Matt Holliday going from Coors to Bush.

Yeah. Or he's playing in a pitcher's park and you're like is he really that good i know the ops plus is good but he's got 14 home runs and a 260 average and i don't care if that's 185 ops plus one way or another he goes to another thing and you see he's still really good, and it feels somehow really convincing. Like he's not a product of his circumstances. He's not just some Dave Duncan acolyte or whatever. He's like good. He's just good. I don't know. I don't know if that's anything.

That's just how I was responding to a question Jeff Quinton asked me. But he's been super good. was responding to a question Jeff Quinton asked me. But he's been super good. Franklin Barreto is a 7.03 OPS in high A. To be fair, he's... At 19. Okay. So, man, this one is tough because it wasn't...

I mean, Hayward had to be good this year for the Cardinals to win that, and he hasn't been good well okay so for I mean look clearly clearly the Blue Jays are winning the only question yes corn dogs right yeah so eight on a scale of one to eight corn dogs three and a half three and a half because Donaldson I mean there's still he's got two and a half more years of club control, I think, or three and a half. Laurie's got two and a half. Graveman's got almost six. Nolan's got six.

And Barreto is completely like an unwritten book. Yeah, that's a lot of years. Things could change. Yeah, I mean, part of the reason why I thought the trade was defensible was that i thought maybe if laurie was healthy he could you know maybe donaldson would decline a little bit and laurie would bounce back and the gap between them wouldn't be enormous maybe it would be a couple of wins instead of a handful of wins and that hasn't happened so but still so many years yeah so here's the here's the case here's the i think probably the best case for it being close to settled i mean graveman and nolan are

both kind of low that they were they were seen as low upside low ceiling i'm sorry low floor guys who are basically ready now they're you know the the type of of starters so you could just put into the rotation get quality innings out of uh you know tommy malone's they were tommy malone's and so like they're not really prospects in the sense that you can just brush aside what they're doing right now they were supposed to be able to step in and provide quality innings right now graveman's been terrible terrible. Nolan's been hurt and hasn't pitched for the A's yet. And of course, Laurie is a year closer to free agency than Donaldson. And this is one year. I mean, he's going to be expected. He's a non-tender candidate,

possibly at the end of this year. Maybe. I don't know if that's true but he maybe is i can say it i said it said so so i mean the ace are 50 games out of first place right now and it's not exclusively because of this trade they a lot of things have gone wrong but they weren't expecting to be 50 games out of first place and a large part of their team is either the product of this trade or the absence caused by this trade. And it's probably the single move that is most responsible for them being 50 games out of first place. Now, they're so far out of first place that you could point to 75 factors at play. And even if they had Donaldson, they probably would be doing terribly. And so maybe they would say, oh, well, you know, the circumstances, the way they are,

you know, thank goodness we got something out of Donaldson and we didn't invest anything into this year. And now we have Franklin Barreto coming along somewhere down the line. And if he's a Hall of Famer or even just a pretty good ballplayer, then it shifts the math. But, you know, I mean, look, this was not a like we talked about this at the time. That's what was interesting about all the A's trades. And if you want to, we could wrap Samarja and Semyon into this too.

We could talk about that trade if you wanted. These were not moves that were intended to be punts. That's what was interesting about them is that the A's had these star level players. They traded them away and yet they weren't rebuilding. They were signing Billy Butler and they were getting guys who were major league ready, who were lower profile and a lot cheaper, but were supposed to be good enough that the A's would be competitive this year. Not four years from now.

They didn't collect a bunch of live arms. They were supposed to be good now, and all these guys have flopped. And Simeon, who has been good, yes, but not a shortstop, really. I mean, like the idea that he was going to be a shortstop turned out to be misguided, I think, is the general consensus. And so maybe it's not. But I mean, that's the consensus that I've gotten. But he has been a good year. But overall as a package, I mean, these were deals that were supposed to make the A's.

but uh overall as a package i mean these were deals that were supposed to make the a's like slightly less competitive this year and slightly more competitive in the years to follow and instead it made them as it turned out way less competitive this year and that's probably a loss again i don't think these are moves that you can necessarily criticize in process but it turned out pretty badly and they were supposed to get a lot of value out of them this year and zoe brist has been hurt and not great when he wasn't hurt oh yeah like lots of things have gone wrong they're not they're not in last place because they traded samarja or because they traded donaldson yeah a lot of factors right and they have like the the worst record relative to their third order record of any team it's like what they like two and eleven

in one run games yeah it's like they're like eight wins below where they should be based on runs scored and allowed and quality of opponents and all that all that stuff but that's what that's what has happened yeah so uh the blue jays just out of curiosity i mean it's we're kind of talking about it as well it's kind of a loss for the A's just on the basis of who has performed. But as it turns out, the Blue Jays are well out of first place as well. Can you make a case that they'd be better off having the long-term guys, or are we getting way too deep into butterfly effect and all that? We just say, hey, they got a great player and

and they're happy with it yeah in the al east no one is that far out of first place they're in they're in fourth but they're three and a half games back so that reminds me i was supposed to mention this the astros have passed the angels in playoff odds which which we talked about. And not only that, but the Astros currently have the highest playoff odds in the American League. Wow. Yeah, they are running away with the American League. Like, if you had to bet on an American League team to win the World Series,

you would probably want to bet maybe on the Astros right now. Like, they might be the favorite. They have 61% playoff odds, 48% adjusted, so basically a 48% chance of having a five-game series. And that is A, interesting because the Astros are the AL favorites, and B, because no AL team has higher than 61% playoff odds, which is amazing. Like, it is total entropy right now. Everything is crazy. The Twins have the best record in the American League.

No. Yes. Only the Cardinals have a better record than the Twins right now. Huh. Wow. Well, my standings are a day behind you. The Astros entered the day with a better record than the Twins, but I guess the Astros lost and the Twins won?

Is that what happened? Yeah, the Twins won i guess the astros lost and the twins won is that what happened yeah the twins won and the astros lost twins are 30 and 19 astros are 31 and 20 so the twins have a 612 winning percentage and the astros have a 608 are you serious why haven't we talked about the twins i don't know let's redo this episode and talk about the Twins. We're at 33 minutes and 10 seconds. That's it. Okay. Is that all the notable trades? There's more, but maybe we'll talk about some more tomorrow.

Maybe we'll talk about the Twins tomorrow. Maybe we will. What did the Twins do since last year? Can you name two transactions the Twins have made in the last nine months? Seriously, I challenge you. Well, Urban Santana, who has not played for them. I won't count that. He hasn't been activated yet.

Name two. Do it. Well, we're out of time. So that's it for this episode. You can join our Facebook group At facebook.com Slash groups slash effectively wild I think Tim Livingston

The broadcaster for the Stompers Will be posting links to Stompers streams If you want to watch Stompers games You can email us at Podcast at baseballperspectives.com You can rate, review, and subscribe To the show on iTunes And you can support our sponsor The Play Index You can rate, review, and subscribe to the show on iTunes.

And you can support our sponsor, the Play Index at Baseball Reference, by going to baseballreference.com, using the coupon code BP, and getting the discounted price of $30 on a one-year subscription. Torrey Hunter. Twin sign Torrey Hunter. There's one. All right. Now we're really out of time. We'll be back tomorrow. Good morning and welcome to 683. Give me a hint. Give me a hint, man.

687. All right. All right. Good morning and welcome to...