Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 690: Probably Premature Judgments About Offseason Trades, Part Two

Episode Date: June 8, 2015

Ben and Sam banter about Pat Venditte, then revisit three winter blockbusters involving NL West teams.

My TV screen spins around and around and around and around. I need a side show. I need a side show. Some kind of creature. Some kind of creature. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Good morning and welcome to episode 690 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. Hi, Ben. Hi. How are you? All right. Anything to talk about? Sonoma Stompers, 6-0. That's a true thing.

Plus 31 run differential. Uh-huh. That's it. Yeah. Good players. Pretty good players. Seems like a good team. It does.

They win the close ones. They win the blowouts. And they win the blowouts. Mm-hmm. That's it. That's all you got on that. Well, Pat Vendetti is in the major leagues. Yeah.

And threw a scoreless inning. Two scoreless innings. And then a scoreless third of an inning. Yeah. Score less third of an inning. Yeah. You know what's weird is that there's a – I don't know, that New York fans, I guess, particularly, got so sick of people not from New York calling for Pat Venditti

to come to the majors that it sort of became – he's become almost a guilty pleasure. I feel like, uh, wanting him to come up. If you, if you ever tweeted like something like about how he should come up, they should bring him up. Then people would make fun of you.

And that's a weird thing that that happened. I mean, if, if he were just a guy who threw with one arm, I don't think there would have been that backlash. He's a, he has a 2.37 career ERA in the minors. He has four strikeouts to every walk in the minors.

He's been old for his levels. That's certainly true. But there's a long track record of this guy getting outs in the high minors. And it's sort of weird that it took this long. Isn't it kind of weird that it took this long. Isn't it kind of weird that it took this long to get him up? It's really long. I wrote about him a bit today, and it's kind of incredible that he didn't get a shot last year, because last year he was really good. He threw almost 80 innings between AA and AAA. And meanwhile, the Yankees were cobbling together the back of a bullpen with guys like Alfredo Aceves and Matt Daly and Rich Hill and Jim Miller and Chris LaRue and just all of these names that you've probably never heard before.

And meanwhile, Venditti was pitching really well. And yeah, there is that kind of backlash because there's there's like almost like a scouty sort of snobbery about it like like you're just scouting the stat line or you're you know overrating him because of his uniqueness and entertainment value and maybe maybe that will turn out to be the case but he looked fairly good to me when he pitched. His stuff from either side is not special. If you look up the closest comparisons to each pitch based on velocity and movement, it's not impressive. The names are not impressive.

But he always has the platoon advantage, and he throws like a specialist from both sides, sidearm, and he always has the advantage. And if you look at his minor league stats, he's probably going to get crushed by switch hitters, I would think. It'll be an interesting thing to see how Bob Melvin uses him with switch hitters coming up, because his strikeout rate with switch hitters up in the minors was like half of what it was against lefties or righties, and that's because switch hitters are the only ones who get the platoon advantage against him. He has to declare what side he's pitching from,

and then they can switch to the other side. So they don't strike out against him, but everyone else does. It works pretty well. So yeah, it is sort of surprising that he didn't get a chance before this. And he had some injuries, like there was one year where he only threw 12 innings or something, and then there was another year when I think he threw

almost exclusively left-handed because of an injury. But still, yeah, you would think he would have gotten a shot at some point with the team that drafted him in the seven years that he spent in their system. Yeah, I actually think that there's— I don't think there's anything wrong with scouting the stat line at AAA. Like, obviously in low A, you should barely look at it, as I think everybody has shown at some point or another. But at AAA, unless you have a reason, like unless you've seen a guy repeatedly flail once he's reached the majors, like one of these quad A sluggers who's had four shots at it,

the default should be that AAA stats are pretty reliable and pretty close to the majors. And, you know, AA, not really that different either. And so I actually don't think there's any reason to have a bet. Venditti or anybody else, if you want to tell me a guy is a qualified reliever based on what he's doing as a qualified, as a reliever in the high minors, reliever based on what he's doing as a qualified as a reliever in the in the high minors i'm not going to uh throw the scouting the stat line uh argument back at you i think that yeah i think that the backlash is that uh people who were like national writers or you know baseball generalists uh were uh paying more attention to the guy because he had this quirk, and so it disguised the numbers to some degree. It felt like if you were calling for him to be called up,

that you weren't calling for him in good faith, that you just wanted to see the freak. And so there was a presumption that your argument was bad because it was being led by the quirk factor the quirk factor that you were you know leading with your bottom hand right should be a top hand hitter right you need to be a top hand hitter ben uh so the switch hitter issue there are um there are 73 switch hitters in Major League Baseball right now, but only about 35 have 100 or more played appearances, which we

could say is something like a regular. And so, just eyeballing it, some of these guys who are on here aren't even in the majors anymore. So you're looking at one a team, maybe two a team if you bring the bench

into this. And so he shouldn't have to face that many. It should be pretty easy to avoid those guys. Yeah, it's not that big a problem. And yeah, I mean, even Javier Lopez can't get righties out, and he still has to face quite a few righties.

He actually can kind of get righties out. But Randy Choate can't get righties out. How many righties do you think Randy Choate faces every year? I think a surprisingly high amount. I think I looked at that once, and I was surprised to see how high the percentage was. Yeah, isn't it like 40% of his plate appearances? Yeah, it's something like that.

This year it is not. Wow, this year, whew, they're doing good. This year he's only faced seven righties. Out of how many batters? 43. Last year, yeah, it was 60 righties in 148, so like 40%. Yeah. So if he can survive in the majors facing 40% righties,

Venditti might be worse. He might even have a worse platoon split. But he's going to be facing maybe 5 five or 10%. Actually, let's see. Well, a minor league team wouldn't necessarily counter him in the same way, but have you looked to see how many times he... Yes, I have. He faced switch hitters in 13% of his plate appearances. Oh, that's surprisingly more than I thought. although in the minors, I guess it works both ways. I would think that would go down in the majors because I think in the minors, you have a lot more full innings out of pitchers, a lot less of the four pitchers in one inning.

Yeah. Kind of machinations. It's sort of surprising that you mentioned that Yankees in 2014 didn't call him up but it's sort of surprising it took him this long just this year he was good in spring he has a 1.3 era and when the a signed him there was a general huzzahing of people who want to see him because it was like oh well of course the a's right well we'll let we'll use them that's the perfect thing the perfect organization for him and the perfect thing that they'd be looking for.

And it took them 33 innings before he came up. Yeah, and they've had injuries, Doolittle, Mujica. Venditti is the 18th reliever they've used this year, which is tied for the most in the majors. And that's if you count him as one pitcher. And they have the worst bullpen ERA in the majors, and that's if you count him as one pitcher. And they have the worst bullpen ERA in the American League after having, I think, the second best last year. So their bullpen has been kind of a disaster, and yeah, even so, it took a while.

I do count him as one pitcher. I definitely count him as one pitcher. Okay. All right. So I want to talk about more trade winners and trade losers. Okay. But I want to go down to one region of the country and talk about the flurry of trades that some overlapping

that the Dodgers and the Padres made this year in the offseason. Okay? Sure. All right. It's? Sure. All right. To your show. All right. So I don't know if we'll do the Dodgers and the Padres or the Dodgers or the Padres or just the Dodgers or just the Padres.

So we'll just together. We'll start with the one thing, lose them both. So the Dodgers traded Matt Kemp to the Padres for Yosemite Grandal, as well as a bunch of money going to San Diego, and as well as a couple of prospects, better prospects, going to the Dodgers. Right? Mm-hmm. You recall this trade?

I do. Happened in December. I can confirm that. Craig Goldstein wrote about it for the Baseball Prospectus. And so Matt Kemp hit his second home run of the year. Congratulations, Matt Kemp. It's hard to do. Hard to hit a home run in the major leagues. It is very hard to do it. We don't necessarily give them enough credit for hitting home runs. And so he's been pretty bad, you would say. And this is one of the things that always beguiles me about analysis is that when a guy signs, like say a guy signs for six years and $100 million, and we do all the math and we're like,

oh boy, looks to me like with the projections, he's only going to be worth $94 million and not $100, and we call it a loss. We'd say, bad move, should have got him for $93, or should have got a guy who'd be worth $101. But in fact, guys very rarely are anywhere close to their projections, and so what ends up happening is that you get a guy like Matt Kemp, who turns out to just be horrible. Like, he's been a replacement level for the Padres this year.

And you could make the case that the Padres simply would have been better off if they didn't have him at all. Like if they were paying all this money but just didn't even have him in the lineup, they might be able to get a better production out of some guy they have in AA right now. And, of course, so then you go, oh, oh this front office they sure botched it they got this guy and he turned out to be horrible and i said at the time he was only going to be worth 93 million uh and not 100 but nobody said he was going to be worth zero you know no like the analysis nobody foresaw that he was going to be worth zero um And so this is why I hate analysis about moves.

This is why I hate doing it. I hate doing it. Anyway, the point is that Matt Kemp has been very poor for them. Yasmany Grandal has been a very good hitter, and when they got him, you probably wrote about this, we probably talked about this, but Grandal was one of the two dozen or so catchers who seemed to have good framing data and poor reputations. And so we thought, oh, smart.

Smart that they got a good framer. AJ Ellis was considered a very poor framer last year. And so this seemed like a smart upgrade, a stat-heady kind of upgrade as well for them. And yet, Grandal's defense seems to be fairly somewhat controversial. Kershaw has continued to pitch to Ellis exclusively.

Well, we know why, right? Harry told us AJ Ellis is a master pitch caller. Exactly. Although Grandal is leading the majors in framing runs at BP. I was going to ask you that. So he is vindicated, I guess, in that sense. All right, so the Dodgers have so far won this one, clearly, right?

They got a catcher at a position that they were pretty weak at. He's been an excellent hitter. He's been framing. We don't know how he calls a game, but we can put that aside a little bit. And when you look at what Ellis has done, he's hitting 138 with a 172 slugging percentage. And you can, obviously they might've found another solution to that, but he was their starting catcher up until the day this trade was made. So it's been very good for them. It's been very bad for the Padres. Is there an argument?

Stop me if I'm wrong about any of that. Kemp, I guess, has stolen five bases. So that's in his favor. All right. So is there redemption possible in this? Is this a just completely irredeemable situation at this point? Well, when we talked about this we didn't like it because we thought at the time that it seemed like a because that was one of the that was one of the earlier

padres moves right that was kind of before some of the subsequent moves and at the time it seemed like what do they need matt kemp for they're not gonna win this year anyway and then they did all those other things and then matt kemp seemed like he could be part of a potentially winning team and the padres haven't been great but they're they're in it at least and so that kind of maybe made the made the desire to trade for him make more sense. And the Padres had, well, they had catching depth at the time, although they then traded all their catchers and traded for some other catchers. But if you think Austin Hedges is going to be the best framer ever,

even though he hasn't hit so far, then maybe that's a consideration for the future. Maybe you don't need a framer so much if you have your own really good one, even if he doesn't hit nearly as well as Grandal has hit the last couple years. So there's that, I guess. And the Dodgers paid a lot of the money for Kemp, right? The Padres are not paying for Kemp this year. But they are paying for him in the future a lot. In the future, yes.

So I didn't think it was the worst move for Kemp at the time. I thought it was curious that the Padres would want to make that move given where I thought they were at that time. But Kemp was the best hitter in the major leagues in the second half last year. So I don't know that we should have expected this. We could have expected him to get hurt. He gets hurt a lot. But I didn't expect that he would play and from all appearances be pretty healthy

and just not hit at all. So that surprises me. So I wouldn't necessarily blame them for Kemp not hitting. I still don't love the rationale for the move, but if we're just talking as we did in the last show about who has won so far, regardless of what the thought process was at the time or what anyone knew at the time, it's probably they're in a pretty deep hole already at this point.

Yeah. We're not talking about who has won. We're talking about how close we can say, how close we are to declaring a winner. Yeah. And so that's kind of the question is, yeah. I mean, I'm going to pivot a little bit and ask a question. The Padres owe Matt Kemp $73 million, I believe, over the next four years, not counting this year.

I think he's getting paid like $87 or something like that, but then the Dodgers are paying some of that. So four years, $73 million. What would he get if he were a free agent this offseason? Well, I thought he would get not terribly far from that if he had been a free agent this past winter. I thought he would. Oh, I think he would have gotten a lot more.

Yeah, because, yeah, right. Well, I think he would have gotten a lot more. Yeah, because... Last one. Yeah, right. So right now, based on his two months of being very bad, how old is Matt Kemp? He's only 30, right? Yeah, this is age 30.

I'm always surprised by how young Kemp is. So, well, he might want to do a pillow contract to get a bigger contract, but he could probably get a four-year deal. Yeah, I don't think that Kemp is, by what the Padres are paying him, I don't think Kemp is overpaid. So I don't think that, you know, he's, I don't think that's a big issue, the money. But I know that if you really buy into some of the defensive metrics that show him as a minus 75 defender in left field last year or whatever he was, then he looks even worse.

But I don't think that he's that bad in a corner outfield. Yeah, I mean, just looking at, I don't know what Pakoda says, but looking at Zips and Steamer, they project Grandal to be a better hitter than kemp or or roughly equivalent to kemp and grandal plays catcher and is a good defensive catcher so in that sense you would rather have grandal in a straight up deal even if they made the same amount of money right yeah so just getting out of the though, that it's not an albatross contract, I don't think. But right. And so then let's say that he's worth exactly what he's getting paid.

Then that means that they just basically gave up Grendel for nothing. And Grendel's got what? This is his third year of service time. He is two years. Yeah., this is his third year of service time? He is two years. Yeah, so this is his third year of service time. So he's going to hit arbitration for the first time this year. And he's probably, I mean, what is he at this point? He's a catcher who's an above-average hitter and by at least one measure is a good defender or certainly credible defender.

I mean, you're talking about... Russell Martin gets $85 million for that. Yeah, exactly. And then, you know, Wieland is in the majors. He's had good peripherals in AAA, got a call-up. It's too early to say whether he has changed who he is since the Padres traded him, but he'll probably pitch some innings in the majors. And then Eflin was part of the Jimmy Rollins deal. And so, yeah, it basically looks like the Dodgers took a guy who was paid fairly

appropriately and turned him into a bunch of really good things. So I would say that on a scale of 1 to 8, we're, I want to say like 3 1⁄2, 8ths of the way there. The thing is that Matt Kemp, like we noted in his BP comment in the annual, three years in a row he's had one horrible half and one MVP level half. And it would probably be too optimistic to think that he's got some skill some particular skill at dividing his performance neatly into lousy half great half and so you probably wouldn't conclude that oh well the great half's coming he's done it three years in a row uh that said there is lots of precedent for him going through an extended stretch like this in

a season and nonetheless ending up really valuable for that season and um so i i think that it's still conceivable that like i probably would put it his chances of winning of getting another well of having another top five MVP finish in his career at probably like 8% to 12%. Okay. And so if that happens, then probably the Padres would be fine. So I would, yeah, maybe I'm going more than 3.5 eighths. I'm going 5.5 eighths of the way to declaring a winner.

All right. It's pretty lopsided at this point. Yeah. Okay. All right. It's pretty lopsided at this point. Yeah. Okay. All right. So let's see. Let's stick with the Padres and say the – let's talk about the Craig Kimbrell trade. All right.

Kimbrell was the last big acquisition. He was the cherry on top in a sense. sense. And they always used to say that having a great closer is the last step for a team, for building a great team, right? That's what you do after you've put all the other pieces together, and the Padres seem to have done that. And then they went out and they got this great closer. And he hasn't been great. The fun fact machine has slowed down. He's got an ERA over four, a FIP over three. He's allowed some home runs. He's walked some batters. He's been good. He's been, you know, I would say a pretty great reliever. And if one of his home runs, one of the three or maybe two of the three home runs gets caught at the wall, then he

looks an awful lot better. So it's not as though you'd write him off. But, you know, we've been saying for years that Mariano Rivera was the exception. There are very few other relievers who maintain dominance over the course of an entire career. And there were some signs already that Kimbrel was slowing down a bit. His walk rate had been going up. His strikeout rate had come down from the historic levels of his, fun fact, heyday. And so, you know, it's not like he has not made the ninth inning any more secure than the ninth inning has been in San Diego for the last decade.

In fact, they've, I'm not going to get this right, but they've blown more games in the ninth inning this year than they did last year, I believe, already. Because I don't think they, I don't think they blew one last year. I think, wasn't that the thing, is they, I think they won every game that they led going into the ninth last year. Uh-huh. Well, the percentage for almost every team is pretty high. Yeah. And so, you know, so he hasn't really changed their success in any clear and obvious way. But BJ Upton is about to be back. I thought he hurt his toe again. I thought I saw a Roto World.

Melvin activated him yesterday. Will make his debut today against the Braves. Yeah. So then it's going to get worse. Right. For the Padres. So, I don't know. I mean, the thing about that move is that they gave up a whole lot of nothing in one way of looking at it.

Mabin was crowded out of the outfield, of nothing in one way of looking at it. Mabin was crowded out of the outfield, appeared to be crowded out of the outfield. He hadn't really been performing. Quentin was, I mean, he's retired. Nobody wants Quentin. And they got a elite, arguably the best closer in the world, who was locked up for a long time at a contract that nobody would balk at. And all they had to do was take on a bunch of money and we don't know how to assess the money that they took on we don't know if it hamstrings them in the short term in the long term if it matters

but as it turned out Cameron Mabin has been pretty good again he's he's been probably more valuable than Kimbrell this year and um and he's also a guy who's signed for a couple more years to a very team-friendly deal. So you'd have to say that the Braves have to be fairly happy at this point that Maven has been good, right? Yeah. And the Padres have to be somewhat underwhelmed that Kimbrell hasn't been any better than 30 other

or maybe 60 other relievers in baseball this year, right? Yep. Maybe this is the sort of trade that only matters in October when you're really happy to have a dominant closer who can shorten the game. Matt Wisler is pitching well in AAA for the Braves. The prospect, the big prospect in the deal okay yeah that's another part of it so i don't know of all the padres moves this is the one that i think at the time we liked the least yes we weren't sure about it partly

because it just felt like they were taking on a ton of money. I mean, they were essentially saying, we're going to spend $80 million and give up a prospect and also give up on Mabin in order to get a closer, which felt like a lot. When they had a good bullpen already. That hadn't blown a game in the ninth inning in an entire year or something like that. blown a game in the ninth inning in an entire year or something like that. So Braves are winning it. Padres are losing it. How close are we to having a definitive?

What changes the outcome here? I don't think I'm that close yet. I think the fact that Whistler is pitching well and is 22 and pretty close to the majors, pitching well and is 22 and pretty close to the majors and that's a lot of service time between him and the other guys they got in the deal um i i would give the edge to the braves just as i gave the edge to the braves then but if the padres are in contention. I mean, if they make it, if they make the playoffs this year, and maybe Kimbrell regains some of his old form, and then they have Kimbrell in October, and they're using him for a bunch of innings, that would be a valuable thing. So if we're just doing the postseason analysis, the retrospective analysis, or not what happened at the time, but what has happened since, I think there is still a way for the Padres to salvage this. But it would take probably Whistler not working out and Kimbrel having big October moments? The Padres' bullpen, it's an odd group because of all the pitchers who have pitched regularly,

Kimbrel has the second worst ERA of the seven relievers. But there's really not a great FIP in this group. It looks like they've all kind of been getting a little lucky here. Maybe they've all been allowing fly balls to the Padres' outfield. Like, my first thought was, well, geez, I mean, Benoit's got a 2.25 ERA. You know, they'd be fine if he was a closer. And Maurer's got a 1.93 ERA. And Thayer's got a 2.66 ERA.

But all those guys have actually got pretty lousy FIPS. And so it's going to be interesting to see if their bullpen continues to be dominant going forward. There's also a pick, by the way, that Braves get a competitive balance pick, which is, what, like mid-40s or something like that? Yeah. Which is not nothing either. Nope. So Braves have the edge, but I'm not there yet.

Yeah, okay. All right, so let's do one more. Okay. And this one goes three directions. It's a three-way trade. Will Myers, Steven Souza, Treya Turner? Trey. Trey.

Trey Turner. All right. treya turner trey trey trey turner all right so the padres get will myers who has hit extremely well for them and then got hurt his defense probably pretty poor but he was asked to play a position that he was probably unqualified for yes very poor but he's basically doing the the shinsu chu in center field thing that the Reds tried a couple of years ago. Yeah, and so that's not really necessarily his fault. And then Steven Souza goes to the Tampa Bay Rays. Souza was the projections darling without nearly the pedigree of Will Myers,

but by most projection systems forecast to be about as good as Myers this year. And so he's hit a bunch of home runs. He's stolen some bases. He's struck out a ton. And overall, eh. Yeah, eh. Not a star. Definitely a qualified major leaguer.

Yeah. And then what else? Turner going to the Washington Nationals and like nine other guys in the trade. Is there anybody else in this trade who needs to be mentioned? Joe Ross got a call up. Yes. So I guess you could say Joe Ross deserves a mention because he got a call up for the Nationals as a pitcher.

He was AA pitcher. Who's pitched well in double-A this year and just called up a couple days ago? The Rays got Rene Rivera. How's that been going? I have to admit, I haven't been following Rene Rivera's season that well. He has a 22 OPS plus. So, not so well.

I have to say that when Rivera got traded, it shocked me that Rivera had trade value. He had a good year last year, but there was nothing in his record that suggested he was any kind of a player. So when people talked about the Padres' depth at catcher, and Rivera was part of that depth, I don't know. I just didn't really see it. Yeah. Well, he's a good framer. He's a good framer so he's basically they replaced jose molina who was a good framer who couldn't hit it all with renee rivera who's a good framer who hasn't hit at all but he's seven years younger something

like that so there's that and then uh turner who was uh the best prospect in the deal you know roughly a number 50 or so prospect uh in the main in the minors uh is still with the padre system until he can be named later and he is crushing he's 22 years old in double a hitting 322 389 478 as a short stop um so that his you know that's good his stock is probably if anything gone up well so the so the nationals did pretty well here right yeah they traded steven souza who they liked so much that they let him have a thousand OPS in four straight minor league seasons and called him up for 12 plate appearances last year. So you could tell that Steven Souza was not exact.

They didn't buy the projections. They didn't really see him as a big part of their plans. And when Jason Wirth is healthy, they basically have no way of using him period so they they turned very little from their end into trey turner and joe ross and joe ross and so yeah you'd say that they have to feel very good about where they are right now the rays essentially turned will myers into steven souza uh and spare parts that don't seem to be adding much to the equation at this point. Let's see.

Well, Jake Bowers, first base prospect, is hitting well in high A as a 19-year-old. So that's not nothing. Birch Smith is healthy. What's Birch Smith doing? Birch Smith is not healthy Birch Smith healthy? What's Birch Smith doing? Birch Smith is not healthy. Not pitching. Not playing for the Rays. All right.

So what are we saying about the Rays? The Rays traded Will Myers for Steven Souza. It was like a classic case of scouts versus stats, right? Sort of. I mean, stats liked Will Myers, too. A couple years ago, Will Myers was the stat head guy in the Shields deal.

So I would say that the Rays come out looking the worst here thus far just because they were kind of betting on Myers not becoming Myers, right? Not becoming the player that he was supposed to be when he was a prospect or even the player that he was as a rookie when he won Rookie of the Year

award. And there were questions about his makeup and work ethic and that sort of thing. And there were questions about his pitch recognition and pit plate discipline and everything. And I think they were just concerned that he wasn't going to develop. And he was hurt last year. He had that wrist thing. And maybe that was responsible for more of his performance than the Rays believed. I don't know. But they seem to think that there were developmental issues there. And so far this year, he has hit just about exactly as well as he did in his rookie year, maybe even a little bit better. And as you said, you can't really blame him for the fact that he has been put in center field where he's not really equipped to play. So he's back on track. He's hitting again. He's the Will Myers that he was projected to be.

And in fact, now that I think about it, the narrative was kind of that Myers wasn't coachable. And so you could actually argue that the Padres were betting on the stats over the makeup. And so it was stats versus scouting, but the Rays took the scouting side. If that narrative is actually accurate, you could say that they were betting on makeup. Yes, they took the scouting side on Myers and the stats side on Souza. Yeah, exactly, which just seems fine. So Souza, now the thing about having pedigree

is that it buys you a lot more time to prove that you're for real. And Souza is a guy who, he didn't have, like, no pedigree or anything like that. He was, you know, he was a third rounder. He had a little bit of prospect-ness a few years ago. Without the pedigree, though, it seems you are infatuation with him doesn't quite have so much staying power so has he lost his upside i mean he's 26 uh and the questions about him uh have kind of been apparent he's he's a little bit limited limited. I don't know what his platoon splits have been thus far this year, but he hasn't been the guy that the minor league stats sort of suggested he might be. He

has a 677 OPS against right-handers, and so he kind of looks like a fourth outfielder slash platoon outfielder at this point, which is what the scouts kind of said he would be in, which is probably what the Nationals always thought he was going to be. So have we changed our opinion about Souza from three months ago? Well, I think he has been what the projection said he would be, right? He wasn't like projected to be a superstar. He was just projected to be a above average player by a little bit, I think. I mean, I don't know. Maybe there were some projections that said something different. I'm just looking at his rest-of-season projections,

and he has more than matched those. He's been a solidly above-average hitter. It's not a really pretty line because he has struck out a ton and has a low batting average, but he has hit 11 home runs and he's still on seven bases. So he's going to be a 2020 guy, maybe a 25, 25 guy. I picked him to be the rookie of the year this year, not because I was so high on him. I just didn't think it was that strong a crop of rookies in the AL this year. And I thought he would win like a Chris Coghlan kind of rookie of the year award where he was

kind of old and mature and just the best guy around and not necessarily a great long-term guy with a lot of projection, but pretty good in the moment. And he's kind of been that. Maybe if there's a disappointing part of what he's done, maybe it's his defense. His defensive stats are not very good so far. But if he had above-average defensive stats, then he'd be looking very good right now. He has a.272 true average,

which puts him a little bit above average. Pre-season, Pocota had him projected for a.297 true average, which would have put him, to put that into perspective, would have made him the 26th best hitter in baseball, basically tied with

Evan Longoria and Justin Upton, and ahead of Bryce Harper. Well, Pocota must have been the highest on him. I mean, not really. I remember at the Well, Pocota must have been the highest on him. I mean, not really. I remember at the time, Pocota was not really notably, if any, higher than Steamer was. And I think something else. I remember it being a fairly unanimous projection system consensus that Steven Souza was going to hit.

Yeah. Do you have an O ops projection from pakoda yeah i do seven seven ninety four his common his combined zips and steamer was 717 oh wow yeah that's much lower yeah i can look up his steamer alone let's see They're about the same right now for rest of season. They're almost identical for rest of season. Yeah, steamer was 733. All right. So basically what we're saying is that the Nationals have to be happy, but of course Turner could turn out to be nothing, and so there's certainly nowhere close to a clear win yet for them.

The Rays probably a little unhappy because they've seen Myers bounce back to the player that his prospect status suggested he could be, but they might also reasonably say, well, you know, maybe he was a change of scenery guy, and it's certainly not like he's guaranteed to keep hitting like this for the next four years and he's already been hurt. And the Padres have to be happy because Myers has been good. But Turner might end up being better and they've had a crowded outfield. And that trade led to Mabin being traded and Mabin's been just as good as Will Myers. And Will Myers could, again, like we just said, end up being disappointing. So probably we're at like one-eighth on all sides,

probably two-eighths on the Nationals, because I just don't think they are going to miss Souza. Yeah. So we're two-eighths of the way to a win for the Nationals, and we're just kind of a couple steps in the direction for the other two. A win for the Padres, a loss for the Rays. Is that right? I think that's right. I don't know if I would give a team a pass for a change of scenery guy, though. I mean, yes, if you want to say that a guy is not going to improve with your team,

so you might as well get rid of him and get something for him. makes sense but that's still a developmental failure on your part right like if the only if the problem is your organization and he just goes somewhere else and is good then even if that's the case even if it makes sense to trade him because of that it's still a black mark against you yeah but we're not talking about who won the james shields trade or who won the you know raise organizational philosophy debate we're talking about whether this trade specifically right makes sense and you know this trade specifically probably i don't know it probably i think that i feel a little more pessimistic than you do but it doesn't look like the rays got a good return for a player who

has a real chance to be an all-star for the next couple years. So regardless of, yeah, I think regardless of whether their own inability to get through to him is a factor, they're not covered in glory here, I don't think, in this particular trade, regardless.

Okay. Not very excited for the draft today? Snuck up on me. Yeah. We were watching the stoppers. A couple names I'm looking at to see if they get picked in the late rounds for his related reasons. I am more interested, actually, in guys who don't get drafted than I am in draftees this year for stoppers reasons,

don't get drafted than I am in draftees this year for for stompers reasons but it's also acknowledged to be not the most scintillating class it's kind of a weaker class there's no clear consensus super exciting number one so all those factors have kind of combined into less draft excitement for me than usual not that I'm ever really a draft guy because you kind of, you see who gets picked and then you wait several years to find things out. So it's always kind of anticlimactic,

I think, except for the spending and, you know, strategy machinations. That sort of stuff is always interesting. Okay. So I believe we'll be back tomorrow. You can send us emails at podcast at baseball perspectives.com.

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