Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 777: The Pun-Free David Price Podcast

Episode Date: December 2, 2015

Ben and Sam banter about the Tony Cruz trade and then discuss a slightly (but only slightly!) more momentous move, the Red Sox signing David Price.

Have you ever heard those opening lines? You should leave this small town way behind I'll be your partner, show you a step With me behind your face and all the sweet wine Success if I, I take you to the top Hello and welcome to episode 777 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives, presented by the Play Index at BaseballReference.com.

I'm Ben Lindberg of FiveThirtyEight, joined by Sam Miller of Baseball Perspectives. Hello. Hi, Ben. So we're going to discuss the David Price signing. Anything you'd like to banter about before we do? Nope, nothing to banter about. Okay. Can I just say a word in appreciation of Tony Cruz? I'm not sure if it's appreciation for him or sympathy for him. Well, I mean, it depends whether you think that this is part, like whether he's made a

lifestyle decision. Right. If it is, I mean, if it is, then he this is part of, like, whether he's made a lifestyle decision. Right. If it is, I mean, if it is, then he's the chillest dude in the world. Like, he's basically like the, I don't know, like Chris Pratt, you know. He's like the Chris Pratt of baseball players. He's just super-duper chill, just wants to live in his, you know, van and have fun. And doesn't need to do the hustle that all these other strivers do right yeah except chris pratt is now a big star and tony yeah still tony cruz but yeah so so tony cruz the the story of tony cruz who's sort of fascinated me for a few years is that he's been

yadier molina's backup catcher in st louis for four years five years now and yadier Molina's backup catcher in St. Louis for four years, five years now. And Yadier Molina's backup catcher is, you know, one of the lowest stress jobs in baseball or just the lowest playing time jobs in baseball. It's just it's been one of the best ways to stay on a big league roster all year long without playing. And so you could look at that as a bad thing that tony cruz has come up he's had the misfortune to come up with the cardinals when the cardinals had a great durable catcher and he hasn't gotten a bigger role or you could look at it as this is the only role that tony cruz could possibly have had And so he's lucked out in a sense, because if the Cardinals had had a worse catcher and they had needed a better backup catcher, then he wouldn't

have had a job. And that's sort of what has happened now. Maybe Molina has slipped a little. He was hurt last year. Maybe the Cardinals have decided that Tony Cruz is no longer good enough. And so they've signed Brian Pena, who's, you know, he hits like a backup catcher, I guess, or he hits better than a backup catcher, maybe. And then traded Cruz to the Royals, where now he is Salvador Perez's backup catcher, which is the newest way to be on a big league roster all year without actually playing. way to be on a big league roster all year without actually playing because obviously Perez is you know now the the guy who never takes a day off less so in 2015 than 2014 but still a guy who never wants not to be playing so if you look at the numbers over the past few years

like if you look at catchers minimum 400 plate appearances over the past four years or past three years tony cruz is tied with jose molina for worst hitter second worst hitter that is in baseball jeff mathis is the worst so you have mathis molina who's now retired and tony cruz and mathis and molina had repations, probably deserved reputations as defensive geniuses. Whereas there's no sign that that's the case for Tony Cruz. He doesn't do particularly well. He's below average in all of the BP catcher stats, framing, blocking, throwing. Not by a ton, but, you know, he's not a defensive wizard or anything.

But, you know, he's not a defensive wizard or anything. So he has sort of carved out this niche where he's good enough to be a backup catcher for one of the most durable catchers in baseball. And then as soon as the team actually wants a backup catcher who might actually play, he is no longer good enough. So I don't know how long he can keep up this act. I don't know if he is even happy. I don't know how long he can keep up this act. I don't know if he is even happy. Maybe he's just thinking, oh, no, I finally got out from behind Molina, and now I'm behind Perez.

Well, yeah, kind of like more like, oh, I finally waited out Molina. Now I'm going to get my chance to star, and his boss was like, that is not why we brought you in here. I mean, it's fun one of two ways. It's fun if you think that Cruise is very self-aware and, like I said, just... Like, one time I had a writing assignment and it got cut, it got killed at the last minute because the subject got injured

and at the very, very, very last second the piece was no longer timely and so they just got killed and i remember being very uh sort of enjoying that because it was like i got i got the kill fee which was half of the pay and nobody would ever judge the piece like nobody like if i had made a mistake like i'm always terrified that there's some horrible mistake or that it's the worst piece I've ever written and I just don't see it and that as soon as it hits the public my career will be ended and so the idea that I can do get half the pay for work that with none of the scrutiny was actually kind of I like that like I ever since I kind of wish that I could half the pay and none of my stuff would ever be seen by anybody.

That would be the ideal world to me. Someone pays me half as I get paid, but it just goes straight into the desk drawer. And Tony Cruz, maybe that is Tony Cruz's career. Maybe he enjoys being around a baseball club, but would rather not be on the field in front of everybody where he could strike out. So if he's self-aware, that's fun. The other way that it's fun is if you think that, in fact, the baseball market is so efficient that basically the 30th best backup catcher does continually get funneled into the 30th least important backup catcher job. Like baseball teams have just completely cracked this.

And they're so efficient that he is exactly perfectly optimally used. That is not as fun for him. Then that becomes a little sad for him. In fact, it's probably neither of those things. No. And he's not a, like, this isn't like a free Tony Cruz campaign. Like, Tony Cruz probably shouldn't be playing maybe at all. But he's managed to make this work. and I admire him for it, I think.

All right. So moving on from one of the most obscure players in baseball to one of the most famous players in baseball. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. I just want to know, over-under on Tony Cruz starts this year. 15? 15. Okay, so that would mean Sal starts 147, or is there another backup catcher in the mix?

Yeah, there's always some guy who shows up somehow and plays a few games. So Sal started 142 last season and 150 the year before. So that's his range. I'm going to see how many Butera and Kratz got last year. Butera started... He had 143 starts in 2014, 137 starts last season. Ed Katcher, yeah. Butera started 23, and then you're right. Eric Kratz snuck in one, and Francisco Pena snuck in one.

Yeah. Oh, was that the hangover game where Drew Butera was like the cleanup hitter? Oh, maybe. Or like the DH or something like that? Might have been. So, yeah, 15 seems... I would guess that having won the World Series and having now been there twice,

I sort of get the feeling that there's an awareness that, okay, we can push Sal a little less now. Like, everybody has seen how sad he looks in October. It is really one of the saddest things in non-concussion sports, watching Sal Perez just get turned into bruises. And, you know, he, like, now that they are, they are now a team that I imagine expects to be playing in the World Series, and so we'll treat the season to some degree with that in mind.

And I would bet that Sal Perez starts 131 games this year. Okay, so you're probably taking the over on Tony Cruz's 15. Yeah, I mean, you know, you're right. Someone else will come in there. Let's see, the game that whoever that guy's name is that I said started, yes, that was Drew Butera, first base. Okay. All right.

Well, apologies to everyone who downloaded the David Price podcast and got eight minutes on Tony Cruz. Paulo Orlando, cleanup hitter. Uh-huh. Okay. So David Price signed a seven-year, $217 million contract with the Boston Red Sox. It is technically the most expensive pitcher contract in the history of baseball. Maybe we'll talk about whether saying that sort of inflates what it actually is but this is maybe a predictable deal i would say in that we talked about when

david dombrowski traded for craig kimbrough we talked about what that meant for whether they were going to sign a starter it seemed likely that they were going to sign a starter after not having done that last offseason and then having things go south and having the rotation be terrible and dombrowski being a guy who gives money to good players and trades for good players, such as David Price, who he traded for before and traded away before. So this is, in a sense, the most predictable possible deal that you could have imagined.

And it is maybe a fairly simple structure there's no deferred money there are no options there is an opt-out after three years so there is a possibility that this becomes a three-year 90 million dollar deal and then david price goes somewhere else we don't have to rehash our our opt-outs good for the player or good for the team discussion in full, but do you want to? Yes, it is a joy to have that. Okay, at least summarize because we've talked about this. So for people who haven't listened to us for hundreds of episodes. No, it's important, I think, that we talk about it every time because every time it gets a little more intuitive to me and I get a little better at communicating it. And so I think I have to, it's like my, it's my scales. I have to work on this every chance I get. So, all right. So the, the point of the opt out is that without

the opt out, uh, with or without the opt out, the club is going to have to commit to those seven years. That is just how it works. You are going to have the downside of David Price being awful by next year, no matter what. Now, the upside of not having the opt-out for the team in this construction is actually fairly small. That, yes, it's nice that you have the choice. The club would definitely rather have the choice about whether to keep the guy or not. But there's very little upside in the final four years of a massive contract given to a A-plus free agent in his 30s. So they lose a little upside, but not really that much. So the downside part of the equation doesn't change. The upside part of the equation was minimal to begin with, and therefore doesn't change that

much. And therefore, it is not that it helps the club, and then I'm going to put a little footnote there to discuss whether it actually helps the club. It is not that it helps the club so much as that it very, very little hurts the club. And therefore, if you're negotiating with the player and this is something he asks for and you can give it to him and maybe get some other concession in return, it's a pretty good thing to give away. The club loses very little and might gain something from this negotiation. Now, footnote, does it actually help the club? There are some people who believe it does help the club because the player is likely going to give you most of his value at the front, and by opting out, saves you from the messy, ugly side. That presumes one of two things. One is that players are completely irrational about their own value and will opt out to test free agency even though they are no longer underpaid by you, right? That

the club is somehow overpaying what the player thinks the club is underpaying. That seems plausible to me that that inconsistency would happen. But it also seems that if the players were systematically overvaluing themselves, that maybe some of the other 29 clubs or the industry consensus would also be overvaluing that player and therefore the player would have some trade value. And if you really wanted to get rid of him, you ought to be able to move him at that point in trade anyway. Footnote. Turning into a David Foster Wallace. Footnote to that footnote, unless he has a no-trade clause.

All right. The second possibility for why that might be true is if the player's incentives and the club's incentives at that point in the deal diverge where the player is now older and really wants to get the long-term deal again. And so realizes that this is his last chance to get a seven-year deal anew or a six-year deal anew, and the club, while they would like to have him in that four-year deal, would not want to go to the seven-year deal, and so it gives them an escape. I don't find that to be all that compelling and I think that, well, and I don't want to go that much deeper into it, but it's in individual cases, there's probably some truth to that. And I just, I mean, just a general observation. I was looking at players who were going to make

the most money in baseball in 2016, and it's a really pitcher heavy top of the list, which sort of, and it's probably about to be more pitcher heavy, like four of the top five earners in baseball in this coming season. And almost certainly five of the top six, once Zach Granke signs, are pitchers. It's Kershaw, Price, Miguel Cabrera, Justin Verlander, Felix Hernandez. Granke will be in there any day now. Justin Verlander, Felix Hernandez, Greinke will be in there any day now. And that's not even counting Max Scherzer, who's got a crazy amount of deferred money and is going to be making 40-something million in a few years. So does that surprise you at all?

I mean, if you didn't know contracts, would you assume that the the best paid pitchers would be making more than the best paid position players? Because I would assume the opposite in that it seems like, it seems like the, I mean, the top end, you know, if you have a Pedro or Randy Johnson or something, a top end pitcher can be as valuable as a top end position player. But if you look at last year, if you go by baseball prospectus, wins above replacement player, there were four hitters worth over eight wins and no pitchers worth over eight wins. And that's looking at it retrospectively, whereas if you're projecting for the future, you would project starting pitchers lower than position players just because of the injury risk. So it seems curious that things would have shaken out this way

where pitchers make the most money per season. Yeah, I think especially the longer, well, the fewer innings pitchers pitch, the historical balance gets disrupted further and further. And yeah, I think that no matter what metric, no matter what version of war you're looking at, you'll see that in recent years the really top end players are almost always position players. Now, it could be that clubs dispute that premise and think that a pitcher who's worth six wins might actually be worth as much as a position player who's worth seven wins. And that there's something about playing time or replacement level or what is that thing called? Scaffolding. Scaffolding, is that the word?

No. What is that thing where if you put a pitcher in, he's not replacing your second. Chaining. Yeah, there you go. I'm perfectly fine with my mistake being public, Ben. You don't need to edit that mistake out. Okay.

So if you replace your second baseman, you're replacing your second best second baseman. But if you replace a pitcher, you're replacing your second best second baseman. But if you replace a pitcher, you're replacing your worst pitcher out of a whole, out of a staff. So anyway, so they might see more value there. I guess what I'm saying is that it might be that it's easier to, if you add an eight win player, you might only be adding seven wins in reality to your team's current construction, but you're probably actually adding seven wins in reality to your team's current construction, but you're probably actually adding eight wins if you add an eight-win pitcher. All right. But the other question that might be relevant is whether, well, all right. So in one sense, say you're a shortstop. Well, all 30 teams need a shortstop. There just aren't that

many shortstops. And you might be able to find two teams who have almost no other option at shortstop and get them into a bidding war. That's one way that you might create a market for yourself. But for pitchers, there are 150 starting pitching spots. And so would you rather be a scarce resource going into a very narrow market? Or would you rather be, you know, the best of a fairly common resource, but everybody needs it? Like, basically, would you rather be pomegranates or wheat? Right. I mean, every team has a fifth starter it doesn't want to have. Yeah, exactly. Every team has a fifth starter they don't want. In fact, every team knows that there is no, essentially limit to how many starter how many good starters they need we've seen teams that have

tried having six seven and eight and they still end up with eric stoltz at some point uh that season it seems like uh inevitably so i guess i will say that oh and then the third thing by the way the third thing is that because of the risky nature of pitchers, the top tier pitchers tend to get six or seven years. The top tier hitters might get eight to ten. And so the average annual value might be higher, but the clubs might consider themselves spending less on those guys. Yeah, that makes sense. I wonder if there's just still some element of thinking of pitchers and position players as two entirely separate groups. And you have to have you have to get good ones of each type.

And maybe there isn't as much consciousness of the fact that relative to each other, those groups are no longer the same as they were decades ago in that pitchers just don't pitch as many innings now. And so they can't have as much of an impact as they once did. So I wonder if that's some of it, but I think you're right. Those are all good, legitimate explanations for why it might be the case. Anyway, David Price, big contract, big number. And yesterday when the deal was announced, you were chitchatting me a bunch of reactions to the deal and being surprised that people were surprised. So why were you surprised that people were surprised about this contract? Okay, well, first I'll say I'm not surprised people were surprised because people are always surprised by every big contract. We and me, I think I am too. We're all shocked by the number. It seems to me

that we're always about three years behind the market in just adjusting ourselves to the amounts of money that gets spent. And so it's not surprising that people would see what is technically a record contract. And while that's outlandish, can you believe how much money it is? But the reason that I was surprised or the reason that I didn't think that this was a great example of a huge contract or a surprising contract is that he basically got exactly what Max Scherzer got last year with $1 million more per year added on, which is how these guys like to do it when they can. I mean, that's essentially more or less that those guys are fairly comparable. The guys get grouped together at tiers, and David Price and Max Scherzer are both at the top of the pitching options, with the exception that Clayton Kershaw is the very, very top of pitching options.

After Kershaw, there's not really much dividing Price and Scherzer and any of about six other guys and so the fact that we saw this exact contract basically a year ago makes it weird to me that we would be surprised that it's coming up again so i guess that's the main reason yeah uh also because a jim boden basically got it exactly right so what i mean we were like if you if i i just feel like if like a lot of people were talking about he missed by two million dollars yeah we were i guess 7 to 15 i guess i feel like a lot of people who write about how huge and what a lot of money it was i feel like yesterday before the deal was announced or signed what do you think david price is going to get they would have said that they would have said kind of like what he got and so i i guess that's why right i mean if he'd gotten 10 years like to shock me for a david price

contract he would have to get 10 years like it if he had gotten 10 years i would have gone wow that's a lot of time for a pitcher uh but i mean it honestly like anything under $35 million for a top free agent wouldn't seem that outlandish to me. Yeah. Per year? I mean, he's been, you know, the third best pitcher in baseball over the last few years or somewhere in that range. And he's durable. He doesn't have much of an injury history. He's not declining.

He's not losing tons of stuff. He's left-handed. He's well-liked. Yeah, sure. He's got a cute dog. declining he's not losing tons of stuff he's left-handed he's he's well liked yeah sure he's got a cute dog he's he has uh he has everything you would want except i suppose post-season performance but obviously this shows how the market values that i would think or at least how the red sox value it which is not at all it would seem. Maybe the interesting aspect of it is that it's sort of a break from what the Red Sox have been over the last few years. And that's not even a

surprising thing because the Red Sox are now run by a different person. And it's someone that we would expect to have done things differently. So maybe like if the Red Sox win the division this year or they win the world series or you know they're they're good then i think maybe the lesson that people would take from this is that they messed up by acting like a smaller market team over the last few years that they won a world series they did they did uh but i i mean if they hadn't won that World Series, things would look a lot worse. And if we accept that winning a World Series is somewhat random or it doesn't necessarily reflect how great a team you were that year or, you know, you weren't necessarily built way better than every other team that made the playoffs that year and didn't happen to win the World Series. They haven't made the playoffs in most of the last several years, right? 2010, 2011, 2012, 2014, 2015. And they've been terrible the last couple of years, which is, you know, when you

are one of the wealthiest teams and the biggest spending teams, then if you are completely terrible, that obviously reflects more poorly on you than if you were completely terrible. That obviously reflects more poorly on you than if you're a team that doesn't spend. So you could say, you could draw the lesson that the Red Sox tried to be cheap, or they tried to economize, and they tried not to give seven-year deals to pitchers who were 30 years old, and they signed Rick Porcello instead, or they signed guys for four years and five years and they wanted to avoid these kind of commitments. And look what it got them. It got them a bunch of mediocre or worse starters and no lights out closer. And they were the worst team in the division. So you could draw that lesson. So if the Red Sox are good in the coming year,

and they should be, if you at least look at the projections, they should be, which obviously was the case last year and turned out not to be true. But if the projections work this year and the Red Sox are good, then I would think people would look at that

and say, well, they played in the top end of the market this time. They didn't skimp. They went for Kimbrelbrough they went for price and look how well it worked so i don't know if that's fair at all i don't i don't know if you can look at the last couple years and say that it was that that it was that they didn't get the ace because as we talked about two days ago if they had signed an ace last offseason like even if they'd signed Max Scherzer, if they'd done everything else they did and played the way they did, then they still would have missed the playoffs because they were bad in other ways. So that seems like too facile a lesson to draw from the last few years of the Red Sox. But maybe that will become the story if they're good this year.

But maybe that will become the story if they're good this year. It's interesting because so much of the Red Sox correction to previous Red Sox tactics was a lesson learned by their decision to sign a bunch of long-term contracts for elite free agents that turned out horribly, right? And a couple years ago, this was— Megan Crawford, Gonzalez. Yeah. Thanks, Ben. Thanks, thanks, Ben. Thanks for spoiling it. And a couple years ago, this was a totally reasonable, like I think that it was seen as like,

oh, obviously, yes, that was where Theo misstepped. He forgot all the principles that we knew about how homegrown talent is better and free agents get overpaid and pitchers and five years and all that. He said this himself. Yes, exactly. Yes. And it's sort of interesting to look at it now where Adrian Gonzalez was clearly a good contract and is still producing four wins a year. John Lackey wasn't a good contract, but not because it was too long a deal.

The years that were horrible were, you know, year one was okay. Year two was a disaster. Year three, he didn't pitch. So if you'd signed him to a three-year deal, you would have gotten nothing out of him. And then he was really awesome in years four, five, six, and six, of course, coming for free. And they ended up cashing him out for, well, what seemed like value, although it turned out that Joe Kelly has good stuff and Alan Craig is a mess. But that deal, the long-term nature of that deal was not ultimately a bad thing at all. And Karl Crawford, strangely, was easily moved to a team that had a lot of money in this TV bubble world. And I don't think Beckett's a good comp because Beckett was, he signed an extension,

and it seemed like that was kind of a more classic. I don't know that I would count Beckett in that same group, but maybe I'm forgetting some of the details. But anyway, in retrospect, those weren't really problems for the Red Sox. And I guess, I mean, it still does seem like you shouldn't sign long-term contracts to free agents because they always turn out horrible, it seems like. But the part of the Red Sox problem is that when they signed a bunch of short-term contracts, those guys were free agents a year later and they had to sign more guys. And it's hard to find nine one-year deals for good players every offseason,

especially when other teams are trying to do the same thing. And there's something to be said for locking a guy in. Now, that said, we say this about every pitching deal of this nature. we say this about every pitching deal of this nature. All of the actuarial tables will tell you that these deals don't turn out great. There's really no way around it. We want to be excited when they happen. And we also want to say, ah, but it's going to be horrible. And that's pretty boring. But here's how I'm sort of thinking about it from the Red Sox perspective. The Red Sox, of course, want to, everybody wants to develop great prospects, right? And the Red Sox made a big commitment to being a player development farm. And if you look at, you know,

this is the dreams to develop a bunch of great prospects who turn into very valuable pieces for you. And Andy McCullough in his Royals essay last year in the BP Annual made the case that prospects are nothing. Prospects are just a bunch of wishes and dreams and that that's why it makes sense to trade them and why the Royals did what they did. Why they traded their prospects and got the players that they needed to make it to the World Series and then to win the World Series. And by insisting that a team like the Royals hold on to their prospects because of the surplus value that they promised or whatever, you're ignoring the needs of the team and the benefits of the players they bring back and overrating the security of those prospects.

And really, it seems to me that the big divide between small market and big market teams right now is that small market teams have to use their prospects to trade and big market teams get to use their prospects, get to keep them and get these players go and sign David Price. They can just go sign David Price. And so, guys like, I don't know, maybe not, but it seems like guys like Bogarts and Bradley and Betts and those sorts of things, a well-run team,

a well-run rich team gets to hold on to those guys, gets to keep them. We usually used to think of rich teams trading these prospects for veterans, but it seems like the great privilege that you have as a rich team now is that you are one of the teams that can go out and sign David Price and not care too much about the money and get those sorts of players that you need to be the ace or the last piece in your puzzle or whatever the case may be. So we're going to, I don't know, maybe it just seems like we're going to end up seeing rich teams be the ones that get to develop their prospects and poor teams be the ones that have to trade their prospects.

This is more or less how, don't you sort of agree that like the details of the deal, maybe aside for the moment, this is more or less how a rich team should be behaving. Developing good prospects, keeping keeping them and then using their financial muscle to go sign a guy like david price yeah who won't even cost them a draft pick who doesn't even cost them a draft pick it seems like this is why you want to root for a team like the red sox so like the blue jays also had david price right both blue jays and the red sox got david price but the blue jays had to give up a lot of young talent to get him because they couldn't go out and sign him to a seven-year deal. The Blue Jays don't really have the financial wherewithal necessarily to go sign the best

free agent on the market to a long deal that will possibly cripple them. So they have to trade their young players to get their David Price. I think you saw a little bit of that with the Angels, where they were trading for, you know, when they traded for Zach Granke, they traded a whole bunch of stuff to get Zach Granke. And that's maybe arguably the wrong way for a team to be. Like, the Angels probably should have kept their prospects and then just gone and done the big, dumb free agent signing.

Except for then, on the other hand, the Angels did a bunch of those, and they didn't turn out well either. It's hard to build a team, Ben. I don't really know the best way to build a team. Yeah, I don't know either. But whatever the Red Sox have been doing the last couple of years hasn't worked out. Whether it should have or not, it hasn't.

And therefore, maybe it makes more sense for them to do something like this. I mean, for one thing, they seem like they should be good. They seem like they're in that range where it really benefits you to upgrade because it could very likely make the difference between making the playoffs and not making the playoffs. And maybe the revenues and the declining ratings and all the stuff that comes with being bad for a couple years when you're expected to be good, maybe there's a bigger bounce back for them

than there would be for most other teams that make this same deal because they haven't done this for a few years and people are tired of them not doing this. So maybe some people come flocking back. So it seems that Red Sox always end up being either extremely happy in Boston or extremely unhappy in Boston,

that the place either turns you into a hero or breaks you. And I'm curious if you have any feeling about which David Price will be, because he does come with a certain baggage, narrative baggage, about his inability to pitch in the postseason. And you wonder whether he's going to get there and immediately all the talk show, talk radio calling people are going to be talking about. It doesn't matter what he's doing in May. It doesn't matter if he's 17-0 in July.

He's got to do it in the postseason. He hasn't done anything yet and create this big burden on him where he's never really accepted until he pitches well in October, which he might do or he might not do. You don't really know. And you wonder whether because of that, because he's already probably going to have a lot of people who are skeptical of him in that market, whether it could be the sort of thing where he's, things have to go perfect or else he's getting booed. Yeah. Or there's a greater risk of that outcome than there is when he could have gone somewhere else, you would think. And that actually relates to what we were talking about last week on the email show with how agents should approach free agency or how players should

approach free agency and what they should value and whether they should really care about an extra $10 million or $20 million when they're making $200 million, when there are other factors that could possibly make them happier. And we've seen again now price is a case where the player takes the most money. And reportedly he was the runner-up for price, at least in terms of dollars, was the Cardinals. And the Cardinals offered the biggest contract they've ever offered but it was at least 30 million less than the Red Sox's offer and you would think I

mean the Cardinals right they're supposed to be the team that everyone loves playing for and they get to St. Louis and it's the best baseball town and the fans are great and you could say that you know at least there's's less likelihood that you're going to go there and turn into Karl Crawford or something who's just run out of town and hates the town and everyone hates him. And Price is from Tennessee, and supposedly he was enamored of the idea of joining the Cardinals, but obviously he didn't value that $30 million more. It usually does come down to the biggest bidder. Are you surprised that he signed this early? Well, not really.

Because there's probably not more. Yeah, I don't think there was much more for him to get. Maybe it's surprising that the offer came this early, but not that he took this offer if it did come. You don't think you... So you would be confident. I guess he's probably got a pretty good idea about what all 30 teams are thinking about, but would it have shocked you if he'd gotten, if he'd broken? I mean, we don't know what the,

the thing about it is we don't really know what this year's market is going to be like, and you can only get kind of clues early on. But it is true that sometimes the free agent market does spike. They're not spike because it doesn't usually ever go back down. But it doesn't necessarily go up in a straight, steady line year in, year out. There are years where things change. And it seems like the price of players goes up two or three leaps in one offseason. And I feel like the Jason Wirth, I think the Jason Wirth year was one of those years where the dollars that you would have expected a player to get by December were much different than you would have expected

in October because it was clear that something had changed. And so I don't know. I just don't know if he's gotten enough information. Well, maybe the Zimmerman deal alone is enough to show that there's not going to be a dramatically new market for starting pitchers. That's a good point. Yeah. All right. That's a very good point. So will Granke get more or less now?

You mean, will he get less than Price or will he get less than we thought he was going to get? Will he get more than Price? Will he get less than we thought he was going to get? Will he get more than Price? Will he now hold out to be the highest paid pitcher? Will he get $1 more? I think not. Just too old. He might get more per year.

I don't know. Should be in the same range, I would think. All right. So we've discussed the David Price price deal i don't know if there's anything else to add kind of find ourselves talking down the same channels when we talk about these deals every off season and we try to come up with something new to say but there's only so much you can say about really good players signing for lots of money with teams that spend lots of money all right so we'll do the email show probably tomorrow, presumably,

unless there's another giant contract to talk about. So you can send us emails at podcast at baseballperspectives.com. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectivelywild and rate and review and subscribe to the show on iTunes. Please support our sponsor, the Play index at baseball reference.com. Use the coupon code BP. When you subscribe to get the discounted price of $30 on a one-year subscription,

we'll be back tomorrow.