Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 890: Ichiro, Kershaw, and Rich Hill’s Contract Comparables

Episode Date: May 24, 2016

Ben and Sam banter about Ichiro Suzuki’s resurgence, Clayton Kershaw’s continued dominance, and Rich Hill’s free-agent outlook.

Would you sell out to the dealer with the lowest cost? And you'd burn every facility alone? How much is love? Did you ever want to get in touch with somebody you've heard? Offered up some kind of collective Where you could never ever be left selected Did you ever want to be a collective? Good morning and welcome to episode 890 of Effectively Wild,

the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives, brought to you by the Play Index at BaseballReference.com and our Patreon supporters. I'm Sam Miller along with Ben Lindberg of FiveThirtyEight. Howdy, Ben. Hello. Anything to talk about? One person I want to mention. Do you know who is leading the major leagues in batting average, minimum 50 plate appearances?

I know. Ryan Rayburn. Ichiro Suzuki. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. No, I didn't know that, but I wanted to, yeah. I wondered whether we would banter about Ichiro. Well, we are. Yeah. Ichiro is Ichiro-ing. And granted, it is 68 plate appearances. He's not an everyday player at this point.

But he is batting.417 with a.478 on base. He is walking at a career-high rate rate 10.3 percent of his plate appearances he is striking out at a career low rate and this is Ichiro this is the contact king and he has the best contact rate lowest swinging strike rate of his career again super small sample but cool that it's happening in any sort of sample because he looked just about cooked last year and was not a good hitter for a few years before that. And it was sort of surprising how quickly the Marlins wanted to bring him back. It was like the first priority in their offseason was bring Ichiro back. And as much as we all love Ichiro, that seemed like an odd priority,

unless they were thinking of bringing him back as a two-way beast and bringing him out of the bullpen, which they have not done, sadly. But he is hitting right now better than any full Ichiro season by far. I'm starting to get a little nervous just because he— starting to get a little nervous just because um he so when he was playing every day for the mariners he'd get 680 ish at bats a year and even when the mariners were good he'd get 680 690 in 162 games so that's 4.23 at bats per game official at bats per game now oh so he no but plate appearance okay so he's better because it's plate appearances. And so I was just gonna say I'm nervous if they don't put him in the lineup soon. It does open up the possibility that Ichiro could end up hitting 400, but without 502 plate appearances. Yeah, yeah. lot they you know they're a national league team they're in a pitcher's park uh and they're not a great lineup and so you know there's plenty of uh like like he probably won't get 4.23 although he doesn't know yeah he hasn't qualified for a batting title since 2013 and he's not going to

this year but if he if he gets i mean if he's still hitting 400 at some point then yeah there will be a push and uh it might we might wake up too late yeah well so maybe part of the reason the marlins were so eager to bring him back i i don't know what this is worth to the marlins but the the 3 000 hits in in the major leagues chase that he is on he only needs 40 more hits now so he entered the season needing 65 i think And that was far from a sure thing because he only had 91 hits last year and he was quite bad at baseball. And so it seemed unlikely that he would play as much and that he would hit very well when he did. So the odds were not overwhelming that he would actually get there this year, even though he was very close. But now he only needs

40 hits in about three quarters of the season. So looking good for that. And it's fun just to see peak Ituro back for a quarter of a season of sporadic playing time. So I don't know what explains it, but I am happy that it's happening. And there was a funny quote, kind of a classic Ichiro quote this past weekend, because he was in the lineup on Saturday replacing Christian Jelic, who was a late scratch. And Ichiro had a four hit day. And he's one of the seven players his age or older who's ever had a four hit day. So that was impressive. But Ichiro likes knowing that he's going to be in the lineup in advance. He doesn't like being an emergency starter. And so he got four hits, and then he got another two hits on Sunday,

and then he got another four hits on Monday. And by the way, most of his previous work this season had been done as a pinch hitter, which makes this all the more impressive. Pinch hitting is hard. And Don Mattingly said He always loves having early notice I'm thinking now after that late notice Maybe the way to go with him is to surprise him on game day And then the Miami Herald story says

Replied Ichiro with a laugh There are some jokes that are funny And sometimes the people that tell the jokes They have to be funny And Mattingly is not one of those guys But he's trying to be funny That's the greatest quote of the season Yeah great Ituro quote

The underrated aspect of Ituro Is his incredible quotes So welcome back Ituro for however Long this lasts Alright couple of quick things No really only one quick thing We've talked on this show about how Records how how we're in a dry period for records and that there seem to be very few records that are even approachable career records. There are basically none that are currently being chased.

season records, for the most part, seem to be out of reach in most cases because the, I don't know, for various reasons, but it's just, you know, it's awfully hard to imagine somebody hitting 74 home runs this year or next year. It's just not that kind of environment. And so other than, you know, various strikeout rate stats, which is more a reflection of the way the game is played, there's not a lot out there. Clayton Kershaw currently has a.66 whip. .66, 0.66, which is better than the best whip in history. Best whip in history is naturally Pedro, and also naturally better than you would guess. Pedro's second best whip is.92,

but his best whip in the record is.74. One year, he just went from.92 to.74. So Kershaw's currently better than that, has some chance of that. Certainly not likely any more than it was likely that, you know, John Ulrood would continue to hit.400 in 1993 or whatever. But is this a record That you would pay attention to Does this merit a chase Status

Well whip has kind of fallen on hard times as a stat Hasn't it I think it's been It doesn't get cited that much anymore I don't know whether people still use it in their fantasy leagues I used to sometimes But you don't hear it cited that much I guess because there are lots

of fancier and maybe more telling alternatives. But I always kind of liked WIP. It's got a good name. It's simple. It tells you something concrete and informative. And I kind of

I'm happy when I hear it. So I would follow this. I wouldn't buy tickets and travel across the country to follow Clayton Kershaw's whip chase. But I would watch. I would pay some attention to it. Is he chasing anything else? Is a 19.0 strikeout to walk ratio anything? Yeah.

I mean, it is by a lot. But I don't know. You think that would that sell? Does that play better, do you think? I think that plays better. Strikeout to walk rate has really very little. I think it's not in fantasy leagues and has very little resonance outside of the stat heads. not in fantasy leagues and has very little resonance outside of the stat heads.

And even stat heads have moved on to strike out minus walks as the preferred means of analysis. And so, I mean, I don't know. I would, but yes, that is,

that would be a record by a lot. I think the record is like 12 for a starter, 11 or 12. He might have, you know, he'd have a FIP. He'd have a real shot at FIP probably. He might have, you know, he'd have a FIP. He'd have a real shot at FIP probably because, you know, the back in the old days when Bob Gibson was putting up better

ERAs, the FIPs were higher. So let me just real quick see what the record for FIP is. Thanks to the play index, I can do this in just mere seconds. Ben is not even editing this. That's how impressive this is. So qualified for ERA title. FIP sorted by ascending order. Pedro, 1999. By the way, 1999, different year than the whip year. So that's how good Pedro was. Pedro had a 1.39 FIP in 1999. Kershaw's is at 1.38 at the moment.

Everything else is dead ball. To find a non-dead ball season, you have to go to all the way up to 1.69 Dwight Gooden in 84. So it really is a two-man race there between old Pedro and new Kershaw. Of course, if you start getting into the stat head friendly stats, then you have to answer the question of why you're not controlling for run environment. Like then it's like the one of the nice things about batting average, you know, about hitting 400 is that, yeah, it's batting average is stupid and we don't really pay attention to it. But it also you get to cheat a little by using this stat that is unadjusted and that doesn't purport to do more than it is.

and that doesn't purport to do more than it is. And so, you know, I feel like if you, again, with FIP, you'd have a problem of who's your base. You're in the Rubio position. You're everybody's second best candidate. The stat heads aren't necessarily going to love it because it's unadjusted. Then you'd have to get into FIP minus or see FIP, and I don't know how he does on that. And then you're even further away from your uncle,

who doesn't know what FIP is anyway, and he's just going to make fun of you. So I do think though that WIP, I mean, millions and millions and millions of people play fantasy baseball with WIP as a stat. I think it's one of the five by five, isn't it? It is one of the five by five. Yeah. All right. So yeah, so it's one of the 5x5. So Whip is pretty basic. So if you were the editor of the Los Angeles Times, and it were August, and Kershaw

were still better than Pedro in Whip, would you have a little info box after his starts showing his record chase? Or is it just something that you tuck into the game story every you know every fifth start you tuck in at the bottom i'd go for the little box i'd go for the little box you know one one more question if you are mlb network and it's the last game of the season

and it's his last inning and he has say he is essentially in a virtual tie and this inning will decide whether he beats pedro do you cut live to it? I do. All right. All right, good. If I'm going to cut when there's a possibility of a papa slam, I'm going to cut for Clayton Kershaw's whip chase. All right. By the way, he's getting into 2005 Carlos Silva walk rate territory.

Yeah. Which, I mean, he's at a 1.8% walk rate territory yeah which uh i mean he's at a 1.8 percent walk rate and carlos silva was at 1.2 percent which is crazy because kershaw is doing that while also being clayton kershaw and not carlos silva yeah what a season it is uh yeah and let me see i want to see if i can pull up i think maybe my all-time favorite fun fact tweet, not by me. So this is from 2014. It's from Jeff Sullivan. And Kershaw has gotten better on all of these things. And so just to put that in perspective. So this was the tweet in June of 2014. This year, Clayton Kershaw has Jose Fernandez's strikeout rate Koji Uhara's walk rate and Tim Hudson's ground ball

rate and that's just like is mind-blowing yeah and he's better at all I think he's better at all three of those now so you could even you could even do you could go better still yeah oh my goodness I mean he's gonna lead the league and he's gonna lead the league in strikeout rate and walk walk rate like that he going to do that. Yeah. He's also given up three home runs in 79 innings so far. And all of them a while ago. Yeah. So maybe he'll lead in home run rate too.

Yeah. Maybe he will. He is currently 22nd out of 104 pitchers in ground ball rate. So he's, you know, 80th percentile ground ball rate as well. He's, you know, he's got the same ground ball rate as Edison Volquez, who we all know of as a good ground ball pitcher. Yeah. All right. What a guy.

What an amazing. What a guy. It's incredible. Yeah. Okay. Ben, we've talked enough about Kershaw on this podcast that we don't need to talk about that anymore. Have we? So we're going to talk about something entirely different now, Rich Hill. I think today I decided that I am going to start paying attention to something in baseball other than Rich Hill.

So this might be the end of the Rich Hill over focus. But I do want to advance the Rich Hill conversation somewhat. So Rich Hill, as you might know, had a very, very good start yesterday. He went eight innings. He struck out seven, I believe. He walked nobody and he allowed no runs. After my brief little scare, my brief loss of faith, two starts ago he has gone 14 innings, struck out 12, walked one, allowed one run. And he now has a 2.18 ERA.

He has 2.71 FIP. And since his return, he's now up to 14 starts, which is almost half a season. And he has a 1.97 ERA, a 2 a 2070 RA plus, a 2.57 FIP, and he's striking out 11 batters per nine. So obviously my Rich Hill contract offer would be going up, quite a bit up. But I want to actually think about this in a little bit, slightly more sophisticated way. And we've just been winging it so far obviously we're going to continue to wing it but with a play index search or two and a reference to an old podcast episode that we did so um rich hill the big uh the big obstacle is that he's old right he came out of

nowhere and uh there are there are there are actual baseball fans. They're pretty close watching baseball fans who just heard of Rich Hill like last year. Like that's how far out of the game, out of relevance he was. Unless you were paying attention to, you know, random reliever transactions. You haven't needed to know Rich Hill or his name since 2007. So he's out of nowhere. He's basically, you know, he is the closest thing that baseball is really ever going to get to Toe Nash, right? Yeah. He just is not, he went from being a total non-entity in the game.

You might have drafted 5,000 pitchers to start tomorrow's game before Rich Hill, and then he shows up a fully formed ace. So that makes it difficult to know what to do with him. But the problem is that unlike Toe Nash, or unlike anybody else in the cornfields, he's old. He's 36 years old. And even if he were doing this for the last 20 years, old guys and their contracts tend not to be too long, right? He would probably not be expecting a super long contract at this age regardless. So I used Playindex and I looked at every pitcher's age 35 and 36 combined seasons since 2000. My only filter was that your ERA plus had to be higher than 105. So basically you had to be at least slightly above average over those two seasons. And then I sorted by innings. I did it since 2004,

not since 2000. So there's about nine pitchers who were starters and meet this qualification. And it just so happens, and I guess this shouldn't be that surprising because if you're 36, you probably are playing year to year or close to it anyway. So of those nine, a lot of them happen to sign contracts right after that season. And so they do give us some real insight into what a free agent profile Rich Hill would have. So Hiroki Kuroda, for instance, is one. And Kuroda, not the same, obviously, but also a guy with a, you know, because of the contract he signed when he came over from the Dodgers, a fairly short track record in the United States. He had only pitched four seasons

in Major League Baseball when he hit free agency. He got three years and $35 million from the Yankees at age 37. And Corotta had a 117 ERA plus. So he was considerably worse than Rich Hill has been. But of course, as I'll say for every one of these pitchers, he had pitched a lot more. So Corotta, three years, $35 million in 2012. Adjust for inflation, in 2012 adjust for inflation. We're talking, what, $3.50? So then we have John Lackey, who last year was $36, and he signed a two-year $32 million deal with the Cubs, which was a deal that I think a lot of people, including us, thought was a pretty good deal, like lower than I expected the market would give him. But he's also to some degree similar in that, like Rich Hill, he had been quite successful in those two years, but he was also coming off of a sort of a dead period in his career from 2010 to 2013 or so, 2010 to 2012,

2013 or so, 2010 to 2012, where he was either horrible, terrible, or injured or coming back from injury. So again, a guy with a fairly short track record at that level, although Lackey had the benefit of having a very long track record before his wanderings. So two years, $32 million for Lackey, and maybe that's low. Tim Hudson did this, and he did not hit free agency. However, one year later, he hit free agency, so he was 37 and coming off of a half season in which all of his numbers had gotten slightly worse, and he had, I think, broken his leg, right? He broke his leg running the bases. And so he got two years and $23 million. That was three years ago, so adjusted for inflation. Call it maybe two years and 28 or so, a year older.

Ankle, ankle, right? Ankle, yeah, okay. And then we have A.J. Burnett, who had pitched two pretty good years with the Pirates and then signed a one-year and $15 million years with the Pirates and then signed a One year and 15 million dollar deal with the Phillies and that was all weird because He was saying he was going to retire Before that he turned Down a he sort of

Tricked the Pirates maybe Into not giving him a qualifying offer It's hard to know whether that represents his Actual value if he didn't want A multi-year contract it's hard to know with AJ Burnett he also doesn't fly Or his wife doesn't fly, so he's limited to like seven cities. Yeah. But that's kind of the low end of these that we're talking about, one year.

One year and $15 million. And again, all these guys were a lot worse than Hill has been and also had pitched a lot more. than Hill has been and also, you know, had pitched a lot more. And then finally, Chris Young, Chris Tall Young, who pitched two years for the Royals and then last year was his age 36 season. Very similar to Rich Hill in some sense. He is another guy who basically you forgot existed, who was not seen as a relevant part of the major leagues anymore.

And then suddenly was pretty good. who was not seen as a relevant part of the major leagues anymore. And then suddenly was pretty good. Not Rich Hill good, but better than I remember. And even though it wasn't very long ago, better than I remember. In his two years leading up to that free agency, he threw 300 innings. He had a 3.4 ERA, which is a 113 ERA plus. He threw 300 innings. His FIP was terrible.

And maybe other than not being as good as Rich Hill, probably the closest career trajectory as Rich Hill. Like, he really was gone for, you know, pretty much gone for like six years, five years-ish, and completely gone in 2013 and so you know sort of similar but not nearly as good and he got uh much less than than we would say rich hill would get two years and 11.5 million so we've got a very wide range there, and it depends how much the league will value longevity, durability, and just being there, and how much they'll dock Rich Hill for coming out of nowhere. He's going to hit free agency, perhaps with 210 innings this year. 210 innings this year. But if, you know, if he, for instance, had a, you know, dead arm period and missed a month or something like that, he'd be going into free agency with only about 200

innings over two years. It's conceivable that that would hurt him. But I kind of, I think that I would put him clearly above Hudson, Burnett, and Chris Young. And Kuroda and Lackey, it's different calculus, but you can make a case that he's at least there. And so then you're talking about two or three years at probably $16 to $18 million per. So that's Rich Hill. But there's one more name in here that is really where I'm going, and that name is R.A. Dickey. And R.A.

Dickey did not hit free agency after his age 36 season. And in fact, his his good season, his real breakout was his age 37 season. And so he also similar to Rich Hill was just a complete non-going concern in Major League Baseball for the better part of a half decade. And then he reinvented himself with this trick pitch. He had a repertoire unlike anybody else in baseball. He came back and was quite solid for two seasons and then was the best pitcher, the second best pitcher in baseball at his age 37 season. And we did not get the benefit of him hitting free agency after that to set a model for us. However, we do know what his contract was. He had signed an extension before that. And when he

got traded, it was three years and $29 million, I believe. And I think that there was an option on there. And everybody agreed that that was a huge, huge bargain, so much so that the Mets were able to trade him for an incredible prospect return. And I was just the other day, I went back and listened to the episode of that trade that had Jason Parks sort of expressing, you know, pretty much awe at what the Mets had gotten back for him. They got Travis Darnot, who was probably the top catching prospect in baseball and was at the AAA level, was basically seen as a guy who could be a major league catcher right then. That they might season him a little bit more, but if he were in the majors,

he'd be a qualified major league catcher. And then Noah Syndergaard, who was one of the top pitching prospects in baseball. At the time, he was the number, in that offseason, he was the number 28 prospect on Baseball Prospectus, number 54 on Baseball America, and number 29 on MLB.com. So we're talking two clear top 50 prospects, maybe top 30 prospect. And so R.A. Dickey's value, we could say, his sort of surplus value, we could say, was significant enough that you might, from that, tease out that his 3-29 year, 3-29 contract maybe should have been something like 3-60, 3-70, which I think adds up. So that's the Rich Hill high estimate, 3-70.

And if he goes this year, if he finishes this season with an ERA of 2.2, it wouldn't shock me. No. I wonder whether people would be more or less skeptical about Hill than about Dickey because we were somewhat skeptical of Dickey at the time. I'm going to – yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the episode you're going to reference? I am, yeah. All right. Then go ahead. All right. So before this trade happened in the summer of 2012 in episode 18, I think it was popping popcorn, I think was the episode. Ben's topic

was R.A. Dickey and how much trade value we thought he had. Or no, that was episode 94 was his trade value. This was just how much we bought him, how much we believed in him. And so Ben took the top 20 pitchers in baseball that year by probably fair run average. I'm not sure. And he read those 20 to me, and I picked Dickey or that guy for 2013, so for the following season. And the pitchers were Steven Strasburg, Wade Miley, Gio Gonzalez, Zach Granke, Felix Hernandez, Chris Sale, Justin Verlander, Clayton Kershaw,

Josh Johnson, Johnny Cueto, Adam Wainwright, David Price, Jason Hamill, Jared Weaver, CeCe Sabathia, Jake Peavy, Chad Billingsley, Jared Parker, Jordan Zimmerman. Boy, does time fly. I picked 12 of those as being better than R.A. Dickey. You said, and I quote, I would agree. If anything, I would probably take more of them. There's something about Dickey where if he makes one start where he doesn't look like incredible R.A. Dickey, I think, well, that was fun, and I think it's not going to continue. I just get kind of an ephemeral feel for it. He could just lose his feel for it, and it'll be gone forever, and all we'll have is the highlights from 2012 and so you're right we were a little bit suspicious of him even then but at the very least and this came across with he did have it was clear why he was why it was working he had a pitch that he had control over um and it was a pitch that nobody else had ever really thrown uh and that we didn't think hitters were all scary thing that no one had really done what he was doing with a knuckleball before. That wasn't scary. So you think that's more scary than just, than, than Rich Hill just being on?

Like, to me, it feels like they're both scary and they're both not scary. They both have demonstrated a true skill here. Uh, but, um, it feels like Rich Hill is, he's on. He's just on. And you can go off. Whereas with R.A. Dickey, it's like he never had this pitch and now he has this pitch. And why would you – if he were 27 and he'd been doing it for seven years, you wouldn't be so suspicious of it. Yeah, they're comparably scary, I think. Maybe.

With knuckleballers, at least, there's a lot of precedent for them being good when they're old. Although not in the way that dickie was really he was kind of not pitching like an old knuckleballer he was pitching like i don't know like a flamethrowing knuckleballer or something close to that so so maybe yeah but i but i agree they're both very scary in similar ways nothing about what they're doing Currently seems fluky They are earning it, they have the stuff They have the skills And so it's just a question of

When they're going to turn back into a pumpkin So as it turned out There were 10 of these 20 pitchers were better than R.A. Dickey So we were A little bit bearish on him And he was basically Well, he wasn't a top

10 pitcher because a lot of pitchers who were not on this list ended up being better than him the next year. But starting with a pool of the 20 best pitchers, roughly speaking, he was in the middle. And so R.A. Dickey was, I think even though generally we think, well, R.A. Dickey regressed significantly, he was never that good again, and there are though generally we think, well, R.A. Dickey regressed significantly, he was never that good again, and there are times where you think he's not good at all, he, at least the next year, he was a pretty good pitcher, and depending on your metric of choice, he has held up. I'd say that if he had, you certainly wouldn't trade Syndergaard and Darneau for him, but he's thrown, you know, he's thrown 200 plus innings a year ever since then. He's been a league average pitcher.

And if you got a guy who's throwing 200 plus innings as a league average pitcher, you are talking about a guy who's worth 16 million or so per year. That's a sample of one, and it's a freak sample. It's not to say that Rich Hill is or isn't, or even that they should be compared in any way whatsoever. But so it goes. If you bet on Ari Dickey's staying power, you probably would have been pretty right. And if you'd bet on Ari Dickey being a Cy Young contender again, you probably would have been wrong. So I want to do the game for you, Ben. I've got here the top 20 pitchers over the last year and a half, so since 2015, by ERA+. And I'm just going to ask you who will be better. And I'm not saying this year.

I'm saying next year, okay? So I'm not even giving you the benefit of seeing Rich Hill's next four months. You pick this guy or Rich Hill. I'm going to go straight down the line. Okay. Well, if I go straight down the line, you're going to know, then I'm going to hang on. I'm going to go alphabetically because I don't want you to be. Yeah. You don't want it to be a assorted leaderboard. Exactly. Okay. All right. So these are sorted alphabetically by first name. So there's no particular order at all, except for the, I mean, I literally just told you the order,

but none that would count as evidence. All right, so you're going to pick this guy or Rich Hill. Here we go. Okay. For 2017. Here we go. All right. Carlos Martinez.

Rich Hill. Chris Sale. Chris Sale. Clayton Kershaw. Clayton Kershaw. Going to go with Kershaw. All right. Cole Hamels.

Hmm. I'll say Cole Hamels. Hmm. I'll say Cole Hamels. Dallas Keiko. Rich Hill. Danny Salazar. Rich Hill. All right. David Price.

David Price. Garrett Cole. Garrett Cole. Jake DeGrom. Hmm. Rich Hill. Wow. All right.

I think that was the first big, big test of how strong you are. All right. Jake Arrieta. Arrieta. John Lackey. Rich Hill. Johnny Cueto. I'll say Cueto.

John Lester. Lester. Okay. Jordan Zimmerman. Rich Hill. Jose Quintana. And Quintana just kind of stays the same or gets better every year, I guess. He's never had a single year as good as Rich Hill's last 14 starts or whatever it is.

But he's been very consistently good, and he's been better this year. Tough one. I'll take Quintana. Madison Baumgartner. Baumgartner. Marco this year. Tough one. I'll take Quintana. Madison Bumgarner. Bumgarner. Marco Estrada. Rich Hill. Max Scherzer.

Scherzer. Sonny Gray. Rich Hill. And Zach Granke. Granke. All right. So you've got 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 hills and 12. So it's the same ratio.

Same as Die, yeah. So you're describing a pitcher who, at his age, I would say is about a 3-65 pitcher. So I think that's our new, for the day, that's what we're landing on. We would offer Rich Hill 3-65. All right. So that's the biggest one-day jump I think we've taken. Yeah. Well—

And no draft pick. And remember, no draft pick attached. Well, yeah. Someone in the Facebook group asked— Probably. Again, assuming he gets traded. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, someone in the Facebook group asked the other day where we thought he would be playing come August. And I guess we're saying that are what percentage are we placing on him playing for a non-a's team uh 85 percent yeah that sounds about right i mean they're definitely they're definitely in trade mode right and yes unless they're playing some weird sort of game of chicken where they take the draft pick uh or or they have to threaten to keep the draft pick instead of trading them. Yeah. So what is two months of Rich Hill worth to a contending team? Three or four top 10 prospects.

No. Who who got traded last year that who let's see. Oh, David Price got traded for two months, right? For Daniel Norris Norris, Matt Boyd, and another minor leaguer Okay So that, I mean, maybe that I mean, he's a lot cheaper than Price

Price's salary was not irrelevant Yeah Last year, for the final two months So, close to that? Yeah I mean, let's see So Samarja That's certainly the Samarja trade

Is not our baseline But I don't know Rich Hill right now Right now Right now Of course Samarja came with Jason Hamill too Right But yeah let's say Like a

I don't know. There was also the Cueto trade, which was not deemed to be an impressive return. That was the Brandon Finnegan and John Lamb and a minor leaguer. Uh-huh. Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting because he was, yeah, you're right. He was ace Cueto before that trade.

He was ace Cueto and Price is clearly better than Hill. Yeah. And so it's got to be a little less than that. Yeah. So, but, yeah, I don't know. I'm not sure. I'm not sure, Ben. I think we've circled the answer and we can let other people fill in the white space.

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