Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 926: Dealin’ Dombrowski and the State of the Red Sox

Episode Date: July 15, 2016

Ben and Sam talk to BP’s Ben Carsley about the Drew Pomeranz trade, David Price and David Ortiz, the Bogaerts/Betts debate, and the impact of Theo Epstein and Ben Cherington on Boston’s 2016 team.

Ain't got time to make excuses, bro, we steady making moves Run the game, even when they been the rules I pay very close attention, after that I pay my dues Excuse me, may I be excused? Cause I gave this shit my all, ain't got nothing left to lose Hello and welcome to episode 926 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives presented by our Patreon supporters and the Play Index at BaseballReference.com.

I am Ben Lindberg of FiveThirtyEight, joined on the phone today by Sam Miller of Baseball Perspectives. Hello. Yo. We are also joined by Ben Carsley, who is a writer for Baseball Perspectives, managing editor of Baseball Perspectives Boston. And that potentially tips you off to what we're talking about today, namely the Red Sox. Hello, Ben. Hi, Ben. Hi, Sam. Thanks for having me on again.

Happy to. We'll have you on every time Dave Dombrowski makes a trade. So stay by your phone for the next 10 days or so. So Dave Dombrowski has been busy. The most recent trade that went down yesterday, Red Sox acquired Drew Pomeranz and traded away Anderson Espinoza to the Padres. He was ranked in BP's recent top 50 at number 24, the number five pitching prospect, the Red Sox top pitching prospect, and fourth overall prospect. So tell us, I guess, first about how Drew Pomeranz became a player that we would do part of a podcast episode about, and then also about what the Red Sox gave up here. Well, Pomeranz is attractive to the Red Sox solely because they have really failed at every single level to

develop and retain any quality starting pitching. You know, I wrote in the transaction analysis today that pretty much over the past decade, the only three starters the Red Sox have successfully developed are John Lester, Clay Buckles, and Justin Masterson. And that's going back quite a few years now. So the reason Pomerantz is attractive, even though he is probably not someone that we would have started the year guessing the Red Sox would go after, is because the other options the Red Sox have are pretty terrible. Sean O'Sullivan is probably or was the Red Sox fourth starter before this trade was made, and it's 2016.

So I think that is probably the best way I can sum up why they would feel the need to go after someone like Pomerantz. Yeah. We actually got a question from a listener who wrote in with the Red Sox dealing Espinosa. It got me wondering about the team's success over the last 30 years drafting and developing pitching talent, which is what you were just alluding to. Clemens and Lester is all I can think of. You mentioned a couple others, but since this spans different ownership groups, executives, etc., I was curious if there are larger factors at play that contribute to this. Minor league affiliates, geography, who knows? Why are they so consistently bad and some teams like the Mets so randomly good? Is it just random

or do you attribute it to something the Red Sox have done badly? I think when it's this consistent, I'm hesitant to call it random anymore. You know, especially with this most current crop, you know, they had arms that people did think would at least be able to slot into the middle or the back of a rotation. It's not as if they haven't had the sort of raw material to work with. You know, even heading into last year, this was a group that included Matt Barnes and Brandon Workman and Henry Owens and Brian Johnson. You know, maybe no one thought there was a savior among that group,

but those are all, you know, fairly well-respected and well-established arms in the upper minors with a little bit of major league experience. You know, it wouldn't have been crazy to think that at least one of those four or five arms would be able to give the Red Sox 100 or 150 decent innings by this season. But it just hasn't happened. And I don't know if Dombrowski has come into this organization

and has decided that there's something wrong and that this is not a good time to be grooming arms. If that's the case, you can certainly understand why he'd be less hesitant to deal with Espinosa. Or I don't know if it's just Dombrowski hating all of your prospects as he so famously does and not really having a problem shipping off a guy that

might not make the majors for the next three or four years. But I think there's definitely some sort of systematic failure somewhere along the line in Boston, but pinpointing where that is is a lot more difficult. Well, everybody knows all Red Sox prospects are overhyped by the national media, too. Exactly. Zander and Mookie and Jackie look very, very overhyped right now. All hype. All hype.

So you alluded to Dombrowski and the tendency to trade prospects, and the Red Sox groomed you guys as Red Sox followers to put a lot of value in this kind of player development machine that they were building and to really see that as key to the long-term success of, you know, the Red Sox at the top of the division. dread. Just knowing that there's somebody coming in who, while a very skilled GM and one who's proven quite capable of building winners, is just so sort of temperamentally different than what had been being sold to you for a decade? Or in some way, is it a relief to have somebody who's different than the propaganda? Or is it not something you spend much time thinking about because you've got a life to live? Certainly not the last one. My life's not that exciting.

It's both terrifying and exciting, I think is the best way to put it. And I think you hit the nail on the head in that it's really just a stark philosophical difference from Epstein and especially from Ben Charrington, who was sort of infamous for hugging his prospects and holding them all close. And I was really worried when Dombrowski was hired that he would do something like, you know, trade Bogarts or Betts. Bradley at the time wouldn't have seemed as much a loss, but that's more what I was worried about.

You know, trading this sort of next level of prospects can be tough to swallow, especially when you're getting back an asset in Pomeranz who is intriguing, but not really a short thing. So that can be a little scary. And I mean, Red Sox Twitter and Red Sox fandom in general, I think tends to go a little overboard when it comes to prospect hugging. I mean,

there were people who were legitimately upset that Aaron Wilkerson was part of the Aaron Hill trade. And I don't know if those people can be redeemed, but certainly it was, you know, it took me back a little bit when I saw that Espinoza was the name going for Pomeranz, you know, sort of hoping it was maybe something more along the lines of a Michael Kopik or a Sam Travis or a Michael Chavez.

Good prospects, but guys who are not part of the so-called big four prospects in Boston right now. But at the same time, you know, the Red Sox have the potential to be good. You know, they have the best offense in baseball right now, and it's pretty reasonable for a GM to come in and say, I don't want to waste a 900-run offense, and if I need to trade a really good prospect to get a pitcher who is going to spare me from Sean O'Sullivan or Rowena Salias

or Joe Kelly or this version of Clay Buckles, you can certainly understand why he would do that. And if the Red Sox win a lot of games in the second half of the season, I think you'll see the reaction start to shift a little bit. So Espinoza was the 24th ranked prospect on VP's midseason top 50. He's the fifth ranked pitching prospect. He's also, as you noted, or you didn't really note, I'm noting, the fourth best Red Sox prospect on the list.

And I'm curious if that makes it any easier to trade a prospect of that caliber. I mean, it's not as though a team is ever like, well, we have all the pitching we need, and so we don't need any more pitching prospects. And, you know, I mean, a baseball roster is 25 spots. They definitely would find room for four future superstars if they turned into those four. On the other hand, it's not as though the cupboard is super bare. So do you find yourself viewing the loss of a player like Espinosa differently, knowing that he's fourth on the team's list?

I think he was probably the easiest one to part with. I think either Espinosa or Rafael Tevez were going was probably the easiest one to part with. I think either Espinoza or Rafael Tevez were going to be a lot easier to part with than Yohan Mankata or Andrew Benintendi. You know, Mankata and Benintendi could probably not this year, but potentially make a little bit of an impact down the stretch. Or if not that, certainly next year. You know, I view them sort of as part of this good young core with Bogarts and Betts and Bradley and hopefully Blake Swihart if he can if he can get back on track you know I think they really have the chance to be core contributors to this next you know two to three years of what is hopefully a pretty good

and young Red Sox team Espinoza endeavors are going to take longer than that specifically Espinoza who was is very advanced for his age you know it's for an 18-year-old to be in Greenville, but he's still in Greenville. So we're still looking at probably three seasons before he makes an impact. And I think that time, more than anything else, is what let the Red Sox do this. Also, I think it's pretty interesting that they were able to sign Jason Grom, their first rounder,

pretty much it seems like within a few hours of dealing Espinoza. And you do have to wonder if that made this a little bit easier for Dombrowski and Mike Hazen. Knowing that they're getting a prospect who is probably viewed at least in the same stratosphere as Espinoza, if not exactly like him, getting another probable top 50 back, another young pitcher that they can slot into the system. of the system. Of course, it would have been great to have both of them, but there were a lot of questions about whether or not Grom would sign, and I do wonder if that made it a little easier to part with Espinoza once the Red Sox realized they could get him in the system. What is the current conventional wisdom around Boston on the Manuel Margot Javier Guerra trade? Well, it looks pretty bad right now because Kimbrell has been good and not dominant, and now he's hurt. I actually didn't mind the Red Sox including Guerra in that trade. I think they sort of sold high on Guerra as a prospect. You know,

he was never really projected to hit for as much power as he showed last year. I still think of him sort of as a glove-first guy, and there's a lot of value in a young shortstop who's a glove-first guy. Don't get me wrong, you know, if he's a starter, there's nothing to be ashamed for by that. But the only player I really minded losing in that trade was Manuel Margot. And it does hurt a little bit because, you know, left field has not been a position of strength for the Red Sox this year. And if Margot were still in the organization, you could easily envision him getting a bulk of the playing time there right now.

On the flip side, you know, if you look at Dombrowski's Tigers teams, all those really good star heavy Tigers teams, they were almost always done in by the bullpen. And you can sort of understand Dombrowski not wanting that to happen again, deciding to pay a premium for one of the best three or four relievers in baseball and bringing him to Boston. I think that was also probably an attempt by Dombrowski to sort of paper over this starting rotation.

It keeps coming back to this inability to develop starters. I think the plan was to put together a bit of a Super Bowl pen with Kimbrell and Carson Smith and Uehara and sort of, you know, be able to come in and take a little pressure off of those number four and five starter spots. Obviously, that hasn't happened with Smith missing basically the entire year. And Kimbrell being okay, not okay. He's been better. Okay, he's been good, but he hasn't been, you know, insanely dominant, like we're used to him seeing. And sort of all these little fault lines started

to show up at once. But I think, yeah, I think you can be justified in wanting the Kimbrell trade back or in still being okay with having made it. So Brett Sayre wrote about the history of top five pitching prospects or number five pitching prospects over the last 10 years that BP has been ranking prospects. So he just listed them. Tyler Glasnow was one. He obviously just made his major league debut. And then after that, it's Jonathan Gray, Yordano Ventura,

Tywon Walker, new AAA pitcher Shelby Miller, Matt Moore, Martin Perez, Tommy Hansen, Homer Bailey, Giovanni Gallardo. So those are all, you know, known names. There's no one there who completely flamed out and didn't even make the majors. They've all contributed a little bit, but none of them has really turned into anything that would make you super sad if Drew Pomeranz actually pitches well down the stretch and the Red Sox make the playoffs and he contributes in some way, which, you know, it's 10 data points. It doesn't tell us that much about Espinosa, but that's sort of the range of fifth best pitching prospect in baseball over the last 10 years. So how did Pomeranz go from a guy that you would, or how did he become a guy who you would want to trade a prospect of this caliber for? Because he has lowered his deserved run average by a full run over his previous two seasons. He has already accumulated more value according according to baseball prospectus Warp, than he had in his entire career before this season.

So what has he done differently and what are the reasons to worry that he won't continue to do those things for Boston? Because it does seem like there are some reasons. Sure. So I think the three main reasons why he's been able to be this good this year are, I believe Evan Drell has just published a pretty interesting piece about him in which Pomerantz talks about sort of rediscovering and refinding his cutter, which he's used pretty effectively this year. It's sort of given him that third weapon that he can attack hitters with that he said he really had no feel for at all in Colorado. So that's one reason. I think the second reason is just the very nature of going to a park like Petco. And I know he was an athletic last year, so he's

a little bit removed from, you know, suffering through the effects of chorus field. But I think, you know, obviously the more time he spends in super pitcher-friendly ballparks, the better he's going to look because he's not an extreme fly ball pitcher. You know, he misses a lot of bats and he generates plenty of grounders, but there are also a good amount of fly balls there too. And then finally, he's actually stayed on the mound, which is probably the biggest question mark that we should have with Pomerantz. He's already over 100 innings this season.

I believe the most he's ever thrown in a year is something like 145, 147 back in 2012. So that is the biggest question mark for me and the biggest reason to be skeptical. You know, this is a pitcher with the frame and the size to log innings, and he has pedigree. This isn't the first time he's been good. He was really good for a portion of his 2014 season. So I worry less about the quality of his performance

than I do his ability to stay on the mound, especially given that he's already at about two thirds of his of his heaviest workload to date. backfired or not worked out as well as he hoped when he made them. But it must be nice for a Red Sox fan to know that your GM is kind of in this mindset where if you need to fill a hole, he will absolutely do it. Like if Kimbrel hurts himself, then you will get Brad Ziegler the same day. You don't even have to wait. Something will happen. So it must be refreshing. It must be nice to know that he is doing everything possible and that he's not going to be held back by any fear of trading someone. No, I mean, I thought the Hill and Ziegler deals were great. I thought they were pretty savvy. They really didn't cost the Red Sox anything that they should miss too much in the long run.

And I mean, I think this is a team that should be going for it. I think we sometimes tend to gloss over the fact that it's really hard to make the playoffs, and the Red Sox are in a position to do so. You know, this is the last year they'll have David Ortiz. It's going to be really difficult to replace his production next year. And, you know, this doesn't look like a one-shot wonder team, and Pomeranz is under control through 2018, which I think is maybe the part of all of this that has gone underemphasized. I mean, the starting pitching trade market appears to be pretty barren right now.

I mean, they could have gone out and made an offer for Julio Tehran, but odds are that would have cost them even more than just Espinosa. There are pretty much no good starters on the free agent market next year, or at least no one who you would think of as a typical person who could pitch at or near the front of a rotation. And I think Dombrowski sees a little bit of a window now through the next

several years, and Pomeranz should be able to help them throughout that window. There isn't really a lot of high minors pitching that the Red Sox can bank on. They should be hoping that Eduardo Rodriguez comes back and can contribute. You know, maybe Brian Johnson is somebody who could fill in and eat innings at the back of a rotation. But, you know, for all the prospects that the Red Sox have, there is not a Mankata or a Benintendi on the mound who is going to be able to contribute meaningfully to them in terms of starting over the next few years.

And I think that is probably the number one reason Dombrowski did this. And I think that's why he paid certainly a premium for Pomeranz over trying to go after a guy like Rich Hill, who has his own problems staying on the mound and probably isn't someone who you can look at as someone who's going to contribute meaningfully over the next several seasons. You know, Pomeranz represented that sort of weird middle of the market where even though it was a steep price, you didn't have to pay quite as much for him as you would a bona fide ace,

and he is someone who has a few extra years of control. So it's been fun with Dombrowski. It's certainly been a very stark departure from the Ben Cherring. Yeah, people were talking about Rich Hill to the Red Sox as almost a certainty. Are you ruling that out? Is there any possibility that they would add him also? Yeah, I mean, I'm not going to be surprised no matter what Dunpraski does at this point. I think it really depends on asking price.

I can't really see him giving up another elite prospect for Hill, nor do I think he should. That's when I might start putting my prospect hugging pants on because Hill is pretty old and pretty injury prone. And while he's a lot of fun to watch and it would be a great story given that he's from here, that's not someone I'm looking up to give a long-term asset for, especially when you have shipped out prospects like Margot and Espinoza and Guerra. So I wouldn't rule it out, especially if there is an injury in the rotation or if Steven Wright starts falling back to earth or something like that. But I would be surprised to see Hill land in Boston at this point.

Got to be careful what you say about Rich Hill. I do not like the way that this conversation is going. Can we get a new guest? The other thing, too, is that, I mean, I think if you ask the average person who follows baseball closely enough, but isn't a Red Sox obsessive or anything like that, they would know that the Red Sox this year have astoundingly good hitters and pretty bad starting pitching. And so it makes sense to go out and get Drew Pomerantz, and it makes sense to link them to Rich Hill. But at this point, I mean, their staff ERA as a rotation is horrible. But if you get to the postseason, Joe Kelly's not going to be starting any games.

And, you know, at this point, even Clay Buchholz isn't going to be starting any games. And that's a lot of the damage is going to be gone. So a rotation of Price, Pomeranz, Stephen Wright, and Rick Porcello seems to have all the holes filled, right? I mean, it doesn't, like, if you go into the postseason with that as your rotation, you know, the lead of your article is not the Red Sox are trying to overcome their mediocre rotation. That's like a legitimate rotation, isn't it? Yeah, absolutely. And I think, you know, I think just needing to get that fourth reliable, reasonable major league starter is so important.

You can sort of, it's a lot easier to paper over just the number five starter than it is both the four and five starters. And while it wouldn't surprise me if that, if that quartet you just named is maybe the weakest or the second weakest starting group, if the Red Sox do make it to the playoffs, they're probably going to have the best or the second best offense. So they don't need to have the Mets rotation. It would be lovely to, but they don't need that. They just need a rotation that is going to keep them in games, because more often than not, when you keep the opposition to three or four or even five runs with this Red Sox offense, they're at least going to be in the game.

But even that low bar was not being surpassed by Shauna Sullivan and Ronan Elias and, to this point, Eduardo Rodriguez. So they don't really need all-star Drew Pomerantz. They just need a Drew Pomerantz who's on the mound and who is better than sub-replacement level. And obviously they won't be thrilled if that's all they get for Anderson Espinosa, but even that, even that low bar would be a pretty market improvement over what we've seen so far this year. It would also be a market improvement if David Price's ERA matched his deserved run average or his other fielding independent pitching marks. And he has the highest strikeout rate of his career, but

he's also given up a bunch of homers. So is Price about to become the guy they signed, or are you sort of resigned to not quite that level, David Price? That is tough. I think i believe his true talent level to be closer to his dra than his era but i i don't know if i still really think he's a high twos uh very low threes dra guy uh he is striking a lot of people out but he also has a tendency to leave some pretty hittable pitches in the middle of the plate this season. You know, a lot of the contact that is against him has been very, very hard. So I certainly think that his ERA, you know, overstates the struggles that he's had this season, but he's not really looked like vintage David Price terribly often.

So I'm optimistic that he will be a reasonable front of the rotation guy, but I'm not sure if I'm banking on a return to real vintage top five or six starter in the game, David Price. And since we have you, what is the current level of denial surrounding David Ortiz's retirement in the Red Sox fan base at large? Is there still hope and faith that he will realize that he's awesome and he's too awesome to retire? David Ortiz is not retiring. I don't know if you've heard that, but the level of denial is that he's not retiring. Okay.

All right. Yeah, it's frustrating, and it's not frustrating. It's a little sad until you hear him give his reasons, and he talks about how it hurts him to just walk in the morning and how much prep it takes him to get his feet ready to play every day. Once I read a few of those interviews and you hear him talk about it, hurts him to just walk in the morning and how much prep it takes him to get his feet ready to play every day. You know, once I read a few of those interviews and you hear him talk about it, it becomes a lot easier to accept that he is,

that he's going to go out, but at least he's going out on his own terms. And this is not to take a shot at the Yankees or anything, but it's just such a stark contrast from watching Jeter sort of limp out on the last legs of his career. You know, you don't, you don't want to have to see that as a fan.

So from a purely fan perspective, this is really more than I could have hoped or asked for from David Ortiz. And it makes me glad that they went out and made this Pomeranz deal and all these small deals, because I do want to see them make one more push with him in the middle of the lineup, especially while he is still completely justifying that middle of the lineup spot. All right. And in a recent episode, Sam and I, I think we talked

about what percentage of the credit we would give to Ben Charrington for the team's performance. So, you know, at the end of the year or thus far this year, if you had to assign responsibilities to Dombrowski, to Charrington, to Epstein, I guess, even in some cases. Where would you put those respective numbers? That is really tough. Actually, I had a fairly similar conversation with my mom the other week because she was asking me whether Betts, Bogarts, and Bradley were Charrington guys or Epstein guys. And I think I erroneously at the time told her that they were Charrington drafts, and I know Charrington worked with Epstein,

so you can't take all credit away from him. But I'm pretty sure all three of those players were signed or drafted still during the Theo regime. So I think that makes it a little harder to give a ton of credit to Charrington. And, you know, I do like some of the things that Charrington did. I mean, this next crop of upcoming talent, you know, Mankata is a Charrington guy.

Benintendi, I guess, I can't remember if he was still technically in power when they drafted Benintendi. I believe he was. So I think you are going to see, you know, a lot of the positives from Ben Charrington's tenure on this team moving forward. But he really, really did a poor job of building this pitching staff. You know, Rick Porcello has been pretty good this year,

and that looks fine. of building this pitching staff. You know, Rick Porcello has been pretty good this year, and that looks fine, but when you turn a free agent, John Lester, into just Rick Porcello, that's not what you're looking for. And who knows whether Lester would have stayed in Boston had negotiations gone differently, but he certainly appears to have bungled that.

You know, the John Lacking trade was an unmitigated disaster. The pieces he got back in terms of Alan Webster and Ruby De La Rosa, they didn't pan out in Boston. So that is a very real and very legitimate criticism of Ben Charrington's time in Boston, that he was just unable to build a solid starting rotation. And I think that sin is something that you're still seeing being repaid today. I mean, that's why they made the Pomerantz trade.

If you want to go even deeper, I think that's why they've messed a little bit with Blake Swihart's development and why they went with Christian Vasquez. So heavily over Swihart is to just try to get anything, any extra strike or any mile they can out of this pitching staff. So I think I would have to assign him the least credit out of the three. Probably next,

I don't know, probably next Dombrowski and then Theo. That's harder to answer because Price is Dombrowski and Kimbrel and now Pomerantz. So I guess if I have to assign shares, this is tough. You guys put me on the spot. I'll go 20 to, I'll go 30 to Charrington. Uh-oh, you gave too much.

You gave too much to Charrington. I gave too much to Charrington? Yeah, it's like you started the birthday sign and the uh the h was too big and you're not going to make it to the end of the page that's actually exactly what I feel like more so because I'm not I'm not confident that I can do this math in my head so I will go all right I'll go 25 to Charrington you've you've talked me into it I will go 35 to Dombrowski and I'll give the rest to Theo still. So that's 40 to Theo. Wow.

I mean, Theo's been gone like six years. He has, but, I mean, that core, the primary reason the Red Sox are good this year is because of Betts, Bogarts, Bradley, Pedroia, and Ortiz. And if all or most of those players are attributed to Epstein still, I think that sends a pretty powerful message. He's a pretty good GM. It turns out he's pretty good at what he does.

So not only did he build the Cubs and get all the credit for building maybe the best team in the National League, but he is also the most valuable GM on one of the American League's better teams this season. It's close. I mean, he only barely got the edge over Dunn-Rapid there, 35-40. But building that core is pretty impressive. I know the last time you had me on, we talked a lot about Betts and Bogarts,

and it's easy to take that for granted now, but it's really hard to get two of those guys at the same time. So, Ben, Betts or Bogarts? It's been, what, 17, no, 15 months since we had you on to talk about that, and they've both changed their careers a lot, although Betts less than Bogart's, but still an open question, isn't it? I think it is. I mean, I have never changed my answer from Bogart, and I think I don't see any reason to right now. I think that Bogart's progression in the field to the point where he is a perfectly reasonable starting shortstop defensively,

the fact that he is starting to marry his ability to hit to all fields with his natural power, getting more selective at the plate, he's a better base runner than I ever thought he would be. So I still give the edge to Bogart's. What's interesting is that if you just look at their slash lines, they sort of have the opposite projections of what you would have assumed when they were coming up. Betts is hitting for more power

and striking out more, whereas Bogarts is reaching base more. Those are sort of the exact opposite profiles they had coming up in the system. And I think that eventually Bogarts will be able to hit for more power than Betts, but still slanting onto Bogarts. But Sam, what about you? And I think that eventually Bogarts will be able to hit for more power than Betts. But still slanting on to Bogarts. But Sam, what about you? Because I think you said Betts the first time around.

I think we both took Betts. Yeah, I was pro-Betts. I'm still pro-Betts. I mean, Betts is my favorite player to watch. And that's really all I care about at this point because I'm not a... If the Red Sox win or lose, it doesn't matter to me. So I just get to choose on aesthetics. But I picked Betts and Betts had the higher war last year. He has the higher war this year.

Is there a reason to look at something other than war to settle this, in your opinion? I guess I'm still banking... I still think Bovert has the slightly higher upside because he can stay at shortstop. Whereas I don't know how much more power Betts is going to grow into. Betts' power is based pretty much solely on wrist speed and bat speed

and the ability to turn on the inside fastball. I still think Bogarts has another level of power within him. So I think that we could be looking at Bogarts as a potential 300 hitter with 25, 30 bombs while playing a slightly above average or perhaps just average defensive shortstop. And I would take that over the guy who plays a slightly or a well above average right field, I guess. So I don't think it's crazy to prefer Betts,

but I still see something a little bit rarer in Bogarts. Yeah. Offensively, they've been almost exactly the same this season. Not the same. They have different shaped slash lines, but value-wise, they've been almost the same. So the defense is a slight difference, but they're about as close as a couple of players could be. And last time we talked, Betts was the guy who was really putting up the performance. And so it was kind of easier to choose him, but Bogarts hasn't made me switch But he's made me less confident

Than I was last time Alright, so I think we are finished You can read Ben's Full trade analysis at Baseball Perspectives, I will link to it You can also read him regularly there And also at Baseball Perspectives Boston And you can find him on Twitter

At Ben Carsley, thank you Ben Thanks guys Alright, so that is it for today. By the way, quick follow-up on our episode from a week ago, 9-21, when we talked to Jason Koskari about Shohei Otani, who has played like the best hitter and also the best pitcher in Japan this season. Listener named Josh let us know that Otani won the Home Run Derby last night. So add that to the list of his incredible accomplishments

It's on YouTube, so I will link to it In the podcast post at BP And also in the Facebook group In case you want to watch Otani Hit some dingers You can support the podcast on Patreon By going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild Today's five listeners who have already pledged their support

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