FA Review Podcast 2044

[Jwalk100]

Fun listen. Good job guys!

Fun for you because you didnt sign anyone for us to grumble over!!

LOL. I did you guys a favor.

[Spiccoli]

Always a lot to unpack in these conversations.

Inevitably we contradict ourselves. The worst part from an analysis standpoint, is that it's difficult to truly rate a signing without knowing a team's plan. I used to spend 4 or 5 hours pre-recording looking at each team's needs, budget, cap space, etc. But recording takes a couple hours, and editing and posting is 4 or so more, and you end up with a 10 to 12 hours project, and that's too much. When we had 8 fewer teams it was slightly more manageable. But I'm not sure how much that prep work added, and I gave up.

lol... God, I don't know how y'all do it.

This was a fantastic podcast. Thank you!

[CTBrewCrew]

Quicker bump my grade?

He will only break your heart....

BTW its "D Battery" giveaway night or we like to call them a "Philadelphia snowball" when Quicker and the Sluggers return to Shotz stadium

[Lane]

well done, gents. I think I'll regret the Barrera deal, but otherwise I'm pretty happy with my FA signings.

And regarding my cycles of buying FA and selling them off after underperforming, I think it'll be like that until I figure out how to draft better!

[usnspecialist]

Always a lot to unpack in these conversations.

Inevitably we contradict ourselves. The worst part from an analysis standpoint, is that it's difficult to truly rate a signing without knowing a team's plan. I used to spend 4 or 5 hours pre-recording looking at each team's needs, budget, cap space, etc. But recording takes a couple hours, and editing and posting is 4 or so more, and you end up with a 10 to 12 hours project, and that's too much. When we had 8 fewer teams it was slightly more manageable. But I'm not sure how much that prep work added, and I gave up.

lol... God, I don't know how y'all do it.

This was a fantastic podcast. Thank you!

By y'all you mean ted. I just show up and talk. He does all of the heavy lifting, always has.

[sjshaw]

This was excellent content

[aaronweiner]

I needed a couple backups and got them cheap and short-term.

The F is fine, except I didn't have to do much, so long as Colin Lee or Willis "WTF" Roberts can play.

[Dington]

Loved the podcast and love the grade. It was very hard to maneuver being the only team in the red. Nice to have someone validate my signings since it was my first year in FA and wasn't exactly sure the going rate for players.

[usnspecialist]

Loved the podcast and love the grade. It was very hard to maneuver being the only team in the red. Nice to have someone validate my signings since it was my first year in FA and wasn't exactly sure the going rate for players.

Historically I am a FA grump (this Palacios signing doubled my FA record spend at 40m), so a good mark from me means you were responsible and likely even conservative lol.

[aaronweiner]

BTW, seriously, anyone know why Willis Roberts has been SUCH shit in his career?

[Lane]

BTW, seriously, anyone know why Willis Roberts has been SUCH shit in his career?

I would say it could be a few things. The contact and avk combo is not great. 2041 was probably a sophomore slump, and then maybe small sample size weirdness for '42 and '43. With 9 power v RHP, it's definitely weird that he hit only 2HR in 174 PA in '42.

It also looks like he's spent significant time coming off the bench. No idea if OOTP has a PH modifier to reflect the real life pinch hit penalty, but that could be it too.

[Lane]

Regarding Pedro Diaz, I would have signed him to a very similar deal. My reasoning is that there are NO SHORTSTOPS available. I have guys that can field just fine, but can't hit for anything. I NEED someone who can field in there because of all the GB that my pitchers throw. And Diaz is acceptable at the plate. I wouldn't bat him leadoff like shoeless said on the podcast, but bottom of the order, plug and play every day guy he's perfect. He's also slightly + against RHP so that makes me feel a little more secure about him aging. Also, he's 25! Twenty-Five! When do we see guys his age/abilities hit free agency?

Finally, like I said above, the value that his defense adds to a GB pitching staff is huge, imo. Probably even more than the 2+ WAR that the game gives him for his defense.

[usnspecialist]

Regarding Pedro Diaz, I would have signed him to a very similar deal. My reasoning is that there are NO SHORTSTOPS available. I have guys that can field just fine, but can't hit for anything. I NEED someone who can field in there because of all the GB that my pitchers throw. And Diaz is acceptable at the plate. I wouldn't bat him leadoff like shoeless said on the podcast, but bottom of the order, plug and play every day guy he's perfect. He's also slightly + against RHP so that makes me feel a little more secure about him aging. Also, he's 25! Twenty-Five! When do we see guys his age/abilities hit free agency?

Finally, like I said above, the value that his defense adds to a GB pitching staff is huge, imo. Probably even more than the 2+ WAR that the game gives him for his defense.

My counter to that is you don't give a bottom of the order guy 20m+/year regardless of his age.

[RonCo]

One of the things I like the most about the various podcasts is how different we think about the world. In Ron's world, you sign Diaz to that deal if he's the part you need to make it over the top. Sure, he's a bottom of the order hitter, but his defense is over the top. Yes, it's an over-pay. But if you're going to over-pay, do it like Lane's talking about.

At fair question, though, is whether this is the time to do that for Seattle. I haven't really looked at them, so I have no idea.

-----

Looking at the world as "simply" a resource/value hoard, like in Ted's "how to" then this kind of signing is always suspect. Diaz probably cannot be expected to turn the 5-6 WAR you'd need to make the pure $/WAR calculation ever work out. Assuming that's true, I'd guess there will certainly be a moment when Nathan is in a pinch due to the finances of this one. Still, that alone isn't enough to make judgements.

[RonCo]

If you call Diaz a 3.5 WAR player, he needs to turn 6 WAR to make him worth $3M/WAR. That's not a terrible overpay. And, yes, at age 25, there is some semi-reasonable probability (30%? 40%? Dunno...) that he'll still be a 3.5 WAR player at the end of the deal.

[HoosierVic]

This is why it’s so great to have Ted involved - terrific podcast and discussion.

[Ted]

I needed a couple backups and got them cheap and short-term.

The F is fine, except I didn't have to do much, so long as Colin Lee or Willis "WTF" Roberts can play.

If it hadn't been you, it wouldn't have been an F. Just having some fun and I knew you could deal with it.

[Ted]

Looking at the world as "simply" a resource/value hoard, like in Ted's "how to" then this kind of signing is always suspect. Diaz probably cannot be expected to turn the 5-6 WAR you'd need to make the pure $/WAR calculation ever work out. Assuming that's true, I'd guess there will certainly be a moment when Nathan is in a pinch due to the finances of this one. Still, that alone isn't enough to make judgement.

This is the thing. And without an inordinate amount of work, you really can't do an FA analysis any other way. That's why I always make sure to tell people not to take the grades to heart. The opinion of an independent observer can never really take into account what YOU the GM sees. Now, the individual GM may be dead wrong, but that's much harder to grade and you don't really know until later.

For example, lets say someone makes a huge overpay. But they make it thought the entire contract without it hurting them. IF that was the plan and they did it on purpose, can I really give them a bad grade? I give out good grades all the time for people overpaying in year 1 to get the AAV down. So no, I can't really. It's just tough to see 5 and 6 years down the road, and MOST big deals do cause future cap difficulties, so I go with what the signing would be for the "average" team. And as I said before, we often contradict ourselves.

So do what you want. If it works and I called you out, rub my face in it. If it doesn't work, maybe take the criticism to heart. Or maybe it was just bad luck. Who cares? This is all for fun.

[RonCo]

Over all, from the outside this FA period had been quite deep in useful pieces that can help teams, but I'm the end well see some more guys coming to their career end because they can't latch on. This seems like (1) a natural progression of what happens as a league gets younger...or in other words, thus is a fallout several years of younger players coming in, and (2) not unlike real life, where the game tells a lot of guys they are done by simply having them fail at finding a job.

[aaronweiner]

I needed a couple backups and got them cheap and short-term.

The F is fine, except I didn't have to do much, so long as Colin Lee or Willis "WTF" Roberts can play.

If it hadn't been you, it wouldn't have been an F. Just having some fun and I knew you could deal with it.

Dude, my head exploded getting an F. I had to visit my great-grandmother's grave in Lithuania to apologize. I just got back today. Pretty country BTW.

Mostly I just came here to chew you out for jinxing JJ McQuade, who's now on the DL for 3 months purely because he tried too hard in spring training due to his shaken self-confidence.