Ken Rosenthal’s Inside Scoop: SP market, Derek Falvey out in Minnesota, Red Sox trade looming? + Catcher framing metrics debate

00:00:06
Speaker 1: And there he is the aforementioned to Ken Rosenthal, the busiest man in the game. Ken, good to see you, thanks as always for being here. A couple of questions. We wanted to ask you some topics that we talked about a little bit yesterday on fair territory. What is next my friend for the Seattle Mariners, and will Seattle will a u henne O Suarez signing time soon?

00:00:31
Speaker 2: They are a team that needs a bat. And I believe Adam Dude was on FT yesterday explaining that since the end of the season, they've lost Suarez, they've lost Polanco, and they've resigned Josh Naylor, but they haven't done anything else really to address their offense. So where would that that be? Most likely in the infield, it seems to me. But their concern there is blocking some younger players. So this is why they have had such interest in Brendan Donovan, because they feel Brendan Donovan is a guy that they can use in a variety of ways at a variety of positions and therefore enable some of their younger players the opportunity to establish themselves. That makes a ton of sense, And yet they've been talking about Brendan Donovan with the Cardinals all winter, and yet we have not seen a deal yet.

00:01:22
Speaker 3: No, Brendan, Donovan might never get traded. He might be a free agent before he gets traded. At the pace this trade's going, Ken, it's been crazy. We've been talking about this guy for three months, about him getting traded. He's about to be traded and he's still a Cardinals. So we'll see him in Jupiter in March. So, Brendan, I expect you to come on the show. Thank you, Ken. Why don't we keep hearing about all these prospects, like we don't want to block this guy. We don't want to block that guy if you can get an established major league player. Every team is just so afraid to block a guy that they don't even know. Christian Campbell, I use Christian Campbell.

00:01:53
Speaker 4: He was not blocked.

00:01:54
Speaker 3: They signed him to an extension, and we spent most of the year in TRIPAA and now this year, guess out there trying to see if he can even make the roster even though he's guaranteed. So why are we so scared to trade away our prospects for guaranteed big leagues?

00:02:09
Speaker 2: Well, I don't know about necessarily trading them or are you talking more about just creating opportunity for them.

00:02:15
Speaker 4: That's oh, it's just both. It's kind of a bow thing, right, AJ.

00:02:19
Speaker 2: You're right that an established player is more likely to help you win than a non established player. But the way teams view this, and I'm not telling you guys anything, you don't know the prospects. The young players are affordable, they're under control for longer than an established guy you might sign for two years, and therefore they provide more bang for the buck. The flaw in that theory is when it doesn't work. Just as you just mentioned with Christian Campbell, they give him a big contract right afore he starts the season, and yet he wasn't ready for the majors. He kind of demonstrated that he wasn't ready for the majors. And who knows, they could have maybe committed that money to a player of a veteran status and waiting to see if Christian Campbell actually can be a viable Major leaguer. They obviously got the price they wanted in the extension they signed him, and then it didn't work out. Now, for every Christian Campbell, there's also a Roman Anthony, a top prospect who does work out, and the Mariners have a number of these guys Cole Young, Colt Emerson, others that are coming, and they have some of the more highly regarded young players in the game today. That's why they don't want to block them. I understand that logic, but they still need one more player at the very least.

00:03:35
Speaker 5: The Red Sox are clearly in a win now, you know, don't hoard the prospect's mode, but it's a little bit different for the Red Sox. You feel like and a lot of people feel like they need to fill a spot in the infield, whether it is Christian Campbell or not. We doubt it that are teams looking at the Red Sox pitching, which they have added to this offseason and then maybe could diminish from to be able to to make sure they fill that role that Bregman left.

00:04:04
Speaker 2: They definitely want to add an infielder, and probably a right handed hitting infielder. The preference seems to be second base because they want Marcella Meyer at third.

00:04:13
Speaker 4: Now.

00:04:14
Speaker 2: I've heard in recent days that they are willing to trade one of their lesser pitchers, and by lesser picture not a guy who's a top prospect and not a guy who is Garat Crochet or Sonny Gray or Johanno Viedo that crowd. Obviously, range of Suarez fits with that as well, So who we talked about. Brian Beyo is one, Jordan Hicks is another. Maybe Patrick Sandoval coming off Tommy John surgery would be another in that kind of category. They don't want to trade Peyton totally. They don't want to trade Connolly early. I understand that. And if they can get the piece they need for one of the lesser pictures, or maybe just rearrange it in some fashion, make a couple of deals to get that player that infielder, more power to them. They need to do that. In my opinion, it's kind of like Seattle. They're missing one piece, and it's an important piece because offensively they are a little bit challenged right now, at least from an outside perspective. Now maybe they feel, well, we've got run prevention figured out better with the pitching staff we've assembled. They certainly have very deep rotation at this point, perhaps even too deep. But you got to score runs too, and that's the area they still need to address.

00:05:28
Speaker 6: Coming out of Minnesota.

00:05:30
Speaker 1: That the Minnesota twins and Derek Falvee, the president of Baseball Operations as well as business Operations, have mutually agreed to part ways. The timing seems interesting, but I'd like your take on it.

00:05:42
Speaker 2: The timing sure was interesting a lot, and I know you just had Dan Hayes on and he of course covers that team so well for the athletic Derek falve from what I gathered, was frustrated. Frustrated because at the deadline he was asked by ownership to go even further than he might have gone if just left to his own devices. And as Dan mentioned in the previous segment, I believe were a couple of segments ago, they tore apart their bullpen, the entire bullpen, even some guys who were under long term control who were cheap like the players we were just talking about with AJ, and it left them in a competitively compromised position. So now they have effectively a new ownership structure. Tom Pohlad is now in charge. He wasn't the guy before. It was Jim Pohlad. Then it brought in some minority investors. Things are changing there in terms of what ownership sees and what ownership looks like so Flauvey, it seemed to me just was wary and maybe frustrated and maybe just uncertain about the direction of this team. He is the one who fought to keep this team together over the winter and not trade Joe Ryan, not trade Byron Buxton. Obviously ownership agreed with that, and that's the way they're going forward. But I don't know how he sees the future, and maybe he doesn't see the future quite the same way that ownership does. That would be my strong guess here when you have a mutual parting. What else could it be?

00:07:13
Speaker 5: Chris Bassett, can you tell us about what his market is starting to shape up like? Because this is a guy that had a bounce back season, and we've seen other guys who have bad seasons right before free agency not get jobs. But now Chris Bassett and he was very He did really well in the playoffs too. Why is it not Materializa? What are you hearing so far?

00:07:34
Speaker 2: Well, the market for starting pitching right now is quite interesting. There are a number of teams still that need to add a starter, and you can see the pitchers right now who are still available, and then beyond from ber Valdez and Zach Gallen. You see that list, Lucas Gilio, Chris Bassett, Zach Lttel, they're all on the rung below. So it seems to me they perhaps and I say perhaps, need from Valdez and Zach Gallan to find their spots and at that point we would see better definition in the markets for the next tier down. And those are the pictures I just mentioned. It's Giolito, it's Bassett, it's Zach Lttel, Nick Martinez, a couple of others as well. So that seems to be what's going on. And you might ask, well, what are.

00:08:21
Speaker 4: We doing here?

00:08:21
Speaker 2: It's January thirty, it's spring training camps open in two weeks even less in some cases, why are these pictures now signed? It seems to me it's pretty obvious the teams are squeezing and squeezing and squeezing, hoping for these guys to lower their prices, particularly the top two Valdez and Gallon, and then they'll have still a high supply and still a high demand, but maybe they can get prices closer to what they want.

00:08:54
Speaker 6: All right.

00:08:54
Speaker 1: I love doing this because we have two catchers on the show. Of course, Aj and Eric both know a little bit about pitch framing, if you will. Things have changed, of course since they were behind the dish, but by stack cast numbers. Let's talk about the best and worst teams, you guys, and the three main catching metrics. That's obviously blocking, throwing, and framing.

00:09:14
Speaker 6: What do you think about this?

00:09:15
Speaker 1: Blocking twelve runs, throwing nineteen runs, framing forty five runs. In terms of what they're talking about, Mike Petriello is saying this now he thinks that kind of is underselling. It also shows you that the spread has declined as teams all value framing. In twenty eighteen, the spread between best to worst with sixty four runs twenty twelve.

00:09:33
Speaker 6: That's pre stat cast era.

00:09:35
Speaker 1: It was seventy six runs in two thousand and eight, so twenty something years ago it was ninety nine runs.

00:09:41
Speaker 6: What do you make of these numbers? Eric, we'll start with you.

00:09:45
Speaker 5: Well, I know for a fact, you can look at my batting average in my career. This is what kept me around. I didn't know I was a good framer. I thought I was good, but I didn't know there was a metric for it. I didn't know it was a thing. So finished twenty thirteen got traded to the Blue Jays, and that was the first time I saw anything, first time I saw any kind of numbers. And fast forward to twenty twenty kept you know, they kept oh wow, your numbers are so amazing. The Yankees were like, oh, we were back on your numbers back in like twenty twelve. There was a presentation done for the Yankees one of the years, and I don't know which one it was, that the year that Mike Trout won the MVP, the Mike Trout Prime Mike Trout MVP, and the argument was framing is so important that Hank Conger, the same Hank Conger that everybody remembers, was more valuable based on a per run, per pitch basis than Mike Trout.

00:10:53
Speaker 1: That's asinine. I love I love Conger, but that is asenine. There's no way that Hank Conger, by the way, the Twins also got rid of when they got rid of Rockaball Delly. Uh, there's no way that Hank Conger has more value. I love the dude, I went to his wedding, but there's no way that Hank Conger has more value in this game than Mike Trout.

00:11:12
Speaker 6: AJ.

00:11:12
Speaker 3: What say you you see you see my face right now, right.

00:11:20
Speaker 6: So sometimes the metrics are be.

00:11:24
Speaker 4: No.

00:11:24
Speaker 3: I also want to say this, Look, let's look at the teams that are at the top. Okay, Giants, Patrick Bailey is elite. The Blue Jays have strike throwers. The Yankees have veteran pitchers, right, The Tigers have mostly strike throwers. The Guardians have really good pitching and strike throwers. Okay, guess what, they're going to get more strikes called. Now that's not knock on the catchers because Dingler won the Gold Glove. Austin Wells, Alejandro Kirk, Patrick Bailey is really good.

00:11:46
Speaker 4: Bow Naylor's gotten so much better.

00:11:48
Speaker 3: Now if you go to those teams at the bottom, Nationals, White Sox, raise Angels, guess what, they didn't have a whole lot of veteran, great strike throwing pitchers. Okay, so in the White Sox had two rookie catchers catch this year, so the umpires aren't giving them the benefit of the doubt. The Nationals keibert Ruiz isn't known for his catching, and then they had to other young guys. Right, So I just take this all with the grain of salt, because the way I look at is Jonathan Lucroi one year was the number one framing catcher in baseball. He didn't change a thing. The next year he was the worst. So how does it go from one to the other. To me, it all goes on who your pitchers are, who you line up with umpires. Because let's say you get one umpire that calls.

00:12:32
Speaker 4: More you get.

00:12:32
Speaker 3: Listen, I love Doug getting his death. He has a bigger strike zone than some other guys do. Okay, so you're gonna get more strikes called.

00:12:40
Speaker 5: Right.

00:12:40
Speaker 4: It's just it's so subjective. Who's doing the rating on this, right? Who's doing this? To me?

00:12:47
Speaker 3: This is one of those things that is cool, and I'm sure it's gotten better over the year since it first started. I just don't know until someone can tell me how it's quantified. I look at it and say great, because for like Krats and some other people had got him, made him some money, and it got him in great position to have a great career. But then I look at it and I go, Okay, well, if my guy is getting one two more strikes a game, but they're also missing more balls in the dirt and having more pass balls because they're trying to frame them.

00:13:18
Speaker 4: Is it really worth it? I don't know.

00:13:21
Speaker 5: And there's hey, kudos to these teams, and there's arguments on both sides. The biggest thing if we put that, if we put the last if we put the last picture up there was the lowest teams. You saw the Dodgers and Phillies up there.

00:13:34
Speaker 6: That's what I was just gonna say.

00:13:37
Speaker 5: Nobody would say. Nobody would say Will Smith and J. T. Ro Muto, who, by the way, JT. Real Muto had been a top ten receiver, or nobody would say they're bad receivers. Did the Dodgers get downgray when they got rid of Austin Barnes. Austin Barnes was one of the best receivers. Just visually. You watch it and you're like that dude catches the snot out of the ball. He beats the ball to the spot. I don't care if you on one knee, two knees. Austin Barnes would catch from two feet and the way he moved his hands, you can tell he is a good receiver. What is the predominant pitch that a lot of the guys on the Dodgers and Phillies who are both playoff teams, two of the best teams in the National League, if not the two best. What pitch did a lot of those guys start throwing? We just talked about Roki yesterday, the split. I promise you, you try to frame a split, you're going to be chasing it to the backstop. You catch a splitter because it's a swing and mispitch, and you're gonna lose pitches. You're gonna lose balls that are at the bottom of the zone, side of the strike zone because they are nasty, elite pitches that are tough to pick up. So there's different things that go into this, and there is value in framing. But Kahi Gashioka said it yesterday. If the eye test does not match the numbers, it's not sustainable. But also if you're selling out to one style of catching. One idea that every pitch that's framed is worth point one two runs, and every pass ball is only worth point two two runs. But a pass ball with a runnerund third is still equal to a pass ball with a runner on first going to second. Like then then you're only looking at it adds the numbers and people will argue it till they're blue in the face. The idea is correct, the execution of it is too broad stroke and everybody needs to do this, and I think that is doing a disservice to some catchers, but it's also doing a disservice to the value of players and certain plays in the game of baseball. I, for one, hope Austin Barnes gets on with the New York Mets.

00:15:54
Speaker 6: He is a good receiver, he's a good dude.

00:15:56
Speaker 1: He's caught a lot of very important innings, particularly in the post season.

00:16:01
Speaker 6: AJ what does this do if.

00:16:03
Speaker 1: They implement robo umps? How does this whole framing conversation change.

00:16:11
Speaker 3: I don't think it's frames because you're not going to get somebody going like this every pitch right and most of the time, if anything, it would fool your pitcher sometimes, and the umpires are still going to call the strikes that they see and if it's close. I don't know that it changes that much. Here's the one thing I'll say. I talked to umpires and I've told this on this on this show that have been in the ABS system in Triple A, and they said that the really good catchers actually box balls that are strikes to make the hitter think it's a ball, they tap, they lose their challenge.

00:16:44
Speaker 4: How much will it change. I don't know. We're gonna have to see.

00:16:46
Speaker 3: That's gonna be one of the fascinating things about twenty twenty six, starting in spring training into the early season, how teams use the ABS and how it affects this, you know, pitch framing metric that is so popular right now.

00:16:59
Speaker 4: I love.

00:16:59
Speaker 3: I think it's great. I think catchers have always been undervalue. I think that this is a thing that was always looked upon. I remember when I first came up there, like just be quiet, don't move the ball. Umpires will tell you, hey, you snatched that back. That's automatically a ball. And now guys are going like catching balls that are a pitch out and they're like, oh, you know, well it's a strike. You know, every pitch they do it. So things have changed on for the change. It's just going to be fascinating to see how it moves on to abs.

00:17:26
Speaker 1: Eric, how do you think it's changed in terms of framing or the style or the thought process of it. Because of the way that it seems like guys are trying to catch differently now you know, the one leg out type of thing. It doesn't matter if there's a you know, run around third balls on the dirt, you're screwed. This whole thing that started kind of with the Twins the Yankees a little bit about just setting up behind the plate differently and different style of catching.

00:17:50
Speaker 6: Has that changed the framing at all?

00:17:54
Speaker 4: God?

00:17:54
Speaker 5: I mean, that is all about the framing. And now they'll argue because they have a lot of numbers that they're able to block more pitches, and the true argument is they're able to block the ninety nine mile hour yard dart that's in front of them, that's in front of home plate, that's directly in front of them, And because they're already down there and they just put their glove down and they're able to block it, you're not moving. You're not moving as well side to side. But so you can't necessarily you bring one argument up and somebody will argue the other part. That value is there, but it's not. It's not as linear as what analytics says it is. And not everybody should be on a knee because the idea is forty eight percent of the pitches are in I'm sorry, fifty two percent of the pitches are in the bottom half of the strike zone. Well, my argument was, and one of the areas that I was the best at for me was the top half of the strike zone. I'm like, well, that's forty eight percent of the pitches, Like it's fifty fifth And if you have a lot of guys that throw high balls at the top of the strike zone, shouldn't you be getting those two? So it's it's really how you manipulate the numbers, But ultimately, at the end of the day, you just got to get the job done.

00:19:18
Speaker 1: I think it also depends too on who's evaluating what the statistical metrics are that they're evaluating by. I mean, can't you manipulate, as you were saying, the numbers, aj can't you manipulate it to service any sort of stat you're trying to prove?

00:19:36
Speaker 4: Yes?

00:19:37
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, it's like war, right, I mean, I use I always laugh at war because there's more than one war, and no one can tell you how they figure out war. But everyone uses it as an evaluation.

00:19:49
Speaker 4: Tool and this and now.

00:19:50
Speaker 3: But if you can't even agree on how to calculate it, then how do you know which who's this or that, which one's right? So, yes, you can manipulate anything. I know this when I used to watch a guy catch, and I still watch guys, you're like, oh, he's pretty good. He can steal pitches. Like I watched Patrick Bailey. I'm like that dude can steal some pitches, right, and you know who's good and who's not good, and the numbers usually bear that out. I don't know that we need this, but it's another tool to help people evaluate catchers and put a value on them.

00:20:20
Speaker 6: All right, Eric, let me ask you this.

00:20:21
Speaker 1: How does this affect guys getting jobs? How does this affect guys coming up? You know, when AJ said stealing pitches, I swear to god, I thought he said stealing bitches.

00:20:30
Speaker 6: But that's neither here nor there.

00:20:32
Speaker 1: How does this affect guys coming up trying to get jobs and maybe coming up in the minor leagues trying to manipulate their style of their game to service what it is that's going to get him to the big league level.

00:20:44
Speaker 5: Yeah, that well, stealing bitches. That's AJ's rap album that's coming out soon's it's a single. It's going to be on just on cassette, but it is it's so effect you see it in college. You see it in college, and there is a value to it. There's always been a value to it. It is not something that needs to be it's not something that needs to be diminished in the sense of, oh, don't even worry about it. It's something that you always needed to improve. Ernie Went was my catching coach. He was always teaching us. You have to beat the ball to the spot. You have to You can't be late. You can't be like Aj had over two thousand career hits and career hits, okay, I had like two to one hundred hits in my career. The value will always be in the offense. But what kind of value do you get for your pitcher in the framing metric? And how do you equate that when you have a guy in the minor leagues that's doing it. That's that's really what's that's what's holding up Ethan Solace right now. Ethan Solace ever since he was sixteen the videos started coming out of him. You know, the way he's able to receive the ball, it's smooth, it's unbelievable. If he doesn't hit over one ninety and stay healthy he's never gonna make the big leagues. So as much as guys work on framing and they do it off machines instead of off of live pitchers, which is not completely applicable. Like there's just there's more ways to get to where they need to go than everybody going to knee the Twins on one knee to catch at all times. I think that takes away some of the athleticism. I think a guy like j t Romuto wasn't in that category. He wasn't with the Twins, but he's has been and probably may still be the most athletic catcher in the game. He could have played short in his prime. He could have played short in the big leagues for a weekend. And when you put him on a knee, you're putting him and my chewed up piece of bubblegum body in the same spot. If you're going down to one knee all the time when you're receiving, like, it's not one size fits all. You have to get the strikes, but not everybody needs to get them the same way.

00:23:12
Speaker 1: What do you think about manager calls in terms of pitch calling from the dugout.

00:23:18
Speaker 3: No, No, because here's my thing, I have with this, and you watch it in college, in high school and all this, you're not back there. And unless you're back there and you can actually see what is happening, what your pitcher has, what movement, hitters make adjustments.

00:23:37
Speaker 4: No, that's a no. But Marlins are gonna do it.

00:23:40
Speaker 3: Marlins are gonna try and if it works, you know the Marlins, then other teams will try to.

00:23:44
Speaker 4: But for me, that's a no. But that's just my opinion because as.

00:23:49
Speaker 3: A former catcher, I took pride and call on a game and getting guys through and not to look over to the dugout and say, hey, you know you're not back here.

00:23:55
Speaker 4: You don't know what the guy has that day. No, it's just a no. But teams are going to do it and nothing we can do about it.

00:24:03
Speaker 5: I think it'll I think it'll cap. I think it'll cap teams. I think there's some success to it. But I think when you're talking about teams that are playoff, fringe playoff teams, and we talk about the Marlins because they're doing it right now, but I'm sure other organizations want to do it. I heard the year when the Red Sox won in twenty eighteen, the front office said they had I think they had the best RA in baseball. And the front office said, if you guys had listened to us and really followed the pitch calling plan, you would have had a half a run less RA. And it's like, Okay, on paper, you can say that. On paper, you can say this is what the pitch that needs to be called. But when I'm watching today, my guy don't have his cutter, my guy doesn't have his curveball. He can't land it for a strike. But if you go down the paper and you go curveball, you're you're going to be cooked in that game. And I think those are the games on the fringes. There's so many things on the fringes right now in the big leagues, from clubhouse personnel, to environment in your clubhouse, to travel to sleep, small tiny little things that could help you win one extra game. That's where I feel like the pitch calling from the dugout gets in the way. At my high school team, I would much rather have a freshman call the games and we talk about it, learn about it, see what's happening in the game, and when it comes to a big moment, they already seen it. They've seen it in action. I'm super close to the home plate when I'm coaching high school, and I don't see the same thing. I don't see the ball spinning. I don't see I can read swings, but you're just not doing that when you're looking at a paper the whole time and saying, splitter, that's what we need to throw.