Front Office Unfiltered w/Jim Bowden: Rangers-Mets deal, Debunking physicals, Helsley converting to SP?

00:00:06
Speaker 1: Front office and filtered a lot to get to. This ends up being a very busy week right before Thanksgiving, deals getting done. Jim Boden joining us right now or resident GM here on foul Territory. What were your thoughts on Marcus Simeon and Brandon Nimmo flipping teams?

00:00:20
Speaker 2: What do you think?

00:00:21
Speaker 3: So?

00:00:21
Speaker 4: I like the trade for the Rangers side of it. Let me kind of go through how I view the trade. So from the Mets perspective, you know, we want to improve the defense. Run prevention is what David Stearns continues to talk about. Marcus Simeon does that. He's a really good defensive second baseman. He's a gold glover. Putting him with Linder up the middle, that's going to help the pitching staff.

00:00:41
Speaker 3: So I like that aspect of it.

00:00:43
Speaker 4: What bothers me, and the other thing I love about him, of course, is his makeup, his character. He's a team leader, he's a great teammate, He's got all the intangibles we look for right and star players. So that's what I like about him. What concerns me a little bit in watching him last year is agent the client is getting to him. In my opinion, from what I've seen, and we've seen the home runs from twenty nine to twenty three to fifteen. We've seen the on base go from three forty eight three years ago to three.

00:01:10
Speaker 3: Zero five this past year.

00:01:12
Speaker 4: His bat speeds in the eighth percentile, his hard hit rate in the seventeenth percentile. And although he had spurts where it looked like, oh, Marcus is coming back, here he comes, he had some stages at the end of the year that they look like his old self.

00:01:25
Speaker 3: That's normally what happens when a player gets older. You get flashes, but you don't get consistency.

00:01:31
Speaker 4: And it reminds me a lot when I was watching Barry Larkin near the end of his career. I just feel like three years at seventy two million is not going to end well, especially from an offensive perspective. On the other side, for Texas, this made a lot of sense, right, they have to reduce payroll, so the non tender a Doolas Garcia, they non tendered Jonah Hine. They trade Simeon for Nimmo. Nimmo makes less money per year than Simeon does, so financially it helps you want to repla Garcia's home runs. Nimo does that twenty four, twenty three, and twenty five.

00:02:05
Speaker 3: The last three years, you put him in.

00:02:06
Speaker 4: Left field, you put Langford and right, Carter and center, and you're you're.

00:02:10
Speaker 3: Outfield is set.

00:02:11
Speaker 4: The other thing it does it opens up second base for Josh Smith, who deserves the opportunity to be an everyday guy. And I think when you look at Nimo the last couple of years, when they moved him down in the lineup, his on base dropped from the three fifties to the three twenties. I think Texas will hit him at the near the top of the order. I think you'll see the on base come back. And look, his hard hit was in the eighty eight percentile. His bat speed was just a tick above average. So I think that Nimo being three years younger, I think that's the better side of this deal.

00:02:41
Speaker 3: At least that's my take.

00:02:44
Speaker 5: I'm gonna go to the Simian side of this. If you're New York, you're you're David Stearns and you picked him up here, you saw it with Barry Larkin.

00:02:52
Speaker 2: How do you.

00:02:55
Speaker 5: Curve that that age decline? How do you make it? Because he's a guy who absolutely wants to be out there every single day. Is it playing time? Is it amount of time that he's that he's out on the field because he's one hundred and sixty two game guy, if he is what he considers healthy, or do you say, you know what, We're running it until it drops and then we're going back to you know, Luis anghel Acunya, we're going back to whatever we had before. If you're the GM making this trade, yeah, I think if you're.

00:03:24
Speaker 4: The GM making the trade, you think I'm wrong, and you think he's not in decline and you think he's going to be a comeback Player of the Year candidate. Otherwise you don't make this trade now. To your point, and I agree with it. You know, you get through a certain age, back off a little bit instead of playing one hundred and fifty one hundred and sixty games, Let's let's dial it back to one hundred and thirty five to one hundred and forty.

00:03:44
Speaker 3: Let's try to keep the legs healthy.

00:03:45
Speaker 4: Let's see if we can get a couple more years out of you by taking care of your legs.

00:03:50
Speaker 3: As you get older. So yeah, I think I think there's the way to manage it.

00:03:54
Speaker 4: But I think, if you're going to make this trade, you're banking on the fact that you think he's going to be fine. You like what you saw at the end of the year, and you think that's what's gonna be real rather than what we saw the entire season.

00:04:08
Speaker 5: What you say, eighty eight percentile on hard hit average, are you fearful of when he goes into Globe Life, which became the least hit or friendly park in baseball last year? Are you fearful that now, all of a sudden, you have a guy who's gonna hit warning track home runs and isn't playing better defense. But hey, you know what, you save some money.

00:04:29
Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean, look, I don't know about the power that's that Globe.

00:04:33
Speaker 4: I feel has been different over the last several years, so it's hard to calculate the ballpark factor with him.

00:04:39
Speaker 3: But I think the thing I.

00:04:40
Speaker 4: Like about Nimo is and I know the last couple of years he hasn't been there. You know, he can get on base. He's been a thirty five, thirty six percent on base guy. I think he needs to get back to drawing walks getting on base, going back to the approach he had two or three years ago.

00:04:56
Speaker 3: And then whether the power is the twenty four.

00:04:59
Speaker 4: To twenty three twenty five we saw, or if it goes down to eighteen to twenty two because of the ballpark, that's still gonna be enough.

00:05:07
Speaker 3: I think playing left field for them.

00:05:08
Speaker 4: So again, you have to understand or at least a big part of this to me is you got out of seventy two million dollars that you were gonna have to pay market simeon And if they view sibbyan like I do, that's a that's a huge plus being able to get out of that money right now.

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00:06:22
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00:06:27
Speaker 1: JB last layer here, what do you think is next for both sides? Where should the Mets be focusing and where should the Rangers be focusing? I think we can start with the Mets just because Krats and me agree here that this team just really needs to have a different strategy on pitching and not playing in the kiddie pool as AJ calls it, like, is the solution here to show up the defense? Certainly it helps, but that's not going to improve them doing these lottery ticket starter signings every year.

00:06:54
Speaker 4: Yeah, you're not going to win with this rotation. You're not going to make the playoffs with this rotation. So that's where you got to focus. You got to get started, and you got to get guys who can count on. You know, you can't count on four and five inning starters, right. You need some guys that can pitch deep. So you should be playing on Framble Baal Days. You should be playing on Dylan c. You should be playing on Michael King. You should be trying to trade for Freddie Peralta. You should try to see if you can match up with Terrik Skuble. Yeah, you need to go big here, and I don't think one starter does it. I think you need to go get too and if you get two with the young pitchers that are coming, that'll put you in a much better position. The other thing is you need more power if you're not going to bring Pete Alonzo back. You know, if you want run prevention, go get Michael Tucker or Kyle Tucker, or go get Cody Bellinger. But I don't think you could let Alonzo go and not replace the power because I think they would miss that home run power that he provided.

00:07:44
Speaker 3: Last year.

00:07:45
Speaker 6: You brought up Freddie Peralta, a guy that everybody has a target for. Where do you see this guy landing. Is there a spot in mind you have right now or it could be a crapshoot.

00:07:55
Speaker 4: To be honest, Yeah, I got the spot in mind for Paralta, and that's no. And let me kind of go through the reasoning on why I think he stays number one. They won more games in the regular season than any team in baseball last year, including the world champion Dodgers and the American League champion Blue Jays. They got a chance to run back the exact same team that did that. Why wouldn't you give your team one more shot? Brandon Woodruff opted in on a qualifying offer. You had Parolta, Jacob Mazarowski, Chad Patrick, I mean, Quinn Priester. You got solid rotation there. If you trade Parolta, you're not going to be as good a major league team. The other thing that plays into it is he only makes eight million dollars.

00:08:39
Speaker 3: Wow.

00:08:39
Speaker 4: I mean that's a bar that's a quarter of his real value on the open market.

00:08:44
Speaker 3: So I think you keep them.

00:08:46
Speaker 4: I do, And I think you know the other thing about Freddy Peralta is another guy big in the clubhouse, can pitch in big games, And I think you also look back at when's the last time that Arnold lose one executive the year of the last two years. When did he trade a pitcher that was going to be a free agent? Well, that was Corbyn Burns he traded at Baltimore. What was the return in that trade? Shortstop Joey Ortiz left the end of pitcher dl Hall and.

00:09:13
Speaker 3: A draft pick.

00:09:15
Speaker 4: Was that enough for one year of Burns? I mean, you say fifteen millions, that made sense. Ortiz has been good defensively at short he hasn't hit enough. Paul has been inconsistent and hurt the last two years. But you can't look at that trade and say, yeah, I probably would have rather had one year of Burns because that's what I would rather have had back then. And so I think I kind of look at Parolta going you better win the trade, You better get pieces that can really help you win. If not hold on to him for eight million dollars, and if you lose him for a pick, it's okay. You did it with a Damis, It's okay. It's not the end of the world. But after the season you had last year, let's not disappoint the fans or the clubhouse.

00:09:54
Speaker 1: Let's get to Ryan Helsley and how we could have interest in him as a starting pitcher on the free agent market.

00:10:00
Speaker 2: What did you think of that story?

00:10:01
Speaker 1: And do you think that he can convert to that role like many others have done successfully over the last few years.

00:10:07
Speaker 3: Yeah, no chance, Scott, not in the case of Ryan Helsley.

00:10:10
Speaker 4: And look, it does work, right, a lot of times you can take Michael King and put him in a rotation and get success. Then a lot of times, like the Giants, they tried to take Jordan Hicks was a solid reliever make him a starter.

00:10:23
Speaker 3: That didn't work.

00:10:25
Speaker 4: The Mets took Clay Holmes they as a reliever and tried to make him a starter. You know, it really depends on what is your repertoire, what's your command and control? How is your stamina? How long can you stay in? You know, with Clay Holmes, it made sense right, he had that change up. You know, he's got the sinker, the sweeper, the change up, the slider, the cutter, the four seamer. He's got enough pitches. He's big, he's strong, he can have stamina. So when Carlos Bandoza saw him with the Yankees, he understood and had the vision of yeah, he could become.

00:10:52
Speaker 3: A starter, although it takes a while before you build up the innings. It takes a few years. But certainly if that made a lot of sense.

00:11:00
Speaker 4: In the case of Ryan Helsley, the reason why I think this is going to be more like Jordan Hicks or Norm Charlton and not working is ninety two percent of his pitches last year were fastball.

00:11:09
Speaker 3: Slider. That's it. Slider was his best pitch.

00:11:12
Speaker 4: In fact, posing battles went fifteen fo one hundred and seven against it, which equates to batting one forty. The slider's nasty. They also hit four to twenty two against his fastball. It got hit really hard. The velocity is still there, but he didn't have the movement and didn't have the placement needed to be successful.

00:11:29
Speaker 3: So how's he going to.

00:11:29
Speaker 4: Go around the lineup two or three times with a slider like it? It just doesn't add up or make sense. And I think you know, in history, Scott, we've seen starters like Brad Keller go to the bullpen huge success. Has now found a new niche for his career going forward. But you really have to look at the full package and say, where's the vision of this working? And when I look at Ryan Helsley nine on two pitches and only one of them effective, I don't know how that's going to play out.

00:11:57
Speaker 1: What do you think is the science to this for a team like Detroit or others? When you're explaining how it doesn't make sense from a repertoire perspective, do you think they're like, Hey, we think that we're going to be able to activate some other pitches that you either don't have yet or that you don't use very frequently. And they are pointing back to recent success stories like play Homes and Rinaldo Lopez.

00:12:18
Speaker 4: Yeah, you have to have a plan, right. If they're looking at Hellsley and they're saying, hey, we think we can develop.

00:12:23
Speaker 3: A split finger with him. We think we can change.

00:12:27
Speaker 4: Is our mangle, get it down a little bit lower to get the fastball to more effective. We can teach him a circle change. We've seen it in the bullpen, and we think if we add these it can work.

00:12:39
Speaker 3: So sure.

00:12:39
Speaker 4: I mean, I think one of the things that front offices always does is you look at a player and say, how can I make him better? How can I maximize the talent he has. Is there a pathway where I could take Ryan Helsley and make him into a starter effectively, which would be an inexpensive option to have success. And so yeah, if you have plan, go make it work. In Helsley's case in particular, I don't see that pathway. In Holmes, I did because Carlos Mendoza was pretty clear on some of the pitches he saw him throwing the bullpen that he didn't throwing games that he felt would be effective and he would turn into a good starter. So again, it depends on the pitcher. But to your point, yeah, obviously a team like Detroit must see something that they feel with adjustments that he could do it.

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00:14:25
Speaker 5: The Rockies bringing back their manager. The Rocky's doing all this and then all of a sudden, they're like, Okay, we're just gonna stick with what we had since it worked so well.

00:14:35
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah.

00:14:35
Speaker 4: So I mean, look, I think Paul de Potesta is trying to get his feet wet. He's been out of major league baseball for a decade working in the NFL, and now he's coming over here. He doesn't know the major league team, he doesn't know the farm system. The former GM is not employed anymore, and so I think he felt like, at least Warren Schaeffer knows the players he's managed in the last four months of the season. This will give me an opportunity to utilize his brain and experience with the group that we have as he tries to work to improve the team he has. And then, look, this isn't a team that's going to contend in twenty twenty six. He knows they're going to finish and last they've already clinched that. So congrats to them. And so that gives him a chance to evaluate Warren Schaeffer next year to see if he's a long term answer, or it gives him time to put his own person in. But in the meantime, you got to have someone in that organization familiar with what you have, and certainly Warren has that.

00:15:32
Speaker 5: Does this signify the fact that they that when he has now taken over, he's looked under the hood that there's a lot to do, that he's already underwater, and he's like, I don't want to add something else where. I'm trying to keep something or get somebody up to speed, a new manager up to speed on something that I can't even be up to speed on.

00:15:52
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, and it's hard.

00:15:54
Speaker 4: It's hard to It would be really hard to do that, and especially in the case of Paul Devotes.

00:15:59
Speaker 3: As I said, just because he's been.

00:16:01
Speaker 4: Out of the game so long, he's not up to date on the technology, the analytic advancements. He doesn't know the players, he doesn't know the coaching staff. You know, he's not familiar with any of them, and so it would be really hard if he just walked in and just cleaned everything out and tried to start fresh.

00:16:17
Speaker 3: So I think this makes.

00:16:19
Speaker 6: Sense talking about another ballplayer at Dolly Scarcia. Man, he struggled, as we've seen, like nobody else, came off a nice campaign with the World Series, and then all of a sudden things kind of went south. Where do you see him landing, if anywhere, as we're moving forward.

00:16:36
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, okay, the one thing he can still do is an occasional homer right nineteen homers seventy five, RBI seventeen steels last year, but is on Basemis two seventy one. Not good last two years. He looks like, you know, he's declining. We'll see if he can have a bounce back year. There's not gonna be a lot of interest in him. I remember, I mean, this is a guy that made nine million last year, was expected to make twelve million, and they see too much money for the industry. Texas tried to trade him before they non tendered him. There was zero interest. So you know, I think he's gonna have to take a five million dollar probably base salary with incentives, and I think he's gonna have to look for a team like the Pittsburgh Pirates, who need to add offense. The Pirates have the starting pitching, they've they've got a decent bullpen, they don't have enough offense.

00:17:22
Speaker 3: They've got to add offense.

00:17:23
Speaker 4: And so maybe Garcia goes to Pittsburgh and can you know, prove to them that he's not done and try to do some damage. There's not going to be a lot of teams that have a starting spot for him, but Pittsburgh might be one that can find an opening either at DH or in the corner outfield.

00:17:41
Speaker 5: You said the words starting Grayson Rodriguez trade. It almost looked like the Orioles gave up on this. What are your not not just views of it, but how it was handled by both sides?

00:17:56
Speaker 2: Wow?

00:17:56
Speaker 4: Okay, Eric, So first of all, my take is great trade for the Angels. I want to be on that side of things.

00:18:02
Speaker 3: Now.

00:18:03
Speaker 4: I haven't seen the medicals. I haven't seen the MRI. I don't know what all the medical issues are with Grayson. I do know one thing, before his injuries, he was one of the best pitching prospects in baseball, with number one, top of the rotation type stuff when he was healthy. I also know you control him for four more years. So let's just say, worst case scenario, the medicals say that he's got a bone in the ligament of the elbow and he might need Tommy John.

00:18:28
Speaker 3: Okay, let's do Tommy John.

00:18:30
Speaker 4: Let him sit out sixteen months and I'll bring him back and still have two and a half to three years of control of Grayson Rodriguez. Like, I don't understand why you would trade Grayson Rodriguez as bad as you need starting pitching, unless you've come to the conclusion because of health you don't think you'll ever amount anything, which I think is really premature with some of that age with today's medical field. Now on the other side, with Ward, you get word for one year, he's got great power. I get it, driven one hundred and ten runs, I get it and also hit two twenty. And you begin to wonder, now when you look at all the Orioles draft picks, and you look at all of the Orioles trades at the big league level, it seems they're obsessed with power over hitting. You know, whether you look at Tyler O'Neil, or whether you look at Ward, or whether you look at Kurstad or whether you look at Mountcastle, there seems to be a theme vance Honeycutt the prospect. There seems to be a theme that their obsession is with power rather than hitters.

00:19:25
Speaker 3: And you would think if.

00:19:26
Speaker 4: You're in the American League East and you watch the Blue Jays win ninety four games, you probably realize the value of contact teams that can hit and play defense and what that results is. So to me, it was a perplexing deal. The trade Rodriguez for one year of Taylor Ward just didn't make sense to me on the Baltimore side. But for the Angels to take a chance on Grayson Rodriguez, I loved it.

00:19:51
Speaker 5: Do you have a chance, as Jim, to actually give Grayson a physical by your doctors, by your team trainers, And because I know during the trade deadline. During the season you say, okay, I just got to read what you have written. A trainer told me it's only you know, we're just combing through things. But in the offseason, couldn't they have given that. Couldn't they have said, hey, we would love this, but we want to see if we want to actually put him through a physical first.

00:20:16
Speaker 4: Oh, eric on and he nailed it. I can't believe that Paranassian didn't do it. I actually don't understand why you wouldn't. You can make any deal that you make contingent on a physical or you know, it's up to you. It's up to the aseny club, the club receiving the player, It's up to them to get as much medical information as they want. Now, you're all going to get the computer print out of all the medical reports, all the MRIs, all the X rays, all the daily training reports. You're going to have your orthopedic doctor talk to their orthopedic doctor. They're all going to converge. But then you always have the option and I did it quite a bit when I was GM about the Reds and Nationals. You have the ability to say, look, I'm going to do the deal contingent on a physical, and then the player would in for a physical and then you'd make a determination after that. When you have the history that Grayson Rodriguez ads, I cannot believe the Angels didn't insist doctor Neil Ella Trash putting his hands on the pitcher before making the trade.

00:21:14
Speaker 3: It just didn't make any sense to me.

00:21:17
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think this part was important, and I like that Eric asked the question, JB. I mention it because there are a ton of people online who think that they were former gms and they're like, that's not a thing. You can't do that. You just get the records and then you just have to make your decision. So I just wanted to make sure, Yeah, let's double down again.

00:21:37
Speaker 2: Can you ask for a physical?

00:21:39
Speaker 1: Actually, the one other follow up I do have on this, is there an opportunity for the player to say no?

00:21:43
Speaker 2: Or does the player basically have to do it?

00:21:45
Speaker 1: If you get a call and you say, hey, Grayce and you're traded, it's contingent on a physical.

00:21:48
Speaker 2: I need you to do that. Can he say no?

00:21:50
Speaker 1: Or because you know he's under control, he has to do Okay, Yeah.

00:21:54
Speaker 3: It's in the contracts. If the team asked them to do a physical. He has to do the physical. So yeah, it was surprising, you know, It's just it's something.

00:22:03
Speaker 4: And by the way, a lot of times it's not done at the trade deadline because a lot of times the trades are made last minute, it's not time to do it. But if you notice, there'll be a lot of trades made ten days before the trade deadline with some injured players where they do do the physicals prior to announcing it. So you absolutely can make you make contingent on signing the player to an extension if you wanted to.

00:22:25
Speaker 3: But it happens quite a bit.

00:22:26
Speaker 4: It's not something teams like to make public, but it definitely happens.

00:22:31
Speaker 2: JB.

00:22:32
Speaker 1: Last one for you, and it kind of brings this fun segment full circle.

00:22:36
Speaker 2: We did see two very.

00:22:37
Speaker 1: Notable names in Major League baseball just get moved. I love a good baseball player trade major league for major leagueer, one for one kind of situation. Do you think that any other big names like that could be moved on the position player side that we're not thinking about. One that I think we are thinking about a little bit is ktel Marte. To get your thoughts, but maybe you know Corey Seegers was floated in kind of like it almost seemed like fake aggregating with Evan Grant's report. But is there a chance that he could actually be moved and the Rangers are looking to move and shake because I looked up looks like he has a limited no trade clause, not a full and that would activate at some point I think this year with ten five rights. So I think sometimes people don't consider that part of it.

00:23:19
Speaker 4: Yeah, And look, he can be traded to the Yankees or Red Sox by the way, they're not on the no trade clause.

00:23:24
Speaker 3: And yeah, I definitely think so.

00:23:25
Speaker 4: I think ti Oscar nandez In La could get traded if they were able to sign say Kyle Tucker and decided to move on from too So yeah, I think big, big names will get moved. There's a lot of very creative GM's out there right now, Scotty, So I think it can happen. In terms of Seager. Yeah, they're going to deny that, you know, they'll talk to him, but they'll move the contract if they can. It's a huge contract. He's thirty two years old. Texas has some financial issues right now. I doubt he gets moved but look, the Yankees have touch base with kateel Marte in Arizona and Corey Seger in Texas, just like they are with Kyle Tucker and Cody Bellinger.

00:24:03
Speaker 3: I mean, the owner of House Steinberger came up instead. It would be nice to say.

00:24:06
Speaker 4: That our payroll's going down this year, but of course it's not because we're gonna go and try to win the championship.

00:24:12
Speaker 3: So the Yankees are gonna spend money.

00:24:14
Speaker 4: And so you know Brian Cashman, he checks on everybody all the time. That doesn't mean anything's gonna happen, but he makes sure that he does his homework before making the final decision. So do I think there'll be some other big names traded this offseason that we're not thinking about?

00:24:31
Speaker 3: Absolutely?

00:24:32
Speaker 6: I do.

00:24:40
Speaker 1: We hit this with Jim Bowden, but I want to do this for a few minutes with our guys. Ryan Helsley is a free agent. Is he a free agent reliever or a free agent starting pitcher? According to the Athletic Ken was in on this article, I believe in and Cody staven Hagen among others. Here the Tigers are among teams looking at him as a starting pitcher. This is something that's now popped up for several years in a row, guys, and we've seen success stories. I mean, if you go a little further back, Seth Lugo's a big success. Michael King More recently, Clay Holmes was good for a while for the Mets last year. Wouldn't call him part of the problems for the rotation. He definitely faded down the stretch, But I think you have to expect that when you're bringing a guy over who hasn't put the innings together. Rinaldo Lopez was brilliant a couple of years ago and then got hurt, so he missed I think all of this past season with Atlanta. First, let's talk Arsenal and then we can talk about the building up component. Do you think Ryan Helsley Todd Father can make this move. Jim Boden really was against it in terms of this particular pitching profile because he's got fastball slider. The other two pitches really haven't been developed yet.

00:25:54
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean he throws hard, and he throws really hard, and that's the factor as as a starter. Now, you can't just go up there humping as hard as you want. I mean, some guys can don't get me wrong, but they've been doing it for a while. They've they've worked their arms and bodies in those situations. For him, I think it's gonna be hard just because of the two pitches that he has. I mean, can can you rely on those two pitches throughout a whole year every five days?

00:26:19
Speaker 2: Or you know?

00:26:20
Speaker 6: Do you he need an arsenal? Nowadays it's gonna tell you need four to five pitches. At least some guys have six to eight pitches.

00:26:28
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:26:28
Speaker 6: I have to tend to go with Jim there and say it's gonna be very hard. I don't think it's the right decision, just on the sole fact how hard he throws and how much effort he gives every time he goes out there, it's gonna it might take a toll on him.

00:26:41
Speaker 1: Do you remember when they wanted Jeff Hoffman some of the teams last year in free agency to consider that, And I don't remember was it him that said no?

00:26:49
Speaker 5: No?

00:26:49
Speaker 2: I think it was the teams that the teams didn't want it.

00:26:52
Speaker 5: So I thought the Braves, yeah, kind of failed him, not the same way that the Orioles failed him. I think the Braves were interested in that. But then when he went to Toronto that I don't know if I don't know if the Blue Jays cut that off or if he was like all right, like well, we're just gonna go closer. I mean, the difference is he has four pitches now. Ultimately, Todd, you know, most big league pitchers, you gotta look for two pitches. The issue is when that third and fourth pitch comes in. Now you're like, well, I'm just.

00:27:25
Speaker 2: Gonna take that.

00:27:25
Speaker 5: He you know, he throws a curveball whatever thirty seven times a season in five hundred pitches, So you're like, okay, whatever. If you see that as a starter, you have to mix that up just because one, it allows you to steal strikes. Two it gives them a different speed. And I don't know that Hellsley has it. I tried to look back at his minor league stats. He didn't that either. Like it. It feels like a It feels like I don't know, A you hogwashed twice feels like hogwash unless there is something that we don't know. Oh, Like, I don't know if teams can look at the guy and be like, hey, because you're a we have so much biomechanical information. Now because you're a pronator, because you're a supernator, all that stuff. Hey, you know what, we can easily teach you the kick change because a guy who throws a fastball that cuts his hand can't really get around it. Hey, you know what, We're just gonna put the ball in your hand. Like, if you become a starter, there's always more value. I was the one that in Mason Miller's corner saying, go be a starter at the padres. That's a huge value. Yes, try him out. What's the worst that can happen? Go back to the bullpen? And I I don't see it with Hellsley. But maybe it's something from his camp because him going to a larger market where the money's always going to be. When he got traded to New York and it didn't go well, teams are gonna be like was there something to that? What happened? And maybe his camp's like, hey, he can start. But I don't see it. I agree with Jim.

00:29:04
Speaker 6: I think it's a respect factor though too that it teem's like, you know what, I want to see this guy as a starter, So if I'm him, I'm taking that as an honor and like, hey, listen, okay, that's nice. Maybe I'll take a second look at this team, whether one mass start or not.

00:29:16
Speaker 1: It's a crowded reliever market this year too, which is great. It's fun for us to cover, but there's a lot more competition than usual, and Hellsley really fell off with the Mets.

00:29:25
Speaker 2: There was a lot of pitch.

00:29:27
Speaker 1: Tipping whispering going on, but we don't know if that ended up actually being the case. The Cardinals picked Selsey as a starter at of school he went to was at Northeastern State in Oklahoma. He was a fifth round pick, but in the minor leagues all but eighteen of his eighty seven appearances where as a starting pitcher, and then the Cardinals bring them up, they make.

00:29:48
Speaker 2: Them a reliever.

00:29:49
Speaker 1: The rest is history. So it's not like he's never done it before at the pro level. And there are others like that too. I mean, Jeff Hoffman actually was a starter in the big leagues, right, Clay Holmes, I think would did he start in the big leagues or was it justice? He was a big league starter then relief then back. Yeah, So for Hellsley, we haven't seen the starting side of things. But it's not like it's completely foreign for him. And that's usually the case, right, They're like there's some track record of starting in the past, whether it's in the pros or early on in his major league career, and then he was just moved quickly to being a reliever.

00:30:20
Speaker 5: Yeah, but there's like there's decision. I mean, who creates pictures really well in the minor leagues. It's for a while, it's been to Cardinals, it was the Braves are the best forever. I just feel like there's I mean, you can say that about almost anybody. Hoffman started it. He was a failed starter. A lot of relievers are failed starters. Like if we're if we're going to do this, let's go back everywhere, tod where did you play? Where did you play when you were Little league? What position?

00:30:46
Speaker 2: Wow?

00:30:48
Speaker 5: Like you everybody was everybody was something to get to where they were, Like everybody the Latinos are like boppy everybody from the Dominican a short stop. Yeah, like yeah, you were all shorts off because you're the best players. It's the guys that make the transitions. And you have to look at the profile, you have to look at what he used and I was looking trying to look at his eighteen minor league starts, and I couldn't see any other pitches besides the slider. In the fastball, Yes, it was a different shape. He has more horizontal, more like a sweeper. Now, so maybe he said, oh, I had a curveball and I had a slider. But there's prerequisites. Clay Holmes was a failed starter with the Pirates.

00:31:31
Speaker 2: Shocker, but.

00:31:33
Speaker 5: So you're looking at those, you're looking at that. Ronaldo Lopez was a big time starting pitching prospect. He came up to the White Sox. They didn't need him, and so it was more like, how do we have this guy in the minor leagues who was dominating the minor leagues. We're gonna put him in a bullpen. And the first week he was ninety nine to one hundred, and he kept all three of his pitches with he had a bugs money change up. I faced him in Triple A, I'm like, WHOA, this dude's legit. So there's so many stories of that, but there has to be like a few things that like, oh, this lines up, this lines up, and I don't see that lining up with Helsley.

00:32:10
Speaker 1: Well with Lopez too, I mean he was a starter first in the big leagues with the White Sox, right right, and then they moved him over like you made thirty two starts in twenty eighteen, thirty three starts in twenty nineteen, like he had full workload starting pitching life, then reliever, then.

00:32:23
Speaker 5: Back and then what and what happened? What happened in eighteen nineteen for the White Sox they were contending, right, they couldn't use them, they could not. He was not part of how he fit into their team as a starter. And then you know, because they're like, hey, we could, we can't. We can't let you continue to learn as a starter in the big leagues. So there you go. He had the he had the ability to start, he had to learn it, and so they shifted him to the bullpen. I don't see that with Helsley.

00:32:54
Speaker 1: Do you think that this being a more new experiment for teams could lead to more injuries for these guys.

00:33:03
Speaker 2: Like this type of model.

00:33:04
Speaker 1: If you're like, hey, you've been a reliever for a while, now we're gonna build you back up as a starter. There aren't a ton of great examples yet. Maybe I'm reaching here, but Rinaldo Lopez obviously went through it. I mean, he was brilliant and then he wasn't right.

00:33:19
Speaker 5: It's all what side of the argument, Todd Well, while I look something up, what side of the argument are you on? Guys throw too much and that's why they get hurt, or they throw too little and that's why they get hurt, or they throw too hard. I guess there's three sides, but to me, it's anyway, go ahead.

00:33:33
Speaker 2: I think they need to throw more. That would be my argument.

00:33:36
Speaker 1: Okay, yes, but is it difficult for these guys to suddenly go from what they're doing to starting and then I mean Clay Holmes had a really nice beginning of the season last year the Mets, and then he eventually.

00:33:47
Speaker 6: Faded as well. You got to revamp your whole off season. You gotta revamp how you throw, how you work out. I'm not saying they can't do it. They're all professionals, but you're putting your body in different scenarios, in different situations where it's like, oh, okay, I haven't been there before. I'm getting older too as well, so the body might not keep up as much. So yeah, I think they could do it for sure, but you know how many guys have done that and been very successful.

00:34:12
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:34:12
Speaker 5: No, I was just gonna say, because it's new, teams are like, what's the track record?

00:34:18
Speaker 2: What does it say?

00:34:19
Speaker 5: You know, because they're there, great.

00:34:20
Speaker 2: If there's no track record on these things.

00:34:22
Speaker 5: Right, well, but they also don't know how to how to handle it. So Renaldo Lopez went from I mean he went to a world tour in twenty three he threw. He threw sixty six innings as a reliever in sixty eight appearances. Okay, so one inning of time he made twenty six twenty five starts, one hundred and thirty five innings. Are team's going to say, well, it's because he pitched too much, that's why he faded at the end. He's still at a one ninety nine era. Everybody will tell you that when you make it to the big leagues position players or or pitchers, you have a larger workload. Even if you're in the minor leagues forever, your workload is so much different. It used to be one hundred and forty four games in the minor leagues. You play one hundred and sixty two. You play a whole nother month. How do you train for that? To me, it's not just a willy nilly, Hey we're signing this free agent. Oh it's November. Hey, go ahead and ramp it up. We're gonna make you a starter. Especially if you say, wait a minute, you used to throw ninety nine miles an hour. Why are you throwing ninety six? Like That's where I think pitchers teams have to line up and say, you know what, I have to be able to not throw as hard as I possibly can. For Renaldo Lopez twenty six starts, but that was a successful campaign. I'm not saying it wasn't except at what cost? Because you go down to twenty twenty five and he had one start. That's not successful. To get twenty six starts in two seasons from a guy, that's not a successful transition, even though he was an All star, even though he was number eleven in the cy Young Award voting.

00:36:02
Speaker 2: Well, that's the question.

00:36:03
Speaker 1: Do you look at the two years of body of work and say, hey, he was worth that because in year one of the deal, I mean he's making what twelve, teneen, ten, whatever? Yeah for a starter like that, I mean he pitched like a one for a good chunk of the season. So some team like, okay, it was worth the sacrifice there, and we didn't know when to kind of start to ease back because he had done significant innings in the past, just not recently.

00:36:31
Speaker 2: I don't know.

00:36:31
Speaker 1: I just it's an interesting science experiment for teams. If you're going to lay that plan out, how do you keep the pitcher healthy and how do you keep them effective down the stretch. That's the other important part, right if you're a playoff team, It's great that this guy's suddenly starting, but is he going to be good in August, September, October or is he going to fade?

00:36:48
Speaker 5: And are you that good that you're like, we're banking on him fading. So we're going to what put him on the phanom I l No chance you're putting an all star starter on the phanomi l Oh, Well.

00:37:01
Speaker 2: You could back to the bullpen, back.

00:37:03
Speaker 5: To the bullpen, and then he's not but he's still throwing. Now he's got to come out and throw, you know, one inning sprints. It's it's a hard thing to put into your season if you're a contending team. This is more to me, it's more of an experiment that non contending teams can do, and players can just revamp their whole their whole stick and get tons of value for the next year. It's just so hard to navigate unless you build your roster in rotation like the Dodgers did, where you're like, we're expecting twenty to twenty five starts out of all of our guys. Somehow you got to find one hundred and sixty starts. You're gonna have your two openers and one hundred and sixty starts? Is that from seven guys? Is that from five guys? Five guys gonna be tough? For five guys and a thirty two starts? It never happens, And not when you're going after these guys.

00:37:54
Speaker 2: Yep, Okay, good stuff, good good topic.

00:37:57
Speaker 1: And we'll see if there are more teams than emerge like Detroit that are interested like that. Detroit's obviously got these big boys, including Krek's Google at the top of the rotation.

00:38:07
Speaker 2: But we'll see, you'll see what happens.