PADS ABOVE REPLACEMENT - Miller/Sears/De Vries Trade Deep Dive

John and Raphie are finally back with a trilogy of episodes to break down AJ Preller's mad mad mad trade deadline. First up is the marquee trade, which sent Leo De Vries and others to the A's in exchange for Mason Miller and JP Sears

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:15):
Let's begin.

Speaker 2 (00:18):
Hello and welcome to Pods Above replacement part of the
Padres Hot Tub podcast network. My name is Rayfie Cancer.
I am a host and producer of Padres Hot Tub
and joining me from the Mile High City. He's got
that new dad's strength and he's throwing one hundred and
three miles per hour. It's John Frea Koda.

Speaker 1 (00:39):
If I make any mistakes for a few weeks now,
you can't blame it on me. Devin Sheets and I
are going through it. That's just what happens when you
have a new child.

Speaker 2 (00:47):
It seems like it's a nice little time on Paternity
List Island. I hope you guys had a nice little
vacation together. John. It's good to see you. Obviously, it's
been quite some time. You've been busy. I've been busy.
But we had to get back into the lab to
talk about what our madman of a general manager and

(01:08):
President of Baseball Ops, AJ Preller did last week during
the course of the twenty twenty five trade deadline. So
we're gonna break it all down for you in just
a little bit. We're also going to be doing this
in a kind of a different fashion. There was so
much flurry and activity that happened on Thursday that we're
actually going to break this down into three separate episodes

(01:29):
just so that we can go a little bit more
in depth, you know, break things down. You guys can
take a little bit of a breather as we go
through these things as well. But before we get into
any of the trades, John, it's been some time since
you've been on Mike talking about the Padres. How do
you feel about this team right now? How do you
feel about the organization?

Speaker 1 (01:50):
Yeah? So those are wildly different questions, right So, Yeah, exactly,
we just made a bunch of trades. I feel like
it's impossible not to be excited about at least this
next half of the season. And if if you're not
excited about the next half of the season, you need
to work on your staying in the moment types things.
Because even if you are down on like the organization

(02:10):
as a whole, which I think is a fair assessment
if you think that all these trades were poor trades
and we gave up too much value, as a fair assessment,
and when something good is about to happen, that doesn't
mean you throw away the baby with the Bathwater, right,
you at least are entitled to enjoy the rest of
this season even if you think the trades were poor.
But yeah, that doesn't necessarily mean that one should think

(02:32):
all the trades were poor.

Speaker 2 (02:34):
So you've talked in the past about this concept of
the Prospect credit card and you know that eventually the
bill is going to come due for the Padres, and
I certainly love that analogy and continue to love that analogy.
I also think that the Padres have seemingly been able

(02:54):
to I don't know if they're doing like a credit
balanced transfer onto like an AMX that like has a
point system or something they're taking advantage of, but they
seem to keep getting away from with it for now.
Do you think that that Prospect credit card bill is
going to come do soon in a big way? Or
is aj Preler just that special.

Speaker 1 (03:14):
Every once in a while, I'll have a patient who
has no home and no job, and somehow they're addicted
to drugs, and you're like, how do you pay for
these drugs when you have no assets? And I think
what it is is desperation will get you there, you know,
And somehow, some way AJ Preller is desperate enough to

(03:35):
get a star. I don't know how he does it.
He'll trade everything in the cupboard just to get that star,
and it keeps working. You would think that eventually things
are gonna fall off, But I don't know. He's good
enough at getting these single A and lower guys with
just enough of a tantalizing talent that people are like, well,
he is the padres fourth best prospect and he does
throw ninety eight. So I mean, it's it's reasonable to

(03:58):
trade this guy for you know, ex player or y player.
I don't know. I think that he has some kind
of talent at you know, justifying a trade, and you know,
that pumping up thing for him, I think is real.

Speaker 2 (04:10):
It's very real. And I mean I think, you know,
from my armchair expert, non professional opinion on all of this,
like it does seem to me that AJ's real market
inefficiency that he's taking advantage of is that he's just
completely emotionally unattached to any of these guys. You know,
I think a lot of general managers, you know, they

(04:32):
take a lot of pride in the players that they
draft and they scout and they go to the Dominican
and they like look into them and then they they
they and they hug, you know, they hug, and Aj
again is like, oh I can get a I can
get a catcher with a seven hundred ops with four
and a half years of control. Like fuck it, Like
you guys are out of here. I don't care. So

(04:52):
I'm wondering if if that rings true for you, John,
or if you think that that is ultimately going to
be a J's achilles heel at some point.

Speaker 1 (05:01):
He's he's a good They say that the best managers
are good old fashioned sociopaths, and you're basically saying that
Aj Proler is a good old fashioned sociopath. He does
no connections, He's just willing to do whatever it takes.
I mean, it's there's so many layers to this because
he is kind of one of a kind, right, There's
not anybody else that wheels and deals quite in the
same manner. I mean, Dobroski is the closest. And he

(05:23):
even has like a very specific thing where he'll trade prospects,
usually younger prospects for current players, but is doing all
the kinds of trades he's doing, you know, lateral moves,
he's doing vertical moves. He'll trade young guys, he'll trade,
old guys, he'll trade, establish players, he'll trade. He just
does it all, and so he's different. I will say
that the one thing that I wanted to bring up

(05:44):
about his strategy in particular because it is so isolated
there's not quite anybody else that does what he does,
is that I mean, he's had conversations this trade deadline,
probably with every single team, but at least with the
Astros in depth, at least with the Red Sox in depth,
at least with the Twins in depth. And that's just
among teams that he didn't trade with. Obviously, he had

(06:05):
ended up talks with all these teams that he did
make trades with. And when he makes all those those
you know, queries on these players and they start discussing
players and transactions, what he always gets, I'm sure is
a thorough understanding of what the other GM values in
his system. And when you start having all these value

(06:25):
now you know, these value assessments of your players constantly,
then you are getting this information on what you can
do in the next trade market, in the next off season.
And so I feel like he, more than any other
GM has an internal knowledge of what his assets are
actually worth on the market, and that's valuable if you

(06:47):
want to make trades. And I think that he just
keeps using that information.

Speaker 2 (06:52):
Well, I think that that's a great springboard for us
to launch into the first trade. So this is the
trade we will be coming in this first episode, podsbav replacement.
And it's the big one. It's the marquee one. It's
the first one that came across the wire roughly around
the eight o'clock hour Pacific time on trade deadline day,
and it was you know, it absolutely floored me when

(07:15):
I saw it come across my phone, which was that
the Padres were trading for right handed flamethrower probably best
reliever in baseball and pure stuff alone, Mason Miller, and
also getting JP Sears, the lefty from the erstwhile Oakland's
now Sacramento soon to be Las Vegas Athletics. But in return,

(07:39):
you know, they gave up four prospects, three pitching prospects,
but of course the big marquee name being shortstop Leo Dvries, who,
depending on who you ask, I think most outlets had
pegged as the Padres best prospect. I think most outlets
had pegged as at least a top twenty, if not
top ten Prospectink MLB pipeline has him as number three overall,

(08:03):
and uh, you know, I think was the number one
UH international prospect in the class after the Padres got
Ethan Sallas, who was the number one international prospect the
year prior. And really, you know, I think a lot
of people saw as the future shortstop of this organization
at one point. So, I mean, there's so much to

(08:26):
unpack with this, John, where do you want to start.

Speaker 1 (08:29):
Let's start with the players that are not Leodarees and
then go into Liodarees because Leo is going to be
the argument point. But before I even get started on
those players, I want to know, so you saw this
trade happen. Right when you saw this trade happen, and
you saw that we were getting Mason Miller, if you
had to put a percentage in your mind that Suarez
was gone, what percentage would you say that was.

Speaker 2 (08:51):
Seventy five percent?

Speaker 1 (08:52):
That's exactly the number. I was going to pick. Seventy
five percent too.

Speaker 2 (08:56):
I was almost yeah, maybe eighty I was like I was.
I was excited by it, to be honest, because I mean, again,
I don't want to spike some of our stuff. But
just like I think Robert Suarez is the fourth or
fifth best reliever in the bullpen. Now, yeah, like I
think it's him and Estrata are sort of like, you know,

(09:18):
neck and neck. I'd probably put him above the Strata
or above Estrada. Maybe that's recently bias because we're recording
this on Sunday the third and Strada gave up two
runs last night in the game. Yeah, but uh yeah,
I mean to think that they could have gotten an
outfielder potentially to plug the hole that they were, you know,

(09:40):
needing to plug. Still I was anyway, yeah, please continue, John, all.

Speaker 1 (09:45):
Right, so let's let's just go. And I also thought
by the way that Suarez was long gun, let's just
go into the prospects. So braidon Net I feel like
braidon Net was this year's like Estuary ruiz Or. I
feel like every year we have this guy that I've
never heard of before the season, and then everybody's saying
that we got a hold on too, no matter what,
and then we trade him. So Brandon Net was going

(10:07):
to be a he was gonna be the next year's
probably makes it into the rotation. At some point in
the year. He's twenty three right now. He was a
number nine prospect according to Fangrafts because he had a
fastball that sat ninety four to ninety eight and topped
out at one hundred with some mediocre breaking pitches and

(10:29):
offsbe pitches to go with it long and hang and
said that poop boo oh. It took him a while
to become a viable strike thrower. And so, yeah, he
was walking like over five batters per nine innings until
this year. This was the first year that he was
down below that, and he's still at four. So it's

(10:49):
a question of in the seventy four innings that he
was pitching at double A, he was able to walk
only for batters per nine innings, which is still a lot.
And you know, and you have a guy that has
trouble control, trouble with control, and the first time that
he ever does it is for seventy four innings. There's
a good question of whether he can actually, you know,

(11:10):
keep throwing strikes if this is real or if it's
not real. And if it is real, he's probably a good,
you know, solid pitcher at the back of your rotation,
maybe even better than that. If he develops his his
off speed pitch is better and if he can't, then
he's what was that white do you remember? Was it Parada,
that white Sox pitcher who he got in the Jake
PV trade and everybody said he was gonna be good.

(11:31):
He's just lefty. I think it was Aaron Parda.

Speaker 2 (11:33):
That might be wrong, but oh my god, a vamp
and keep going and I'll confirm.

Speaker 1 (11:39):
But he does the same thing, where like he was
a guy that had nasty stuff but couldn't throw strikes,
and then he threw strikes I think the year that
we tried to trade for him, and then he never
threw strikes again. And I don't even think he made
it to the Potters. If he did, it was just
for a couple of coffee. But that's kind of the
situation here. There's definitely upside here that makes sense that
that A's would want him, and there's downside. If this

(12:00):
guy can't throw a strike, then he's definitely a relief picture.

Speaker 2 (12:04):
It was indeed Aaron Parida. By the way, there was
there were there were four players coming back to the Padres.
Can you name any of the other four. There's one
guy you do know for sure? Clay rich Yep, there
you go, Clayton Richard, Aaron Preda. And then there's two.

Speaker 1 (12:21):
There was some flame thrower that was right handed. It
was a bullpen picture. There was shoot I don't remember
his name. No, I'm lost. On the other two. I
could eventually pull it out, I'm sure, but it would
take too long on a podcast.

Speaker 2 (12:37):
The other two pictures are excuse me. The other two
players are Adam Russell and Dexter Carter.

Speaker 1 (12:44):
Yeah, Dexter Carter was the one I was thinking though,
or wait, no, yeah, I think so okay, But anyways,
there's a chance that that that net is the Aaron
Parreda of this trade. Going up next, Henry Baiaz is
a twenty three year old who is like the antithesis
of somebody that a j peler would like. He is
a strike throwing righty with the stuff of a depth starter,

(13:07):
so hes like mid like load of mid nineties. He
has kra is already in double A below nine. You know,
he just he had a one ninety sixty ra with
you know puriferles that say that he wasn't throwing that well.
So he is something that we need often, like many years,
we need somebody who will be the seventh eighth starter,

(13:28):
and you know Colk was that this year for us
when we don't have to go digging into like the
bullpen or for rich Hill to you know, get the
last few winnings. Probably that's what Baias is not my
favorite Pattery's prospect. That being said, probably useful guy, especially
when we're trading like all of our depth options like

(13:48):
we did this trading deadline. But I totally understand not
being high on him and being willing to give this
guy away. And then the last guy that's not Leodi
Breeze is the Nunez guy how to pronounce it, ed
you are and Yoe, I believe Nunyez that we saw
him for a second for four and two thirds innings
in the majors, and he's the guy with a bunch

(14:09):
of stuff and also no command. He's a minor league signing,
and I think this off season so that was, you know,
making something out of nothing. Basically, it's funny. The longenhagen
like quote on him was from a few months ago,
but it totally makes sense. And that's that while he
has the lightening stuff which we saw he does, he

(14:32):
can't repeat his delivery. He lacks mechanical fluidity and his
release is all over the place, which like totally sounds
like the unathletic wind up that it doesn't have repeatability
that a j preller would just hate, but the stuff
that he would love, So he's probably like ambivalent on
him overall. I don't know, minor league signing with great
stuff and probably will walk too many people to be

(14:53):
a great picture unless you get the you I mean,
how old is He's already twenty six.

Speaker 2 (14:58):
Years old and he can't read twenty three?

Speaker 1 (15:00):
Yeah, twenty six year old who can't repeat their delivery
is not super exciting. But you know, this is the
kind of guy that I would love if we were
in like twenty sixteen Padres, where like we don't have
much on the horizon, but we're like, maybe this guy
could be a closer, and maybe he can for a
team like Days.

Speaker 2 (15:18):
Yeah, yeah, I mean he's got this sort of winnowy
equality to him as well. He's six to two, but
he's only one seventy and he doesn't you know, he
doesn't have that kind of muscle build up, and it's
like when you get to this point in your career.
If you're not able to repeat the mechanics of your delivery,
that's death to major league pitchers because the hitters are

(15:39):
simply just too good, Like they'll they'll pick up on
it like it's like it's they don't even realize that
they're picking up on it. Their instincts are so good.
So my question before we start talking about Leo, these
three guys, Net, Bias, Nuniaz, are you gonna miss any
of them?

Speaker 1 (15:56):
Yeah? Net, just because I like to have that, you
know that you can have in the minor leagues that
you can bring up and not have to get rich
Hill when the I mean, how close were we to
running out of pictures this year? We were very close,
and we got lucky that it ended up being like
Burger was fine, Colic was fine. Somehow, some way Vasquez

(16:16):
has survived. I have no idea how, but somehow that
worked out. It felt like we were on a precipice
and we almost fell over and we didn't. We just
like stood right on the edge, and you know that's
the guy that would keep you from falling over the edge.

Speaker 2 (16:28):
Probably next year, Yeah, So let's talk about Leo. So,
do you want to do a little queue up on
Leo and then we can talk about the future war
and all that stuff.

Speaker 1 (16:40):
Yeah. So, I mean Potters fans know this dude. Well,
it's a question of what you think he is. And
there's I feel like there's two camps kind of. There's
the camp that thinks that this is a future like
great hitter who sticks at shortstop and therefore is a

(17:00):
franchise altering player, and the people that rank him third
overall like MLB Prospectus, that's who they think that they are.
And then there's a there's a most people are slightly
behind that, And then there's Eric Longenhagen who's on the
very far end and has him rated below Sallas, mostly
because he thinks that he needs to gain muscle strength

(17:21):
in order to be a valuable hitter. But then if
he gains muscle strength, you have to move him off
shortstop and now you have to hit like either a
second basement or a third baseman if he gains a
lot of muscle mass, and now it's like Kenny hit
enough to be a third baseman where his ceiling would
be kotel Marte, but its floor is just a pretty
good hitting third baseman. And if that's the case if

(17:43):
he is moved off to shortstop position, it's going to
be harder for him to be to be a valuable hitter.
I mean, he's eighteen, so you're basically making wild guesses
right now about what he would be at the major
league level. He's I think, like four years younger or
something crazy then his average player at the same level
as he is, so he has a lot of time

(18:03):
to develop. That being said, does he have holes, I
don't know. You normally find that out in like double A.
So he I understand getting people excited about a player
and then trading that player and he could be franchise altering.
So it depends on your level of risk about how
much you like to freeze.

Speaker 2 (18:24):
Yeah, something you talked about before we hit recording is
prospect evaluation has gotten better over the years. So you know,
the idea that there's a pretty wide consensus that he's
going to be an impact player for whichever organization he
shows up for. I think you could probably probably bank

(18:47):
on that in some way. I think that the error
bars that you laid out are are pretty significant in
terms of the future impact of this trade, because you know,
we haven't gotten to the to the A side of
things yet, but Mason Miller's really good, Like he's he's
just really good. And like that's basically like we're gonna
talk about it a little bit more in depth than that,

(19:07):
but like that's gonna be like our top line is like, look,
this guy throws harder than anyone else, and if his
arm doesn't fall off, he's going to continue to be incredible.
And sort of what you were talking about with with
Leo is like, yeah, if he hits thirty home runs
a year as a switch hitter playing shortstop, that stings,

(19:29):
Like that's that is a franchise altering player. You can't
like polish that turdu. But if you know, if he
doesn't build up the muscle, or if he does build
up the muscle and is a negative defender or whatever,
and like, yes, he's still a power hitter. And like,
how many thirty to forty home run guys are there
out there? Really not a lot. It's still gonna hurt.

(19:50):
But I did just want to as we transition out
to talking about kind of the future war breakdown, which
if you're not familiar with the concept of future war,
John and I have plenty of episodes where we talk
about it. You can go and listen to our trade
breakdown we did of the Wan Soto trade. You can
listen to and then the second one Soto trade, like
we talk about it quite a bit there. But basically

(20:13):
the idea is when teams are evaluating making these trades,
they assign dollar values and therefore sort of war values
to prospects. And the thing to really know about it
is that present war is more valuable than future war.
So production that you were getting today in twenty twenty
five is more valuable than production you're getting in twenty

(20:36):
twenty eight. And there are plenty of different talent evaluators
who have their own formulas of like how much they think,
Like they even go into like we think that Like
I know, for fangraphs, they basically have a exponential decay
of ninety three percent year over year, so they and
that's what I use for my future workoutlculation, So basically

(20:57):
meaning that like you know, six war is worth ninety
three percent of twenty twenty five war, and twenty twenty
seven war is worth ninety three percent squared of twenty
five war, you know what I mean. So it's like
you can really get technical with it if you want,
and they've there's an article I think Longenhangen wrote this one,

(21:20):
but it's back from twenty eighteen where they basically assigned
war values to different tiers of prospects. And you if
you're watching this, which we should say, we hope you're
watching the video of this, it's gonna be on YouTube,
or if you're a patron, you know, it might be
on Patreon if I can get the uploads. Sometimes the
upload system is a little finicky on there. But we

(21:41):
have a chart on screen now that that will show
you kind of how Fangrafts values top one hundred prospects.
And I think something that's super important to note you
can see on the different sixty position player future value
of fifty five position player future value tiers is that
the bus rate for these guys is really still quite high.

(22:04):
And by bus rate we mean they put up fewer
than one war in their career. So for sixty future
value players back when this was written in twenty eighteen,
the bus rate was thirty one point eight percent. For
fifty five future value players, the bus rate was thirty
six point five percent. For fifty future value position players,

(22:27):
the bus rate was over half fifty one point five percent. Okay,
Obviously talent evaluation has gotten better since then. I suspect
that those bus rates now will be a little bit smaller.
But one thing that Leo has going against him compared
to some of these other prospects that are evaluated is
that he's eighteen years old. He's super young, and that

(22:51):
creates larger error bars. And so yes, maybe Leo's ceiling
is higher than we can even imagine right now, but
also his floor could be lower. So it's important to
keep that in mind. So as we talk about future war,
I'm gonna just go ahead and give you the breakdown
as I have calculated it, and then you know, we

(23:12):
can kind of talk about why work, why that calculation
works and doesn't work. So Mason Miller, according to Zips,
is projected to put up about a one war every
year of his deal. So so for four and a
half seasons of control, that's four and a half f
four projected, and that would be three point nine future

(23:33):
war with the decaying returns. As I said, the reason
that that's imperfect is that war for relievers, it is
typically calculated by how many leverage innings that they throw
and by way of the fact that he was playing
for the athletics, Mason Miller was not throwing as many
leverage innings as he will with the Padres. So I

(23:53):
would say that that war calculation is probably lower than
it actually will end up being because these projections were
run at the beginning of the season. But uh, just
top level with that number, John, How does that strike you?

Speaker 1 (24:12):
Whenever you do this, it's like relatively close the total
value in the exchange, and so it feels like all
the gms are operating off something that's relatively similar to
the thing that you're basically operating off of. I will say,
just like you said, the the you know, how high

(24:32):
the leverage of the situation is dictates how valuable or
relief picture is. I mean, the numbers for Mason Miller
in terms of future war are like barely higher than jpcars,
And I feel like our intuition tells us that that
is just not true. Like his his likelihood of even
if he just stays in as a reliever, the likelihood
of him being a valuable commodity worth more than one war,

(24:54):
I mean, one win one blown say that turns into
a loss compared to you know, like JP series is
not close, So I would say that kind of like
defense relief value is tough to judge, and so I'm
sure that there's some folks out there who value it more.

(25:15):
And I think that a J. Peller has very clearly
declared himself to be somebody who values relief pitching more
than the average GM, especially in years that he thinks
that he's going to make it to the playoffs, because
he's seen relievers, you know, turnover value in the playoffs
at a higher rate because in the playoffs you can
only use your top maybe ten pitchers that you're using,

(25:36):
and so their value versus somebody that you're not going
to use, like a probable jpcars is exponentially more valuable
if your goal is to win a championship, which should
be a J. Peller's goal.

Speaker 2 (25:48):
Yeah, And just so folks get sort of reference of
like what does an incredible reliever season look like, and
how does that great out in terms of f four
Last year with the Athletics, Mason Miller pitched sixty five.
During those sixty five innings, he had a two point
one to eight FIP. That fip was carried by a
fourteen point four strikeouts per nine rate. He was walking

(26:09):
guys just under three per nine, and he gave up
homers at a zero point eight three per nine clip, and
he threw sixty five innings, and that equated to two
point three war two point three four. That's probably a
ninetieth percentile outcome for any reliever, I mean, certainly, and
even for Bason Miller. I mean, it's hard to imagine
it getting that much better than that. And so if

(26:32):
you think maybe two point five f wour is like
the the one hundred percentile outcome of what a reliever
can offer you, it's hard to imagine a reliever pushing
three f four.

Speaker 1 (26:43):
Swatch just has one point seven f woor this year,
And like, I feel like most of us kind of
shit on Suarez overall, but like, because he is getting
all those leverage innings, it boosts your four. The whole
calculation seems a little bit like, I don't know, imperfect,
it's a little imperfect.

Speaker 2 (27:02):
But because I haven't even just laid out what the
whole future war calculation is, so I have Mason Miller
at four point five total four projected three point nine
f future war. I have JP Sares at two point
seven f war projected two point four future war, So
in future war that grades out to six point three
that the padres are receiving. And for the athletics, it's

(27:27):
entirely dependent on how good you think Lao Direes is.
So I didn't even calculate Layo Direes as a fifty
future value player because literally, Eric Lonkinhangen is the only
evaluator who thinks that, and I think it's a little
silly because it just obviously, yeah.

Speaker 1 (27:42):
Just by reference, that same guy almost ranked Berger as
a fifty, so he was. He was basically said he
was a change up away from being the same value
tier as Leod de Breezers. Seems insane to me.

Speaker 2 (27:54):
It's it's insane and I just frankly don't agree with it.
And in the latest write up they did, he like
he's about as close to a fifty five future value
as a fifty future value prospect could be, which I'm like, okay,
fuck off. So let's say you value him as either
a fifty five or sixty future value player, as most
outlets do. That puts his future war calculation at five

(28:17):
point one or six point one, which again I think
gives you an idea of how why the air bars
are on these guys, because you don't think of giving
up six point one future war in a deal and
think that that's going to be a franchise altering number.
But that's because you're factoring in a thirty ish thirty one,

(28:37):
thirty two percent bust rate on these guys who don't
put up any and so six point one is an
average number for guys who are graded out at sixty
future value and the rest of the guys Brandon Net,
Henry Bias, Edwardiel Nuniez, I mean they're you know, it's
Net's the only one that that grates out above zero

(28:59):
point one future war. He puts up zero point three
future war as a forty plus future value pitcher. Really,
the thought process behind that is just there's no such
thing as as a pitching prospect. The error bars are
massively wide because at any point, any of their elbows
could explode. And when you're not graded out at like
a McKenzie gore level evaluation as a prospect, it's just

(29:21):
really hard to There's so many of these guys who
average out to nothing that it just kind of drags
the valuation down. So depending on how you see Layo Devrees,
the Athletics are either receiving five point six or six
point six total future war. That's again against the Padres
receiving six point three. So you know, again I don't

(29:43):
know if the system is perfect. I think especially with relievers,
it doesn't really work. And also we're gonna talk about
JP Sars. I think Jvcars is going to be a
much better player for the Padres than that. But the
numbers are somewhat close, so you can kind of see
if they use something similar to this, how they get
to this number. John.

Speaker 1 (30:00):
So if you don't like this trade, there's I feel
like there's two people who don't like the trade. There's
one person that says we gave up way too much,
and that's that's if you are more accepting a risk,
I feel like you're that person because you're like this
because Liar Devies could be a very average, below average
player even but it could also be a star. So

(30:21):
if you're the person that just likes to hunt risk,
then you probably think that we gave up too much.
If you're a conservative person about prospects, then you probably don't.
But there's another person that I think is a more
fair argument, which is, we gave up a fair amount
for this player, Mason Miller. But why the hell did
we go after Mason Miller rather than a different like

(30:42):
a position player or a starting pitcher or somebody else
that has equal value to Mason Miller but would help
the team more a catcher. So let's get into Mason Miller,
I think, and then we can have that debate after
we talk about Mason Miller, which would be pretty short,
I think.

Speaker 2 (30:59):
Yeah. So for folks who don't know Mason Miller, he
was drafted by the Athletics in twenty twenty one. He
was a third round pick, ninety seventh overall. He was
a college signee. He went to Gardner Webb University. John,
Do you know what the mascot of Gardner Webb University is?

Speaker 1 (31:21):
I've seen them before, probably college basketball. Is it like
a spider or something?

Speaker 2 (31:26):
Or it is not a spider. It is a mammal?

Speaker 1 (31:32):
Okay down, you know mammals among logos. You know how
unlikely those are?

Speaker 2 (31:37):
Yeah, it is the did you want to guess or
sure to say?

Speaker 1 (31:41):
So? It's is Gardener Wam in North Carolina? Is that what?

Speaker 2 (31:43):
It was said Gardner Webb is in North it is
in Boiling Springs, North Carolina.

Speaker 1 (31:48):
So a mammal in North Carolina. What kind of mammals
do they have in North carolinam I mean maybe there
are there bears in the some kind of bear in
the Smokies.

Speaker 2 (32:01):
There's not. And I'm just gonna go ahead and tell
you they are the running Bulldogs, the running Bulldogs of
Gardner Webb University, which is a is a private Baptist
university that is D one. It's D one. They played
in the Big South Conference. So good on Mason Miller.
There you go.

Speaker 1 (32:21):
So is that aj Preller right right away when he
was talking about He's like, oh, I wanted this guy,
but he wanted to go over slot. He signed with
them for slot in the third round. So I mean
we drafted after the a's I saw in the third round.
So if we would have got him, we would have
got him instead of Gasser. I think it was Robert

(32:41):
Gasser that we got in the second round that year.
So I don't know, it didn't seem like we had
to go over slot to get him.

Speaker 2 (32:48):
Yeah, So when he graduated to the athletics major leagues,
Eric Bogenhagen graded him as the thirty eighth overall prospect
in baseball at the end of twenty twenty four, number
one overall in the Athletics organization. Fifty future value evaluation
as a reliever, fastball eighty grade. I mean, I don't

(33:10):
see how else you can Yeah, what else can you
give him? Slider seventy grade, change up sixty grade and
the command was a forty five present value, fifty future
value and the TLDR too long. Didn't read of Miller's
prospect evaluation was his prospect stock was impacted by his

(33:32):
injury history, which we will talk about. But he has
premium stuff and will be an elite closer while healthy.
I think that elite closer almost under sells it. John.

Speaker 1 (33:45):
Although you're I mean, I'm not going to get into
I don't think we're getting into this him his prospect
as a started starting picture. Possibly maybe we will, but
I will if we are going to get into it,
I will kind of seed that conversation by wondering about
this sixty grade change up that he throws one point
eight percent of the time. Because Doesneble like changeups? He
does question question going forward. Let's put that in the

(34:06):
back of your head, everybody. Mm.

Speaker 2 (34:08):
Interesting. Interesting, So just really briefly on that injury history. So,
after a May eighth start against the Kansas City Royals,
the Miller was given elbow tightness diagnosis. Uh and he

(34:28):
was later diagnosed with a mild sprain of his ucl
is throwing elbow and promptly shut down. So that was
by the way back in twenty twenty three. So this
was when Miller was still you know, being touted as
a potential starter and uh So in twenty twenty four,
the athletics announced that they were going to move Miller

(34:50):
to being a reliever and that wasn't an effort to
maintain his health. And in the time since then, Miller
has said that he will not but go back to
being a starter unless he gets a contract extension, which
is of course the same thing that Garrett Crochet did,
which he then achieved when he was traded to the

(35:10):
Red Sox and got a contract extension. And is now
that that's actually worked out very well for both Garrett
Crochet and the Red Sox. So, John, why don't you
just like break it down for us, like tell us
about Miller the picture at Like, why is he so
good starter, prospects in the future, et cetera.

Speaker 1 (35:29):
All right, this is very simple. He's really good because
he throws one hundred and four miles an hour up
to one hundred four miles an hour with a good slider,
and we're going to see that. I interestingly to me,
he has a kind of similar location profile with his
foreseen fastball as Nick Pivett died before he came to
the Padres, which Nick Vett hasn't changed out wildly, but

(35:52):
he's changed it just enough to make him like slightly
more variable than he was. And in Mason's Mason, I'm
I'm on our first name basism basis with Mason. So
in Miller's first start or first relief appearance for the Padres,
he also is hitting more armside fastballs like armside middle
in which he never does. And so I'm wondering if

(36:13):
we're gonna change the locations around a little bit on him.
He doesn't have the command that Pavetta has, but I
do wonder because he's pretty For the A's he was
pretty much all forcing fastball above the zone, mostly down
the middle, but above the zone, and then slider glove
side away, middle away, goes tunnel off each other well,
which is what Paveta kind of did before he came

(36:34):
to the Padres. And then once Pavetta came to the Padres,
he put his sweeper instead of a slider. Why did
I just get a bunch of balloons more low and
away rather than middle away? And it's obviously worked very well,
and he's also moved his fastball command around a little
bit more. So I do wonder whether if you come
up to the play against Mason Miller and you pretty
much know that he's gonna give you a fastball up

(36:55):
that you just are is this to strike? If it's probably,
you just don't at it. If it's you know, high
at all, but then you're looking for it to be
over the middle, and if it's over the middle, you swing.
I do wonder whether Enablo is going to change things
up a little bit. It seemed like there's only ten pitches.
I think that he threw in the in the first appearance,
So I don't know. I guess now is the best
time to mess with it before you get to the playoffs,

(37:17):
just to see if you can buy a few more
strikes on the inside part to right handers or away
from lefties. But for the most part, he throws one
hundred and four and he has a nasty slider. If
you don't mess with what's working currently as a reliever,
then he's probably just going to keep doing that fastball
is above the zone and then sliders that tunnel off
of it. Like I said, he throws that change up
one point eight percent of the time. I suppose if

(37:38):
we were moving him back into the rotation, if that
change up continues to play well, which I mean stuff
plus doesn't do changeups that well. But I would imagine
a change up that was originally grade sixty off of that,
you know, as a starter, probably closer to one hundred
mile in our fastball, we'd probably play well, especially to lefties.

(37:58):
He'd probably be nasty. The question is whether he would
be able to endure the violence on his arm over
you know, so many pitches per per appearance. He's good,
He's really good. I bet we could make him even
better with just a couple of little tweaks if we
wanted to. But he's he's he's got pretty good induced vertical,

(38:19):
and he's got pretty good induced vertical for somebody that's
averaging a fastball of one hundred and one point one
miles per hour, so like he could get away with
not having induced vertical and he has pretty good, like
slightly above average induced vertical even on that one hundred
and one point one mile per hour fastball. So if
you get a fastball at the top of the zone
against him, you good luck unless you're like Vladimirgerrero or
somebody who can the original, somebody who can just like

(38:42):
smack a fastball at incredible rates. He's good. That's that's
really it. He's good. Do we transfer him into relieve,
I mean into a starting pitcher. We've had success obviously
with that with quite a few players. Now, if you
want to increase the total likelihood of his value, it's
possibly worth getting into and when you have him for

(39:04):
as many years as we have him, even if you
lose him to a single, yes, young, I mean not
so young. A single? What do you call it when
you cut the U c L But the surgery what
do you call it the surgery for when you cut UCO? Sorry,
Tommy John, Tommy John, Yeah, if you get a single
Tommy John surgery doctor for Koda. Sorry.

Speaker 2 (39:28):
I was like, John, I was like, are you asking
me what I think you're asking me. Don't you're in
a surgery rotation right now.

Speaker 1 (39:36):
I am currently in a surgery rotation. That's true. If
he gets a single Tommy John, then it's probably still
like you lose one year out of the four of
value that you have. Cool. That's he's gonna be valuable
no matter what you do with him, and he has
a higher likelihood of being incredibly valuable if you move

(39:56):
him to the starting pitcher role. If you leave him
in as a it's still very valuable.

Speaker 2 (40:02):
Yeah, I mean, I really don't have too much to
add to that. You know, there's a little bit of
hay made about oh, well he's not that good against
lefties this year. I A, it's a pretty small sample size.
But be also, I think that that we can chalk
that up to Sacramento, something that we're going to talk
about a lot when we get to JP Sears. So
before we do that, why don't we talk about the

(40:24):
you have it in our article as the implications of
Mason Miller and a little component of game theory that
you want to talk to us about.

Speaker 1 (40:32):
Yeah, so this this rolls into what I was talking
with you about earlier in the podcast when we were saying,
did you think that we were going to trade Suarez?
So we didn't trade Suarez. And there's Ben Clemen's article
that came out right after that that basically said the
Padres have used their four best relievers, the four horsemen,
prior to this trade, in almost every single possible higher

(40:57):
than average index spot. So we've every time that there's
a high leverage spot the four horsemen are in, which
means that if you add a pitcher to it, then
one of those four horsemen are basically pitching more often
in a lower than average indexed spot, which means that
you're not technically adding to the total value of like

(41:17):
how much value you can pull out of a bullpen.
And so that totally makes sense to me from an argument,
especially during the regular season. However, during the playoffs, you
could argue that the team that Aj Peler set up,
the value of our team currently is based on our bullpen.

(41:40):
That's the deck that we built. We built a team
that is based on its bullpen capacity going to win games,
and that means that especially in a three game series
if we may only make the wild card, but also
in a five game series in the second round, we
have to use all of our five relievers almost every
single game, at least, you know, three or four out

(42:01):
of five games. And the question is is are we
going Is Mike Shilt going to use the roster that
was built for him? Is he gonna be able to
pull Dylan Cees, Michael King, you Darvish, Nick Povetta in
the fourth inning if there's runners on base, or in

(42:22):
the fifth inning, before they even go into the fifth inning,
just because they're facing the third time through the lineup
for the first time. Is he going to be able
to do that? Because that is going to be what's
most successful. And so what I have listed here, I
have it organized by x wOBA, but you can you can,
you know, look at whatever stats you want. This is
for the past two years Padres or the Padres starter.

(42:47):
So you Darvish, Nick Povetta, Michael King, and Dylan Cease
plus the now five relief pictures that we have that
are the good ones, their stats from the fourth inning on.
So you pick if it's the if it's the fourth inning,
or if it's the fifth inning and you need five,

(43:08):
you know innings, who of these pitchers are you going
to make sure that you include for the rest of
the game against the Dodgers in the playoffs. Right, it's
an important game.

Speaker 2 (43:18):
Okay, And do you want me to try and guess
who these people are?

Speaker 1 (43:22):
You can if you want, but you don't have to.
You can just you can just pick who you are. Oh,
I'm just picking the fourth or fifth inning. You can
do either, you can do both one the other.

Speaker 2 (43:31):
Well, I think part of it is, uh is what
part of the lineup are you facing? Who's on base,
et cetera, et cetera. So I mean, like, you have
a guy on there that I have to assume is
Mason Miller with his forty one point strikeout right as
Elica at the top.

Speaker 1 (43:52):
I was pitching every game in a close skit, or.

Speaker 2 (43:55):
Yeah, I would want him to face the top of
the Dodgers lineup whatever the final time that they're projected
to come up in the game is. So if that's
the the seventh inning or the eighth inning or the
ninth inning, it doesn't really matter to me. And then
we've got the next highest person up, or there's two

(44:15):
people tied with an x wOBA of two fifty four,
but I've got one of them below who has a
higher strikeout rate, a slightly higher walk rate, but a
sub two hundred batting average, and it's sub three hundred
slugging percentage that they'd probably be my second person up,
followed by whoever's above them as the third person. And uh,

(44:40):
I'm just trying to think, I mean, like from fourth inning,
I mean I would just kind of go in these
in this descending order here that you have. There's really
only like one person who there's there's two people who
are really like big, like blinking red lights for me,
which are the two bottom people who have x woba's
a three hundred. So why don't you tell me who

(45:03):
all these people are? Yeah, so this is great audio content,
by the way.

Speaker 1 (45:07):
The bottom so I just wanted you to rank them
because now the good audio content is gonna happen. So
the bottom two pictures are Nick Pavetta and Dylan ceas
which means that if it's the fourth inning and we're
facing the lineup through for the third time, very good,
are you gonna bench? Nick Pivetta and Dylan Ce's game
strategy would say yes, right, absolutely, you're gonna do it.

(45:29):
So this is so important about whether they're aligned on
their strategy, because if we build a strategy that's a
perfect strategy and we use it imperfectly, then we have
an imperfect strategy, right. And so the question is is
are we going to up for in the in a
clinching game in the ALCS or NLCS. Are we going

(45:49):
to pitch Mike Clevenger in the first inning and then
Manaiah afterwards, you know, like like we did with bow Mel. Hopefully,
if it's the fifth inning and there's even one hitter
on base, or the top of the lineups coming up,
or it's any like any kind of important situation, we're
pulling Nick Povetta and Dylan Cee's for sure. Right, then
you can get into a question mark. I feel like

(46:11):
Darvish is actually ahead of Jason Adam and Robert Suarez. Interestingly,
Darbish gets better as the game goes on. So just
like in the playoffs last year against the Dodgers, leaving
him in tended to be a valuable thing to do.
And so he's he's I mean, he's not built up.
So we'll see if he gets built up for the playoffs.
And this is even a question, but if it is,
if he is built up and he's playing well, there's

(46:32):
at least a question mark about whether you pull Darvish
in the fourth or fifth inning. And then Michael King
also a question mark because he's kind of similar to
Robert Suarez in total efficacy the past couple of years,
So you can make a debate to leave Michael King
in for the fourth or fifth. But for the most part,
it's pretty much just I mean, the players that you
ranked in order were Mason Miller, then Jeremiah Strata, who

(46:52):
you would then put in in the in the second
highest leverage then more a hone, and then you Darvish,
like I said, and then Jason Adam and then Robert Suarez.
So basically, besides you de Arvish, you're just using the
five horsemen from probably the fourth inning on and just
trying to go, you know, get a an inning and
a third from each of them and just running out

(47:13):
the bullpen. So the question is was it Is it
a good strategy? I think it depends on whether we
implement the strategy. If we do implement the strategy, I
would argue that it would be a great strategy for
the playoffs.

Speaker 2 (47:24):
Yeah, also just goes to show, like my trust level
in the starting rotation is probably Michael King, Nick Pavetta,
and then you Darvish and then Dylan Ceese in the playoffs. Like,
my trust level for Dylan Cees is so low, man,
It's just I just think it's just I mean, you'll

(47:45):
hear the same thing for Craig and Chris. But I
think that there's just something about being there, like we were,
the three of us were there in Game four last
year at the NLDS, and it was just I know
he was on short rest, and I know there was
a lot of clutch. He wasn't really set up for six.
But something is just seared into our brains that we
can't we can't undo.

Speaker 1 (48:06):
Dude, Okay, Dylan cease. Dylan cease. This year so far,
his first time through the order is two ninety four.

Speaker 2 (48:12):
What do you think is second time through the order
is oh two, I'm gonna go like five seventy five,
six oh five, and then it goes pretty close.

Speaker 1 (48:23):
Thirty three after that. So I mean, if you if
you're gonna use Dylan Seas, which I think we basically
have to use Dylan see, if you're gonna use Dylan
Sweeze in the playoffs, then you're gonna have a criminally
short leash on it with this current bullpen. That's just
how you have to do it. That's just how you
have to do it.

Speaker 2 (48:40):
I would love to see him piggybacked with uh JP
Sears in the playoffs, which is my uh segment transition
man transition man. Uh So, I mean the reason for
that being, of course, that also we've we've you've got
a hard throwing alrighty against the somewhat selft tossing lefty.
But okay, JP s. For folks who do not know,

(49:03):
he is twenty nine years old. He was drafted in
twenty seventeen in the eleventh round by the Seattle Mariners.
The Seattle Mariners, but his time in the Mariners organization
was somewhat brief. He ended up going to the Yankee system,
which this is just a side note, but I wanted
to just point out for our folks we have a
lot of former Yankees organization pitchers with the Padres. Now

(49:27):
we've got JP Sears, we've got Rady Vasquez, we've got
Michael King, We've got Johnny Brido, we've got Nesa Cortes.
So I don't know, there's something something interesting there. Obviously,
the Yankees are a pretty well regarded pitching organization, and
certainly now with Matt Blake as they're pitching coach, they've
been doing great things. But I'm just curious if that's

(49:50):
something that Preller, if it's coincidence, or if Preller sort
of recognizes that, like, oh, they do know how to
scout pitching, and you know there's something to be to
be gained from that. But anyway, he ends up on
the Yankees, and he gets traded to the Oakland Athletics
and comes over in the twenty twenty two season, and

(50:12):
basically from the time that he was with the A's
he's been good to mid to maybe not that great,
depending on you know, what numbers you're looking at. He
is an extreme flyball pitcher. You know, his first year
with the Athletics, his first full season, he had a
FIP over five, largely because he was getting shelled and

(50:36):
wasn't striking out as many guys. Twenty twenty four, that
number just creeps down to four point seven to one,
and so far this season with the A's he has
a FIP again that's just nearing four point ninety six
right now. But the good news for Padres, folks, is
that he's an inning zeater. One hundred and seventy two

(50:57):
innings in twenty twenty three, hundred and eighty innings in
twenty twenty four, and he's already thrown one hundred and
eleven innings so far for the Athletics this season, John,
why don't you get into a little bit more of
the nitty gritty with JP and then I'll kind of
talk about his flyball profile.

Speaker 1 (51:13):
All right, So obviously he's been fine. He's JP series
is the definition of fine XCRA this year is the
forty third percentile, which would be classified as fine. The
thing that makes him interesting is one he has a
weird delivery, right, with a weird angle. And you discussed

(51:36):
before when we were talking about like the fastball speed
doesn't really matter when you're throwing it at different angles,
or you can't just like trick somebody like so, Kyle Hart,
you were low on at the start of the season
because despite the fact that he had a strange angle,
he just didn't throw hard enough to get by major
league hitters. And so I think that a lot of

(51:57):
what happens with JP Sears is can he throw literally
this is what it comes down to for me, can
he throw fast enough to be a major league quality
starting pitcher. And I don't know. I don't know what
the answer to that is. And so I dug into
it a little bit and we'll talk about it probably
in a little bit. But his scouting report before he
got to the Major's said that he sits ninety three

(52:19):
and his fastball lives off the angle at the top
of the zone, so kind of like in extremely extremely
poor version of Josh Hater where he has the weird
angle and he can hit it at the top of
the zone, but seriously throws it at about six miles an
hour less. But he also has a swing in miss
slider that has great back foot angle against Riety's. He

(52:40):
actually mentioned this in it later on in this article
that I posted, but Longen Haeggen said that he alters
his release somewhat when throwing the slider, but hitters haven't
been able to pick that up so far, and he
actually said that himself. He says that he knows that
he drops down a lot with his slider in particular,
and soossible that some hitters can pick that up. I

(53:01):
don't know how easy or hard that is because I've
never done it. But he drops his angle a little bit.
And then what he referenced also in the article was
that he knows he's like one of those nerdy guys,
so he'll probably get along well with Michael King and
with Joe Musgrove. But he knew that in order to
make his breaking pitches and his off speed pitches better,

(53:23):
he actually had to make the analytics behind his four
seem worse. Otherwise it was too it was too different
from his off speed pitches, and you would be able
to pick up all these things even easier. And so
he knows that he analytically made his four seamer worse
in exchange for making his breaking pitches better. So I

(53:44):
don't know that's interesting to me. It's interesting to me
that he knows that what he wants to do is
increase fastball velocity. He gave it up point three to
point four bump this year. I'm just gonna get into
what I think about that. So when I like took
out the numbers of when he throws a fastball, that's

(54:04):
ninety three miles an hour or more or ninety two
miles an hour or less, and that's this year and
last year, Just so you know, his average fastball velocity
is ninety two point two. So when he is just
above his average, what his numbers are, and when he's
just below his average, he when he's ninety three or
higher on his foreseen fastball. That fastball result had a

(54:26):
wobun and x wOBA in the two nineties, both of them,
so two ninety two whoba two ninety seven, X whoba
when it's ninety two or less. His WLOBA was three
ninety two and x wlobo is three seventy four. So
we're talking about one hundred points difference basically when he's
throwing it hard enough to be ninety three or more
versus when he drops down a little bit. And so

(54:47):
that kind of bears out to me in his numbers
first time through, second time through, and third time through
the order. So in that first time through the order
when he's able to kind of ramp it up a
little bit. This year, his ERA is three zera eight.
For his whole career, it's three forty seven. Obviously, those
are good numbers. Those are numbers that you will take
all the time. This year, his second time through is

(55:07):
ninety six. For his career is four ninety, Suddenly you're
talking more of a you know, third or fifth starter
or so, and then third time through seven eighty eight
this year and five fifty for his career. So the
question is for me for JP sears one, can he
throw hard enough like that's just it. Can he throw
ninety three miles an hour or more and then have
his nasty sweeper off of it, Because he does have

(55:29):
a good sweeper. It generates wiss at to twenty six
point four percent rate the ex wOBA against his two
thirty six so far this year. It's a good sweeper.
But he can't just live on sweepers in his own
all the time. He has to be able to command
his fastball and hard enough for hitters not to just
be able to key in on it.

Speaker 2 (55:47):
Yeah, I mean it's it's sort of reminiscent of when
you broke down the Waldron knuckleball sort of velocity threshold,
and you're like, Okay, if Matt Waldron just throws his
knuckleball at least seventy eight miles per hour, like you know,
he's basically a completely different pitcher. And you know, in
the limited action we saw Matt Waldron this year, he
was not throwing it that hard. He was throwing it

(56:08):
closer to seventy six. Seventy seven was saw that different.
So yeah, super intriguing for JP series because to me,
there was one obvious comparison and play that stuck out
to me, and I talked about it on the main show.
But I'm gonna do go much more in depth here,
which is it reminded me of the Nick Pavetta signing

(56:29):
and the reasoning. You know, this is not super in
depth analysis, but you just look at these guys' profiles.
They're both extreme flyball pitchers. You know, JP sears had
a flyball rate so far this season. Gosh, where do
I have it? I have it down here? Of I

(56:51):
don't have it down here, this is I only have
his homestats. Well, I'm just gonna vampall I pull it up.
JP Series is a flyball pitcher. That's all you need
to know. Extreme flyball pitcher. So here we go, fifty
two point nine percent flyball rates so far, which is
the highest of his career. He is a career forty

(57:14):
nine point three percent fly ball pitcher. And just for reference,
so you guys can get a sense of like what
like league average is according to stat Cast, the league
average fly ball rate is twenty four percent, So he's
more than he's more than double league average in terms

(57:37):
of flyballs. And let's talk about why JP series has
been mid so far. Well, there's a lot of variants
that happens when a ball goes in the air. There's
a lot of environmental factors that go into it. And
stack Cast, which is for a long time had park
factors up there. It's something we've talked about, you know,

(57:59):
all the time. Why is Course Field a hitters park?
You know, why is San Francisco typically a pitcher's park,
et cetera, et cetera, And you know we always have
kind of talked about, like, well, elevation and temperature and YadA, YadA, YadA. Well,
they've added recently a variable extra distance tab in terms
of parks, so you can literally see how much further

(58:22):
flyballs fly in certain ballparks, and they rate it based
off of temperature, elevation, environmental factors, whether or not you're
playing under a roof super super cool data. And so
I want to start by talking about Nick Pavetta because
Nick Pavetta is another extreme flyball pitcher and Nick Pavetta
when he originally was playing for the Philadelphia Phillies, was

(58:44):
not very good. He had an era around five. He
was tended to be clobbered a lot. And if you
look on the variable extra distance chart, you'll see that
right now, on average, flyballs in Philadelphia are flying a
five point eight feet further than they are in Boston.
And when Nick Povoda went to Boston, you can see

(59:05):
that his home runs per nine rate at home went
down about zero point three. So his career home run
per nine rate at home is one point seventy nine
in Philadelphia, one point four point eight in Boston. And
since he's come to San Diego, I know it's only
one season of sample size, but he has a zero

(59:26):
point seven home run per nine rate at home with
the San Diego Padres. And what's so curious about this
is that his fly ball rate over the course of
his career has actually gone up with each successive location.
So in Philadelphia he had a fly ball rate at

(59:46):
home of thirty six point seven percent and a home
run to fly ball percentage of nineteen point five percent,
So basically one in every five fly ball that Nick
Poveda was allowing in Philadelphia was going over the fence
for a home run. Austin, he gave up forty point
five percent flyball rate at home. That home run to
fly ball percentage went down to fifteen percent, and in

(01:00:07):
San Diego he has the highest fly ball rate at
home of his career. Forty eight point three percent sounds
an awful lot like JP Sears his career number and
his home run to fly ball percentage has fallen to
seven point one percent. Now when you look at JP Sears,
JP Sears has played in two ballparks in his career.

(01:00:29):
He's both of them On the Athletics. He played at
the Oakland Coliseum, which is another ballpark that is close
to a natural California harbor right around sea level and
so therefore has comparable park factor elements to Peco Park,
Whereas when JP Sears moved to Sacramento, he was playing

(01:00:49):
in a literal minor league ballpark with shorter dimensions. The
temperature in the summer tends to hover around one hundred
degrees every day, and there are other elements like wind
and humidity. The prevailing winds going from west to east,
which are going to blow the ball over the fence.
You know, humidity tends to be a little bit higher
in northern California than it does down here in southern California.

(01:01:12):
So all of that adds up to the variable extra
distance on fly balls in Sacramento was eleven point seven feet,
And when you compare that to San Diego, which is
currently this year playing at a negative three point nine
extra feet, that is a swing of fifteen point six
feet on fly balls that JP series is going to

(01:01:33):
experience just moving from Sacramento down to San Diego. And
if you look at JP Series' career home run per
nine rates at home in Oakland, it was one point
five to eight and in Sacramento. Again small sample size,
but he's at two point six two point six home
runs for nine at home for JP Series in Sacramento

(01:01:54):
this season, and I mean, it's just a nightmare to
play an extreme flyball picture in Sacramento. It's death to
his career. So you look at JP Series' numbers, his
flyball rate at home in Oakland was forty six point
two percent, again very comparable to Nick Pavetta, and his
home run to fly ball ratio was twelve point two percent,
which is actually very close to league average league average

(01:02:16):
tends to hover aroun eleven or twelve percent. In Sacramento,
he had a fifty five point nine percent fly ball rate,
and he had a home run to fly ball rate
of seventeen point five percent. Again, sounds very similar to
what Nick Povetta's was in Philadelphia. So I think that

(01:02:36):
Ruben Nievo was like, just put this guy down here,
Just put this guy down here, and all of a sudden,
those home runs that were flying out of the ballpark
in Sacramento are dying on the warning track in San Diego,
as we've seen time and time and time again, and
all of a sudden, what became a very unreliable picture
in Sacramento is someone who is you know, zapping power

(01:02:58):
and by having you know, sluckers get underneath the ball
in San Diego and having balls die harmlessly in which, oh,
by the way, a very good defensive outfield now with
Tatiza Merril, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:03:11):
Let me say that too. So this is before LOREANOAA.
We were fourth in the league in outfield defense. Athletics
were fourteenth. DRS. If you're a DRS fan, we're fourth
in the league and the Athletics were wait, oh, twenty
fourth and so for both of those. Obviously we're much

(01:03:35):
better defense than the athletics are in the outfield, and
now we're adding Loreano, who should make us even better,
one would think. So the question is one, how much
does pet go help? Two how much does the defense help? Three?
How much does Diebla's influence and possibly using him in
shorter stints because we have a better bullpen or at
least knowing being able to pull him at times when

(01:03:57):
he's in danger because we have a better bullpen. How
much do all of those factors influence.

Speaker 2 (01:04:02):
His Yeah, So, look, I don't think that that JP
S has Nick Pavetta ceiling. Nick Pavetta has far better
stuff than JP series. But I am very excited by
the idea that JP siars is gonna work with Ruben
Diebola and with Nick Pavetta. As you know, again, they're
throwing from opposite arms, like you know, they're not super

(01:04:25):
close and stuff by any means. But I do think, hey,
extreme flyball pitcher to another, Here's what I notice about
playing in you know, in the city and in this ballpark.
You know, could JP sears be a reliable force starter
for the team. I don't see why not and that
like again, for three and a half years of control.

(01:04:47):
I'm not trying to polish the turdive of giving away
a load of rerees if he turns into a franchise guy.
But you've got the best reliever for four seasons, and
you've got a solid, like a really solid back end starter,
like that's going to provide a lot of value for
the padres down the line.

Speaker 1 (01:05:04):
Yeah, especially when we traded so many back end starters
in this trade deadline that it's like you needed a
JP series and there's there's some ceiling here for him
being an actually good player. I think there's a lot
of things that you could like, he's successful when he's
throwing hard enough, he's got a good sweeper, he is
going to a better park, better defense first time through.

(01:05:24):
He's very good. So how do we harness all of
these qualities and make him into a successful pitcher. I
think that the likelihood of that happening pretty high.

Speaker 2 (01:05:31):
Actually pretty high. So very interesting stuff here, John, before
we start moving on to any of these other trades,
any any final thoughts on this? Miller Sears defrees.

Speaker 1 (01:05:46):
Yeah, so I want to I want I want to
know your overall opinion in the question that it brought
up earlier, which was, we got Mason Miller, we got
JP sars. That's what the value exchange that we got
for our prospect capital in this trade. Are you okay
with that? Would you have preferred an outfielder? Say that

(01:06:09):
was controllable if it was available. I don't know that
it was available, but if it was.

Speaker 2 (01:06:15):
So hard because you have to imagine that they made
this trade knowing that they were close on Loreano and O'Hearn,
because again, Debrees seemed to be the biggest trade chip
that AJ was willing to part with, especially because I
think Sallas's value is basically at an all time low
right now, so it didn't make a lot of sense

(01:06:37):
to trade Ethan Sallas. I was really surprised, and at
first I was kind of, you know, the logically, I
was like, I don't really get it, Like the team
already has the best bullpen, Like, why are you going
to expend your biggest trade ship to strengthen something that
doesn't necessarily need to be strengthened. I see this move

(01:07:01):
much more for twenty twenty seven and twenty twenty eight
than I do for twenty twenty five. I think it
makes the twenty twenty five team better. Don't get me wrong,
but like now you have controllable starting pitching for and
you're the best reliever in baseball. And I also think
you know it is worth saying if you trade for

(01:07:24):
Mason Miller, the Dodgers can't trade for him, you know,
which I do think is in a weird little bit
of game theory sort of makes sense. I don't know
that there's another outfielder that was available outside of Jared
Duran who I would have been comfortable giving up Lao
degrees for, and it doesn't seem like he was available,

(01:07:46):
So I guess that that's my answer.

Speaker 1 (01:07:50):
Would I have been happy, happier if that was the return?

Speaker 2 (01:07:57):
Probably? Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:08:00):
And then the follow up question is do you think
that the game theory is gonna align with aj brotherer
and chill for the playoffs? Are you gonna be mad
because we're not pulling start as quick enough?

Speaker 2 (01:08:12):
Well, again, recency bias, but they left Randy Vasquez into
a game last night far too long, and there also
are playing different game. Playoffs are a different game. I
unfortunately I don't. I think Dylan ceases the kryptonite to
all of this because I think he has too much

(01:08:34):
respect in the clubhouse for them to have the short
leshan with him, even though they should. I think for
basically any other picture, like even to a certain extent
you Darvish, like, even though the numbers say that, like
he works great into the games, obviously he's been battling injury.
He seems like he's a little bit of a different
picture this season. But I think, like you, given his
age and like his injury this year, like they'd be

(01:08:56):
willing to have a shorter leashan. I just have trouble
thinking that they're going to go one time through the
order with Dylan Cease, Like I think they'll only pull
him if you know, he's given up two runs in
the fourth inning and he's got two runners on base
with an out left and it's too late already, you
know what I mean. And you're like, well, now we'll
make the move, you know, Uh, do you think that

(01:09:19):
they'll do it?

Speaker 1 (01:09:21):
I don't know. I would love to see them do that,
but I haven't thus far seen. I mean, we for example,
last year in the playoffs, we still had a good
bullpen last year, and when the top of the lineup
came up and there were runners on base in a
critically important game for we put Brian Hoeing into the
game rather than one of our higher leverage pitchers, which
is like, obviously we should put in a higher leverage

(01:09:42):
picture in that situation. So I don't know, it feels
like there's a little bit of inability for I mean,
the players seem to love show, but there's it seems
like there's a little bit of an inability for him
to make like a crazy move for the success of
the team. And so I do wonder whether, you know,
we get to the end of game five and are
I mean, if you if you are in a five

(01:10:02):
or a three game series or a five game series,
what should happen the same way as at the end
of a you know, mile run, you should be exhausted
and have expended all of your energy. We should have
our bullpen should be heavily used where there should not
be people who haven't pitched in two or three games.
And last year that didn't happen. I wonder whether this
year would happen again, because that's that's our talent as

(01:10:24):
a team is bullpen. That's like our biggest thing. That's
our that's the thing that we need to express in
the playoffs and we're to be successful. And so when
you get to the end of a series, you better
be like, shit, did we almost use a bullpen too much?

Speaker 2 (01:10:35):
Not?

Speaker 1 (01:10:36):
Are we saving a couple guys for game one of
next series?

Speaker 2 (01:10:40):
Yeah? Well I think that that's a good note to
end it on, John. So thanks for kicking it with
us for this coverage of the very first trade of
the trade deadline. Already over an hour in so uh,
we're going to be back to you. Uh, we're probably
gonna release these, you know, day or days apart, but

(01:11:00):
we'll come back to you next with the Loreano and
o'hearne trade coverage, and then for episode three, we'll talk
about the fermine trade and sort of pick up the
pieces on some of the other smaller moves that were made.
But hang with us because we'll be back soon with
some more trade coverage for John Percoda, I'm Rafae Canter.
We'll see you next time.