Let's begin.

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.

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.

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 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 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?

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 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 all the trades were poor.

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 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.

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 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 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.

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 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 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.

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 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 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 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 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 want to make trades.

And I think that he just keeps using that information.

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 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, 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, 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 unpack with this, John, where do you want to start.

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.

Seventy five percent?

That's exactly the number.

I was going to pick.

Seventy five percent too.

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, 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, needing to plug.

Still I was anyway, yeah, please continue, John, all.

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 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 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 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, 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.

He's just lefty.

I think it was Aaron Parda.

That might be wrong, but oh my god, a vamp and keep going and I'll confirm.

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 guy can't throw a strike, then he's definitely a relief picture.

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.

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.

The other two pictures are excuse me.

The other two players are Adam Russell and Dexter Carter.

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

Years old and he can't read twenty three?

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.

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 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?

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 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.

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.

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 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 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 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 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.

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 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, 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, 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.

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 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 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 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, 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 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.

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, 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 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 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 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 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?

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 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, 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.

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, 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.

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 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 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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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 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, 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 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 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 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.

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 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 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.

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?

I've seen them before, probably college basketball.

Is it like a spider or something?

Or it is not a spider.

It is a mammal?

Okay down, you know mammals among logos.

You know how unlikely those are?

Yeah, it is the did you want to guess or sure to say?

So?

It's is Gardener Wam in North Carolina?

Is that what?

It was said Gardner Webb is in North it is in Boiling Springs, North Carolina.

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.

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.

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 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.

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 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 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.

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 back of your head, everybody.

Mm.

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 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 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 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.

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 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 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 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 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, 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 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.

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, 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 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 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.

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.

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 him to the starting pitcher role.

If you leave him in as a it's still very valuable.

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 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.

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 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 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.

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 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 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.

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, 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.

Okay, And do you want me to try and guess who these people are?

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.

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.

I was pitching every game in a close skit, or.

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 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, 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 all these people are?

Yeah, so this is great audio content, by the way.

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.

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 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 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 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 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 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.

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 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.

Dude, Okay, Dylan cease.

Dylan cease.

This year so far, his first time through the order is two ninety four.

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.

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.

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, 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 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 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 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 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 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.

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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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.

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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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.

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 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.

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 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 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 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 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 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.

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 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 he's in danger because we have a better bullpen.

How much do all of those factors influence.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 was controllable if it was available.

I don't know that it was available, but if it was.

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 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 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 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, So I guess that that's my answer.

Would I have been happy, happier if that was the return?

Probably?

Yeah.

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?

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 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 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 they'll do it?

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 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 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 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?

Not?

Are we saving a couple guys for game one of next series?

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 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.