Episode 796
Meg Rowley has previously served as a contributor both to Baseball Prospectus and Lookout Landing. More recently, she was named as the new managing editor of The Hardball Times. She’s the guest on this edition of FanGraphs Audio.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.

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Audio after the jump. (Approximately 1 hr 6 min play time.)

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Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about a few recent trade demands (or non-demands), then bring on Yahoo Sports MLB columnist Jeff Passan to talk about what’s behind baseball’s slow-moving labor market, who and/or what is to blame for the sport’s present economic stalemate, and what can be done to avert disaster. Lastly, Ben provides a brief addendum on baseball’s most and least productive names.

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The Marlins have sold off a bunch of valuable pieces this offseason. You might’ve heard. Giancarlo Stanton? Traded. Marcell Ozuna? Traded. Dee Gordon? Traded. Regardless of whether they were good baseball moves, the immediate consequences are obvious: The Marlins are going to be bad. They hope to eventually become less bad. Now, all along, the Marlins have expressed an interest in building around Christian Yelich, who’s under team control for a while, thanks to his existing long-term extension. We would’ve been able to guess how Yelich has felt about that idea, but now his feelings are just…out there.

Christian Yelich’s relationship with the Miami Marlins is “irretrievably broken,” and it would be in the best interests of both the outfielder and the organization if the Marlins trade him before the start of spring training, his agent told ESPN on Tuesday.

In truth, Yelich has only so much leverage. He has to honor the contract he signed, and it wouldn’t help him to tank his own performance out of spite. If the Marlins kept Yelich, he’d essentially have to just deal with it. But it makes sense to trade Yelich anyway, given what else has gone on. The Marlins have already had a number of conversations about sending Yelich elsewhere, and, long story short, we come to Ronald Acuna.

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We haven’t spent much time talking about the Twins this offseason. The last post dedicated to the team was published Dec. 8, when this author wrote about two savvy little trades the club had made after losing out on the Ohtani sweepstakes.

But in what has been a quiet offseason, the Twins have quietly been one of the most active teams, bolstering their bullpen by signing ageless wonder Fernando Rodney, left-hander Zach Duke, and most recently, Addison Reed.

They’ve also made a move with an eye toward improving their 2019 rotation by signing Michael Pineda. Pineda is expected to miss most, if not all, of this coming season while recovering from Tommy John surgery. Given his bat-missing upside, though, the $10-million commitment seems like a prudent value play.

Overall, only 21 of Dave Cameron’s top-50 free agents have signed so far this winter. The Twins are responsible for two of them, however, in Reed and Pineda.

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Manny Margot had a breakout within a breakout last year. After accounting for his offensive and defensive contributions, the Padres’ rookie center fielder was worth roughly two wins in slightly less than a full season’s worth of plate appearances. Even for a player who was highly touted as a prospect, producing league-average work at 22 years old represents, in itself, a kind of breakout.

Hidden within that strong end-of-year line was a drastic change in the second half, though. Margot started hitting the ball in the air. That’s a change that has powered many other breakouts. But before we book the skinny center fielder for all of the homers next year, we have to ask: what’s happened with launch-angle surgers in the past?

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Earlier this offseason, the Braves and Dodgers conducted a trade that is likely to have little bearing on the 2018 season in terms of on-field results. Los Angeles sent Charlie Culberson, Adrian Gonzalez, Scott Kazmir, and Brandon McCarthy to Atlanta; Atlanta sent Matt Kemp the other way. There was a little money involved, too.

It wasn’t so much the precise identities of the players that were relevant to the deal, however, but rather the manner in which it allowed the clubs to curate their payrolls over the next couple years. The trade permitted the Braves to concentrate more of the salary in just the 2018 season while allowing the Dodgers to spread the money out over the next two years, thus avoiding the luxury tax. For taking on the brunt of the payments now, the Braves received whatever production McCarthy will provide this season and whatever production Culberson will provide over the next few. More importantly, however, they relieved themselves of a large financial obligation in 2019.

It’s hard not to look at that trade and see that the Braves are positioning themselves for a contending run starting in 2019. Perhaps that’s the case. There’s a pretty good argument, however, that they should consider accelerating their timeline. It’s possible, with the right moves, that Atlanta could assemble a winning team a year earlier than expected.

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Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan answer listener emails about rebuilding teams absorbing bad contracts, bad teams signing good players, an MLB amnesty clause, fans switching team allegiances, pitchers wearing jackets on the bases, how to maximize playing time with a limited number of hits, baseball on an Olympian schedule, how catchers could transition to a world with robot umps, and the effect of facing two pitchers simultaneously, plus a trio of Stat Blasts on the most valuable baseball names, “Mickey Mantle’s Legs,” and extreme batted-ball changes.

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I suppose what I should say is that the Gerrit Cole trade has two perception problems. One, it’s clearly just a bad look for Pittsburgh. It’s generally a bad look when a major-league team has to trade away an established major-league talent, and with Cole and then Andrew McCutchen going out the door, it’s a twin reminder of how the Pirates failed to build on a tremendous run of success. I don’t know how much more the Pirates reasonably could’ve done, but there’s forever that lingering question regarding ownership’s commitment to winning. This is nothing new. It’s a reopening of wounds that never healed.

There’s also, though, another aspect. The Pirates have been heavily criticized for the return package they got for Cole from the Astros. I have no interest in trying to figure out whether the Pirates got the best package possible. I don’t know what else was truly on the table. Maybe more would’ve been available in July; maybe Cole’s stock would’ve dropped. All we know is what the Pirates got. My read of the consensus is that the Pirates didn’t get enough. But my read is also that the Astros have a little something to do with that. Specifically because the Astros are unusually good and deep.

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