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Friday, February 19, 2010
Best and worst moves by a GM
Indians’ Shapiro: Rather than those articles that look at virtually every deal and try to grade each one (which is a worthy exercise on its own), I like the executive summary that is presented in terms of top 5 and bottom 5 like Pouliot does here. Neyer has it right however when he says:
The lists aren’t completely fair because Pouliot counts as a “miss” a deal that seemed perfectly fine at the time. In a sense, what’s really being counted is lucky outcomes and unlucky outcomes
Right. Signing Westbrook was perfectly sensible (neither bad, nor good). But he has it in his “miss” because of what happened afterwards, things that they couldn’t have known. It’s like buying stock in Toyota last year. Who could have known?
In terms of evaluating a single deal, then you have to evaluate it at that point in time. HOWEVER, in terms of evaluating a bunch of deals, then you can and should evaluate them after the fact (given enough deals). Basically, once you have enough sample size, the Westbrook-type outcomes should work out in the wash, the noise cancels out, and what you are left with is the signal. Given the trade with Minaya, it would be practically impossible for Shapiro to end up in the negative.
Anyway, I’d love to see this done for all GMs, the 5-best and 5-worst, if for no other reason than to show a balanced view.
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Whitesox’ Kenny Williams.
Cubs’ Jim Hendry.
Marlins’ Larry Beinfest.
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