THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Yea, I thought about trying to figure out a better way to classify the guys involved in the deals who weren’t prospects, such as Rick Reed, Bobby Kielty, Mike Timlin, etc… If I was going to publish this as an article somewhere, I’d have gone a bit further, quantifying the actual performance values and breaking down the cost of signing the draft picks as well.

But, since it was a blog post for Mariner fans, I decided to be a little more brief and focus on the prospect side of things, because the M’s aren’t trading Ichiro for the 2007 versions of Rick Reed, Bobby Kielty, or Mike Timlin. 

From a prospect standpoint, I think it’s pretty clearly a wash.  If you want to get potential in return, you might as well just keep him and get the picks.  If you’re hoping for 2008 value, then, you consider the trade. 

But, really, the M’s in 2008 with Ichiro aren’t any good, so trading for low ceiling players just because they can help next year isn’t a very good idea.

On a tangent here, Dave’s bringing up Grady Sizemore opened up some bad memories for us Expos fans, which is hot on the heels of SI’s cover story on Omar Minaya, as he talks about taking the Expos GM job:
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2007/baseball/mlb/06/12/minaya0618/8.html

O flew home from the Dominican Republic, reported to MLB’s offices in New York City and discovered—three days before pitchers and catchers were to report—that he had six people on his staff. In the entire organization, including his five minor league teams. Loria had stripped the franchise and hauled off the parts—humans, computers, scouting reports, radar guns—to Miami.

“What is this?” O asked his administrative assistant, Marcia Schnaar, when she faxed him the employee list from Montreal. “A joke?” He heard no laughter. He reached for the telephone in his office. O.K., so it was the umpire’s video room at MLB headquarters. He reached for his Rolodex. O.K., so it was a pile of paper scraps stuffed in a manila folder. But no one in baseball had a circle of friends the size of O’s.

Hey, Tony, got a job for you, how ‘bout it?

What’s the job, O?

What job you want?

If this was any other industry, it would be considered theft.  MLB?  It seems that it’s BAU.

Which brings me back to the much-despised Loria:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A10599-2004Jun27?language=printer

Soon, Loria and the limited partners were at war. After Loria issued a cash call on March 17, 2000, they staged what amounted to a coup. They told Loria they would give him back his $12 million if he would step down.

“They basically put a check on the table and said, ‘Bugger off,’ “ said a source familiar with the meeting. Loria instead initiated another series of cash calls. If the limited partners failed to come up with the money their shares in the team would be diluted. Within 17 months Loria had gone from owning 24 percent of the Expos to more than 93 percent.

Asked why the partners failed to meet the cash calls, their lawyer, Jeffrey L. Kessler, said, “All they knew was that this was a destroyed team” run “by a general partner who they thought was totally out of control. . . . It was impossible for any sane investor, and Loria knew that.” The move gave Loria the power to do basically whatever he wanted with the team.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Loria got the cash for those cash-calls on a loan from MLB.  That too would seem BAU.

Back to Dave’s point, I agree with him.  When you do a blog, you don’t have to go out of your way to dot all the i’s.  That’s why I like blogs.  You do most of the work, present as complete a list as you can, and let others sort out the minutiae.

Michael Lewis said that Bill James preferred to leave behind an honest mess rather than a tidy lie.  I believe in that.  While Dave’s data is hardly a mess, it allows other researchers to round out its tiny rough edges.

It would probably be better to try to put a number on things.  When Placido Polanco and David Aardsma end up in the same category, and different from Aaron Harang and Huston Street, it gets awfully subjective.

I don’t need to fine tune it to see that there is no clear advantage one way or another.  What to do with Ichiro depends on the circumstances.  There’s more uncertainty with the draft - In July 07 you have no clue who will be available to you with June 08 compensation picks.  Its much easier to evaluate possible trade targets.

So my strategy would be to trade if you get the prospects you like, but if the offers underwhelm you - like Soriano with Washington - take the draft picks.  With Seattle, I would really have to love the prospects I get in a trade because I’d want to take every opportunity to resign Ichiro.

Even as an Angel fan, I’d be a little sad to see him leave, he’s one of those players you just identify with the franchise.  The Rev. Halofan even calls them “Seattchiro” on his updated standings.

The Mariners also need to survey the market to see which teams would have a serious interest in signing Ichiro as a free agent. If they think there are significant odds that Ichiro would sign with a team that will probably draft within the top 15 picks, then they should probably try to trade him because those picks are protected. If the Mariners can acquire a top-flight prospect for Ichiro, then I don’t see how they could pass him up in favor of a draft pick.

it would be too tough to sell a trade of Ichiro to the public, especially with the team winning recently. The M’s management will not be throwing in the towel on this season, and simply will not be making that trade. If they’re going to lose him, they would prefer to lose him after offering arbitration. 

I realize that I’m reply 3 weeks after the fact, and situations can look different now, but the topic is still, and mabye even moreso, relevant. Questions about Ichiro and the Mariners future are only going to escalate the longer he remains unsigned.

Personally, I think that Ichiro simply does not want to play any longer in Seattle. Certainly the losing has had a great deal to do with this, but I think he feels he has just had his run here and he wants to move on. Maybe the improvement the team has shown this year will make a difference, but I’m thinking uh-uh.

And I don’t mind if he goes. I love watching him play, but I’m skeptical that the money it’s going to take to resign him is going to be worth it, at least in terms of wins.