THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Some of these make little sense.  Like Figgins and Damon both going to the Angels - If they resign Figgins I can’t see them being interested in Damon.  Or Troy Glaus (converting to OF as mentioned) going to a Red Sox team that resigns Bay.

I was ignoring the teams.  I just liked his list because it seemed reasonable and used WAR as his basis.

Quick question for Tom:

If Davidoff asked you for a 1-2 sentence explanation of WAR that he could use in this article, what would you tell him?

Good work from Davidoff, he’s certainly one of the more, um, enlightened (for lack of a better word) members of the MSM.

Here’s my first stab at a “Merriam Webster” entry:

WAR is the number of wins a player’s overall performance likely would have generated for a typical team, over and above the performance of the worst player in the league, given the player’s playing time.

(*) I want to say that we give the worst player in the league the playing time of the player in question.  Too many pronouns here to keep track though.

***

You guys can try as well.

WAR is the number of wins a player’s overall ACTUAL performance likely would have generated for a typical team, over and above the EXPECTED performance of the worst player in the league, given the player’s playing time.

***

I put in caps my additions.

Chone Figgins only $7 million a year?  Even if you assume his 6 WAR year this in 2009 will not be repreated, he has been about a 3 WAR player.  Seemd like a bargain.

I’d take Beltre at $6 million for one year easily.

It would make me happy to see Mike Cameron get 2 years / $20M, but I expect him to be more undervalued than that.  Unless suddenly everyone has realized his value.  He’ll be 37, so I dont expect him to get 2 years.

Wow, if Adrian Beltre signs one year 6 mil contract, and the Twins aren’t the ones signing the deal, I will not be happy.  I’ve been pretty lukewarm on signing him, but I was thinking something like 3 years, 25 mil.  That would be a steal.

I also agree that figgins will get more than that. 

Whether or not these numbers make sense is one thing, but he did say that he relied completely on the last two season of WAR.  What I don’t get is what type of $/WAR he’s expecting. Beltre was 6.5 WAR for 2008 and 2009.  We’re expecting him to sign for 2 mil per war?

Figgins has been 8.5 war, so he’d be in the same range.  I’m assuming he’s not using a straight $/WAR conversion, but what is he using?

As Davidoff said in his blog post today, “The predictions reflect a mix of reporting, guesses and attempts to think along with teams.”

The Newsday paywall may prevent viewing: http://bit.ly/3k4KI0

He’s obviously thinking it will be a recessionary market.  Three fairly large contracts in Bay, Holliday, and Lackey, but nobody else over 21 million.  Wonder where he thinks Vlad ends up?

Chone Figgins is going to get way more than $7 MM. That’s probably no better than half of what he’ll get, and that might even be a good bargain. At third base, the guy is likely a 4 to 5 WAR player. That would put him somewhere in the range of $17 to 22 million dollars. If he signs somewhere in the $15 million range, that would be quite a bargain.

Does this guy not like thirdbaseman or what? He’s also got Adrian Beltre at one year for $6MM, and Troy Glaus going to the outfield.