THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2008/baseball/mlb/09/29/bc.bbn.cardinals.lohse.ap/index.html

Cards ink Lohse to a 4/$41 extension. Thoughts?

Is it time for a “Sabermetric Moves of the 2009 Pre-Season” thread, yet?

It’s symmetry; the 2008 offseason started with the Cardinals signing Piniero to an ill-advised extension, and now there’s the Lohse deal. It’s probably money spent better than the Piniero signing, but I don’t think it’s a very good contract.

Yes, I think they paid almost twice what he is worth.  You could easily make a rule of thumb that you never sign a pitcher to long term deal because the pitcher, his agent, and some team is going to tremendously overvalue a contract like that because lots of people, including baseball insiders, do not understand the long-term prognosis for a pitcher, on the average.  Not to mention the fact that as long as every announcer you will ever hear on TV says that pitching wins championships, pitching, especially starting pitching, will be overvalued.

That being said, Lohse got “better” coming from the AL to the NL, as expected (I am not sure that the NL has worse hitting now, but they definitely have a low worse pitching, so a pitcher in the AL is “better,” as compared to his peers in the NL).  He also, however, had somewhat of a career or fluke (we never know about that of course - the rest of his career could have been a fluke and this year could have been real!) year this year.  Plus, his garbage (w/l) and semi-garbage (ERA) stats were good this year, giving lots of folks (not all of them of course) in the STL front office the impression that Lohse is/was better than he is.

None of his component stats changed all that much this year, especially considering the league move.  He is likely a little worse than an average pitcher.  That is not very good for a 30 year old pitcher!  In fact, you could also say, as a rule of thumb, and it would be a good rule, that you don’t give a 30 year old below average pitcher a 4 year deal, especially at 10 mil per!

I have him projected an 1.5 WAR next year, 1.2 after that, then .9, and then .6.

That comes out to a fair contract of about 4/22.  4/41 is ugly.

Here is the really interesting thing though.  At the beginning of the season, he was really undervalued (for some strange reason).  They basically picked him up for a song.  He also basically pitched this year about the way you would have expected him to pitch, maybe a little better.  So why wait until he is overvalued to sign him to a 4 yr deal?  Why didn’t you (STL) sign him to a 3, 4, or 5 year deal before the season started?  He is no less of a risk now than he was after last year. In fact, less so, as he is one year older.  They could have gotten him for half that at the beginning of the season, I assume.  If you are a team that is presumably smart, but you are going to occasionally sign FA pitchers to long term deals which you probably shouldn’t, then you should make those long-term deals when you find a pitcher who is underrated, not overrated!  You had and opportunity and blew it.

I don’t have my Marcels ready yet, but I’m going to guess that Lohse is going to come out ok at something like a 4/30 deal.

Seems like the 2008 thread just ended.

Regarding Lohse: Last year he turned down a 3/$21 offer from the Phils. This is probably what he’d have gotten as a free agent… he didn’t give the Cards and kind of discount.

I don’t think we can say whether it was fair value or not for sure just yet (it appears to be overpriced)--we don’t know how the rest of the market will play out.

Concerning Lohse, his ‘08 looks like an improvement mostly because of what he did against lefties. Some of that improvement is likely due to Dave Duncan. I suggest that because Lohse clearly changed his approach this season compared to ‘07 (overall more fastballs and against lefties specifically he threw more fastballs and curves at the expense of his slider).

Of course it also helps that he had a great year command-wise and showed ground ball tendencies as well (both of which could regress but also both could be in some part to Duncan).

I say all of this because some of his improvement might actually have been more real than random. In any event, I could see the Cardinals’ FO thinking Duncan may have had a positive impact. In their defense, I think with Lohse they believe they’re buying innings rather than ERA.

Lohse is still a mid-to-backend innings eater who doesn’t miss bats and relies upon his defense but there might be a better chance that he’s “closer to league average” than he’s “worse than league average” over the next few years, if that makes sense.

I think Tango’s estimate of 4/30 probably isn’t that far off. 

To me, the real sin is 4 years.

People who seriously analyze players do not benefit from the concept of an innings-eater.  A player’s value is his projected playing time times his rate value over replacement.  Period. 

Any above average player benefits, value-wise, in having a greater amount of projected playing time, more or less.  That applies to below average players as well as super stars.  I don’t know why a below-average (but above-replacement) pitcher is called an innings eater, but a star who has a high playing time projection is not.

As I said, a team and/or the player benefit, value-wise, and therefore, dollar-wise, from more playing time.  That should be obvious.  No player has any value while he is sitting on the bench or the DL.

Obviously if a player is marginal to start with, talent-wise, he needs to have more projected playing time in order to get a total value of X then a player who has more talent.  But again, since X value is , we already know that, and we don’t need to throw in meaningless words to muddle the issue and give people catch phrases to justify a position.  (Terry, I am not picking in you.  I am just using this opportunity to rail on the phrase “innings eater.")

You can say all you want about Duncan and Lohse, but the bottom line is that his profile really didn’t change much this year, and what did change may almost entirely be due to changing leagues.  Don’t also forget that we a beneficial effect to pitchers when they change leagues (familiarity factor).

BTW, I am looking an Fangraphs, and I see little if any fundamental differences between 08 and 05-07.

Fastball speed same as last year and down 1 mph from 05 and 06 (as we expect of all pitchers).

Fastball, change, and curveball percentages about the same, give or take a few point of fluctuation from year to year for whatever reasons.

His G/F ratio was 1.43 this year, up from last year, but in 05 it was 1.31, and it should be lower in the NL.

Literally the only thing that sticks out in 08 is his HR rate, which is quite a bit lower than in his career, and his FB rate which is a little lower than in his career. And of course HR rate and FB rate is going to get Marcelled just like everything else.

In fact, Lohse is quite easy to do a projection on.  Lots of data.  No major injuries I am aware of.  No changes in approach or pitches thrown.  Pretty consistent from year to year in all peripherals.  What more can you ask for to make a projection?

He is one of those pitchers who just begs to be overvalued.  Quiet, no controversy that I am aware of.  (Nice looking.) No injuries or complaints.  Decent stuff, good velocity, does not let up a lot of HR’s, and pitches a lot of innings, with no history of injury.  And a good ERA and w/l record this year to boot!  What a perfect storm to be overrated and overpaid.  We should all be overvalued like that! 

The only problem is he is just not that good.  Average at best.  Probably bad in 3 or 4 years.

Reminds me a little of Suppan, who was near average a few years ago and pretty bad now.  Reminds me a little also of Marquis, who was bad a few years ago and is terrible now.  But because of a lot of those reasons above, they were overvalued for a while, and maybe still are, at least Suppan is.

"No player has any value while he is sitting on the bench or the DL. “

Tony Pena does.

One more thing while I am on my soapbox.  Those kinds of pitchers tend to me mediocre at lots of things but not real bad at any one thing so no one notices the sum of their deficiencies.

They tend to have a below average K rate, around an average BB rate, and around an average, and sometimes a little below average, HR rate.  That does not make a bad pitcher of course.  But it does tend to make an overrated pitcher, especially if they have good stuff and don’t get hurt much.

The ones who get overrated a lot and are not very good pitchers, are the Suppans and the Marquis - low, but not terribly low K rates, average BB rates, and slightly worse than average HR rates.  What fools people are the fact that they strike out just enough people not to be known as extreme “contact type” pitchers and they often have decent velocity and stuff to go along with their passable K rates, and they don’t have really bad BB or HR rates, so no one notices anything unusually bad about them.

The problem of course, is that if you have a K rate 70 or 75% of the league average, unless you walk a lot less than your fair share of batters and give up few HR’s, you are a BAD pitcher.

I think it’s a bit of a tough sell to claim any change that Lohse might have seen in ‘08 was from a league change.

BTW, concerning the pitch tendencies, Josh Kalk has done a nice job of summarizing pitch f/x data in an accessible way. It’s pretty clear that there are some substantive differences in Lohse’s pitch tendencies between ‘08 and ‘07-especially against LHB.

I understand that innings eater is a pejorative but the point I was trying to make was that St Louis was likely willing to tolerate (or over reach for it) “league average” because Lohse can also likely give them 190-200 innings of it. I wasn’t arguing that pitching a lot of innings trumps pitching them well per se.

This past season, Lohse:

-threw fewer strikes than he did in 2007
-registered fewer swinging strikes than he did in 2007
-allowed more balls in play than he did in 2007
-gained groundballs at the expense of infield flies

If St. Louis wasn’t willing to go four years for him last March, they shouldn’t be willing to now. Nothing significant has changed, except for his age.

The basic rule if you need one is:

salary in millions = (win% - .400) * innings / 2

So, a .500 pitcher with 200 innings will make 10MM a year.

A .450 “innings eating” 200 innings is the same as a league average pitcher at 100 innings.

***

A great pitcher, your CC, Santana, Doc, etc, should be a .600 (or better) pitcher.  As you can see, that puts them into the 20MM range and beyond.

***

It’s a nice rule of thumb…

I think it’s a bit of a tough sell to claim any change that Lohse might have seen in ‘08 was from a league change.

That’s what I was thinking. Lohse changed leagues in mid-2006, right?

I think an innings eater might have some value, above and beyond the basic runs over replacement calculation.  They allow you to avoid overworking your bullpen. 

Take the Orioles.  Their starters, who are mostly terrible, can’t pitch deep into games.  The team winds up overworking the bullpen, and you wind up with a bunch of pitchers on the DL or pitchers who lose effectiveness as the year wears on.  I’m sure they’d love to have a Paul Byrd type who can pitch 180 innings of a 4.80 ERA, throw strikes, and keep the pitch count down.

I don’t know if this should be considered in determining a pitcher’s value, just something to consider.  Of course, with the rule of 10, it’s hard to project anyone to continue being an innings eater anyway.

"Literally the only thing that sticks out in 08 is his HR rate, which is quite a bit lower than in his career”

Lohse’s last 42 GS in 06 & 07 were playing for Cincinatti & Philadelphia. Before than in Minnesota. I would hope that his HR% would come down.

HR park factors
Min 0.98 Cin 1.23 PHI 1.24 STL 0.82

The hit, bb & so per 9 ip don’t look like they’ve changed one bit (within normal variations) compared to the previous two seasons.

My bad about the “league change.” For some reason, I thought he was on MIN last year.

Brian, I was referring to context-neutral HR rate. I should have made that clear.  After park and opponent adjusting.

Jeff Sullivan is right on the money.  Nothing has changed about the guy, from the standpoint of a sabermetrician doing a projection.  He is the same pitcher in April as he is now, other than he is older now with fewer good years left in him.

If they were unwilling to sign him to a 4 or 5 year deal then, and willing now (which they are), be definition, they must have made a mistake somewhere along the line (either now or then).

But, I still see him as a 4/25 guy at best.  My projection for him NOW is .3 runs worse than an average starter.  That is a .475 starter.  Using Tango’s formula, that is 6.75 mil for 180 innings.  I don’t think you can project any 30 year old pitcher for more than 180 innings.

If you think you can, give me a criteria for that and we’ll check the historical record and see if you are right.

Here are his context-adjusted DIPS component ERA’s for the last 5 years, normalized to 4.00:

04 4.50
05 4.12
06 3.50
07 4.11
08 3.68

So there appears to be a change when he went to the NL (those numbers are as compared to a league average pitcher in that league).

Re: “Bad” veteran starter types

I agree on the overall value of a guy like Marquis, Lohse, or Suppan. These guys aren’t that great, and probably overpaid. But I do think they have value to certain teams. It’s the value of “known commodity.”

Call me crazy, but if I’m the Cubs and I’m pretty sure my top 4 starters and offense are enough to get me to the playoffs, I’d rather fill that 5th spot with Jason Marquis - even at a higher cost, because afterall I’m the Cubs and I can afford it - than a young pitcher who might be just as good. See, Marquis isn’t going to kill you. He’s healthy, will give you the innings. He’s going to be league-average at best, but you can be pretty sure of it. The unknown player might turn out to be the next Zambrano, or he could pitch 10 games, have an ERA of 8, and cost your team a ton of games. For a team that is expected to win, and who can safely pencil in a certain number of wins, it’s more important to have a consistent (but average) player than somebody who might be so bad that you need to quickly find a replacement or your season could be jeopardized.

Now, if the Cubs use Marquis in the playoffs, somebody needs to call for an intervention for Uncle Lou.

If the argument is Marquis for 7 million or a young pitcher for 400K plus pocketing the difference for next year, and you need to win this year, then fine.  The 6.6MM$ you are overpaying for Marquis may have better benefit in 2008 than spending it a bit at a time in 2009-2011.

But, at the start of the season, with so much uncertainty in the records (remember, the top forecasters are off by 8 to 10 wins every year!), it’s foolish to presume that kind of setup.  You got for the known quantity with 2 or 3 months to go, and you are in contention.

MGL, what is your projection for AJ Burnett?

He is under contract for 2 more years at 12M/year, but can opt out.  Should he?  Is he worth more than that?

I’m not MGL, but a rough projection using tRA has Burnett as a ~4.5 WAR (.575-.600 W%) starter, so yeah, he’s absolutely worth more than that. The only question is whether teams will look past his >4 ERA and see his true value. His 2008 was sensational.

Admins,
How about freezing this thread and the postseason one at the top of the page? I recall that was done last year. Thanks.

Marquis is a bad example.  He is truly a bad pitcher.  I am not sure that you get much more of a “known quantity” with a pitcher like him as opposed to a young or rookie pitcher with the same or similar projection. And I am definitely not sure that it matters.  I am almost certain, however, that you don’t want to spend 7 mil more just for a “known quantity” since you can purchase almost 2 wins more for 7 mil.  Marquis got the contract he did because he was terribly overvalued by the Cubs.

AJ is a good pitcher.  Again, you will see a big jump from when he was in the NL to the AL, although some of that is from being older, oft injured, etc.

I have him projected around 2 tenths better than average or about a run better than replacement (in the AL).  That is around a .570 pitcher.  With his injury history, I don’t think you can project him for more than 180 IP.  That is around 3 WAR or something like that.  For next year. So 12 mil is “fair.” If he has the option, it’s up to him to decide if likes playing in TOR, what he can get from another team. The thing about an option like that, if it is one year, is that he probably has an opportunity to sign with another team for multiple years.  If he takes the option for one year and then gets hurt or tanks, he is screwed.  Someone will give him 3/35 or 4/40.

If he is not in the AL, but in a “neutral league”, you can add .5 win.  4.5 WAR?  No way.

A .570 pitcher compared to the .370 AL replacement level, with 180 IP (20 full games) is a 4 WAR pitcher (.200 times 20).

I think you’re being conservative saying someone will give him 3/35 or 4/40 MGL.  I could easily see someone giving him at least 4/60.

Burnett?  Maybe.  I am not very good at predicting contracts.  However, there are many things that are going to keep that number fairly low.  One, he is not on the short list of pitchers that are “household names,” partly because he pitched in FLO and TOR, partly because before this year he never won more than 12 games, and partly because he is not all that great.  Plus, as Jeff said, his 4+ ERA will scare some teams, and rightfully so.  Finally, his history of injuries will also scare teams, again, rightfully so.  Not to mention that he is 31 years old.

I don’t think that all of the above is recipe for “at least 4/60”.  But I could be wrong.

I don’t know why I said that Burnett was a .570 pitcher.  I said he was .2 runs per 9 better than average.  That is a .513 pitcher of course (assuming 6 IP per 9), which is 2.4 WAR per 180 IP.

I think our nomenclature is different.  When I say a .512 starting pitcher, I mean that is how many games he wins per start.  It is a combination of his rate talent and how many inning he pitches per start.  I guess I can’t use that “construct” to compare starters to relievers though.

How do you calculate a pitcher’s (starter and reliever) value again, in “wp” given that he is X runs per 9 better than an average pitcher?

MGL:

Calculate personal winning percentage.  In your case, .2 runs per 9 IP = .02 wins per 9 IP.  Add that to the league average of .500, and you have a .520 pitcher. 

Convert to WAR. In the AL, the baseline is .370 and in the NL it’s .390.

(.520-.370)*(180/9) = 3.0 WAR

***

You however have a higher replacement level than I do.  This also implies that you pay more per WAR than I do (since we are both paying out the same total amount).

You are right about dollar value of course. If my replacement level is much higher than yours, my WAR would have to have more value.  But it does change the relative value of players, of course.

There are so many “studies” that show that scrap heap pitchers are not that bad.  Why do you stick with such a low level of replacement?  Some people say that it is hard to believe that a replacement pitcher can be so “good.” Again, my answer is that if the spread of pitching talent is small (which I think it is), and people get fooled because of the spread we “see” in a year’s worth of samples - then it is not surprising that we should not see such a gap between replacement and average and star pitchers.  There are only so many spaces for pitchers in MLB.  If there are lots of pitchers between a true 3.50 and 5.50 ERA (with an average of 4.50) then so be it.  All of the pitchers in MLB will be in that range.

What I have said for many years is exactly that.  There are a few true 3.50 pitcher (the superstars), a few more, 4.00 pitchers (the stars), many average pitchers (4.00), a bunch of 4.50 pitchers, many of them in the bullpen as average relievers, and a ton of 5.50 pitchers.  A ton.  Who needs anyone worse than that when there are so many 5.50 pitchers?  What is so hard to believe about that?  There is no magic number that represents how far below average a replacement pitcher or other player has to be.  As I said, it all depends on the spread of talent in the population and this the number of players available between a certain range of talent.  I contend that at any one time, there are 6 or 700 pitchers available between a true 3.50 and 5.50.  Heck, that is a pretty big range anyway.

There is also the issue of the theoretical replacement level and the de facto replacement level.  If teams suck at evaluating pitchers (or just if they make more than an occasional mistake) then the de facto range will be larger, at the upper end mostly. IOW, let’s say that there are 100 replacement level 5.50 pitchers to fill out the back end of all pitching rosters, but that 10 of those are actually 6.00 pitchers that the teams think are 5.50 pitchers (the Backe’s, Hennesy’s Duckworth’s, etc.).

The better you are at evaluating talent, the lower replacement level is going to be, BTW.  Depends a little on the distribution of talent, but in general that is true by definition. 

So the effective or de facto replacement level in MLB is ALWAYS going to be lower than the optimal or theoretical one and different (higher or lower) than anyone else who does the evaluation (and is better or worse at that evaluation).

To tie this in to another thread, if Steve Phillips ran (evaluating players and signing contracts) all 30 teams and so did a good sabermetrician, who do you think is going to have a substantially lower replacement level, especially when it comes to pitchers?

I set the replacement level such that about 40% of the value goes to pitchers and 60% to nonpitchers.  If I make the replacement level too high for pitchers, and not for nonpitchers, then I’ll be out of balance from the 60/40 split.

Apparently TOR is planning to offer Burnett 2 more years at $15MM per year in addition to the 2 he has remaining at $11 per. So that’s 4 years, $52million. Of course, he didn’t sign anything yet.

I believe Burnett has 2/24 left, so if that 2/30 extension thing is true that would put him at 4/54.  Of course, I fully expect him to go into free agency and use that 4/54 line he almost has guaranteed to his advantage and raise up his price.

Apparently TOR is planning to offer Burnett 2 more years at $15MM per year in addition to the 2 he has remaining at $11 per. So that’s 4 years, $52million. Of course, he didn’t sign anything yet.

JP is not on my short list of intelligent GM’s.  In fact…

I’m wondering what anyone thinks Furcal will get this offseason. Good defender, but historically a slightly below average hitter.

Will he get paid *a lot* more for his 36 great games this season?

Furcal is a terrific (good) offensive player for a SS.  Where did you get the idea that he was slightly below average?

Lwts per 150 games (0= average for all players, -9 = average SS)

04 .1
05 10.3
06 11.6
07 -14.1
08 69.9 (154 PA)

Oh, I guess you looked at last year and “forgot” about the rest of his career.  They all count.  Some more than others, but they all count.

I didn’t mean for a SS. I meant for all hitters. He’s been about average (or a touch below).

I typically look at a hitter relative to all hitters, then defense, then add in a position adjustment. (This may not be optimal.)

For 2004-2007, Furcal is +2 per season.  The 2008 can’t lift him up too much since the sample is too small, but maybe he’s up to +5.  Then there’s age, he’s over 30 now, isn’t he?

An average hitter overall, who can play shortstop is a very valuable player.  I don’t know what offer I’d make to Furcal.  It would depend on his medical reports.  If I were a GM I’d need a full report and a doctor to advise me before I made an offer.

Nick, yes that is definitely the best way to do it, since the average hitting stats at any one position can change from year to year. If all of a sudden one year the average SS hits +10, it doesn’t make a SS who hits +10 an average player. It just means that all SS that year are way above average players.  So you are doing it the right way (hitting+defense+positional adjustment) - I just think you underestimated his hitting projection, even relative to all players.

Wes Helms just signed a $1.9 million/2 year extension with Florida. From Buster Olney’s report, it appears he’ll also get the $750,000 buyout for 2009, so it’s 2 years, $2.65 million.

I know that’s not very much money, but does Helms actually do anything well? He’s 33 next year, isn’t much of a hitter, and from the little I’ve seen doesn’t appear to be anything special defensively. For a franchise that likes to keep its payroll way way low, this seems like a pretty unnecessary extension, even if it’s relatively cheap.

MGL - What linear weights value do you have for Furcal in 2008?  The number you give in post #35 doesn’t seem remotely possible.

Do you know if anybody has run a study if players project better from their median values then their means?

MGL - What linear weights value do you have for Furcal in 2008?  The number you give in post #35 doesn’t seem remotely possible.

***

Peter, that number is per 150 games, in which case it seems completely reasonable.

Sorry, my mistake. I’ll sign up for reading lessons.

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/stats/parkfactor?season=2008
ESPN park factors are out. The leader (Rangers) had the lowest runs adjustment of a leader for the 8 years they have listed at the site. Perhaps they have improved their calculations?

Peter, I don’t know of any studies like that.  And median what?  To compute a median, you need a series of numbers, right?  What series are you computing a median from?  And at what point?  IOW, when are you doing the regressing?

A projection is basically a weighted mean which is then regressed towards some number - how much to regress a function of the number of historical PA.

What and where are you proposing a median be computed?

Helms is pretty much worthless.  For some reason, he has a reputation as a good hitter. I guess he was good in 05 and 06 (and decent in 03), and then fell of the table in 07 and 08.

I have him projected hitting-wise at around the level of a 2B or SS without much defensive value (he plays 3B and 1B).  Pretty much replacement level.  Maybe a little more.  Who knows?

Well, Manny and Boras will want at the very least 5/$85. That’s crazy. Of course, I’m sure some team will want to give him that much, and more.

I have him as 2.8 WAR, and I wouldn’t give him more than 3/$34 if he plays LF. Not sure how much it’d be as a DH.

Click my name for the LA times snippet on this.

Ellis signs for $5Mil in ‘09, $6Mil in ‘10, and has a $6Mil club option for ‘11.  There is also about $2MM in possible incentives.

He’s a favorite of the fans’ scouting report.

Looks like a great deal for the A’s.

Mark Ellis is like Placido Polanco was: a league average hitter who is an excellent fielder.  Just doing it real quick, I’ll guess he is +0 as a hitter, +1.5 as a fielder, +0.25 for his position.  Add in the +2.5 the average AL player is over WAR, and he’s a +4.25 per 162G WAR player.  He misses his shares of games, so if we give him 75% of that, he’s still over a 3 WAR player.  He’s probably worth a 4/50 deal in the free agent market.  Again, just doing this as I’m typing without referencing anything yet.  I’ll look into it more tomorrow.

Also off the top of my head, I’d be surprised if any other FA deal nets as much surplus value (per year) as the Mark Ellis deal does for the A’s.

Your bang on Tango with Ellis, based on my numbers. Using the 5/3/2 weighting over past 3 years, he is a 3.5 WAR, heavy on the defence side. Take .5 win off for being over 30, and you get 3.0 WAR. Deal of the early preseason thus far, likely for the whole year

I know this is “Sabermetric Moves of the 2009 Pre-Season” rather than “Moronic Moves of the 2009 Pre-Season,” but I guess that, in a general sense, the Jacobs-for-Nunez deal should go under here. I am one of those in the Royals blogosphere who, um, aren’t particularly thrilled with Dayton Moore at this point.

I won’t go on and on about all the different levels on which this deal is stupid for the Royals (and please, correct me if I’m wrong in that evaluation), but I have to say that no matter how I look at the numbers, it seems to me that if Jacobs plays the field with regularity, there’s no way he comes out above replacement level. Am I being unfair? I mean, I guess if he somehow hits just as “well” in the AL as he did the NL (i.e., giving him the 2.5 WAR level for AL position players instead of the 2.0 WAR level for NL) he might do it, or if he has a career year with the glove and just goes -6 runs or something, he might… I just want to make sure I"m not overreacting. I guess he has a shot at being a 1.2 WAR player if he DHs and everything breaks right offensively, but I don’t really do my own projections.

I’ve seen the CHONE forecasts that have him at -8 runs (I think) next year. Billy Butler is at -4. Do others agree (as do I) that Butler would be a better fielder than Jacobs?

So much more to write, but I already have elsewhere. I always knew that Dayton Moore wasn’t exactly arguing with people over VORP vs. Super Linear Weights, but I guess what is frustrating is that he seems generally grasp the concept of picking up fungible talent for the bullpen and making good use of it, but when it comes to position players, trades for Mike Jacobs and signs Jose Guillen to a dumb-then-horrifying-now 3/$36M contract instead of picking up players of equal or greater value like Russell Branyan or Eric Hinske up in free agency (not that those guys are great, or anything, but they’d certainly come cheaper).

/rant

Hope this is not a dumb question, perhaps others that are reading this thread have the same question, but when you refer to a pitcher as a .570 win% pitcher in your WAR calcs, how are you calculating this win% number?  Thanks.
vr, Xei

Short version: Use Pythagorean win expectation, figure out his win percentage against a league-average opponent pitcher. Search for “WAR” in the search box in the upper right hand corner if you want the full formula; I can’t remember it off the top of my head right now.

The short answer is that if you have a 4.00 ERA in a league of 4.40 ERA, then your win% is .540.  The short-rule is:
(lgERA-ERA)/10 + .5
or
(5+lgERA-ERA)/10
Whatever is easier to remember.  Again, short-hand.

Am I being unfair?

Yes, I think you are.

I just want to make sure I"m not overreacting.

Again, I think you are.

I have him projected to be a very good hitter.  +18 runs per 630 PA.  That is around 7 runs better than an average first baseman.

Here are his everything adjusted lwts per 630 PA (150 games) for the last 3 years, including any AA and AAA MLE’s.

05 18
06 8.5
07 7.8
08 18

The reason that the projection (+18) is so high even though a quick Marcel might look lower is that he is only 28 or so, so that those past lwts get adjusted upward (for age) and he is now around at the peak of his expected offensive performance.

It appears that he is probably a very bad fielder, but at first base, the worst we can assign someone is -10 runs.

That puts him at 3 runs worse than an average 1B overall.  In the NL, an average player is 1.6 WAR (using my numbers - Tango uses 2.0 I think).  That makes him 1.4 WAR, not terrible.

I don’t know about the other issues, such as whether they need a 1B or DH (he is probably better as a DH), or who he might be “blocking,” but on its face it is not a bad deal.

He is still under control for a while I think and Nunez is a very generic (near replacement level) pitcher, not worth much of anything, regardless of salary.  His only value is that he is near replacement in the AL, which makes him slightly above replacement overall, maybe .5 win to .75 wins.

Your linear weights don’t match up with what I got, or what’s on Baseball Reference:

2006 +4
2007 -1
2008 +5

I’ve got a projection on Jacobs for +5 hitting, which combined with terrible defense puts him just above replacement level.  He has a rather large platoon differential though, and if used strictly as a lefty DH, I think he’s got some value.  In that role, he’d be the new Brad Fullmer.

MGL/#54. Thanks. My problem was less with trading away Nunez (I thought he was better than that, but in any case I’m still not really clear on how to evaluate relief pitchers), but rather bringing on Jacobs, who, while he is under club control, is supposedly going to get around $3M-$3.5M in arb this year. I guess that’s pretty good if he’s a league average player. I guess my own evaluation of him is closer to Rally/#55.

As an aside, although I’ve read the WAR post here a couple of times, I’m still a bit confused on how to exactly handle the league differences for position players re: league average, replacement level, and so on. I think perhaps the problem is that I’ve always assumed (for some reason) taht 2 WAR was league average, and that if league average is “0”, then replacement level is -2.5 WAR for AL nonpitchers and -2 WAR for NL nonpitchers.

Tango/53. Thanks for that short answer, as that’s something I’ve been wondering about as well, but was too embarrassed to ask. Could one do a similar thing (with satisfactory results) using FIP or tRA instead of ERA?

Right, the zero-level in WAR is -2.5 wins per 162 G in the AL (relative to the average player in the AL), and -2.0 wins per 162 G in the NL (relative to the average player in the NL).

tRA, FIP, BsRA, DIPS, ERC - any component ERA/RA can be used in place of ERA in “value” formulas, like baking with Splenda instead of sugar.

Note that tRA is a measure of runs allowed, not earned runs allowed, however - I think the league average tRA you’d want to use is about 4.80, but that’s just a rough guestimate.

+18 for Jacobs in 2008?  Tough to believe for a guy that couldn’t crack a .300 OBP.  Fangraphs has him dead even over the past three seasons, and bb-ref has him at about +7.5.  Hard to believe he’ll be 18 runs better average in the AL this season.

If you’ve been following the Peavy to the Braves talks, the rumors are that Towers wants Wren to give him Yunel Escobar and other prospects. 

Escobar is about a +21 defensively according to Dewan’s +/- Fielding Bible, +10 defensively according to Tango’s Fan Scouting Report, +12 defensively according to MGL’s UZR, +7 defensively according to jinaz, and a +12.5 offensively relative to the average SS according to baseball prospectus’ pmlv.  Wouldn’t that make him worth between a 4.5 and a 5.0 WAR? 

I think Peavy has been on average about a 5 WAR over the last three seasons.  The Braves would be getting 5 years of club control over him.  They would have to give him $81 million over those 5 seasons.  That’s great value in free agency dollars.

However, the Braves also already have about 5 years club control left on Escobar.  He’s making the league minimum and isn’t yet arb-eligible.  Trading a 4.5 to 5 WAR SS who won’t make much money on the five club control seasons you have left and who hasn’t yet fully matured along with other prospects for a 5 WAR, $81 million injury risk of an ace doesn’t seem to make sense to me.

Even worse, Towers wants Wren to take Khalil Greene’s $6 million off his hands.... That $6 million hit ($5.4 more than Escobar makes) will likely hurt the Braves in getting and/or maintaining a good bench, outfield, and set of relievers. 

Any thoughts?

http://www.fangraphs.com/statss.aspx?playerid=2231&position=1B

Jacobs was +1 Situational Wins in 519 PA.  So, per 630 PA (which is what MGL is quoting, or 146.5 games… MGL, 150 Games is 650 PA), that would make him +1.2 wins.  That’s not far off the +18 runs MGL has him for in 2008, if he’s got good baserunning numbers, or the park factors look better for him.

***

For his career, his Offensive Situational Wins is +2.27 wins in 1611 PA, or +1.0 wins per 700 PA (162 G).

As for fielding, according to the Fans, he is DEAD LAST among 1B, which makes him possibly the worst fielder in MLB.  Billy Butler is not much better.  I’m not even going to look at UZR or Dewan, because I can’t even imagine that they could trump what the Fans see.

Let’s give him 70% playing time.
WAR = .70 * (+1 -1 -1.25 +2) = 0.5 WAR

***

Nunez has a career -0.9 situational wins in 691 PA.  Per 9 innings, that’s roughly -.05 wins relative to league average, or a .450 pitcher.  Problem is, a replacement-level pitcher is .460 in the AL.

***

So, what we have here is a trade of a platoon player for a guy who is a back of the bullpen guy.  For this kind of trade, it becomes a question of whether a scout on one side or the other sees more than the other guy, and if there’s some tiny hole for each team to plug.

***

This seems to be about as ho-hum as a “trade” as there is.  Heck, I would argue that MLB ought to have a protected list of say 20 players of their 40-man roster, excluding anyone under 25.  Everyone else is a free agent.

This way, instead of worrying about trades, they can simply draft whatever is in the scrap heap every year to fill-in whatever holes they think they have.  These two players would not be protected.

Peavy is a great pitcher of course: +9.4 wins in his last 5 years (almost 4000 batters).  That puts him close to a .590 pitcher, compared to the .390 repl level for a NL starter, or +.20 wins per full game.  If you give him 22 full games, that’s 4.4 WAR.

Esobar, according to the Fans, is a bit above average (and less than Greene).  With the positional adjustment, that makes his fielding roughly +1.5 wins.

In 942 PA, he has +1.54 Situational Wins, or about 1 win per 700 PA. 

If we give him 75% playing time, then we get:
WAR = .75 * (+1 +1.5 + 2) = 3.4

***

A 1 WAR difference is almost $5MM in difference.  Obviously, Peavy makes alot more than 5MM more than Escobar.

Would you rather have a 250K Lamborghini, with 200K left in payments, or a 150K Porsche, with 50K left in payments (or whatever the appropriate comparison is)?  With the Porsche maybe requiring more day-to-day maintenance (young guy, not much history, not exactly sure what we have in escobar), and the Lamborghini possibly breaking down it the middle of the road at any time (pitchers who have injuries are scary).

If you really can’t afford to make the payments, and if the other guy really needs the best car around, and if your risk aversion puts you in this position, then maybe you can make a case for the trade.

Tango/62: I agree on the surface with your analysis. I do think that Nunez has shown himself to be a better than a back of the bullpen guy the last couple of years, but agree that he’s not a hot property and is relatively easy to replace, no biggie.

My main problem with the Royals going after Jacobs in trade is that they already have 2-3 guys that are cheaper and probably at least as good with potential to be better than Jacobs, and 2 of them are younger (Kila, Buter). Moreover, if they really wanted a guy to fill the role Jacobs is most optimally utilized in (DH vs. RHP) there are guys out there who could be had for less than the $3M+ figure Jacobs is likely to get in arbitration who are as good or better. And they could be had without giving up talent, however marginal.

Of course, if MGL’s projection is accurate, then this trade looks much better for the Royals.

I’m not as good at projections as MGL or Rally, but I have Jacobs pegged at -4 runs for next year in 459 PA, not adjusted for park.

Colin/65: Is that just hitting, or overall?

Hitting relative to league.

ESPN reported that the Brewers picked up Mike Cameron’s option for 2009 ($10 mil). Factoring in projected playing time and aging, is his projected performance going to be worth that much?

As a general rule, Mike Cameron is year-in year-out the least appreciated above average player in baseball.

I would build a team with Mike Camerons and Endy Chavezes, and Mark Ellises, and Placido Polancos, and I’d contend for the playoffs every year.

***

Devil: any platoon player or back of the bullpen guy is worth at most 1 WAR, and therefore, should get less than 5MM$ on the free agent market.  In arbitration, 1st year arb, they get 40 cents on the dollar.

In the case of Jacobs, he’ll be worth very little.  Let’s see what he gets.

An average player in fulltime play is worth 2 WAR, or about 10 million.  Cameron is a bit above average hitting, fielding, and plays a premium position, so this was pretty much a no-brainer. 

On these options, there is usually a buyout so keeping Cameron may have only been 8 million more expensive than letting him go.

Tango, on my blog you questioned my use of 5.25 million per win.  Am I getting ahead of myself in inflation?  I thought last year was 4.8 mil, but maybe it was 4.4 and we should be up to 4.8 this year.  I can’t remember.

Just looking at the raw numbers I have in front of me, I have Cameron at $12.2 million for the upcoming year. That’s using the Chone defensive projections and basing it on 514 PAs. I just do a basic projection so I’d wait for the big guns to come in and tackle this one.

Rally, right I think you are getting ahead of yourself.

In 2007, I used 4:
http://tangotiger.net/salary2007.html

And 2008, 4.4:
http://tangotiger.net/salary2008.html

So, I’m going with 4.84 for 2009.

It also depends how many WAR you have.  I get around 1000 WAR for the season.  MGL has less, probably 800 or 900, so each of his wins costs more.

Tango/#69: It will be interesting to see what Jacobs gets. I guess I was quoting a figure from Dick Kaegel, official reporter of royals.com and known idiot, so I probably shouldn’t take that as gospel.

I suppose I also get confused, however, as to how we should view the market or even arb rulings. How “rational” is it. Maybe I’m conflating posts of different people that I’ve read on here, so I apologize if so, and I don’t mean this as a criticism, but more of a question, and here it is: at least on the FA market, sometimes the comments on deals are such that “oh, okay, that confirms how we valued player x.” However, sometimes the comments are more in the vein of “wow, that sure is stupid, player y isn’t worth that,” or, as in the case of Mark Ellis, “wow, the team sure got a great deal on player z, he’s worth way more than that.”

I suppose the question is how rational the market for marginal wins really is, overall. Are deals like Ellis and Milton Bradley last year (or, on the other end, Jose Guillen last year and Kyle Lohse this year) just outliers, or is the market less “rational” than it should be if it were efficient.

Getting back to Mike Jacobs, when you write “let’s see what he gets,” do you mean that ‘let’s see what he gets” meaning “this is how the arbitrator sees his value” or “this is what his value really is?” I hope the question makes sense.

I hope my posts/quetsions aren’t too annoying—I realize that these are probably very basic (albeit long-winded and confusingly worded ) questions, but for my part I appreciate the the time various people take to respond—I’m learning a great deal. Hopefully I’m not testing anyone’s patience too much. A few weeks back I even nerded up my own “2009 salary chart” from your previous posts extrapolating the 4.84/WAR from last year’s 4.4 and posts around that.

-------------------------

I think Rally went with the $5.25M/WAR because, unconsciously, he wants the Hunter and Matthews contracts to look better! [joking, of course. Love the defensive projections. Well, I wish they were better for certain players, but that’s hardly your fault.]

What’s the scale for the lwts offensive metric that MGL and Rally use? (what’s good per 600 PA or w/e)

I know you were kidding, but Hunter is probably a slight bargain at 5.25 per win, and slightly overpaid at 4.84.  No complaints about him at all.

For Matthews, any $ per win looks bad when you are no better than replacement.

Here are the weights I’m using:
1b .47
2b .77
3b 1.02
hr 1.4
bb .31
hbp .33
out -.2875
sb .19
cs -.44

Shouldn’t Hunter’s 2008 be judged against $4.4M/WAR?

Sure.

+7.4 batting (b-ref)
+3 defense
+25 al replacement level
+2.5 cf

total +3.79 wins * 4.4 = 16.7

Not counting baserunning, which he’s good at.  I’m happy with his performance, he can keep the change.

That’s what I thought. Justin’s numbers have him about the same, I was just confused with all the 4.86/5.25 being thrown around.

For Jacobs’ 2008 park and opponent adjusted lwts, I have him, per 500 PA, as:

s 59 (6.5 of those were IF singles)
d 26.7
t 2.13
hr 40.3
BB+HP 25.3
roe 2.9
so 111.5
FB outs 128.8
GB outs 122.4

I don’t count DP except as they are included in the out value of the GB out.

so = -.288 runs
FB outs = -.274
GB outs = -.288 (for a lefty batter)

non-IF single = .48 runs
IF single = .4
d = .77
t = 1.07
hr=1.40
roe = .51
bb or hp =.32

Tango, my PA’s are AB+SF+BB+HP-IBB-sac attempts (1.5*SH).

In the AL this year, there were 38.1 of these PA per game.  So 630 PA per player is 149 games.  In the NL, there were fewer PA per game, 37.7, I think, so that 630 PA is around 150.5 games.  That is why I use 630 PA for 150 games.  Obviously for a player who tends to bat in the top half of the lineup, there are more PA per 150 games and vice versa for players at the bottom of the order.

Tango/63

For Escobar, you use (+1 +1.5 +2) which I’m pretty sure is (hitting, fielding, NL).  Don’t you also need to add in the fact that he’s a SS?

MGL/79

You have the 3 out values as so = -.288, FB outs = -.274, GB outs = -.288

I was under the impression that an out was worth closer to -.30.  Is this due to playing in FL? Here is a link to where I think I got that in my head from…

http://www.tangotiger.net/wiki/index.php?title=Batting_Runs

Thanks guys…

The run value of every event depends on the run environment:
http://tangotiger.net/customlwts.html

As for Escobar, I combined fielding and position:

Esobar, according to the Fans, is a bit above average (and less than Greene).  With the positional adjustment, that makes his fielding roughly +1.5 wins.

What am I worth in free agency?  My baserunning and defense drag me down, but what am I worth as an AL DH?

Pat Burrell’s WPA/LI for the last 5 years, more recent first: +2.8, +2.8, +2.0, +2.0, +1.9, averaging 600 PA per year.  So, that’s +2.8 per 700 PA weighted, or +2.5 per 700, weighted and regressed.  Knock out a little for aging, say +2.25 overall offense.  A very good hitter.

He s-cks as a fielder.  I give a blanket -2.25 for any guy that should be a DH, in terms of his fielding + position.

In the NL, he gets +2 wins per 162G.

Let’s give him 80% playing time.

WAR = .80 * (+2.25 -2.25 +2) = 1.6

Man, that’s low.  It just goes to show how much you handcuff your team with being such a poor fielder.

Am I being too hard on him?  Maybe.  I’m just doing this fairly quickly.  Maybe he’s a 2 WAR player, but he won’t be much more than that.

Ouch, he will be one overpriced m-therfu--er.  Excuse my hyphenations.

I would see Burrell about the same as a hitter, but I’m curious why you use -2.25 for him as a defender, rather than -1.75 as a DH, if that’s what he would play (I think that’s why #82 was asking about)?

The DH value is -2.25, with a +.50 bonus if you accumulate your stats AS A DH.

If you remember in The Book, we said that there’s a DH penalty, that it’s harder to DH.  So, for a guy like Hafner or Ortiz, their stats have been depressed, and therefore, we give them an extra +0.5 wins to compensate.

For Burrell, he did not act as a DH, and therefore, we don’t need to compensate him.

He stinks as a fielder, say -1.5 wins as an OF and -0.75 for the corner OF adjustment.  Or he’d be -1 win as a 1B and -1.25 for the 1B adjustment.

Remember what we do.  We always ask: “What would an average player have done, if he performed under the same conditions as our guy?”.

Ah, OK. That makes more sense—if a guy’s previous stats were as a DH, then he gets the +0.5 bonus because we “know” he can do it, or whatever.

Actually, my cheesy weighted projections for Dunn and Burrell are both look better by “only” giving them the -22.5 penalty instead of adding their field + pos (assuming that the horrible fielding numbers I have for them the past 3/4 years are accurate). Yikes.

My simple weighted average of the last three years(using -2.25 rather than his “actual” defensive value) has Adam Dunn projected a a bit under 2.25 WAR for next year. Would I be correct that implies (just rounding offfor simplicity) say, 3/$28M or 4/$32M? If so, wow, I think someone s going to give him way more than that…

I’d have to re-read the info in The Book about the DH penalty, but I’m not sure we went any further than if a player DH’s AND plays a position in the same season or even sporadically in his career, he hits worse as a DH.  I don’t think we ever figured out if some or most (or all) of that penalty was from the fact that players who often or mostly play the field might DH when they are a little injured, hence the “penalty” is an injury.  Or, if we used a player’s entire career, did we control for age (obviously a player who plays the field early in his career and then DH’s later in his career will hit worse as a DH)?

IOW, I am not sure there should be any penalty if a player switches to DH and then settles in that position.  My guess would be there isn’t.  If the data contradict that, then I my guess is wrong.  I just don’t know (I don’t think actually) the data we looked at in The Book did in fact contradict that.

I don’t know that UZR hates Burrell all that much:

05 -3
06 -12
07 -30
08 -8

On offense, I have him as around +1.5 wins or 3.3 WAR in my scheme.  Om defense, his projection in LF is around -10.  Baserunning he is worse than even an average LF’er.

Around 1.5 WAR overall.  Yes, he will be mad overpaid. How many times have I said that poor fielding slugging 1B and corner outfielders are overpaid like no one’s business?  If you ever doubt that, think Carlos Lee.

I would start a thread of the Carlos Lee Family of Players (like I did with Endy), but I’d have some 30 or 40 guys in there, easy.

What would be interesting is to start lists of guys in the Lee and Chavez families who somehow defy the expectation that they will be over/underpaid.

Maybe Matt Stairs would be a guy who is like a “Lee” family member (power hitter, bad defense) who never really quite got his financial due (short, stout Canadian Guy Discount).

It’s would be harder to find a guy who got overpaid for (alleged?) fielding/defensive skills… Jason Varitek might enter that discussion. I know people disagree about Omar Vizquel’s fielding (I have not particular opionin)… If I remember rightly, UZR has never been particularly impressed with Ichiro’s defense, and a large part of why he’s “worth it” is his allegedly awesome OF defense.

I don’t think Varitek has been overpaid, except maybe this past season, the last year of his deal.  He’s been well above average hitting for a catcher, and good enough defensively.

Aubrey Huff only got 3 years, 21 million the same year Carlos Lee got his big deal.  Despite their projections and defensive value being very similar.

You won’t find two more similar players than Pat Burrell and Adam Dunn, except they bat from different sides of the plate.

Clarification: I meant that Varitek’s upcoming contract may or may not overpay him for his defensive skills and or “good work with pitchers,” since I assume that overpayers won’t be expecting much offense out of him.

devil/90: While Torii Hunter might have ultimately not been overpaid (I think he was), I think he WAS overpaid for his defense. UZR hasn’t loved him for a very long time, I don’t think, yet most of that money was because Hunter has a reputation as the best defensive CF in baseball. In truth, he’s a decent CF and a decent hitter. Overall money might work out, but the motivation for the contract was probably wrong.

Burnett has confirmed he is opting out. I have him at around 5.25 WAR over the past 3 years (weighted). Assuming half a win for aging, and $4.8MM a year, is he really in for $20MM, $22MM a year? Perhaps his health history will discount this a bit, but I think he gets as much as Lowe, if not more.

The rumors of Varitek’s early demise have been greatly exaggerated. I think he will be underpaid next year.  The bar is so low for catchers, in terms of their offense, that even a really bad hitter is an average catcher offensively. Combine that with a catcher having a career bad year, and then combine that with the catcher being pretty old, and you have a perfect storm of a catcher getting underpaid.  The only thing that prevents Tek from being vastly underpaid is that which makes people think he is going to overpaid, which he will not be.  That is his supposed defensive and leadership skills.

Tek’s offensive lwts, last 4 years:

23.4
-15.7
9.7
-16.5

What do you think a Marcel says about that?  Compare that to an average catcher with around -15 (I forget).  This guy is projected to be an above average catcher, or at least average one, yet everyone speaks as if he is replacement level.

Among other things, everyone assumes that an “old” player who has a bad year somehow defies Marcel.  Why is that?  It is simple to look back in history and look at all old players who had a bad year, even really bad year. Guess what you find the next year?  Marcel!  I have to constantly remind people, “Where do you think Marcel comes from?  Real players, real data!  If reality didn’t match up to Marcel, then there would be no Marcel, because that’s where Marcel comes from!”

If Marcel did not work for fairly common subsets of people, like old players with bad recent years or young players with good recent years, or some such thing, Tango, I, Rally, and everyone else would be revising Marcel to fit the data (reality).

So let’s please stop assuming that everyone is an exception to Marcel (or at least that you just KNOW who those exceptions are, because you are smarter than Marcel).

MGL #95: you are absolutely right. Although I don’t know how to run an “official” Marcel myself, I can do a weighted average that I think is sort of close. My problem was not that I was trying to “outsmart” Marcel or identify an exception, but simply that I didn’t look at Varitek’s stats very carefully, and thought that his 2007 was bad and his 2006 was good, which, if I understand how these things work, would change his outlook for next year considerably.Once I actually looked at the numbers and plugged them in, he does, indeed, look like an above-average catcher (before adjusting for age). I apologize for my carelessness.

I have Tek at -8 in 440 PA, so around -11 in 600 PA, right around where MGL said. That’s just a Marcel with some LWTS applied to it.

Of course, with a catcher (especially an older catcher) I’m not sure that per 600 PA is the best yardstick to use, given that he’s never had 600 PA in any season in his career and isn’t likely to start now. That might ding his value a little bit.

Marcel might work for common subsets of players, but for a 37 year old catcher with 1300 games caught under his belt and coming off a terrible year, I’d probably take the under on whatever marcel will spit out for Tek.

But either way, let’s say Tek is -11 for hitting.  +12.5 for being a catcher seems to be what Tango settled on a week or so back, so I’ll use that.  Defense, I have no idea.  Fans had him dead average (50.3) so 0 seems like a fine guess.  +25 for AL replacement.  That puts him +26.5.  Give him 70% playing time and he’s about a +18.5/+1.8. 

At 4.8M/win, that’s something like 8.5M.  Is he going to be paid much less than that?  I doubt he’ll be underpaid next season, and if he signs a multi-year deal, I’d think the odds will be VERY high that he’s grossly overpaid in years 2-x.

I’d probably take the under on whatever marcel will spit out for Tek.

That’s generous!

Yeah, I’ll take the under too!  How about if you give me 3-2?  Still take the under? How about if you allow Marcel 5 runs of “slop?” Still take the under?

Come on, I am not saying that Marcel should be perfectly linear or uniform or however you want to put it!

Your 1.8/8.5mm is probably not too far off.  And I am not very good at guessing what a player is going to command in a contract. I could guess 2/15, which would probably be about right.  We’ll see I guess.

I am mostly referring to many or even most people “bad-mouthing” Varitek as if he were replacement level, which I think they are. If not, then I take everything I said back.

Agreed on Varitek.  I’ve got him somewhere in the 8-11 million range, depending on how many games you expect him to catch.

Red Sox fans on BTF are talking like he’ll get a 2/15 deal, as if it was massively overpaying for him.  I hope he signs elswhere and Red Sox fans get a taste of what replacement level catching really looks like.

I hope he signs elswhere and Red Sox fans get a taste of what replacement level catching really looks like.

The return of Doug Mirabelli!

[Cue long response showing why I’m an idiot (again) and how Mirabelli’s year off means he will come back as a 1.5 WAR player.]

Mirabelli is not even close to a replacement level catcher. It is almost impossible to be a replacement level catcher since the average catcher is so low already in offensive lwts.  Literally, almost any hitter in AAA, if he could learn how to catch would be better than replacement level.  Well, maybe not “almost everyone” but you know what I mean.

Rally, #100, that is exactly what I was saying.  Perfect storm for people thinking that he is going to be overpaid AND that he will suck next year. 

1) Bad year (people always overvalue recent performance, of course).

2) Low junk stats in 08 - BA, HR, and RBI.

2) Since the average catcher sucks at hitting, a catcher who is just a little below average in hitting will be perceived as really sucking.

3) His age to go along with #2.  If an older player has a bad year, he is “done” (in the eyes and minds of the average fan).

4) They just took a disliking to Varitek’s offensive production and that snowballed and was fueled (as usual) by the media.

Varitek hit just as badly in 06 as a 35 or 36 year old (and his junk stats were also bad).  I don’t remember, but I suppose he was “done” then too.  Anyone want to some research on what the fans and media were saying after 06?  Miracle of miracles, he was +10 on lwts in 07!  Whaddaya know!

Mirabelli is not close to a replacement level catcher?  How so? Do you have him better or worse? (From your post I think you mean he’s better)

Mirabelli is 33 runs below average (LW figures from B-ref) in his last 480 PA, going back to 2005.  He did hit pretty well in 2004, but I’m not sure how relevant that is (when he was 33) to next year, when he’ll be 38, if he were to decide to unretire. 

Take a marcel of those numbers, and throw in an extra round of aging since he didn’t play last year...if he’s not replacement level or below then I don’t know who is.

Somebody is a replacement level catcher.  Take the projections of the best 60-75 catchers, and the guy after that is replacement level, a guy who you can sign for the league minimum.

If the position adjustment is set so low that all your catchers, including you AAA ones, show as above replacement level, then your RL is too low.

"It is almost impossible to be a replacement level catcher since the average catcher is so low already in offensive lwts.  Literally, almost any hitter in AAA, if he could learn how to catch would be better than replacement level.  Well, maybe not “almost everyone” but you know what I mean.”

I do know what you mean, but doesn’t this mean that the margin between replacement level and average is less than two wins? Doesn’t it also mean that an average catcher is worth less than $10 million a year?

Huh. My one-off joke making fun of myself turned into a debate about whether or not Doug Mirabelli would or wouldn’t be a replacement level catcher, and also one about whether or not replacement level catchers exist… The Butterfly Effect. I hope this didn’t kill someone 3 years down the road or anything.

Rally, you are right of course.  Whatever the level of the next X number of catchers after we give 2 or so per team IS replacement level.

I should have said that replacement level for catchers is higher relative to average, than for other positions.

I have him at -23.8 (non-weighted) over the last 480 PA since 05.

Throw in regression and even an age adjustment, and I don’t think you get a projection of much worse than -22 or so.

The average catcher is around -13 to -14 I think.  So he is -8 to -9 worse than that.  That might be replacement level for catchers, even though I generally use -18 worse than average or so.

So what I meant was that he is not that far from average, I guess. 

While obviously it is hard to find players who are willing and able to catch with some requisite skill, the number of players who can hit at -25 to -30 levels is enormous.  That would suggest that catchers should have a higher average offense.  I submit that they should, but for the fact that any decent hitting catcher is often moved off of catcher, catcher’s probably take a beating which depresses their original true talent, and teams seem to overvalue perceived defensive value behind the plate (maybe they are right - I don’t know), and guys like Fick and Craig Wilson are not allowed to catcher even though they would be well-above average hitters for the position.

I don’t have my Marcels ready yet.  Let’s take a peek at Manny.  He’s an unbelievable hitter, probably +4 WAA per 162G.  He’s a bad fielder, which we fix at -2.25.  His replacement level is around +2.3.  He plays all the time, so give him 85%.

WAR = .85 * (+4 -2.25 +2.3) = 3.44

That’s a 2yr deal, for 30 or 35MM.  He apparently has been offered a 2/50 deal.

I did some unofficial Marcels projections:

http://www.editgrid.com/user/cwyers/2009_Marcels_Projections

SG’s CAIRO projections are available now as well, I believe.

Given the recent discussion in these parts (as well as throughout the “blogosphere” about the Mark Ellis resigning, what do people make of these recent comments from Christina Kahrl (who is, I believe, an As fan):

“But to be terse (by my standards), the word that sums up my feelings on keeping Ellis is ‘resigned’ (as opposed to “re-signed"). OK, we kept him, and in the long and unhappy history of second base in A’s history, Ellis is sort of our generation’s Dick Green, a nifty player, but not a great one. For that money, it’s not a great deal, and given that it’s spread out evenly, this isn’t even a situation like Terrence Long’s contract, where we can always hope Billy gets somebody else to pick up the heavy back end of the tab.”

From http://www.baseballprospectus.com/chat/chat.php?chatId=544

I’m not trying to stir anything up, but while I realize that BP writers in general aren’t perfect, this just seems a bit… I dunno… “Wrong,” maybe? I mean, Terence Long?

I don’t know if Christina is an A’s fan.  Huck is (worked for them I think).

Anyway, it’s a summary position presented without evidence.  That makes the statement as meaningless as the millions of other statements posted on the web each day.

If she were to expand on her thought, provide evidence, then we can talk.

Ditto what Tango said.  I’ll add, consider the source.  Since when does Kharl have any more credibility when it comes to evaluating player value and contracts than, say, Buster Olney?  I am not aware of any, although I could be wrong.

Summary statements with no evidence should be taken for what they are worth, with one important caveat.  The source. If Buster Olney (or anonymous fan X) tells us that player A is better than player B, we are skeptical, as we should be, that they have any idea what they are talking about (in fact, we basically ignore it), and we demand evidence, and rightfully so.

If Tango says the exact same thing, and we are aware of Tango’s credentials, while it would be nice to demand evidence, it is not particularly necessary, especially if it is something that is not particularly controversial and we already know that Tango is more than competent to make correct judgments like that.

So let’s not put the the same demands and requirements on everyone.  The source is at least as important, probably more, since it is not easy to decipher someone’s evidence, especially if you have no expertise in that area yourself.

While I appreciate the sentiment in the illustration, I’ll have to disagree.  It ends up with the possibility of “resting on laurels”.  You can give a pass once in a while, but I’d prefer being challenged than have what I say without evidence be accepted at face value.

So, if I said that Chase Utley and Joe Mauer signed to an incredibly deep discounts two years ago, and I say it without evidence, maybe it’s not worthless, but it’s pretty darn close to it, because there’s nothing you can do with the info.  All I should get is a temporary pass until I explain further.

It’s not really a move, but the Giants’ projected shortstop right now is Emmanuel Burriss. Rally has him at -2 next season at short. Offensively.... well how bad does it look?

Tango, Kahrl is an A’s fan, she actually confirmed it in her last chat.

x (Y): Better farm right now—A’s or Rangers?

Christina Kahrl: I guess that’s a grass/greener question, but speaking as an A’s fan who likes what we’ve got, I nevertheless find myself envying the Rangers much of what they have.

baseballprospectus.com/chat/chat.php?chatId=544

So if league average wOBA is around .340, is there a breakdown of league average and replacement level wOBA by position?  If so, what are they?
vr, Xei

RJ’s message was marked for moderation and is now available.

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Yowza… Christina is an A’s fan and doesn’t appreciate Mark Ellis?  A nifty player, but not a great one?  Unfortunately, BPro policy precludes us having any discussion on this matter with them.  As Obama told McCain, paraphrasing: “You tell me where you want to have the debate, and I’ll be there.”

Holliday for Huston Street, Greg Smith, and Carlos Gonzalez?

Street just strikes me as a Lidge2008 type.  His peripherals seemed good this year, but for some reason, management lost faith in him, limited his saves, and therefore his trade value.

Meanwhile, ESPN provides “park adjusted” stats for Holliday… BA from .321 to .311, HR from 25 to 24.

Now… this strikes me as ridiculous.  What are they adjusting for?  I’d think that would be the AL West vs NL West adjustment, nevermind Coors.  According to BaseballMusings day-by-day, in 2007-2008 he was:

Home: .356 / 40 in 613 AB
Away: .304 / 21 in 562 AB

They’ve had the humidor there the whole time.  So yeah… I’m thinking he might lose a little more than .011 BA and 1 HR.

Holiday is the sixth best hitter in baseball according to Marcel the Monkey.

I’m hoping the A’s can sign him to an extension. 20/yr for 5yrs is a lot of money, but he’s probably worth it. He’s coming off a down year so the time to strike is now.

Mike, this is why you cannot simply look at one player’s splits and try to determine meaning from them.

For example, Chipper this year had a 1.122 OPS at home, compared to a .956 OPS on the road. Does anyone really think that Turner Field is a hitter-friendly park?

Or look at the entirety of the major leagues in 2008 - the average ML player OPS’d .769 at home and .730 on the road in 2008. This is why there’s a home field advantage!

You can’t simply quote a player’s home-road split as evidence of a park effect without controlling for home-field advantage and preferably using some sort of regression.

So… how do other people evaluate Holliday? If you’ll indulge me (and perhaps correct me), my (unregressed) weighted three-year averages have him as about a +39 run hitter, +10 defender, subtract ~.75 wins for corner outfielder, add 2.0 WAR for being in the NL… anyway, he comes out as just under 6 WAR (that’s worth $29M on the FA market, if my chart is right). Great player according to this, slightly better than even Teixeira.

I don’t know much about Smith and Gonzalez’s projected futures, but this strikes me as a pretty good deal for the As, given their seeming depth on the farm and the fact that they’ll get two draft picks for Holliday

Colin, I’ll try to be diplomatic here.  I’m not just looking at one player’s stats, I’m looking at Holliday’s stats in the context of everyone else’s stats.  And when you show me a league-wide OPS difference of .039, and I see Holliday has a 2-year OPS difference of .265, I kind of suspect something.  And I’d be willing to bet that him moving from Coors to a pitcher’s park in the AL won’t decrease his OPS by just .026, as ESPN declared.

Out of curiosity, why did you cherry-pick Chipper?  The only reason I wanted to look at 07 and 08 was because those are the only two years in which I’m positive Coors was using the humidor on all baseballs (according to what I’ve heard).  And I figured that 07+08 is a better idea of true talent than just 08.

For what it’s worth, we have absolutely no idea why there’s a home advantage.  Do hitters see the ball better at home?  Do pitchers pitch worse on the road?  Do umps give more calls to home players?  Are rookies always hung over at away games?  Saying that a .039 OPS difference is the reason for the HFA is like saying the home team scores more runs than the other team, and that’s why they win more.

I’ll try to be more thorough next time I make the 117th comment on a thread.  But I guess my point was: What might others here come up with for an estimate of how his numbers will drop?  And what do you all think of the deal - who benefits most in the talent exchange?  And why are the A’s trading for established stars all of a sudden?

ESPN is using B-R to change the stats, go to Holliday’s B-R player page, neutralize stats, 2008, AL, Oakland.

For the last 3 you need to be a B-R subscriber.

I actually used ESPN’s park factors and determined that Matt’s OPS should drop ~69 points (.947 to .878).  I only adjusted his stats in Colorado from this last season to what they would have been in Oakland and left his road splits alone (which could be lower as the AL is perceived to be more difficult).

His SLG/OBP goes from .409/.538 to .392/.486.  Billy Beane should end up with some draft picks which we all know Billy loves is one of the only reasons I can see him make the trade.

Do not use ESPN.com’s Park Factors. They do not correct for the other parks in the league. It is also a bad idea to use 1-year un-regressed park factors.

ESPN.com PF for Coors: 1.126
Uncorrected PF for Coors (2002-2008): 1.259
Corrected PF for Coors (2002-2008): 1.239
Regressed PF for Coors (2002-2008): 1.225

I am using Patriot’s method for adjusting a player’s statistics described here.

http://walksaber.blogspot.com/2008/09/end-of-season-statistics-2008.html

Instead of adjusting Holliday to a league-average park, I will adjust his stats for Oakland’s park:

Park Adjustment for Coors is 1.108
Park Adjustment for Oakland is 0.974
New Park Adjustment is 1.138

The first line is Holliday’s actual 2008 stats. The 2nd line is what Holliday’s 2008 stats would look like if we assume that he played for Oakland. line

AVG OBP SLG
.321 .403 .538
.300 .380 .504

Mike/117: I think you’re a little off on what happened with Street in Oakland. He was hurt in the middle of the season and lost around 4-5 mph on his fastball. During that time, he was awful and they tried other closing options (Devine and Ziegler). Once Street got over whatever it was that was nagging him - I forget exactly - he returned to form but by that point I think the A’s realized they had quite a few bullpen arms who were considerably cheaper.

I don’t think it’s that the A’s don’t have faith in Street. I think they dealt from a position of strength with a guy who was more expensive than/closer to free agency than other guys who are probably just as good (or better).

That’s not to say this is a good trade. I think that’s totally dependent on what you think of Carlos Gonzalez’s future. But their motivation for moving Street is different from how you phrased it I think.

Hmmm… so if I cherry-pick the worst stretch I can find, it looks like from 6/20 to 8/10 he has a K/9 of 6.6 and a BB/9 of 5.7.  (How Greg-Smith-esque, actually).  Which means he was very very good throughout the rest of the season.

How expensive is he?  2008 should have been his first year of arbitration pay.  Makes me wonder… were the A’s selling low because they thought that midseason problem may pop up again, or were the Rockies buying high because they thought he had bad luck and is fundamentally sound?

I wish interviews with GMs would reveal this stuff.

All this hubbub about what holliday’s numbers will look like in Oakland strikes me as so much fantasy hoohah.  If his ops drops, so what? In a lower run environment, those numbers will have just as much value — unless you believe that holliday is particularly suited to coors, moreso than other players.  What was his park adjusted lwts?

Click on my name link for his projections, and the other guys in the trade.

I have Holliday projected at +19 runs above average, regardless of whether he does it by hitting 316/390/549 in Colorado or 286/355/484 in Oakland.

Right, the issue is whether Holliday has received an extra boost ala Dante Bichette, or an opposite boost ala Juan Pierre, or somewhere in the middle.

Here’s a relevant thread (see post 2 and 3):
http://www.insidethebook.com/ee/index.php/site/comments/baseball_reference_does_it_all/#2

I look forward to the bright minded folks here to extend that analysis to Holliday…

I have Holliday as .3 wins in defense for a RF’er (+.5 fielding and -.2 arm), +.2 for baserunning, and +2.4 for hitting, all above average.  Subtract .75 wins for a corner, that is 2.15 WAA, which is around 4 WAR. Subtract another .25 for the NL, and that is 3.75 WAR.  I am quite confident he is not close to being 6 WAR, as in #120 above.

It used to be tricky to neutralize players in Coors.  Not only was the Coors park factor very high, but the road “hangover effect” was enormous.  You would have to adjust both home and away stats in the opposite direction.

Now, Coors is not that much of a hitter’s park, and there does not seem to be much of a hangover effect, if any.

Also, I don’t see any reason to treat Holliday any different than the “average” player in Coors, although, I suppose, by definition, he is NOT an average player, so maybe some kind of “custom” park factor might be appropriate, if you could figure out what that might be.

BTW, be careful about using a run factor to adjust OPS.  I think, you have to take the square root of the run factor to use to adjust for BA, OBP, SA, OPS, etc.

I have Holliday projected at 301/369/511 (no IW in OB) for a .379 wOBA

Most of the Coors effect now is in BA - outfielders are probably still playing too deep.

Here are his road totals per Baseball-Reference
2008 308/405/486
2007 301/374/485
2006 280/333/485
Right in line with my projections, little less SA

Oakland has a weighted team park factor of .98 for BABIO, .99 for HR, very neutral, but leans towards pitchers with current set of parks averaging above 1.00 in most categories

Other Oakland OF’s wOBA are (avg cf .330, corner .347)
Aaron Cunningham .350
Travis Buck .346
Chris Denorfia .338
Javier Herrera .326
Emil Brown .320
departed Carlos Gonzalez .316
Rajai Davis .316

Roughly speaking, you can add this much to wOBA to account for fielding:
.030 great fielder (+18 runs per 162G)
.015 good fielder (+9 runs)
-.015 bad fielder (-9 runs)
-.030 horrible fielder (-18 runs)

You can see therefore when you compare say Pat Burrell to Endy Chavez, that if one guy is .360 wOBA and the other guy is .300 wOBA, that they are in effect equally impactful.

Nice article by Tim Marchman, who seems to have landed in the Wall Street Journal:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122642534796017799.html

MGL #131: I may have been overly enthusiastic, and hardly see myself as an expert on projection, but I at least want to show how I got so that I don’t totally seem out to lunch. I re-did my “work” with WPA/LI rather than b-r’s batting runs and Rally’s defensive projections rather than a weighted average of the last three years of data I could find and came up with a similar result.

I took a weighted average (5-4-3) of the last three years of WPA/LI (3.98, 5.05, 3.37) and got 4.18 (a four year average gave 3.96, a weighted average regressed to league average gave 3.98). From Rally’s projections, I added +.75 wins for defense (8 runs/10.5), and subtracted .-75 for corner outfielder position. That gives me 4.18. Then I added 2 wins for replacement level, for 6.18 (the other two “averages” gave me 5.96 and 5.88).

I don’t have arm ratings or baserunning, which are obviously important for an overall picture, but wouldn’t have made that much of difference. I cede to your greater skill in projection, and I admit that I don’t know what to make of the “Coors Effect” if that’s the problem (and I don’t know enough to figure it out myself if the problem is park-adjusted stats like WPA/LI, etc. are way off). Again, I just wanted to show that I wasn’t simply making a crazy assertion. Maybe incompetent, but not totally unfounded from my admittedly limited point of view.

I probably wouldn’t understand all your reasoning, but are the main differences found in how you adjust Holliday’s performance for park and league, how you incorporate replacement level, or some other components?

Devil Fingers, no problem.  I don’t have any reasoning at all.  My projections are 100% objective.  I don’t do a thing, beyond plugging the numbers into a computer program.  I have him rated a little less on defense, partially because of his arm, which is a little weak (.25 runs).  I use a different replacement level, around 1.8 wins below average. I included an NL adjustment, because the average pitching and offense in the NL over the last 3 years at least is substantially worse than in the AL (and we want to normalize everyone to both leagues combined), and of course, you HAVE TO do a park adjustment on his home stats or half of his total stats (if you don’t use home/road splits), as Coors is still the best hitters’ park in the NL, I think, or at least pretty darn close.  And my projections are per 150 games played.  All of that add up to a big difference between our projections!  You can use WPA/LI, which Tango, for some reason likes to use these days (I am not fond of it, at least until someone shows me that it has predictive value beyond regular lwts), but you can’t even talk about an “evaluation” or a projection without regression.  That is where the average person usually gets it wrong - not regressing.  That is especially true for very good or bad players.  Plus he will be 29 next season which is actually in the 2nd or 3rd year of the downslope of the aging curve (I use 26-27 as the peak).  So for any projection hence, you actually have to start docking him some runs beyond his weighed, regressed historical average.  As I said, I think if you consider all those things above, even conservatively so, you will find that you have to project him much closer to 4 WAR than 6 WAR.

If Holliday’s arm is weak, wouldn’t the A’s be better off moving him to left field? The Oakland corner OF spots would seem to play about the same (nothing really quirky in one like the Green Monster), so if Cunningham or Buck or whoever ends up being the other corner OF guy has a better arm, moving Holliday to left would be the smart move. And if they do this, wouldn’t this increase Holliday’s value (only slightly, I suppose) since his arm wouldn’t be so much a negative, his range remains the same, and offensive production in the corners is about equal?

JD, in general you can’t just move a player to another position and increase his value, unless he is so bad or good at one position that he is playing the wrong position.  If LF’ers have worse arms (which they do) than RF’ers, then in order for the positions to be equal, then LF’ers would have to be better fielders.  If left fielders are NOT better fielders (but have worse arms), then their positional value is worse than that of RF’ers.  Either way, you don’t change Holliday’s value by moving him to LF.  If the A’s (or any other team) have two corner outfielders, then of course they would be better off using the one with the better arm in RF, and teams generally do that of course.  Then again, I would suspect that some players are better (probably because they are more used to it, or perhaps because of handedness) in RF of LF, so that has to be taken into consideration as well.

According to Tango’s weighting scheme for the Fan’s Scouting, LF had the lowest weight of any position for arm strength and accuracy. If a player has a weak arm, that is the place where it’s easiest to “hide” it, in that it would be used less than any other position. Minimize the opportunities to fail. BUT, you are moving pieces around, so if Holliday goes from RF to LF, someone else has to move to RF. Holliday has a value in RF, a different value in LF. Same with everyone else. Management must find the lineup which offers the highest total value of all nine players summed.

Holliday’s last 3 years of WPA/LI is (unweighted) is +12.37 (on Fangraphs, this includes a crude park adjustment) in 2,003 PA, or 4.3 WAA per 700 PA.

He’s a slightly above average fielder according to Fans for his position (say +0.25), but the position knocks him down by 0.75 wins.

We knock out 0.5 wins in aging (we need to do this part if we don’t do a proper Marcel.  I think I’ve been skipping this part for a few players.)

We add 2.0 wins for NL average player being above replacement.

Let’s give him 83% playing time.

WAR = .83 * (+4.3 +0.25 - 0.75 -0.5 +2.0)
= 4.4

It comes down to how much his park adjustment is.  His WPA/LI matches pretty much his Linear Weights by the 24 base/out states (LW24, or REW on Fangraphs site).
http://www.fangraphs.com/statss.aspx?playerid=1873&position=OF

Dudes, Holliday has been playing in left field his entire Colorado career.

Rally/#141:  That’s what I thought, but was worried that I was on thin ice as it was (hee hee… heh… uh...)

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Thanks for the explanation, MGL/136. I hope you and others don’t mind a novice like me posting and asking so many questions. The “reasons” you gave are objective—that is, subject to confirmation and dispute (Yes, I’m a philosophy grad student—it’s all about the $, you know. That and boring people to death). And your reasons sound good for me (after all, you set up your program/database/spreadsheet/whatever the way you did for reasons).

I came up with similar results using both B-R’s linear weights and WPA/LI, just switched to WPA/LI to see if it was substantially different the second time. Your (very good) explanations are persuasive. I have two (rather wordy) questions for you or anyone if it doesn’t take too much time.

1) I assume that more precise forecasts project a player re: aging is by to adjust each component (defense, baserunning, power, contact, etc.) on a different curve (since, iirc, defense and baserunning generally peak and decline earlier than power and patience, and so on). I just was using offensive linear weights-type stats to “group” all (well, most) of the players offensive contributions. It obviously has limits due to its generality, but doesn’t that incorporate a playing time element into it as well, since projects from an actual hnumber of plate appearances? If a player is in decline (one of my big mistakes, since I thought of Holliday as being 28 rather than 29), we take of .5 WAR overall, but aren’t the PAs already accounted for in some way by using actual quasi-lwts type stats? I suppose if you want to be more precise, of course, one goes back to projected rate above replacement * projected PAs, but I guess I figured that was done implicity (if not very precisely) by weighting the BtRns or WPA/LI or whatever from the last three years (although the defensive and positional adjustments would be prorated).

2) Park adjustments: I wondered about Coors, too, but given the materials to which I have access, figured that thee offensive stats are already adjusted for the player’s home park. Am I misunderstanding what the park factors are meant to do (I thought it was to make offensive performance comparable)? I the problem that park factors that are out there are generally wrong, ro that extreme environments like Coors (or Petco, or whatever) are special cases?

Addendum: I did adjust for the difference between the leagues by using 2 WAR as replacement level for Holliday as an NL nonpitcher, as opposed to the 2.5 I would use for an AL nonpitcher, as per the earlier postings on calclating WAR.

Part of the problem is the different languages.  I use a 2.0 and 2.5 wins replacement level per 162 G. 

MGL uses 18 runs per 150 G (presumably 15.5 for the NL and 20.5 for the AL).

As a result, he gets a lower WAR for all players.  At the same time, his $ per WAR is much higher than mine is.

If I work out my way, I get about 1000 WAR for all players in a given season (about 57% for nonpitchers, 33% for starters, 10% for relievers).  MGL?  Just going a quick back-of-the-envelope calculation, I get about 870 WAR for him (58% for nonpitchers, 42% for pitchers).

So, in order to convert MGL’s WAR to Tango’s WAR, you need to add 15% to his WAR numbers.

If I have Holliday as 4.4 WAR, then he will earn exactly the same amount of money as MGL’s having him at 3.8 WAR.  MGL said that he’s got Holliday at 3.75 WAR.  So, we are in perfect agreement here.

Devil fingers, ask away!  That is what we are here for (other than our own bloviating)!

If park adjustments are already included in the metrics you are using, then no need to further adjust them, of course. Everyone uses different park factors, but as long as you are using some reasonable one, that’s OK.  A reasonable park factor is generally a multi-year one which is then regressed towards some number which represents “similar parks” (in size, altitude, average weather, foul territory, etc.).

It is obviously hard to know what kind of park adjustment someone is using in their projections, so caveat emptor!

For aging adjustments, as well as park factors, it is technically proper to adjust each component separately, but just adjusting a comprehensive stat like WPA/LI, or lwts, or RC, with one adjustment number is fine too.  Close enough for union work.

#141, of course he is!  I knew that. Funny, it’s like those “written word” optical illusions.  Someone started to talk about Holliday playing RF and I jumped on the bandwagon.

I just have to say for the record that it was really cool for me to see Marchman link to one of my spreadsheets in that article. I don’t know why, exactly.

mgl #145: thanks again. I’ll try not to abuse the privilege.

Funny thing: I made this spreadsheet for doing these pseudo-projections combined with the 2009 salary chart and stuff. But I’ve continually been improving it to include regression, projections using past 3, past 4 years… so anyway, going back over my numbers, I realized that in the “newer” version I was using for Holliday, I hadn’t updated some of the league-adjustment and defensive “projection” stuff… So I was (inadvertantly) giving Holliday a “bonus” for replacement level. Once I fixed it, he came out as about 5 WAR after adjusting down .5 for age, which isn’t that far off from you other people.

What I’m saying is that it’s all Excel’s fault.

Here a serious question to ask, although this might not be the right thread. Of the freely avilable and pre-calculated quasi-lwts stats out there, which do people on here think is the most accurate overall (in terms of getting the weights right, park and league adjustments, etc.)? I’m sure there are more out there, but the ones I’m thinking of (and feel free to add to the list):

b-r’s BtWins/Rns

Stat corner’s bRAA (and add in the SB/CS weights)

WPA/LI (or other Fangraphs stat)

This may seem like a copout, df, but I really don’t know enough about the innards of those three to say for sure. Here’s my off-the-cuff opinion:

B-Ref uses the Palmer weights, which are generally fine (I don’t know if they’ve fixed the double for B-Ref) if perhaps a bit low for the modern run scoring context. I don’t think their park factors are very good, but I don’t think they’re as bad as, say, ESPN’s.

Statcorner uses wOBA to generate bRAA, which again is usually fine. I really don’t know much about their park factors - for pitchers I know they use batted-ball park factors from a THT article, which are pretty solid.

For Fangraphs, the direct comparison to the others listed is BRAA, which is similar to WPA/LI but for runs instead of wins. Again, either is probably fine. I know they worked on adding some park adjustment this summer, but I don’t recall exactly what (I remember that it was… a little rough, I think, although I don’t remember thinking it was just plain wrong or anything.)

I tend to use B-Ref’s batting runs, just because B-Ref is so damn useful I find myself drawn there.

The Padres are picking up Giles’ option but they’re letting Hoffman go.

Just how big of a steal was Giles’ ‘08 and how good does his $9M in ‘09 look?

Also, what should have San Diego’s spurred (and super secret) offer to Hoffman have looked liked ignoring any sentimental bonus?

Devil Fingers - I run each compinent seperately, as they have different denominators (if your strikeouts increase all batted balls will decrease) and yes, they age differently.

I use matched pairs of teams to calculate park factors for multiple years. Pirates and Phillies in Three Rivers vs them in the Vet, covers almost 30 years. Repeat for each combination of teams and parks (including any time a park changes configuration).

Then I made a Marcel based projection, using park factors, major, minor and college data, basically weighted 10-7-5-3-2-1 for past seasons.

I’ve pretty well settled on using wOBA and BRAA for rating individual players.

I’ve written detailed descriptions of all these in articles at seamheads.com and statspeak.net.

Uh, yeah, of course I knew Holliday played LF, I just couldn’t pass up an opportunity to disagree with mgl.

Oh, and learn a relational database. Excel takes so much time to copy and paste formulas. I use Access, by most folks use MySQL (I will eventually, but am addicted to the gui). There’s just so much more power and flexibility with a minimum amoutn of time spent coding.

I use Access quite a bit.  It not only has a powerful gui, but it has great linking capabilities to other Access database.  This way, you can have a BDB database, a Marcel database, a Scouting database, and then cross-link them.  Not only that, but it lets you link external databases like Oracle, all while using the Access gui.  Furthermore, the export feature to Excel or csv files is super quick.  Access is just a really bangup DBMS.

On the downside, I wouldn’t use it for more than 1 million recs, and really, I’d top off at 100K recs.  And, it will crash on you once in a blue moon, so make sure you make backups all the time.

You can use both. If you set up the ODBC connector you can use Access at a front end to MySQL databases. (I believe there is similar functionality for PostgreSQL and Oracle DBs, but I have no experience with it.) I can import an Excel file into Access and export it back out to my MySQL database. I can also view and alter MySQL tables in Access. You can also query a MySQL table using Access’s SQL dialect.

I normally use a different GUI front-end for MySQL, mostly out of habit and because at this point I’m more comfortable with writing to MySQL.

Hmmm… Access… Let me see. No, not on my computer. I guess when I got this thing years ago, I just got the basic Office package. Hmmm. I don’t know if I’m at the poitn where I’m doing massive amounts of projetions at once and stuff, but it’s worth trying out if I can link things together quickly (then maybe I can do full leagues!).

Is the OpenOffice database a decent free alternative to Access? Anyone out there use it for this stuff?

#144 - If you don’t mind me asking, what are each of your respective $s per WAR?

Thanks.

Mine is 4.84, meaning his must be 15% higher.

But, we’ll only know once we know how many WAR mgl has for the league.

Apropos of nothing, 37 Down in the Post crossword today is “Sabermetrics stat”.  The answer will not make you happy.

156:
It has to be “holds” right?

@#157 that or OPS

Washington Post, sorry.  It’s either “RBI” or “FIP”; you get three guesses.

Seriously.  They picked maybe the single least sabermetric stat.

GWRBI ?

WHIP?

Cubs trade prospect SP Jose Ceda for FLA closer Kevin Gregg. Their closer last year, K Wood, is a free agent. I don’t know much about Ceda, but I think he’s another hard thrower who doesn’t know how to pitch.

According to B James, Gregg’s projection for 2009 is a 3.71 ERA, compared to Wood’s 3.51 projection. So, for perhaps a .3 win difference (assuming 65 IP and LI of 2), the Cubs can use Wood’s money elsewhere, to help shore up their main weakness in CF. Or, to help sign a good FA starter. And they are rid of the injury concerns for Wood, and the last tie to the ‘luvable loser’ tag from the past..

Sounds good to me. But, I know nothing about Gregg’s contract, or any great detail about Ceda.

Nick Swisher to the Yankees for Wilson Betemit, Jeff Marquez and Jhonny Nunez.

Oh, the Yankees also get Kanekoa Texeira.

Marquez, 8/10/84, RHP, 2004 1st round sandwich pick.  Hit AAA this year.  33Ks in 80.2 IP.

Nunez, 11/26/85, RHP.  terrible season in A+, high K-rate.

Texeira, 2/6/86, RHP. Minor-league closer.  Has looked pretty good so far - reached AA with 3 HR allowed in 144 IP.

Yankees acquire Swisher

I estimate Swisher at 10-15 runs with the bat, Rally puts him at +5 with the glove (corner OF), -7.5 runs for position, +25 runs for AL replacement.  That puts him ~35 runs above replacement.  Throw in some aging and/or missed time, he is probably about 90 runs over the next three years, for which he’ll be paid 5.3, 6.7, and 9 MM.

That’s a pretty good amount of surplus value there.

Seems like the White Sox sold low on Swisher.  His BABIP was .251 last year, lowest of his career.  It seems unlikely that he’s in the Ben Grieve old player’s skills/early decline phase.

In my article for the Annual I give the surplus values for lower rated pitching prospects.  For “B” pitchers their surplus value is $7.25 million.  For C pitchers 22 and under their surplus value is $2.1 million and 23 and over is $1.5 million.  Given those, this looks like a big steal for the White Sox right now.

I guess the Swisher deal dwarfs the Wood/Gregg deal…

Victor--

I figure your system doesn’t capture this, but Marquez is regressing. 33 K’s and 24 walks in over 80 AAA innings and scouts have said it looks like he doesn’t know what he’s doing on the mound. At best, he’s a long reliever.

Given that Swisher will be paid about 20 million for 9 wins, 45 million of value, I think that dwarfs the surplus value of a few lower rated pitching prospects.  Betemit’s got 2 years of arbitration left, and he’s a slightly below average player, 1.5 wins or so.

Looks like a win for the Yankees.

Rally/#171 (or anyone else)—using your OF defensive projections for Swisher (+5 run in the corners, -3run in center) and Tango’s positional adjustments (-.75 wins LF/RF, +.25 CF), it looks like Swisher is “good enough” in center that he’s more of an asset there than in the corners, despite being projected as below average. Is that the right way to think about using the positional adjustments and defensive projections together when trying to establish a player’s value?

NB: the fangraphs, b-r, and stat corner “lwts"-type stats all differ a fair amount on Swisher.

Is there a site with WAR projections for 2009?

I know the Yankees have the luxury of always being buyers but Cashman and the front office almost always make excellent trades, frequently.

DF, I don’t know if Tango’s conversion between the corners and CF are “per some number of opps” but you have to be careful when converting from corners to center or vice versa, because it depends on whether the player is plus or minus in center field.  That is because CF gets considerably more opps.  If you are an above average CF, the more opps the better.  If you are below average, you want to reduce your opps as much as possible (one option being moving to RF or LF).  It is a little tricky determining whether a player on the fringe has more value at position X or position Y.  Obviously it depends on what team he is on.  But in general, if you don’t know team he is on, you have to know the distribution of defensive talent in the league. Basically, you fill your SS, then your CF, then your 3B and 2B.  etc.  If a player does not get his correct position when his name comes up, then you can assume that he is at the wrong position.  But, as I said, in order to know/do that, you have to play around with all the defensive talent in the league.  To do that, you also have to know the offensive talent.  For example, if your best defensive talent can’t hit, then he does not fill the “first slot” at SS, and you go to your next player.

It gets even trickier than I described it above.  For example, let’s say that you are down to the first basemen.  Now let’s say that you have 10 players left to fill out one last job at first base.  You don’t just choose the best fielder out of the 10.  If someone can hit considerably better than he, then you choose that person, as long as the amount he hits better is more than the amount he fields worse.

Cubs resign Dempster for 4/52. Off the cuff, using his ZiPS projection, I come up with 4/51. So I’m pretty happy about this. Should I be?

Dempster is maybe 3.5 WAR. So that should be more than 4/52. Maybe 4/58?

The Dempster signing looks pretty fair.  I’ve got 47.4 million over 4 years, though I may need to adjust my dollars per win from Tango’s numbers.

I’ve got the league at 969 wins over replacement, or a replacement level team at 49 wins.  Batters are +548, starters +345, and relievers +76.  I’ll have to look through the archives and see how those numbers match up.

Ryan Dempster: 3/38 or 4/52 (player option), paying for 3.0 wins in 2009.

Marcel calls him 3.67 ERA in 146 IP.  Dude was a starter in 2008 and a reliever in 2006/07.  Not only that, but he pitched better as a starter than reliever.  Much, much better.

So, very tough call here. 

Let’s see.  25% of his forecast was from his relief performance, so replacement level is 25% of .480 and 75% of .390, or .413.

A 3.67 ERA in a league of 4.30 is around .570.  146 IP is 16 full games.  So, his WAR is 2.5.

But, like I said, we should expect his IP to be more han 146, and it’s a tough call on his ERA.

Presuming say 180 IP (20 full games), then the Cubs are paying for for 3 WAR, or 3/20=0.15 WAR per game.  At .390 replacement level for a NL starter, that means paying for a .540 performance.

Basically, we could have justified anything between a 2.5 and 3.5 WAR performance, meaning justified anything between 4/39 and 4/62.

I’ve got the league at 969 wins over replacement, or a replacement level team at 49 wins.  Batters are +548, starters +345, and relievers +76.

At +345 for your starters, in 30*162*5.8/9 games (3132), that puts them at +.11 wins above replacement.  The average starter is a .490 pitcher, so you have replacement at .380.  That matches mine.

At +76 for your relievers, in 30*162*3.2/9 games (1728), that puts them at +.044 above replacement.  The average reliever is a .520 pitcher, so you have replacement at .476.  I use .470.  Fairly close. However, you seem to give no credit for extra leverage for the ace reliever.

+548 wins for nonpitchers, in 30*162 games means +.113 wins per game, spread over 8.65 nonpitchers, or an average of +.013 wins above replacement.  I use +.014, so pretty close.

Breaking news: Royals traded Ramon Ramirez for CoCo Crisp.

Not sure about his projections. I really like Ramirez—Justin had him at about 1.5-2 WAR last year, and he’s making the minimum.

Here’s what I have for Crisp (tell me if I’m going it wrong) as posted elsewhere:

Chone CF projection: -3
Marcels bRAA: -6.4

Arms ratings the past three years in CF:

2005: -16.5
2006: -4.9
2007: -0.2

Let’s generously call that -

So… - 10.4 is about - 1WAR

+.25 wins for CF + 2.5 wins for AL replacement = 2.25 minus 1 = 1.25 WAR player playing full-time.

Maybe that’s worth $5.75M, except that I think Dayton Moore gave up a superior player who makes the minimum, and Rally projects DeJesus’s range as 6 runs better next season anyway…

I’m I “doing it right” with regard to Crisp? What do people have for Ramirez? His pRAA (without leverage index) says he outpitched Soria be a decent margin last year…

Sorry, just found some typos that I missed in the preview. after “arms”, I have Crisp at 1 win below average, +.25 wins for Cf +2.5 wins for AL replacement = 1.75 WAR is he plays full-time, which he hasn’t a for a few years. So I guess that’s better than I thought, but I’m still not sure it’s a smart trade.

Off the top of my head, this looks like pretty close to a wash for both teams, value and salary-wise.  However, this is one of those instances for Boston, whereby if a player with value is sitting on the bench because you have better options, you try and get as much as you can for him.

Before the season started, I had Crisp as close to +2.5 WAR, and Ramirez as close to replacement level.  I’m not sure about now.  Crisp is probably around +2 and I am not sure about Ramirez.

I still need to bone up (i.e. re-read the WAR post) on how to figure relievers above replacement. I followed the ROyals pretty closely this year, and Ramirez was great. I don’t know what you all think of pRAA from Stat Corner, but out of the AL relievers, he was third behind only Rivera and Papelbon. He had a higher tRA* than Soria.

Yeah, it’s just one year, and he was bad in 2007, but he did have an excellent year in 2006. No, I"m not arguing that 2007 “doesn’t count,” just that this performance isn’t unprecedented for him.

I guess one issue we’re talking about at Royals Review is how good Crisp’s defense. There seems to be a lot of disagreement about it. He had a bad year in everythig I’ve seen, but that could be wrong.

From a Royals’ fans perspective, the issue is whether or not the Royals needed another CF. I kow that different PBP systems see players very differently. I also know that David DeJesus had a bad year in center in most of them. However, so did Crisp. But in 2007, if I’m not mistaken, Crisp was +13 UZR in center, and DDJ was +10. Crisp obviously had a better 2007, then, but not enough to make up the difference in their offensive projection (for this year).

In CF, Rally’s projections have Crisp at -3, and Dejesus at +3, which surprised me.

Of course, when I combine Marcels with Rally’s projections, it turns out that the Royals problem is not DeJesus, Crisp, or even the oft-demonized Mark Teahen, but Jose Guillen, on both “sides” of the ball.

Back to the ‘pen: even if relievers are somewhat interchangeable, I guess I’m not sure that Ramirez’s kind of performance is as easily replaceable as that of, e.g., Leo Nunez.

Thanks Tango.  It looks like we’re close enough that I’ll just use the same 4.84 million per win value.

“Fairly close. However, you seem to give no credit for extra leverage for the ace reliever.”

Does this really matter?  I mean, since I’m not just looking at ace relievers, but all relievers, and other than the closer and the 8th inning setup guy, most relievers do not have high leverages.  I did a quick check on Fangraphs data and found the average reliever had a leverage of 1.07 last year.  I don’t think considering leverage would increase the total wins over replacement for all relievers, though the top pitchers certainly should get the credit for it.

Wow, my projection for Crisp has really changed.  He had an awful year, defensively - double digit negative in CF.  He did have a good year (around zero) offensively though.

In total, I have him only 1.25-1.5 WAR for 09.  Maybe that is another reason why BOS traded him.  Maybe they think his defensive value has really declined.

Ramon Ramirez, after a good year in 08, has a pretty good projection.  About .5 to .75 runs better than replacement as a reliever.

KC may have gotten a little hosed. Very little, if any, equity in Crisp, while Ramirez has some value and makes the ML min salary (I think). Wouldn’t that be a shock?  KC’s FO gets hosed by Boston’s.

MGL #187: Thanks. I always want the truth, no matter how much it hurts and confirms my suspicions. (That’s a llie, I’m pretty sure I don’t want the truth about Alex Gordon). ZiPS wasn’t too thrilled, either. Yeah, Ramirez is making the minimum. bad 2007, great in 2006 and 2008.

You have Crisp even worse than I do. I guess I don’t have his arm number for ‘08, and don’t know enough and was too depressed to think about it. He’s making $5.75M in 2009 with some sort of option in 2009.

Wouldn’t that be a shock?  KC’s FO gets hosed by Boston’s.

I can only assume this is entirely appropriate sarcasm. I just hope that Dayton Moore doesn’t have Billy Beane’s phone number, or vice versa.

I’m not worried about the future though. I heard that Dayton Moore was going to get a computer of his very own for his office next Spring if Wal-Mart does well this Christmas.

While non-sabermetric teams can certainly compete on a lot of fronts, getting involved in transactions with teams like Oakland or Boston, the best they can hope for is a wash I am afraid, and the worst, which is going to happen all the time, is that they get hosed.  I don’t think this is a hose, but I suspect that KC has no idea what WAR is and if they did, no idea how to compute it for a player or even to look it up on the internet (and then to respect and use it).  That is a huge disadvantage for a team these days.  It is going to get harder and harder for successful teams like MIN and ATL to stay successful if they don’t get on the “sabermetric evaluation” train, assuming that they are not already.

I question that.  We’ve seen enough trades by Boston and Oakland under their current regimes that we could put together a scorecard.  They’ve each made enough bad moves that I don’t think it’s obvious, on balance, that their trading partners should expect to get hosed.

Rally #190: that’s a great idea. I would love to see a scorecard like that done by someone who knows what he or she is doing (i.e., not me).

Tom Ruane of Retrosheet has a full transactions file available. It’s pretty buried, and I don’t know if 2008 data is available yet:

http://www.retrosheet.org/transactions/index.html

The transactions must be evaluated knowing the finances (salary, and years of service).

Trading a house worth 1MM with 1MM in mortgage for a house worth 200K with no mortgage is not necessrily a win for the guy that gets the 1MM house.

Is Derek Lowe’s really underrated, or is it just me?

Supposedly there is a Dye for Edwin Jackson+ rumor going around. The Rays must keep tabs on you, MGL.

Giants sign Renteria for two years, 18 MM.

Marcel: 336 wOBA.  Call it +0.
Chone: -6 at SS.  Call it -5.
Position: +7.5
NL Replacement: +20.

Assuming he plays in 130 games, that puts him at +1.8 WAR.  At $4.8 MM per win, that’s $8.7 MM.  Pretty close to a fair deal.

I’d give Renteria a +22.5 rep-level bonus - he split time between the AL and NL, and so his projections are baselined against a mixture of the two leagues. So 2 WAR.

Not bad. Wish the Cubs would have been interested in that. (I have a great fear that they sign one of the Ibanez/Abreu types this offseason instead of doing something productive.)

The Renteria deal isn’t confirmed yet. I won’t have any problems with the reported signing if they somehow delay it a week.

The Renteria rumor is false, according to MLBTR

Supposedly there is a Dye for Edwin Jackson+ rumor going around. The Rays must keep tabs on you, MGL.

I think it is pretty clear that the Rays don’t like Jackson either, considering the way he was used in the post-season, but…

This would be a horrible deal for the Rays.  Jackson I think is eligible for arb. I am not sure what he would make.  Maybe 1 or 2 mil.  He has a tad of value above a replacement pitcher, so he has essentially zero equity (value in WAR * 5 mil minus salary).

Dye, on the other hand, is slated to earn 11 or 12 mil next year, but is only a 1.5 WAR player or so (of the top of my head).  He is worth only 7 or 8 mil.  Why would a smart team want to pay a 1.5 WAR player 11 or 12 million dollars, especially a low revenue team?

I don’t get the Renteria love. I was expecting everybody to say he’s done. He looks done. He plays like he’s done. His defense has dropped off the map, and he seems incapable of hitting (in the AL, at least). I don’t know how Marcel has his wOBA at .336.

So my question: Why do people think he wasn’t that bad last year or why do they think he won’t continue to be that bad (or worse)?

Most people believe he’ll bounce back once he gets to the NL, and that last year he struggled simply due to the fact that he’s not an “AL player”.

I have him at like 1.7 WAR, so a 2/$18 isn’t too terribly bad (if I remember correctly, that’d warrant like a 2/$15 deal).

The short answer is that 33-yr olds, with a career wOBA of .333, who hit .308 wOBA in their most recent season after hitting .381 and .350 in their two previous seasons, has a true talent level of .336.

The Tigers fans did think he was one of the worst fielding SS in baseball and a very big dropoff from his 2007 assessment, so that may provide additional clues, at the very least on his fielding, and perhaps even on his hitting.  Or, it could be that Tigers fans were so unhappy with his hitting that they took it out on his evaluation.

If I had a nickle for every time someone just “knew” that so-and-so was “done,” and then lo and behold, they end up performing at around their Marcel level (e.g., Jim Edmonds or Frank Thomas, etc.), or I had another nickel every time someone came to Spring Training in the best shape of their lives and healthy as a horse, and then ended up performing, again, at their Marcel level, well…

I’d have a lot of nickels…

What’s the lowdown on Furcal? Supposedly he’s looking for a 4 year deal. Seems a year too long for a 31 yo player with a back injury.

Matt

Matt, everyone has a long-term projection based on an aging curve, which informs a player’s rate stats AND expected number of PA.  That is true whether a player is 31 or 41.  As far as a player with back problems/surgery, I have no idea how that affects anything.  There has not been nearly enough research on how injuries affect projections.  So, the “lowdown” is the usual - a long-term Marcel plus however you want to adjust/change that for the fact that he is coming off back surgery.

Hampton signed for 1 year and $2 million, plus incentives. I wonder what some of the projection systems see him doing since he’s missed so much time. Seems like he’d be considered almost a 36 year-old rookie.

No arb offer to Dunn? Smart or too cautious?

Are we about to see a huge market correction (i.e. deflation in win value)?

Also there was an interesting interaction between Neyer and Seidman (and a post by Eric on Fangraphs) about “context” as it colors value which might be germane to the conversation here.

"I don’t follow the Jays so I won’t comment on the effect this has on the development of young players being blocked. I come from the 70s and 80s and 90s Expos where any young player with talent was thrown to the wolves to see what they’ve got. I applaud that style.”

I was just reading this comment from you (Tango you commented at Battersbox in 2005), I was wondering what is the best way to implement a system like this? Also include keeping in mind the costs of the player further down the road.

Once you realize that controlling a player’s salary (pre-free agency) costs you just one-third, over those 6 years, than a similar free agent would cost you, you’ll do practically whatever it takes to get that asset.

There are no “further costs down the road”, as I wouldn’t have any good free agent.  I’d put that money back in r&d.

The only free agents I’d go for are those that are severely discounted, or that I need for a quick stop-gap.  Mike Cameron and Milton Bradley were probably the two best signings I thought at the time last year.

Javy Vazquez: Marcel has him as a slightly above average pitcher (around .515), with almost 21 full games.  With replacement level at .370 for AL starters, that makes him a 3 WAR pitcher.

3 WAR for 2009 (at 4.84MM per win) and 2.5 in 2010 (at 5.32), plus the 800K of minimum salary, makes him worth $28MM for these two years.

Javy has a two year contract left, at $23MM total.

So, he has about a $5MM surplus value.

***

Boone Logan, by the age of 24, is a reliever with a career 110 IP and ERA of 5.87.  Marcel has him at 4.94 (with low reliability for that estimate).  Scouting reports would be crucial here, otherwise he looks like a replacement-level pitcher, and worth nothing.

***

In return, the Braves give up Tyler Flowers.  ANY decent prospect will be worth FAR MORE than 5 million$.

This is just like giving up your $28MM house that has a $23MM mortgage on it, for something that you get to “try before you buy”, live in a very modest house for a couple of years, that you think you will really like with some great renovations, and payments backloaded, of which you can walk away from at any time you want.

What is the word on Flowers’ prospect status?

Actually, closer to $28.5MM.

Kevin Goldstein rated Flowers as a 3 star prospect, which would be about a “B” prospect I believe.  Going from my THT article his surplus value is about $5.5 million.

CHONE likes Vazquez more than Marcel, with his projection closer to 4 WAR.  That should give him enough surplus value to be worth a decent prospect package. 

But CHONE just really likes pitchers who can be counted on for 200 or so K and no more than 60 walks.  CHONE thinks such a pitcher should pitch the way Vazquez pitched in 2007.  That is the only season of Javy’s last five where he was actually an above average pitcher by ERA+.

He certainly has been frustrating.  Probably the worst pitcher I’ve ever seen among those with a proven track record of elite K/W numbers.

Looking at the rest of the names according to Jon Heyman/AJC: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2008/baseball/mlb/12/02/braves.whitesox.trade/index.html

Flowers (B) - $5.5
Gilmore (C) - $0.7
Lillibridge (C) - $0.5
Rodriguez (C) - $2.1
Total - $8.8

Not sure what to make of Lillibridge.  He was a solid prospect coming into last year but just collapsed last season.  I wouldn’t necessarily disagree if you added $1 million to his surplus value.  Flowers is regarded better by some, maybe even in the 76-100 rank range, which is $12.54 million on average value.  So based on your evaluations of the prospets, I could see the surplus value the Braves gave up range anywhere from $9 million - $17 million, the right figure is probably somewhere in between.

Seems like a somewhat balanced deal.  Good job guys.

***

Yes, Javy is frustrating in that his ERA and his FIP don’t match up very well.

I was looking at Victor’s THT articles for the value of compensation draft picks, and salivating over the potential draft for the Angels next year.  A type A is worth 8-9 million, and the Angels have 3 (Tex, K-Rod, Darren Oliver) plus a B in Jon Garland.

If Oliver signs somewhere else, that has to go down as one of the great unexpected free agent bargains in recent years.  For 3.5 million, they get 2 years of solid relief, and almost 3X the investment in draft pick value.  Assuming that some other team bites and offers a deal to the 38 year old Oliver.  I would not be surprised to see him accept arbitration.

I posted a question on their blog, but Sheehan called Bobby Abreu a “five or six-win player” in an unfiltered post (click name) today.  That seems wildly inaccurate to me.

Marcel: .357 wOBA means about +10 with the bat over 600PA
Defense: Chone projects to about -10 with the glove

After demerits for position and age, he looks like a 1.5-2 win player to me and possibly even worse than that.  I’ll be interested to see if Joe offers an explanation (my guess is no).

218- Joe was referring to him as a five to six win player using WARP.  If you look at his WARP totals the last three years they are 5.2, 5.8, 7.3.

219—thanks.  That would make sense.  I’ve mentally removed that stat from my consciousness as I find it to be severely less useful than at least 10 other stats I can name off the top of my head.  Should have looked there first.

(I still think Abreu is more like a 2 win than a 6 win player.)

Pedroia comments moved here:

http://www.insidethebook.com/ee/index.php/site/comments/dustin_pedroia/

Tango, MGL, et. al.:

I have a question about this years $/WAR. I’ve been going with $4.84M, as per this discussion. However, over at Fangraphs, Dave Cameron (and others) have been using $5.5M. I asked Cameron about it (and Dave, if you’re reading, please correct me if I’m inadvertently misprepresenting you), and he wrote that $4.84M is the correct figure for a win above replacement, but that the cost of the replacement player ($400,000) also needs to be figured into the salary—thus $5.24M. Now, he went on to say that given the great nature of this particular free agent class, that he thinks $5.5M is reasonable…

Leaving that last point aside, does the $4.84M figure include the replacement salary? More simply: should I be using $4.84M/WAR or $5.24M/WAR in my oh-so-crucial thinking about free agent market value?

I think the proper way to do it is to take 4.84 per marginal win, then add 400K to that for the minimum salary.  You don’t want to add an additional 400K for every extra win.

I’m not sure what the great nature of the free agent class has to do with it.  If there are great players, they’ll have more marginal wins, hence more total dollars…

The $400K should be a fixed cost added to the total salary, not a per WAR #.

Rally beat me.

Rally and NickP: Thanks. Anyone else can chime in. So add $400,000 per year of the contract?

I did want to leaave aside the $5.5M issue, as I didn’t really get the reasoning for it, and didn’t want to accidently misrepresent Cameron’s point on that.

Ditto Rally/223.

Thanks Tango. I’m doing a free agent spreadsheet with Marcels and Rally’s defensive projections that “automates” the market values, and I wanted to make sure I did it right.

=====================

By the way, MGL , if you’re reading this, let me be one of the first of hundreds to thank you (and anyone else involved) for making a version of UZR publicly available on Fangraphs. Very generous and cool.. Without naming any names, other than for fantasy reasons there are getting to be fewer and fewer good reasons to pay for baseball analysis on the internet due to the coolness of this kind of stuff.

I don’t think Cameron is multi-counting the $400K.  I think he uses a higher replacement level—2 WAR for all players regardless of league if I remember correctly.  I don’t think that should result in such a significant change from $4.8MM to $5.5MM per marginal win, though.

I echo the sentiment of devil fingers/#228. Thanks for making it happen MGL.

I have around 1000 marginal wins at 4.84MM marginal dollars per win, for a total of 4.84 billion marginal free agent dollars.

Take that figure and divide by how many ever marginal wins MGL or Dave or Rally or whoever has, and we are using the same thing.

Now, if those guys are using more or less than 4.84, than we are not very comparable.

Thank you, MGL and Tango for all you have done (with patience) for so many baseball fans and FUTURE baseball fans.

Tango, that is 1000 marginal wins for whom?  FA only?  For 2008?

Sure, no problem for the Fangraphs UZR.

MGL: total number of wins above replacement for all players in MLB.

Each nonpitcher is 2.25 per 700 PA (i.e. 162 games).  There are 8.65 nonpitchers per team.  That gives us 2.25 * 8.65 * 30 = 584 WAR for nonpitchers

Each pitcher is +.09 wins per 9 IP above replacement.  .09 * 162 * 30 = 437 WAR for pitchers

584+437 = 1021 WAR in MLB

Tango, you used a 1009 WAR in MLB in your “how to calculate WAR” article( 563+446) Why the 12 win difference now?

I obviously miscalculated something somewhere.

For the pitchers, the old calculation is better as it includes reliever leverage.

I don’t know why I have such a difference for nonpitchers.

How does one properly adjust the marcel projection to account for a planned platoon?  Adding the average .025 wOBA platoon split doesn’t seem right.  I am trying to gauge how the harris/buscher platoon stacks up against free agent/trade options for the twins.

Just guessing, but let’s say that the average RHH faces 80% RHP, 20% LHP, while the average LHH faces 60%/40%.  Someone can easily go to retrosheet and provide the actual splits.

Anyway, suppose that someone’s, a RHH, Marcel forecast was .350, and that was based on that particular player’s platoon split of facing 60% RHP, 40% LHP.  What’s the forecast if he is no longer a platoon player?

The gap in platoon splits for a RHH can be taken from The Book.  Say it’s 20 points.

So, simply solve:
.350 = .60(x) + .40 (x+.020)

Solve for x, and then apply whatever expected PA split you expect him to have.

I think the typical LH starter faces a 60/40 split, but the average LH player faces more like an 80/20 split.

Reportedly, Casey Blake 3 years $17.1 for the Dodgers.

I have him at 1.5 WAR (1 hitting, 0.5 fielding).
Adjust for age over the three years.

(1.5 * 5) + (1.0 * 5.5) + (0.5 * 6)
= $16mil.  $15mil for security of three years.

If my 1.5 is too low, then this is about right.  Otherwise just a tad overpaid, but not much.
Thoughts?

vr, Xei

Averagish hitter, averagish fielder, at an averagish position sounds.... average.

The average NL player is +2 wins per 162G and the average AL player is +2.5 wins per 162G.  So, he’s around 2.3 WAR.  Give him 75% playing time, and that’s 1.7. 

For 3 years, that’s $20MM.  He’s pretty old, and so, maybe he needs a .6 or .7 aging factor, not .5.  That would put him right at 3/17.

A perfectly reasonable deal.

My Marcels + Rally def. Google spreadsheet (click my name above) sees Blake as a 1.8 WAR player assuming 85% playing time, which implies a 3/$22.1. Hey, the monkeys are too busy to customize playing time for each player… Combined with a reasonable Loretta deal, could we be seeing fiscal sanity from Ned Colletti?

The Marcel playing time is “average” for an “average” player.  For a guy who is this old, but is average (meaning not much reason to give him more chances), I was a bit harder on his playing time.  And of course, his aging in future years should also be harsher for contract purposes.

If he was 29 or 30, then 3/22 would be correct. 

I have a souped-up version that I only run from time to time.  This one has a smarter model for aging at different age points and talent levels.  Anyway, when I run it for Casey, I get these WAR for the next 3 years:
1.72
1.17
0.63

At 4.84, 5.32, and 5.86 MM$ per win, that’s a total of 18.3MM$.

Yeah. I didn’t use the Marcels playing time projections—not because they’re “bad” or anything, just that they vary so much from player to player depending on circumstances. That’s fine by—that’s Marcel. I just used it to get 2009 wOBA then linear weights, then added in position, defense, replacement level, and went 85% for all players. It’s generic, but so be it. It’s less my porojections than a semi-fun “tracker” to see how well the two monkeys (Marcel and Rally) can do predicting the market on auto-pilot.

K-Rod:

I’ve read the “Calculating WAR” post here many times, and use the methods there in general, but I’ll admit that pitcher win % is something I still need to get a grip on. In the meantime, I’m using this more simple way of calculating RAR for pitchers that I’m sure you’re all familiar with (and probably have good reasons why it’s problematic, but bear with me).

Starters:

(lgERA*1.28-ERA)*(IP/9)

Relievers:

((lgERA*1.07-ERA)*(IP/9)) * LI (I use 1.8 for closer projections)

Using this method with Marcels projection (66 IP, 3.27 ERA)for K-Rod, I get about 17.6 RAR, or about 1.7 WAR. I see people around the blogosphere getting much different figures, of course. If 1.7 WAR is correct, then the Mets overpaid. I’m curious to see what figures people here have.

Doing this quick, I get a win% of .625 for KRod, which is pretty average for a closer.

Replacement level is .470, so he’s +.155 wins per 9 IP.

He also gets a bonus for everything above .570, so that’s an extra +.055 added to that, or +.21 wins per 9 IP. 

Multiply by 8 full games (72 IP), and you get 1.7 WAR.

On a 1 yr deal, that’s under 9MM.  For relievers, the aging is a bit different.  Drop it by .100 in win% and 10% in IP.

So, next year, he’s .615, which makes him +.19 per 9 IP, times 8*90% = 1.4 WAR

And in the third year, that’s .17 times 8*81% = 1.1 WAR

So, 1.7*4.84 + 1.4*5.32 + 1.1*5.86 +0.4*3 = $23MM

I don’t know what he signed for, but I presume it’s some ridiculous deal like 3/30 to 3/40?

Ok, I see it’s 3/37.

That would imply these WAR for the next 3 years: 2.5, 2.2, 1.9.

***

For a closer, you should look at his WPA and WPA/LI and take the midpoint.  KRod’s last 5 years is a WPA of 3.5 and WPA/LI of 1.5, for an average of 2.5.

So, if KRod delivers exactly what he’s been doing these last 5 years, it’s a break-even deal. 

But, this completely ignores regression.  And it also gives no extra weight to his two most recent (and not as impressive) seasons.

fwiw, K-Rod’s three year (WPA WPA/LI) weighted (5/4/3) comes out to 2.4.  That season three years ago was a monster!

I’m also with DevilFingers that the Win% method for calculating pitchers WAR is still confusing even with the “How To Calculate War Thread”.  I could go for a primer on that, which shows all work.
vr, Xei

CHONE projection as a Met is 70 innings and a 2.76 ERA.  Mets are moving into a what should be a great pitcher’s park (something I learned from Greg Rybarczyk’s THT article.) and he’ll be in a weaker league.  His ERA projection in a neutral environment is 3.01.  I’ve got a salary formula built in, it assumes a 1.7 leverage rating, and calculates a 3 year value of 30 million.

Rally #249

I guess the Annual came out already. I won’t get it for about 10 days when I come home. Is their new park supposed to be even more pitcher-friendly than the current one?

Yeah, Greg has an article using hittracker to estimate how many homers a group of 3 players would hit in every park, given the distance and direction of the flyballs they hit.  When he gets to his estimate for the new Mets stadium, he thinks they’ve overdone it as a pitcher’s park.

Ramon Hernandez and $2MM traded for Ryan Freel and 2 prospects.  Both of the major leaguers are free agents after next year (assuming Hernandez buyout is exercised).

Ramon Hernandez
.320 wOBA marcel
-0.5 Catcher
2.0 WAR (1.5 batting, 0.5 fielding)
1.5 WAR after 75% playing time adjustment

He is owed $8MM for next year and a $1MM buyout for 2010, so his value with contract is -$1.5MM.

Ryan Freel
.318 wOBA marcel
+0.0 2B/3B
0.8 WAR (0.8 batting, 0.0 fielding)
0.5 WAR after 65% playing time adjustment

He is owed $4MM for next year, so his value with contract is -$1.5MM.

Hernandez for Freel is an even swap. $2MM for 2 prospects would value them at approximately late first-round picks, which seems a little high given the reports on them.

Given each team’s respective synergies, it looks like a good trade for both.  It clears a little payroll and frees up a spot for Wieters for the Orioles, while it fills a big hole for the Reds without adding significant payroll.

Tango - this might be a little outside of the sabermetric sphere, but considering the current economic climate, is it time to reconsider the assumption that salary inflation will remain at 10%?

It doesn’t make a huge difference when evaluating a one year deal, but when looking at a 7-year Sabathia contract, the inflation rate makes a huge difference. My rough calculation based on him being worth 5.5 wins in 2009 and declining by .5 wins a year is that he’s worth about $178 million at 10% inflation. If salary inflation is only 5%, then he’s only worth about $150 million. If salaries remain flat, $126 million.

Certainly the landscape may have changed.

Like the government indexes, we’ll only know after the actual money changes hands, and then we can provide revised estimates.

I can’t find the 2009 salary scale, but adjusting upwards a bit on the 2008 scale makes it look like the Yankees are paying CC for 6 WAR ($161M over 7 years). There’s an opt-out after 3 years and $69M.

"$2MM for 2 prospects would value them at approximately late first-round picks”

The signing bonus of a draftee is not a good proxy for their value because of the draft system.  The kind of prospect that gets sold for $1 million in the free’ish trade market should be expected to be much worse than the kind of prospect that signs for $1 million in the draft.

CC is worth right around 4 WAR, maybe 4.5.  That is for next year.  After that, it keeps going down to the tune of .25 to .5 win per year.

Pitchers are actually easy to value, even though they are difficult to project, for two reasons:  One, the range of talent is much less than for position players, and two, the uncertainty on our projections is so high, that if we classified every pitcher into only 4 or 5 categories (say, replacement, 1 WAR, 2 WAR, 3 WAR, 4 WAR), we can’t really do much better than that, no matter how hard we try.

CC is a top-tier pitcher, which is 4 WAR.  He probably is a fairly low risk injury, such that we can expect him to lose IP at a rate of maybe 5-10% a year.  That’s about it.

For newcomers, MGL’s WAR and my WAR are not the same, since we use different replacement levels.

Therefore, the $perWin converter I use is not the same he would use.

MGL: can you tell us again what is the replacement level you use for nonpitchers, starters, and relievers?

Presuming 4.30 ERA (and 4.70 RA), I’m using roughly 5.50 for starters and 4.50 for relievers.  For nonpitchers, the baseline is 2.25 wins below average per 700 PA.

CC talk should go here:
http://www.insidethebook.com/ee/index.php/site/comments/vote_how_much_for_cc/

If the Derek Lowe to Yankees rumors are true, how much does his value drop going from one of the best pitcher’s parks in the league to an average park in the AL?

It doesn’t.

You have to score runs and prevent runs in order to win baseball games, regardless of the park. A player’s value is the same regardless of park, unless there’s some special featue of the park that’s particularly well/ill suited to the pitcher.

Ditto Colin.

And I wouldn’t necessarily say that Dodger stadium is one of the best pitcher’s park either.

Tango & everyone else, Dave Cameron recently posted an article on fangraphs about the $/win value staying at around what it was before and not increasing 10% due to inflation to $5mil/win, which is what we usually see each year.

Since we usually assume 10% inflation, and given the recession, how do we accurately calculate the $/win value now that inflation seems to not be a factor this year?  Does our $/win value stay around the $4.4 mil/win it was last year?  What does everyone think about this development so far?

Well the last 4 recessions in US history lasted an average of 10 months. So I have to assume if your projecting salaries, you may want to throw away the 10% increase in 2009 (offseason), and then back up to 10% inflation per year beginning in 2010.

For position players, I use -16 in the NL and -20 in the AL, in runs below average.  That is for the last few years.  Obviously the balance of talent between the two leagues can and does change.  Basically, I use 18 runs below average for both leagues combined.

For starters, I use 1 run per 9 (in RA) below average.  For relievers, I don’t know what the heck I use. I guess I use a league average RA, since I assume that a replacement level starter can relieve and knock a run off of his ERA.  There really is no one-size-fits-all “replacement level reliever” as there are different kinds of relievers.  A short reliever can pitch better than a long one, for example.

OK, massive three-way with the Mets, Mariners, and Indians… I’ll let someone else sort out the whole thing, but as I understand it, among other things, the Mariners end up with both Franklin Gutierrez and Endy Chavez. Why don’t they just put those guys on the field with Ichiro, get a bunch of mediocre flyball pitchers and have fun.

I doubt it’s the new “stats department“‘s doing, but it seems pretty cool to me.

I would not put Ichiro in that group (Gutierrez and Chavez).  Even bUZR, which likes him a lot more than sUZR, has Ichiro at around zero for the last 2 years in either RF or CF (of course, he should be much better in RF, relative to his peers of course).
And sUZR hates him.  I would guess that his true value is near -5 in CF and +5 at the corners.  I suppose if you put Ichiro in RF, Gut in left and Chavez in CF, you would have a pretty good OF.

I suppose if you put Ichiro in RF, Gut in left and Chavez in CF, you would have a pretty good OF.

Gutierrez is going to be the full time CF and Chavez will be a fourth OF/defensive replacement.  I’m hoping the M’s start Chavez in left when they play Tampa, and we can watch Chavez/Gutierrez/Ichiro go up against Crawford/Upton/Joyce.  First one to hit a double wins.

Sounds like a good season coming up for Jarrod Washburn.  Just in time for a contract push too.

Sounds like a good season coming up for Jarrod Washburn.  Just in time for a contract push too.

I’m sure Dayton Moore is already on it. With Farns and Ho-Ram on board, who will stop the Kansas City Braves juggernaut?

Ibanez: 3/30 paying for 2.35 WAR.

Offense: +0.75 wins
Defense: -1.25 wins (not liked by sUZR, bUZR, Dewan, Fans).
Position: -0.75 wins
Replacement: +2.5 wins
Playing time: 85%

WAR = .85 * (+0.75 -1.25 -0.75 +2.5) = 1.1

Ouch.  If you consider him an AVERAGE outfielder with the glove, his WAR is 2.1.  Yet another example of ignoring the glove.

And in the NL, no less.

Which reminds me… Marcel has 32 guys forecasted with at least 84 RBI (average of 93).  Ibanez is forecasted with 93 RBI, and tied for 14th-16th place.  So, he should be in the middle of the pack in wOBA.

Ibanez’ wOBA is 31st among those 32, a smidge ahead of Delgado.  His RBI total simply doesn’t reflect his talent level.

Tango, couldn’t it also be that they are paying Ibanez for the hitter that he has been to this point?  For example looking at statcorner wOBA* of Ibanez you could say he is a .370 wOBA guy and fangraphs once adjusted for park about .360.  Now Marcel is projecting him for a .344 (without park adjustments obviously), but ZiPS has him even falling off a bigger cliff than Marcel.  So if we give him a .365 wOBA (in between fangraphs and statcorner) he comes out a +1.5 wins offensively, so maybe thats what the Phils are looking at. 

wins=10.5 runs, correct?  Just making sure because I’ve seen people using 10 runs as a win.

Last thing, what do u use to get lgwOBA in a projection like this going forward?  For example I used .336 for Ibanez in this example because .335 was 2008 AL OBP, but in 2007 and 2006 it was .338 and .339 respectively so I just raised it a point.

The Marcel average, as noted in some other thread, for 2009, is .330.

***

10.5 or 10… doesn’t matter much.

***

I don’t think there’s a company in the country that will pay you for what you did, outside of your annual bonus.  You are paid for what you are about to produce.  That is the definition of compensation: payment for services rendered.  It is not future payment for past services.

Obviously you are trying to infer future services based on past services (among other things).

Not to mention that the last thing the Phillies needed was yet another lefthanded bat.

Yesterday the rumors had him as the backup plan for the Angels if/when Tex leaves, and guessed a 3/36 contract.  That’s a worse deal, if possible, than picking up Garret Anderson’s 14 million one year option.  Because at least choice #2 would be over in a year.  So I’m very happy for the Phillies.

I really don’t understand the high regard for Ibanez among MLB teams.  He’s not terrible, but clearly overrated. The Phillies were not the lone bidder, it seems like many teams value him much more than our methods do.

3:1 odds that by this time next year, we’ll be proven right.  Again.  No matter how many great sabermetric advancements Will Carroll thinks they’ve made.

Using MGL’s numbers in post 265, his replacement level works out to:

nonpitchers: 18 runs per 150 G times 162 games times 30 teams times 8.65 nonpitchers per team times .1 wins per run = 504 wins above replacement

starters: presuming league average of ALL pitchers is 4.70 and starters is 4.80, then MGL uses 5.70 as the replacement level, so: +0.90 runs per 9 IP times 162 games times 30 teams times 65% of the innings times .1 wins per run = 284 wins above replacement

relievers: presuming 4.7 like above, and relievers are 4.50, then MGL uses 4.7 as replacement level, so: +0.20 times 162 times 30 times 35% times .1 = 34 wins above replacement

So, MGL has a total WAR of 504+284+34= 822.

In order for us to speak the same language, if I use 4.84 MM$ per win, he should be using almost 6MM$ per win.

Willie Harris, resigned for 2 years at $3 million. Because the Nats need 6 outfielders on their roster…

Marcel has him at .326 wOBA for next season. Using .333 for league average wOBA, that comes to -0.41 wins above average. Though he’ll split time between left and center, he’s played mostly in left, so I’ll give him a -.75 for position adjustment. +2 for replacement level, and since I can’t access Rally’s defensive projections right now, I have him at a conservative +13 runs in the field, meaning +1.24 on defense.

(-.41+-.75+2+1.24)*700 PA = 2.08 WAR for full-time left field. But he’s not going to be a full-time player (probably). Using 451 PA’s (Marcel’s projection), he’s only a 1.34 WAR player. Using $4.8m per WAR plus $0.4m for the league minimum, Harris is projected to be worth $6.84m. Looks like the Nationals got a good deal.

Whew. So did I do that right?

I don’t know what happened to my comcast webpages.  They’ve been down for 3 days and comcast can’t tell me anything beyond “we’re working on it”

Time to maybe think about paying for a web domain.  Any suggestions on where to go?  What does Tangotiger.net cost and how much data can you put up on it?

I’ve got a sweet, one-time deal: unlimited.  I pay $120 a year.

You can get a free host here (Retrosheet’s provider), provided you pay them 12$ for domain registration:
http://www.webhero.com/webhosting.php

Also a free host here (you get more, but you pay 18$ for domain registration):
http://www.doteasy.com/Services/WebHosting/Zero/

Another good option is here:
http://www.asmallorange.com/services/hosting/

Those guys look like the kind of guys you’d like to do business with.

Aaron: sounds right.  Don’t forget to apply the multiplier for being arb-eligible the first year, and free agent the second year.  Sounds like an excellent signing to me.

Yea Rally, that’s been killing me. I’m glad it’s not just me that’s having a problem accessing though, so I know it’s not something on my end.

I’ve taken to using Google Pages for that sort of thing.

So… I have Ibanez the same as everyone else. A bit over 1 WAR in 2009, and so on. So the deal is a bit over $20M too much, with Ibanez being around replacement level (and that’s assuming the normal 0.5 rate of decline even for a guy who’s 37 now) in the last year of the deal. Yay.

Here’s a question: what’s worse, this or the Kyle Farnsworth 2/$9.25M KC deal? Marcels and ZiPS both have pr0FF3ss0r_F4rnsw0rth at below replacement level using ERA, with ZiPS having about .2 runs above using FIP.

I suppose it depends on context, team budget and all that. In sheer monetary terms, the Ibanez deal is worse, because $21M waste (or whatever) is a lot more than $9.25. On the other hand, “intuitively” (yeah, I know) it seems like at least the Phillies will get something out of Ibanez, whereas Farnsworth, well, could be replaced with, um, a replacement level schmoe.

Is it better to own a 10MM home with a 30MM mortgage, or a rundown home with a 10MM mortgage?

I suppose some people would still choose the former, because they absolutely must have that 10MM home right now.

Tango, you’ve told MGL that before but I’m not sure he understands the difference between both of your WAR calculations.  This has been ongoing for awhile now, a resolution seems necessary.

I’m not sure what you mean by “resolution”.  He has his WAR, I have mine.  And, in order to convert his WAR to dollars, to match my scale, you do what I said.  Sounds resolved to me.

How would one figure out UZR over replacement? Is there somewhere I could find it at Fangraphs or wherever?

Before you talk about “UZR over replacement”, you should ask yourself what the heck that even means.

There are NO replacement-level hitters.  There are NO replacement-level fielders.  There ARE replacement-level PLAYERS.  If you insist on the non-latter, then make sure you wear plenty of padding, because we’ll be coming after you from all sides.

Pardon me. I was asking how it would be possible to add UZR to measures used to compare hitters to replacement level to create wins above replacement. I don’t understand how you guys add defense to offense to create WAR.

See the links at post 19:
http://www.insidethebook.com/ee/index.php/site/comments/how_to_calculate_war/#19

Whoaaaa, one minute. How do you use that formula to calcalate defensive runs over replacement to combine with VORP, some wOBA derived system, or any other statistic to create wins over replacement?

Sam, did you look at the Cano example?

Sorry about this, you’re probably getting tired of me. So when calculating wins above replacement level, add hitting wins above replacement to fielding wins above average? That seems to be what you are doing in the Cano example.

Sam, I think the source of confusion here is the “replacement player.” We are pretty confident that replacement players are terrible bats but average gloves.  So to compute runs above replacement, you have to use a very low value for offense (-20 runs or so) but a high one for defense (+0 runs).

Is it starting to make sense, or did that just muddy the water?

"add hitting wins above replacement “

I never do that.  It would be more helpful to me if you cut/paste the particular part that doesn’t make sense to you.  In step 4 (the hitting part) of the Cano example, I specifically said:
“That’s +15 runs, or +1.5 wins above average. “

So, that’s wins above average.

It would be better if you put pen to paper and go through the example yourself, and then post at the point you get stuck.

"5. Figure the replacement level.  For AL, it’s 2.5 wins per 162G, for NL it’s 2.0. ...

7. Figure his position and fielding.  2B is neutral.  Fans think he’s an average fielder.  UZR sees him as a bit above average.  Dewan’s all over the place with him: great in 07 horrible in 05.  (UZR gives him similar trend change, but not so wide.) Tough call here.  +0.5 wins would be the max you can go here, but you might want to stick with zero.”

So, it seems to me tha you are taking hitting wins per game and adding to that the number of games times either .0123 or .1543 (Replacement adjustment/162) depending on the league. Then you are taking his defensive wins above average, and adding that to the player’s total.

As a formula

WAR= batting wins above average + (replacement adjustment/162 * player games) + defensive wins above average

Please correct if I am wrong.

Sam, simply add up everything above or below average (offense, defense, baserunning, whatever else).  Then subtract replacement level runs, which is around -20. Don’t think of a player as x above (or below) replacement on offense, x above replacement in defense, etc.

Replacement level is always offense and defense combined.  It is mostly poor offense and around average defense, but it does not have to be. In fact, I think it has been shown that replacement players are a couple of runs or so below average on defense, and therefore only 17 or 18 runs below average on offense (if the total is 20 runs below average).

Sam, see post 271 (Ibanez) for the ordering of doing the addition and multiplication.

Below are some ramblings on some WAR-related topics I’ve been thinking about.  I assume this has been expressed in some form before, and I’m not sure it really belongs here, but I wanted to get my thoughts down somewhere.

This concept is just a straightforward extension of the WAR system.  It’s relatively simple to determine a player’s projected WAR and then compare that to his salary to determine if that player is overpaid or underpaid.

The next step is to simply find the difference between the projected WAR and the “paying for” WAR to come up with what I’ll call “excess wins”.  This number can be negative for players on long-term contracts gone wrong.

In a perfect free agency market, each player is signed to a contract that exactly matches his projected performance, assuming that players do not supply off-the-field value to teams.  So, in this framework, free agents are worth zero excess wins.

The question is, how many excess wins does a team need, and how do they accumulate them?  The following formulas describe the relationships between the various unknowns.

Required Excess Wins = (Competitive Wins) - (Replacement Wins + Paid For Wins )

Paid For Wins = (Team Payroll - Replacement Payroll) / (Cost of Free Agent Win)

There are a lot of moving parts here, but there is one thing that every GM knows: how much money the team owner will allowed him spend.  A team’s payroll does fluctuate from year-to-year, but the crux of this model is to assume that payroll is essentially fixed and the GM is responsible for maximizing performance within that payroll.

A few more pieces of information are needed:

-Competitive Wins are the number of wins that a team needs to be competitive for a playoff spot.  This is not the same for every team, as it depends on the quality of divisional and league rivals.  I use 95 wins here as a catch-all.
-Replacement Payroll is the cost of fielding a replacement level team.  This is 25 x $400K = $10MM.
-Replacement Wins are the number of wins a replacement level team.  I’m using 47 (from a Tango calc).
-Cost of Free Agent Win will change year-to-year, but I’m assuming it is $5MM.

Running through the calculations…

A team with a $40 MM payroll will need 42 excess wins to compete.
A team with a $90 MM payroll will need 32 excess wins to compete.
A team with a $200 MM payroll will need 10 excess wins to compete.  Yes, even the Yankees need some.

Using my assumptions, the formula can be simplified to:

Required Excess Wins = 50 - Payroll (in millions) / 5

If free agents are worthless, the main source for excess wins is going to be players with less than 6 years of service time.  For the first three years of MLB service, players earn right around the minimum, so virtually all of their WAR are excess wins.  For the three arbitration years, player salaries are still usually lower than what their performance would entitle them on the free agent market.  Teams simply non-tender players with negative projected excess wins.

In reality, excess wins can also be found elsewhere. The free agent market is not perfect, so it’s possible to find bargain players with a positive excess win value.  Even if a bargain can’t be found, a team can manipulate their excess wins to some extent by signing players to long term contracts that are likely to provide positive excess wins early in the contract and negative excess wins later.

Teams can also offer extensions to players during their arbitration years and generate additional excess wins by getting the player to commit to a below-market salary in exchange for security.

Excess wins provide a pretty good proxy for the trade value of any given player, although it is complicated as you look beyond next season.  Even leaving out the complexity of projecting performance well into the future, every team will apply a different “discount rate” to future excess wins depending on how close they currently are to competing.

I came up with this framework as I thought about the Orioles signing Mark Teixeira to a long-term deal.  Even if they can sign Teixeira to a zero excess win contract (which may be optimistic), they will be well short of the talent stock needed to compete.

Assuming the Orioles can sustain a payroll in the neighbourhood of $70-90MM, they will need to find a way to come up with ~34 excess wins to have any chance at competing.  Based on my calculations, they have a current talent stock of ~15 excess wins.

Adding Teixeira does improve the team’s talent significantly on the surface, but it does nothing to address that massive shortage of excess wins.

Rally, do you have your fielding projections available anywhere else?

And thanks for explaining the use of leverage. I understand it better now.

Felipe Lopez signed with the Diamondbacks for 1/$3.5 mil.

Using Marcel’s .315 projected wOBA for him and .333 as league average wOBA, I get about -1.00 win offensively for Lopez. Defense is going to be bad just from eyeballing his UZR’s and +/- ratings, probably -0.75. Using 0.25 for positional adjustment and 2.00 for replacement level leaves Lopez at 0.50 WAR. I think he’ll amass 700 PA’s this season, unless he gets released or benched again, but I’m not positive on that.

0.50 WAR * $4.8 mil = 2.4 mil, + 0.4 for league minimum salary = $2.8 mil for a full season’s worth of play. Giving him 90% PT, that drops him down to 0.48 WAR and $2.56 mil.

I feel like I’m off here…

No.  I have no idea what happened to the comcast pages.  Neither did the customer service person I talked to. Gave me some vague “I’m sure they’re working on it” response.

But fear not.  I’ve purchased a website that I can do a lot more with and when I have it up & running I’ll post something here.

My Marcel/Rally Robo Gm gets about the same for Lopez (click my name above for the Google spreadsheet). Assuming he plays second

-10.3 RV/700 = -0.98 wins

-7 runs on defense= -0.67 wins

+0.25 for 2B

+ 2 for NL replacement level

= ~0.6 WAR

times 85% playing time =

~0.5 WAR. = ~$2.9M salary (the spreadsheet hides the various “roundings” going on. Salary includes $400,000 replacement salary).

Rally, it’s good to hear your stat site will be back up soon. Best news of the day for me.

devil_fingers, thanks for letting me know.

I’ll be moving all these relief posts to this thread:
http://www.insidethebook.com/ee/index.php/site/comments/valuing_relievers/

Tango, can you conjecture how moving Kelly Johnson to LF would affect him defensively? I was thinking it would be a good move because he was originally a LF and his UZR’s at second haven’t been good, but his Fans’ Scouting Report have him below average as a position-neutral fielder (though 2007 was kinder toward him). Moving him to left with Furcal (presumably) moving to 2nd would be a big boost to the Braves defense, right?

According to the Fans:
http://tangotiger.net/scouting/sim2008_7558.html
The weakest part of his game is the hands/footwork.  He fared better in 2007, but dropped in 2008.

UZR sees him with a 17-run gap (per 162 G) between LF and 2B, even though it should only be 10 if he wasn’t particularly suited for either position.  The sample size is low, so take the gap with a grain of salt.

All told, it’s probably a push as to whether to put him at 2B or LF, with a lean toward LF.

So what is the monetary value of the “average” player in the majors right now? (Or last year, if you don’t want to adjust for salary inflation)

Nathaniel/#308:

Let me see if I can get this right so that if I’m thinking about it incorrectly someone can “fix” me. I’ll assume you are talking about what an “average” player, properly valued as such, would be worth on the free agent market. While 2.25 wins above replacement (WAR) is, according to Tango, the definition of average (or, more precisely, 2.25 wins below average is the definitino of replacement level), 2 WAR is the simple way to get at “average” in whole numbers.

If $4.84M per WAR is the market value, then the league average player is worth $4.84 times 2 (WAR), plus the cost of the replacement player making the minimum ($400,000). So the average player should be worth $10M in the 2009 season.

I’m pretty sure this has been asked and answered before, but Tango, is the 4.8mm per year for all players or just for FA?  I always thought it was just for FA but then I thought you computed all players’ wins above replacement and then divided by total salary, including arb and protected players.  If we are trying to figure out how much a player is “worth” (market value or “going rate") on the FA market per marginal win, don’t we want to only look at the total WAR for FA only, and then divide their total salary by that, and then adjust for inflation, time value of the money, etc. (which is no easy task, since we have to look at when each contract was negotiated, etc.)?

No, not what an average player would be worth on the free agent market; what an average player was paid last year. Or, maybe, if you were to add up all the WAR compiled by all players last year (would that amount to 81-[whatever a replacement team would win]?), then divide by all the salary paid out last year at the major league level.

What was the “average” player paid last year? Or, in other words, what was a 2.25 WAR player actually paid last year, and adjusting for inflation, what would one be likely to be paid this year? It seems that would be instructive to know to compare with the expected amount that free agents would be paid.

This may not be an answerable question. I know that players around average and below are going to be paid at a rate per WAR well below those players above average, so it may skew any kind of effort at scaling salary to WAR.

Thanks Tango for the Johnson rundown.

yes, Nathaniel, as MGL hints, I should have made clear that this is what an average player, properly valued as such, would be worth on the FA market. Arb-eligible players, etc., are a another matter.

Tom, I’ve been meaning to ask you this for a while, but how exactly did you come up with the $4.8 (or whatever it may have been at the time) per 1 marginal win figure? Did you derive it yourself, or is it from some other study? If so, please link.

Thanks.

I suggest reading Studes’ articles about Net Win Shares Value, which you can find on Hardball Times, and in the 2007 Annual.

You will find that free agents earn about twice what the average player earns.

The average player is easy enough to figure: if team payroll is 90MM of which 10MM is minimum salary, then you have 80 marginal MM$ to pay for 32 WAR, or around 2.5 per WAR.  More or less.  Free agents earn almost double that.  More or less.  Anyway, if the average player is 2 WAR, then he earns about 5MM$ plus the minimum.  As a free agent, he earns almost double that.

DK (#299), nice post. I like that way of looking at things.

Here’s the case for Teixeira. The only way to get lots of excess wins is to have many positions filled by cost-controlled players. But, the fewer free agents are on the team, the more each one has to be paid (if payroll is going to remain fixed). So an expensive FA at 0 excess wins is better than a cheap FA at 0 excess wins.

Let me know if this doesn’t make sense—I feel like this may be unclear, and I could probably explain it better.

Word is the Cubs are still in the market for a LH bat. Seems like the remaining candidates are Abreu, Dunn, and Bradley, with Bradley apparently in front. No idea how much each would cost, though word is Abreu is looking for 3/45. As a Cubs fan I want none of Abreu… but as for Dunn vs. Bradley, to me its a tough call. Would Dunn’s health and bat make up for the nightmare that would be him roaming right field at Wrigley?

Ryan Doumit - $11.5MM for 3 arb years. 

Wow.

Doumit: 3/11.5, 3+ years of service, paying for 1.7 WAR.

Off: +1
Def: -1.25
Pos: +1.25
repl: +2
playing time: 65%

WAR = 2.1

Note: defense was based solely on the scouting report.  When I run my WOWY, I’ll know more.  His playing time is really up in the air.  Not often you get someone with his playing history.

I’m not sure if “wow” is supposed to mean very high or very low, but I’d say that the Pirates got a decent deal here.  Especially when they have a 2-year team option.

Jay M.  There is probably a 20 run (per 150 games) difference between Bradley and Dunn on defense, maybe 25.  So you tell us who the better player is after comparing estimated playing time.  I am not sure that Dunn is even the better hitter.

And for anyone who wants to say something like, “Well, since the Wrigley outfield is small, Dunn’s defense won’t hurt as much,” there is NO (NONE, ZILCH) evidence to suggest that a small outfield mitigates the negative effect of a poor defender, or vice versa. In fact, in some research I did earlier this year or last year, there is some evidence to support the opposite notion.

"there is some evidence to support the opposite notion.”

Any idea as to why that might be?

There was a 20-25 run defensive gap between Bradley and Dunn.  Then Bradley got hurt, had knee surgery, and spent a year almost exclusively as a DH.  So Im not sure he’d still be a good defender.

But I doubt he’d be as bad as Dunn, and my projections show Bradley to be a much better hitter.

Dunn’s got durability on him but that’s it.

Rally (322)
“Dunn’s got durability on him but that’s it.”

That’s no small thing. Dunn has logged more than 630 PAs 5 years running.  Bradley’s career high is 597 and has averaged just 414 over the past 5 years.  Add in that Bradley is 1.5 years older and I’d have to think the expectation for over a 3 year deal is about 300-500 more PAs from Dunn.  That’s more than a half a season of value.

APV/#323: Durability does matter, and I’ve actually been meaning to ask about exactly how people would project Bradley if they had to make a recommendation to a team about his market value. I think he’s pretty obviously a better player when healthy than Dunn.

But that’s where the concept of WAR helps us compare players (at least retrospetively) with very different playing time and “rate” stats, because it’s a kind of counting stat. I know that Rally has recenlty posted his own WARs for the major free agents, including Dunn and Bradley, and they’re probably better than mine, but I like to pretend to be an analyst (even though I’m just plugging other people’s numbers in from elsewhere). I did these a few weeks ago, so I might change things now, but here are the WAR I have for both Dunn and Bradley over the last four years along with games played. I don’t have baserunning scores, nor do I have arm ratings for 2008, but I don’t think they’d make a huge difference overall.

Dunn:

2005: 3.9, 160 games
2006: 0.0, 160 games
2007: 1.8, 152 games
2008: 3.6, 158 games

So he is very durable, and plays the field (so to speak) and stuff. Certainly more than Bradley. But how much more does he actually help his teams than M.B.?

Bradley:

2005: 1.9, 75 games
2006: 2.5, 96 games
2007: 2.4, 61 games
2008: 5.0, 126 games

I’m sure other people have different values, but I wasn’t just ‘making stuff up.’ The offensive linear weights were taken from B-R., the defensive stats from the various UZRS and stuff, arm ratings from THT, and I prorated positional adjustments and AL/NL replacement levels as per this blog. I was just blown away at how good Bradley is. In a way, the 2.4 in 61 games is the most impressive at al. Despite playing less than half the games Dunn did in 2007, Bradley was still about half a win better, on my calculations. That was shocking.

On the question of Bradley alone, though, it’s tough to know how to value him. My “Robo-GM” just spits out 85% playing time for everyone, but obviously that’s way too optimistic for M.B. Does it really help him stay healthy to DH? Is so, should he be valued as a DH going forward, despite the fact that when he plays the OF that he’s good at it?

Hyltzn, not really.  There is a thread somewhere, where I and others discuss those findings.  One thing I did not look at was small and large ballparks and slow and fast guys.  It may be that in large parks, the slow guys have trouble chasing balls in the gaps or over their heads such that they allow more doubles relative to singles and triples relative to doubles.  And slow guys tend to be worse outfielders.

To incorporate playing time into a value projection, I don’t think you want to use a runs formula that incorporates playing time, like WARP.  Projecting playing time and rate performance are two different things, with different regressions (probably) and certainly things that will affect one and not the other.  For example, for an otherwise healthy player who had a recent “freak” injury, I assume you would not hold his recent lack of playing time too much against him.

One thing that has not been researched very well, as far as I am aware, is a projection model for playing time.  Sig Mejdal used to use one for presenting estimated playing time in the Bill James Handbook, but I don’t think he ever published the “engine.”

No matter what, I would think that there would be a large regression toward the mean (where the mean was very age and maybe position-dependent) in projecting playing time.

Marcel does:
PA = .5*PA1 + .1*PA2 + 200

So, if you had 500 PA in 2008 and 300 PA in 2007, then your PA in 2009 is 480.

There are other considerations, notably:
a. known injuries
b. age
c. wins above average per 162 G
d. teammate competition

The younger you are, and the better you are, the more PA you are likely to have.

I had a blog discussion about this several weeks ago.  I put it on my todo list.

I have a question about runs over average. Should wRAA account for differences in the average hitting capabilities at each position like VORP, for all its flaws, does?

"Should” it?  It “should” follow its definition. In the case of wRAA, that’s hitting runs above the average player.  There is nothing in wRAA to do with position.

What I am asking is “in the order to be the most valuable statistic it can be, should wRAA be positionally adjusted?”

I don’t think that’s a fair question.  Would you ask the same of OBP?

These metrics are what they are, and you can’t ask for them more than their design.

The other issue regarding playing time that I haven’t heard much discussion about (quite possible I’ve missed it) are the associated costs to an organization when players do go down to injury.  From a roster perspective and organizational depth perspective, what costs in wins and $$$ go along with injury risk?  For example, if you are the team that signs Bradley, you’re probably planning on him missing some stretch of games, so you probably have planned for that outcome.  If you sign Dunn, you probably are hoping he goes out there for 150 games, and you probably are less likely to have a significant replacement plan in place.  What are the costs that go along with these kinds of organizational decisions?  The potential cost of maintaining depth at the ML and AAA levels, the cost of possibly being forced to start the service time clock of a young guy, and whatever other costs go along with the roster disruptions necessitated by an injury.

As a Cleveland fan, organizational depth is something I hear Mark Shapiro talk about obsessively...I assume because he views it as essential for a team like Cleveland with very little margin for error on budgetary issues. 

I think the issue of playing time projections are interesting not just on a player by player level, but from a much broader organizational planning perspective.

Teixeira: 8/180, paying for 5.2 WAR.

Off: +3.5 WAA
Def: +1.0 (*)
Pos: -1.25
Repl: 2.3
Playing Time: 85%

(*) sUZR/bUZR not that crazy on him, and Fans really like him.  I split the difference.

WAR = 4.7

This would imply an 8/153 deal.

As you can see though, my estimate of him is 0.5 below that of what he was paid for.  A little here, a little there, and you might be able to justify a 5.2 WAR evaluation (especially since the fielding number could easily be 1.5 as implied by Fans).

Or, perhaps rather than 0.5 aging, you give him a 0.38 aging, at which point a 8/180 deal is fair.

That’s what happens when you have the compounding effect of 8 years: all the uncertainty gets magnified.

Teixera is an example of an extremely high-profile player being paid around what he is “worth” to the league as a whole, despite being sought after by some of the highest revenue teams in baseball (Angels, Yankees, Red Sox).  IOW, I don’t think that these high revenue teams necessarily “bid up” the price of high profile FA.  I think that by and large, all teams pay the going rate for players, assuming that they evaluate the players correctly.

It is a fair point to say that while I use a “standard” $ per win value, that some of these guys should get a tiny bit more.  If for example, we started him at $5.75MM per win, instead of the standard $4.84MM that I use, then the contract is justified.

Seeing that the Yanks are always in the “sweet spot” of making the playoffs, it could be justifiable.

In the end, the contract is at the high-end of where it could have gone.  It’s not a bad contract, but it’s at the edge of what could be considered one.

Though, it’s nothing compared to Carlos Lee’s contract from a few years ago.

I think my website captures this method pretty well.  Not all my inputs are the same as yours, Tango, though some just need to be adjusted for scale.  My 31 runs per 150 G is equal to 33 per 162, no need to quibble over 2 runs.  But as you can see, calling Tex a “good” fielder (and in my book only Pujols among 1B would grade as excellent) the chart says WAR = 4.7
http://www.baseballprojection.com/teixema1093.htm

My chart shows 20.7 million for year one, which is just a bit lower than he signed for so my first reaction was that it’s close to a fair deal.

But using -.5 per year and 10% inflation, his value in nominal dollars decreases - in the last year he’s 1.2 wins at 9.4 mil/win, for a value of only 11.6 million - so he’s a little overpaid but increasing each year, adding up to a 30 million deficit.

Though maybe the aging isn’t quite right.

Ryan Doumit signs an extension with the Pirates, seems pretty cheap to me. IIRC, they gave just about as much to Jay Bell 15 years ago.

By Dejan Kovacevic | 2 p.m. Monday

The new contract extension just signed by the Pirates and catcher Ryan Doumit covers three years plus two club options with a guaranteed value of $11.5 million, and a maximum value in the range of $27 million.

Here is the breakdown: $300,000 signing bonus, $2.05 million salary for next season, $3.55 million salary for 2010, $5.1 million salary for 2011. The club option years, which can be triggered or rejected only once, call for a $7.25 million salary in 2012, $8.25 million salary in 2013. The option’s buyout would cost $500,000, and a decision on that option would have to be made before the end of the 2011 season.

There also are incentive and escalator clauses that increase the total value of the contract by $1 million or more. One of the escalators involves All-Star appearances. If Doumit is an All-Star once in the first three seasons of the extension, the salaries on each of the two option years goes up by $125,000. If he is an All-Star twice, the option years go up by $350,000. If he is an All-Star each of the first three seasons, the option years go up by $500,000. Silver Slugger awards can bring similar bonuses.

Park adjusted wOBA last 4 years 360, 305, 372, 364, current ML avg catcher 316

How does 8/180 equate to 5.2 WAR?

In the first year (which I am assuming he would be the most valuable do to lowest $/WAR) wouldn’t this be

$22.5M - 400K = $22.1M / ($4.84M/WAR) = 4.57 WAR?

This was for 2008:

http://tangotiger.net/salary2008.html

What I meant earlier is for use in WAR. I would think that positionally adjusted runs above average would more accurately portray a hitters runs above average. After all, you use the positional adjustment for defense so why not do the same for ofensive value?

Surprised that nobody mentioned the luxury tax when discussing the Teixeira contract.  It could cost the Yankees up to about $70 million extra.

I would guess that the true cost to the Yankees of the contract is in the 8/230 range

With the luxury tax, the Sabathia contract is especially nutty.  They’re paying about 3/95 if he doesn’t opt out.  My guess is the player option costs the Yankees about $15 million, which would make it in essence a 3/110 contract to the Yankees.

Hey Tom,

How do you convert FSR into runs?

JB, there are two aspects to the “rationality” of a contract.  One is whether you pay above or below market value for the marginal wins (WAR) you think you are getting.  That has nothing to do with team specific things like the luxury tax.  For example, if you pay 16 mil for one year of a player who is 4 WAR, then you just purchased a commodity for a little less than market value.  That is true whether you have to pay an additional 16 mil in taxes and penalties or not.

The other aspect of a team player payroll, is how much a WAR is actually worth in extra revenue.  That varies tremendously from team to team.  In that case, if your goal is always to purchase commodities (WAR) that make you money, then you have to consider all the taxes and penalties (like the luxury tax) that go along with purchasing that commodity.

For the Yankees, maybe each marginal win (WAR) is expected to bring in 20 mil in extra revenue (I don’t really know what the number is) next year.  If that is the case, then it is rational and prudent to purchase those WAR’s for the going rate of 5 mil, or more if you have to, and THEN pay up to an additional 10-12 mil in taxes in penalties, if you have to.

If a team only gets 5 or 6 mil in extra revenue per marginal win, then they obviously cannot afford to pay the going rate for those wins plus substantial taxes and penalties.

"For example, if you pay 16 mil for one year of a player who is 4 WAR, then you just purchased a commodity for a little less than market value.  That is true whether you have to pay an additional 16 mil in taxes and penalties or not.”

The Yankees know they are not paying 8/180 for Teixeira.  It’s not like the luxury tax is some surprise that can’t be accounted for ahead of time.  They know that adding him to the payroll is going to cost them ~$230 million.  Why does it matter who gets the money as far as the Yankees are concerned? They are obviously paying way above market value.

You’re of course right that teams can rationally pay above market value due to their specific condition.  I’d be surprised if they can really justify paying almost 50% more than all the other big market teams, but what do I know

Let’s pretend for a moment that we’re not talking about baseball players; instead let’s talk about a commodity like gold, or oil, or corn.

Now let’s say the Federal guvment has decreed that, for whatever reason, you have to pay an additional tax on goods and services that you purchase. That changes the cost-benefit analysis for a lot of your purchases. That’s one issue.

But that doesn’t mean that you suddenly stop caring whether or not you can get a better deal on gold/oil/corn from your supplier. If you’re paying $70 a barrel when the market rate is $60, you’re paying too much for oil, and it doesn’t matter whether the Feds are taxing you more or less than everybody else.

That’s the Yankees situation in a nutshell, and the commodity they’re trying to buy is wins. It is in the Yankees best interest to pay the market rate for wins to their suppliers - i.e. the players - regardless of what their total cost is. One, it saves money, obviously. Two, it makes the contracts more tradable between teams.

If someone is offering me oil at above market I shouldn’t accept the deal because I know I can get the same product for cheaper.

If someone is offering me a 5 WAR 1B then the market value means nothing because there are no other 5 WAR 1B available.  There are hardly any 1 WAR 1B available. 

A team should figure how much a WAR is worth to them and find out where they profit the most between the three or four players + cost (including luxury tax) options they they have.  You’re right about the trade value issue, but I think that’s pretty minor

If the luxury tax was 5000% then the Yankees shouldn’t be signing any free agents no matter how far below market value they’re being offered for

If the luxury tax was 5000% then the Yankees shouldn’t be signing any free agents no matter how far below market value they’re being offered for

That is correct, assuming that they don’t make any money after paying that much tax and assuming that making money is their goal, of course.

Still two separate, yet related or everlapping, issues, though.  One, is how much the commodity (marginal wins in this case) cost you, relative to how much marginal revenue it produces.  As I said, if a marginal win costs the Yankees 10 mil, including any taxes or penalties, and that marginal win produces 15 mil in marginal revenue, then it MAY make sense to purchase it.  In that sense, it does not matter how much of that 10 mil is actual salary, and how much is “tax,” which is your point of course.

However, the other, separate, yet related, issue, is indeed what the breakdown (between salary and tax) is.  The reason it is an issue is in terms of alternatives.  If the Yankees came to you and said “We are considering spending 40 mil on this 4 WAR player; what should we do?  We are going to make 50 mil on the marginal wins this player provides - a profit of 10 mil,” your first response/question should be, “How much actual salary are you paying him out of that 40 mil?” If they say, “20 mil, the rest is tax,” then you can say, “Well, you got him at around market value, so assuming there are not any other cheaper alternatives available, go ahead and make the deal.”

On the other hand, if their answer is, “We paid 40 mil for the player, with no luxury tax,” then your answer to them might be, “You way overpaid for that player.  Let’s take a look at the other players available, or let’s consider purchasing another cheaper player at market value, and put the rest of the money into player development or the draft (or hiring a couple of sabermetricians).  I think that we can take that same 40 mil, and generarte 7 or 8 WAR if we spend it in another manner.”

That is why it is important to know how much you actually pay for salary and how much for any taxes and penalties.  A decent rule of thumb is that if you WAY overpay for a player, there is a pretty good chance that there are other ways to spend that money, in any market, that would generate more WAR.  And, the reason that a team usually WAY overpays for a player, is not because they are a wealthy team, like the Red Sox or Yankees, and there were no alternatives - the reason is usually because they way overvalued that player, like Carlos Lee a few years ago.  I mean if you sign a player like CC or Teixera, who are worth 4 or 5 WAR, it’s not like a rich team is going to pay them double their worth, or 35 or 40 mil a year, just to lock them up.  That has not happened yet, I don’t think.

Anyway, if their final response is, “Well, that’s the only player available (that can upgrade our team right now), and we need to, or want to, win the World Series this year and maybe even next year, and we think that this player will increase our chances significantly,” then it MAY be ‘correct’ to purchase that player now (for 10 mil per win, with no luxury tax - just for salary), even though they are overpaying tremendously for him, salary-wise.  (I say MAY, because it still may be correct to abandon that “win now” goal and wait until a better deal comes up in a year or three or five.)

And again, if making the most amount of money is NOT the goal, then all bets are off, and this entire discussion is moot.  If winning is the goal, regardless of expernditure or profit, then you simply sign and pay for the most WAR humanly possible (until your entire team is “maxed out").  The tricky part is that for many, if not most, teams, the actual goal, whether stated or not, is some combination of the two - winning a WS and maximizing profit.

You don’t buy a “5 WAR 1B,” you contract with a player to provide services. Players are not commodities, they are contractors. Wins are commodities.

(This is of course not a perfect analogy, but none are.)

When we talk about converting WAR to salary in this context, we’re talking about it in the framework of a typical team - typical revenue streams, typical replacements, etc. This tells us (perhaps) little about how much Teixera is WORTH to the Yankees. But it tells us a great deal about how much the Yankees should pay for him, because we’re modeling the way real player compensation contracts work.

Just because Teixera may be worth more to the Yankees than other teams is no reason to pay him like that, because you end up bidding against yourself. (And in fact, the Yankees were not the top bidder for Teixera.)

In a given offseason there may be only 5 free agents (other than bench players and middle relief) that the Yankees have any interest in signing.  If you can keep track of the actual cost and actual benefit of all your options, then the market value for WAR doesn’t mean anything.

If there were 85,000 free agents worth something to the Yankees, then you could meaningfully judge a signing based on them paying market value for WAR.

If you can keep track of the actual cost and actual benefit of all your options, then the market value for WAR doesn’t mean anything.

I have no idea what this means.  The “keep track of” part, that is.

Again, I am no economist to say the least, but of course the market value or going rate of a WAR means something.  Why do you think that even the Yankees have been paying approximately the going rate for WAR?

If there were 85,000 free agents worth something to the Yankees, then you could meaningfully judge a signing based on them paying market value for WAR.

Once again, it depends on what you mean by “judge.” There is not nearly enough information in that word or in this particular context to be able to discuss a “judgment” on a Yankee signing.  “Judge” it from what perspective?  If someone asks me whether or not a signing by a team was a “good” one or a “bad” one (or in between), I can never answer that question with a “yes or no.” All I can do is explain whether I thought that they paid at, below, or above market value, based on that player’s expected, estimated WAR.  Any judgment beyond that is up to the indivudal based on his presepctive and however he wants or means to define “judge” or “good or bad.”

We’ve discussed this before, but yes, if there are a lot of attractive FA available, then the Yankees will pay around market value. 
However, if the number of available and attractive FA are limited, then the Yankees might pay a little more than MV.  How much more, I have no idea.  It won’t be equal to the marginal value of the player to the Yankees (a little less of course, so that they can profit).  That “little less” than marginal value will be the ceiling, but by no means will it be how much they have to pay.  Why would they?  All they have to do is to tell the player, “Go sign with another team then (for less than we will pay you).” We’ve discussed this before (above) and I thought we came to the consensus that the Yankees and other high revenue teams will pay more than market value for wins, but not that much more.  How much more, depending to some extent on supply and demand.  How are you going to claim that the Yankees (and other teams, presumably) are going to pay something close to the marginal value TO THEM of wins when, one, you have no idea what that number is, and two, they don’t pay that much more than the going rate?  If you say that someone does something, don’t they actually have to do it in order for what you say to be true?

He’s forgetting that the marginal value of a win to the Yankees is by far greater than it is to any other team.  If the $/marginal win is $5 million on the FA market right now (or 4.84 or whatever it is), it is probably at least $10 mil to the Yankees.  Until we are able to determine the value of a marginal win for each team we will never fully know or be able to 100% accurately assess these WAR dollar values because they are not currently relative to each team.

Mike, just because a diabetic whose blood sugar is low gets a bigger benefit from a candy bar, it does not mean it costs him more. If the question is simply, “Did the Yankees pay market value for Teixiera,” then that’s the question we’re answering.

WAR-to-dollars as we’ve been doing it in this thread is based upon the going market rate for wins. That’s all it’s trying to answer. Saying that it doesn’t answer other questions isn’t a rebuttal at all.

You can try to make a donkey fetch and a dog pull a cart, but at the end of the day it’s simply best to have each thing do it’s own job as best it can.

Hey Tango:

This is just thinking outloud, because I don’t think it will ever happen. But would the Cubs get more value out of Soriano by moving him back to 2B? UZR had Soriano at -9.1 in ‘04 and -10.7 in ‘05 for UZR/150 at 2B, and +4.4 in ‘07 and -3.1 in ‘08 for UZR/150 at LF. When comparing Soriano in LF to Soriano at 2B, do we still use positional adjustments? Would I subtract 7.5 runs from him in LF and add 2.5 runs to him at 2B? That doesn’t seem like its the right application of the positional adjustment numbers. That would somehow mean you could actually protect a bad defensive player at a more difficult position, rather than an easier one. It would mean you’d get more value out of Adam Dunn in CF than in either corner, but that just doesn’t make logical sense.

I didn’t mean to write my post like I did...I just meant that if this was from the Yankees perspective, they would use their $10 mil/win figure and not the going market rate for wins.  In fact, every team should use their own $/win figure.  But, like you pointed out, it has no validity within this thread.

Using the above defensive numbers for Soriano:

Say he’s +30 over replacement on offense.

As a LF, +1 Def, -7.5 Pos, +30 = +23.5
As a 2B, -10 Def, +2.5 Pos, +30 = +22.5

Another consideration for the Cubs is the next best hitters - Mark DeRosa and Mike Fontenot - are both 2B, and better defenders than Soriano at 2B while probaly not having the same range he has in left.  He won’t be moving, and it wouldn’t make sense for him too.

I don’t understand how you get Dunn having the same value as a CF than in a corner.  Please explain.  If he went to center his position adjustement would be 10 runs better (+2.5 vs -7.5) but he’d be at least 10 runs worse relative to an average defender in center.

Actually, he’d be more than 10 runs worse, as center fielders get more chances - Dunn would have more opportunities to cost his team runs.

Rally’s got it right.

Generally speaking, if you move anyone, anywhere, you’ll always be close to equilibrium. 

It’s the extreme players that are most affected.  A really good fielder, who gets moved to SS (most opps on the field), will get his value increased (in a similar way as moving Pujols from hitting 8th to hitting 4th).

And, on the opposite side, moving a really bad fielder from SS/CF to corner OF/1B (or DH) will increase his value, much the same way as moving a really bad hitter from cleanup to 8th will increase his value.

#336 Brain, bucco blog went off on Doumit’s signing today.  He called it too risky. When I read MGL’s thoughts at #346 I wonder, should a catcher’s win-loss record be considered in value?

Tony/357 - Jake is never pleased over at Bucco Blog. FanGraphs said Doumit has prudced $25m over the past 2 years. 3 of his last 4 have been very productive for a ML catcher, save for one in which he was injured much of the year. The Pirates commit to 3/12 and some of these fans act like they’ve sold him the farm. Do they realize how cheap that is in today’s market?

Thank you Brian.

Just to make sure I understand all this, if Fangraphs says Jason Bay was worth $14m the last two with his 45 HR and 169 rbi in 1115 ab, Nyjer Morgan was worth $9.1m the last two with 1 HR and 14 rbi in 267 ab, then I’m supposed to believe Doumit is worth $24m for his 24 HR and 101 rbi in 683 ab.

It’s all making more sense every minute. 

Joking aside, should a team’s win-loss rate be considered when evaluating a catcher?  We look at a pitcher’s win rate, why not the other half of the battery?

A pitcher’s win-loss rate isn’t a very good indicator of talent; this is probably even more true of the catcher, who has less control over the defense than the pitcher does.

The overriding question that you should always be asking is, How much of this result is under the player’s control, and how much isn’t?

Fangraphs does not include fielding for catchers.  And Doumit is ranked very very low by the fans.  That takes a HUGE bite out of his valuation.

Mr. Smith has his catcher projections up at his site (baseballprojection.com).

Doumit is projected to “contribute” -5 runs behind the plate.

This is kinda off topic, but does anyone know where to find RoE data for batters?

Baseball reference has RoE data, on the player splits pages.

And speaking of “Sabermetric Moves,” I am glad I’m a Mariners fan, with our very own sabermetric Tango consulting for the M’s. Congratulations to Tango and Yay for me.

Burrell: 2/16 to the Rays

He’s worth 9.7 mil/year at 2.2 WAR (if my numbers are correct), so he’s an absolute steal. I can’t quite figure out why the Phils would sign Ibanez for 3/30 so early, when they could have gotten more production for $2 mil./year less, or could have gotten…

Milton Bradley: 3/30 to the Cubs.

Looks likes he’ll play center. I have him at 3.7 WAR (if my numbers are correct):

Offense= +2.7 wins
Fielding= -.2 wins (CHONE’s projection at center)
Position= +.25 wins
Replacement= +2.5 wins
Playing time= 70%
WAR= .7 * 5.26 = 3.7

That’s $16.3 mil in his first year--that can’t be right, or is he just that good?

He’s good, but 70% plyaing time may be optimistic.

70% of 700 PA = 490 PA. He’s only done that once in the last four seasons.

Bradley will be playing RF, not CF.  Its hard to value him because playing time is such a big variable.  70% would translate to 113 full games...that seems optimistic.

Marcel projects 479 PA for Bradley…

Zach, how are you calculating Bradley at 70% playing time? Do you and tango use a formula given his previous years’ PA or is that just an estimate you’re using?  I remember reading somewhere that you don’t project over 90% playing time usually but I am still unsure of the whole playing time aspect.  Thanks

EDIT: I see you’re going off Marcel.  I guess I thought there was a quick-n-easy formula Tango was using.  Is there?

Maybe someone can point me to a thread discussing playing time (I know it’s more of an “art” but I’d like to read more about it if there’s a blog post somewhere...).

According to fangraphs numbers, in 2007 Bradley put up 2.5 WAR.... in 61 games. Wow.

I like the way FanGraphs does it with the 20/600*PA.  Just use whatever Marcels projects in terms of PA and put that number into the equation.  I think for the AL the 20 needs to be 25, though.  That’s quick-n-easy.

Turns out I forgot to divide by 1.15 for Bradley for offense (though I did for Burrell...). That +2.7 wins turns to +2.25.

#370/Joseph: Marcel’s formula for projected PA is .5*PA1 + .1*PA2 + 200, where PA1 is last year’s PA and PA2 is the PA two years ago.

#373/Mike: Is that equation for replacement level?

Zach, whoops it definietly is.  I think I mis-read the question because he was asking something different. My bad!

It sounds like the A’s are about to sign Giambi for just over 5 million, with an option for the second year.  The articles I have read have Giambi at DH.  With Holliday in left field, that leaves no spot for Cust.  Aren’t the A’s better off with Giambi at first and Cust at DH?  Cust was their only half-decent hitter last year.  I realize Giambi is not very good at first, but it seems like a waste to have Cust riding the bench.

Drew, wouldn’t a Giambi signing mean Daric Barton gets to spend some time at AAA?

That’s what I figured when I heard he might sign.  It would make the most sense to have Giambi at first, Cust DH, and Barton work out the kinks in AAA.  Keith Law and others have reported that Giambi would DH.

Giambi signed to a 1 year deal somewhere around $4 to $4.5 million. Great deal. I have Giambi as a 2.5 WAR player at 1st, which is worth around $12 million for 2009.

In a vacuum, the Giambi deal is good. Don’t think it helps the A’s all that much. The move either forces Barton, who projects to be at most one win worse than Giambi, to the minors, or it moves Cust to the outfield if Giambi DHs. Neither plan is really all that beneficial to the A’s, I don’t think.

Of course if Barton is traded for a 3B or SS, then the point is moot.

Looks like Hoffman to the Brewers… I don’t see anything saying he could be worth more than maybe .75 WAR (Chone has him at 3 RAR, Marcel has him at 3.5 by FIP and 5 by ERA), and everything says that the deal is worth at least 4.5M$.  Not sure I like the deal, but I’m not a big fan of paying closers a whole lot in the first place.

Any other thoughts?

What no discussion about Hairston and Taveras?!?

Tom - define a replacement level team in wins.  40? 46?

I think it’s around 47 or 48 wins.

.300 win%

Derek Lowe: 4/60, paying for 3.4 WAR.

3.4 WAR, presuming 189 IP (21 games) is +.16 wins per game above replacement.  For NL, the replacement level is .390, putting him at .550 win% expectation.  That’s pretty much what I had him at.

A perfectly fair and reasonable signing… in a normal market.  If we presume that the wins per $ is still stuck in 2008, then they are paying for 3.7 WAR, putting him at .565 win%, which is also not far from where I had him.

A fair signing, all-around.

One thing that is interesting with Lowe is how bad his clutch numbers are.  Normally you don’t pay too much attention to them, but with pitchers, who actually pitch with different mechanics with men on base, I’d be a little more leery.

Thoughts on Youkilis’ 4 year, $41 million deal?

Check the Pedroia thread:

http://www.insidethebook.com/ee/index.php/site/comments/dustin_pedroia/

Youk: 4/40, paying for 3 WAR (2 years of arb, 2 years of FA).

This is an excellent player, at least a 3.5 WAR player, and more likely at 4 or more.  He should have signed a 4/60 deal.  I don’t get the reason for him to give up his free agency years, like Pedroia did.

I have his arb estimate for 2009 as 12MM and 15MM for 2010.  It’s clear he wouldn’t get that, and so, my arb model needs an obvious topoff for non-power guys, or guys with glove value.

Or, that while I give 60% / 80%, I need to change that.  It works on average, but it doesn’t work in this case at all.

If we say his arb value for 2009/10 is in the 15-20MM range, combined, and that his FA value stays as I had it for a 4 WAR player (30MM), then his fair contract value would be 45-50MM.

He still gave up a bit, but not as egregious as I thought.

That is, we have to value his arb contract not based on his actual win value, but on how much his win value can be sold to the arbitrator.

Ryan Howard has the opposite issue, in that the arbitrator will award him far more than he deserves.

What’s interesting about Cole Hamels $4.35 / $6.65 / $9.5 million is how much it follows the 40/60/80 split.

If for example we presume the free agent base that was used was $12MM, then those three annual figures as a percentage of 12 is: 36%, 55%, 79%.

Hmmmm… he’s a 2+ player, so perhaps it should be the 20/40/60 split that I should look at.  On that basis, then the baseline salary would have been 16MM, and you get these splits: 27%, 42%, 59%.

I like Hamels’ deal for himself. I like that he guaranteed himself some security without giving up a year of free agency. This puts him in a much stronger position later, and teams will be far more willing to lose a pick for a pitcher coming into his prime.

Papelbon: 1/6.25, paying for 3 WAR
Jenks: 1/5.6, paying for 2.7 WAR

Both are 3+ service year players.

Presuming 8 full games, and an LI, for salary purposes, of 1.5, this puts their winning percentage at .700 for Jenks, and .720 for Papelbon.

They both signed a bit high, but, that’s what the market is for closers.

Thoughts on Markakis’s 6 year 66 mil extension, buying out 3(!) free agent years?

Wow, Howard is asking for 18M in arbitration, while the Phillies offered 14M.  I believe this is Howard’s 2nd year in arbitration (he won last year when asking for 10M against the Phillies 7M) and he is a Super 2 guy, so he still has 3 more years until free agency, could be wrong though.

Well, last year he was a super 2 (his first year of arb).  So, he’s got this year, plus 2 more.

The weird thing about Howard is that he is royally scr-wed by the system, because there is no age cap in free agency, unlike say the NHL.  MLBPA should be ashamed of itself for not having an age cap.

At the same time, the Phillies are royally scr-wed by the system because of the reliance on stuff like RBIs and sh!t like that, and the complete lack of fielding/positional adjustments.

So, in a two-wrongs-make-a-right view, the system “works” for Howard.

Tango/396 - What would happen if a team went to arbitration with a sabermetric argument? They go in saying Player X is 2.7 WAR, he’s in his 2nd arbitration year, and the market says he should get $Y. They don’t mention RBIs or Wins or any other silly stat.

They’d probably be laughed out of the room, but it’d be interesting if it happened.

They would be laughed out of the room, and in no way will it happen.

This is EXACTLY like buying a house: you need to do a CMA (Comparative Market Analysis).  In doesn’t matter what the intrinsic value of the house or land is worth.  All it matters is how much is a similar house in a similar location selling for.  And if there is nothing similar, then how much more or less is it worth based on the extra or lesser features it has.

The problem cases for the arbitrators are the extreme cases, like Ryan Howard.  In hockey, there was a famous case about Ray Bourque, who the arbitrator acknowledged was the best defensemen in the league, but ruled against him, because he determined that defensemen are worth less than forwards.  (Or this is how I remember the ruling anyway.)

This caused an uproar in Boston, with fans holding out signs “Pay Ray”.  Bourque was the good guy to end all good guys.  If someone can find the Youtube of Phil Esposito’s number being retired in Boston (Espo and Bourque both wore #7 for the Bruins), you will see what I mean.

I’d love to see an arbitration hearing to see how it goes.  Bill James was hired more than 20 years ago to testify in arbitration hearings.  Can’t remember if he was working for teams or agents.  Maybe both at different times.

I doubt that you’d have trouble hearing the sabermetric argument, depending on whose side it favored.

Players.  He talked about being in on the Raines case, George Bell, etc.

The “sabermetric” argument would be based on specific components, like focusing on K,BB,HR for pitchers and finding comparables based on that.  No way would you get SuperLWTS or WAR or anything else we put into “one number”.

However, most cases get settled before it even sees the arbitrator, and so, when 90% of the cases are settled, the other 10% are not so unique that they won’t have a comparable among those 90%, plus the settled cases of the previous season.  Ryan Howard is the exception, and THAT is the case I’d like to hear.

Prince Fielder: 2/18, paying for 3.5 WAR in 2009, 3.25 in 2010 (has 3+ service years).

I gave Fielder a smaller expected aging/attrition rate because he’s so young. 

He’s a great hitter of course (+3 wins above average).  For guys like him, Ryan Howard and all the other no-fielders, their wins above average is also their wins above replacement. 

So, I think he got a good deal here.  He should have gotten 2/15.  But, as is standard, guys with lots of HR/RBIs get a premium.

***

Which brings me to Ryan Howard.  Howard is like Prince Fielder.  The only difference is that this is his 2nd year of arbitration.

However, the arb rules seem pretty clear that Howard gets to be compared to guys in his service class, and not his arbitration-years class (i.e., he doesn’t get to be compared to the current 4+ years of service guys who were not previously super 2s).

So, we’ve got two fantastic comps here.  But Howard also gets to show off to the arbitrator his previous salary of 10MM (and Fielder made under 1MM last year).  Not quite as perfect a comp as I’d have liked.

I get Fielder’s two years as being worth 7.2MM the first year and 10.8MM the second year.

See where I’m going here?  Ryan Howard, LAST YEAR, got 10MM.  Fielder, THIS YEAR, gets 7.2MM.  So if next year Fielder is getting 10.8MM, how can Howard argue for 18MM for this year?

Then again, he’s got the ultimate-extreme HR/RBI numbers, and that is the largest source of bias around.  That, and the lack of penalty for being a 1B.

Just to be clear about the service time issue.

Howard is a previous super 2, and is now 3+ years of service.

Fielder is NOT a previous super 2, and is now a 3+ years of service.

The CBA say you can compare guys to the current service group, plus the group one year ahead.  So, as I read that, this means that Howard/Fielder get to be compared to each other, plus those guys with 4 years of service.

Otherwise, and perhaps this is the way it used to work, Ryan Howard would have been considered a 2nd-year arb-eligible player, and would not be in the same service class as Fielder (1st year arb-eligible).

Since Tom can’t talk about this one:

M’s trade Aaron Heilman for Ronny Cedeno and Garrett Olson. 

Heilman is something like a +.5 to +1 win reliever, under club control for two years at a total cost of something like $5 million.  That makes him barely an asset, unless he successfully pulls a Dempster and moves to the rotation. 

Cedeno is a +.5 to +1 win infielder, under club control his three arb years.  Olson is a +.5 to +1 win pitcher under club control for five more years, two of them at slave wages.  Olson also has a minor league option left, so he doesn’t require a major league roster spot.

It’s hard to paint this as anything other than a huge win for the M’s.  I love having Tom work for my team.

I can’t talk about this deal obviously.

***

I just want to point out that if we consider everyone’s contributions to the M’s moves as a human organism, I’d like to think that my role is analogous to the big toe (reference: Bill Murray in Stripes). 

Jack and Tony and some others in the front office are the heart and brain and lungs, so any moves, good or bad, they should get almost all the attention.  Granted, in my little blog world here, it’s my toe that’s the most visible.

I can’t talk about this deal obviously.

%$#@!, your consultant gig is ruining “The Book Blog.”

Signed,

Another Glorified Fanboy Trying to Look Smart

I see Heilman as +2 wins as a starter.  The injury last year hurt his performance.  A “Dempster” isn’t even that far out of the equation.  If he can come out with a 4.50 ERA in the 5th spot he’s Jason Marquis while saving 5 mil.  FYI, Cedeno may be the most frustrating player to watch because he’s a legitimate player but has the attention span of a 2 year old.  I will never forget when he overslid second base and was tagged out while stealing on a 3-2 count when the batter walked.  Olson’s upside is .5 win IMO.

Regardless, I think it is a good deal for both teams but Heilman is definitely more than .5 a win player.  His 2 wins will be more valuable to the Cubs than they would have been for the M’s.

Tango/404:

Stubbing your big toe really hurts eh? I guess there will be some times when you get the most attention out of the whole “body”

I don’t understand why the Cubs made this deal. CHONE has Heilman at 73 IP, 4.07 ERA. Olson is projected at 153 IP, 4.88 ERA. Factoring in the starter/reliever ERA adjustment, these pitchers look about the same to me.

Except that Olson is younger and cheaper, IIRC.

And that doesn’t even include Cedeno’s value…

Can someone comment on the Jason Kubel signing?  My question is specifically related to the comparison to Hinske made at fangraphs.  What percentage of at bats at DH does a player need to get the 5 run extra credit for being a full time dH?

Adjusting Heilman’s CHONE forcast as a stater I get a 4.46 ERA. (His CHONE forecast is for the Mariners, which should include a DH penalty, shouldn’t it?) That should work out to about 10 runs difference in 200 IP - this is real off-the-cuff here, by the by.

I played around with Heilman converted to starter and found him and Olson being about equals.  So considering service time and Cedeno, Mariners got the better of the trade.  Cedeno looks like a carbon copy of Betencourt.  Wonder who is going to start, or maybe another trade is in the works.

David (formerly at 411): please no thread-jacking, especially one with 410 posts that makes it clear what we are discussing.

I moved your post here:
http://www.insidethebook.com/ee/index.php/site/comments/the_perfect_run_modeler/

Rally/411: I’m curious as to why you say that Cedeno is a “carbon copy” of Betancourt. I see that your lwts/150 are similar for both (-11, although FanGraphs wOBA-fication of your forecast has .329 for Cedeno and .311 for Betancourt. ?? I guess that’s another question...), but your defensive projection has Cedeno roughly average at SS (-2) and Betancourt in the “poor” region (-6).

I agree that splitting minor differences in defensive quality is not a good idea, but is -2 and -8 that close?

The Fans are interesting, as always, although sometimes I’m at a loss to know how to interpret the results (especially with a guy like Cedeno, who didn’t play regularly the past two years). Cedeno seems to be around average the last three years, while Betancourt goes from 82 in 2006 to 69 in 2007 to 39 in 2008.

With defensive projections of -2 and -6, I’m not comfortable saying any more than “Cedeno is probably a bit better”.  With Betencourt we have as much data as we could ask for in his projection.  With Cedeno it does not include minor leagues.  At some point I’ll add that in, since I have minor league defensive data now.

(The ratings are already up on minorleaguesplits.com, Jeff Sackmann and I worked together to produce these).

The fangraphs WOBA is based on the player’s nominal stats, for the team/league they will play in.  My R/150 is context neutral.

Please let me know if I’m not doing this correctly:

Mets sign Perez for 3/36, paying for ~2.8 WAR.

Marcel has him at 4.22 ERA for next year, which coincidentally is exactly his ERA from last year, which, even more coincidentally, was exactly league average. So call him a .500 pitcher for 20 full games above a .390 replacement level: .11*20=2.2 WAR.

With a lot of pitchers still available, including Sheets, and a rotation that already contains Santana, Maine, Pelfrey, and Redding, plus Garcia, Niese, and Brandon Knight, not to mention more glaring holes at second base and in the outfield (where there seems to be a good bit of potential value to be had), I don’t see any way to justify this overpay. You could say that wins are worth more to the Mets, but there didn’t seem to be anyone bidding against them for Perez, besides which there were alternatives (as mentioned). He’s not an “innings eater,” and it’s hard to see him as much better than an average starter, though if you use .370 for the replacement level he’s a 2.6 WAR pitcher. Maybe the Mets think he’ll age slightly better than most free agents, since he’s only 27? If you chop off only .25 wins for each subsequent year, they’re paying correctly for an average pitcher.

Still, this is an unnecessary overpay in a buyer’s market. Along with the K-Rod overpay and the lopsided Putz deal, I’d say the Mets are having a typically poor offseason.

They sign Perez for 1M per year less than they offered Derek Lowe.  Even with age, it’s hard for me to see those two as anything close to equal.

CHONE has Lowe at +3.6 and Perez at +1.7.

Orlando Hudson plus Adam Dunn, or Manny.  (Include draft pick compensation.)

Discuss.

Offer Dunn 3/30, be open to a 1 or 2 year deal if he prefers.  Wash my hands of Ramirez, and pass on Hudson, keeping the draft pick.

I would take Manny because I wouldn’t bet on Hudson being healthy. I would also wonder how he would fare with a full season in the NL because he was on fire after that trade. Manny turned down 1 year at 25 mil, so he may not be available at price that makes sense, so you would have to turn to the other option.

I’m about as down on Adam Dunn as anyone in the sabermetric community, and I still don’t know how anyone actually picks Manny over the pair. 

In reality, it’s Dunn, Hudson, and a draft pick or Manny, because you’ll get two picks for Manny leaving and only lose one for signing Hudson.  Yes, if you’re the Dodgers, you’ll move down, but the two picks are still going to be more valuable than the single pick. 

Dunn and Hudson are probably both +2 to +2.5 win players.  Ramirez is, at best, +3.5 wins.  The difference between Manny and Dunn just isn’t so great that it can compensate for not signing Hudson and picking up an extra pick.

Just going by Rally’s numbers:

Rally has Hudson had +3 defensively, but bUZR doesn’t like him as much, so let’s call it even, for 1.8 Wins.

Taking Tango’s suggestion about Ryan Howard above,, good-hit, no-field guys like Dunn and Manny have their WAR determined by their lwts above average. For Dunn, that’s 16 (let’s call it 1.6 wins), and for Manny, it’s 35.

So Dunn + Hudson = 3.4 Wins/150
Manny = 3.5 Wins/150

While Dunn has been a horse the past couple seasons, both Hudson has missed a lot of time in recent seasons, but Manny is old.

Honestly, I don’t know what to think. It’s definitely closer than I thought it would be. I read somewhere that the Dodgers might be able to get a third player in addition to Hudson and Dunn, so that would definitely swing the scales.

I’m not sure whether this belongs here or not but on Metsgeek we are having this big debate on the Perez signing (and Lowe).  There’s alot of people on both sides.  I had written a article on pitcher’s WAR and had Ollie at 3/17 and he got 3/36 as you all know.  I had lowe at 4/56 and he got 4/60.  I had some questions.

For lowe I used his FIP projection for 2009 (forgot which one, maybe Marcel).  Does that factor in the move from the dodgers to the braves and if not would that affect his WAR greatly?

People in the pro-oliver camp are arguing that Lowe being 37 and moving to the NL East is going to regress far more than his projections indicate.  They also argue that perez being 27 will far outperform his projections.  Many seem to make this argument because he is going into his “prime” years.  I just don’t see any indication that he will turn into a better pitcher or greatly outperform his projection.  I was just wondering what the thoughts of others are on this subject?

Some posts moved here:
http://www.insidethebook.com/ee/index.php/site/comments/players_who_can_pitch_and_hit/

The Mariners signed Josh Fields recently.  Apparently any player who has exhausted his college eligibility is not subject to the August 15th deadline.  Does anyone know why this is the case?  Why are college seniors treated any differently than high school seniors (or college juniors for that matter)?  Is it simply because MLB knows that the college seniors have very little leverage?

McLouth signed for 3 years and 14.5m guaranteed.

I don’t remember if I ever linked to this:
http://jeffsqanda.blogspot.com/2009/01/how-does-players-ability-and-team-he.html

Orlando Cabrera just signed with Oakland at 4/1. Seems really cheap to me. My swag would put him at about 2 wins ($8 mil) and BP has him at $7 mil plus change.

Has the FA market really collapsed this much? We seem to be at more like $2 mil per win lately.

Matt

To those who have been keeping up with this thread—what seems to be the $$$/win this off-season?  Significantly less than $4.5MM?

Cabrera and Hudson were Type A, meaning there is a fixed cost to signing them.

Tex and CC were also Type A, but it’s practically the same fixed cost to sign them too.

So, if the value of a Type A is 10MM, and if Cabrera is really worth say 20MM for 2 y, then he’ll only get 10MM.  In the case of CC and Tex, we don’t notice because 160 or 170 is so close.  Plus, the Yanks likely don’t value the Type A anyway.

On the other hand, this means that Cabrera or Hudson might be a Type A next year and they get back into the same position.  Ideally, the teams signing them to one year realize that they might become Type A next year, and instead of presuming they lost 10MM in draft pick value this year, see it as losing 10MM this year, and probably getting about 6MM worth of value next year.  So, instead of docking Cabrera 10MM, the A’s dock him 4MM instead.

***

As I said, the free agent compensation system is stupid to begin with, and it’s utterly stupid for guys who are not with their original teams.  The idea about the compensation system was so that the teams who “raise their kids” won’t be left with nothing.  But, it makes no sense for the Angels to get compensation for losing Tex.

I’d hate for Canada to have required compensation from America for having nurtured then lost me.

Matthew has a nice parallel to Baker and Lester:
http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/twins-lock-up-baker

I love it when we find (sort of) twins (no pun intended) like this.  Throw in Shields, and it looks like the market has been established for this level of pitcher.  Cole Hamels probably set it for the level above that.