THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Not sure if you’re making a counterpoint, but this sounds to be my point from November:

http://www.insidethebook.com/ee/index.php/site/comments/cba_changing_landscape_of_compensation_rules/#4

I actually don’t quite think “budgeting” is an inaccurate way to describe what’s going on, but I think you’re thinking about it from a GM-level, rather than a collective team level. I believe owners give GMs budgets, and they do so based on a general cost-benefit analysis, which is largely based on their perceptions of their position on the marginal-value-of-a-win curve plus their understanding of their local markets.

In other words, you should change your headline to “GMs are given budgets, and those budgets are sometimes up for debate”

I definitely had you in mind!

I agree with this part:

“I believe owners give GMs budgets, and they do so based on”

But I don’t agree with what follows after that necessarily.

I believe that they simply look at how they did the last two years on their current budget, and if they turned a profit (or get some big revenue stream like a new park), then they’ll roll some more profits, and if they didn’t they hold steady or scale back. 

Basically, trial-and-error.

And there’s always a regression toward the mean component that gently pushes the teams toward 90MM$.

I was listening as McCown and Cox were interviewing AA.  I don’t doubt that there is a budget, but if the right player could be signed to a contract for what they believed would be good value, I’m sure they would have signed them.  It is simply not good for bargaining with agents to flat out say that.  There are teams that will overpay for the likes of Wilson, Darvish, Pujols and Fielder, but the Jays under Anthopoulos will not be among them, and I applaud that.