THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

There’s only two candidates, I think. 

1. Brandon Lyon.  Relievers of similar quality are signing minor league deals or, at most, low base one year deals.  3/15 for Lyon was beyond crazy. 

2. Jason Bay.  If you subscribe to the “Lyon’s deal is bad, but it’s just $5 million a year” school of thought, then Bay is the next obvious choice.  Bay is not significantly better than Johnny Damon.  Multiple +2 to +3 win outfielders signed for fractions of what Bay got.  His contract might have made sense a few years ago, but in this market, was ridiculous.

Lyon I think was the one that was the biggest head-scratcher.

For Bay, he’s being valued at 4.3 wins in 2010, and dropping by 0.5 each year, while being paid at 4MM per win in 2010, and increasing that by 0.5 each year.  That’s 4/66MM.

Holliday, following the same scheme, is being valued at 4.8 wins in 2010, with the same pattern as Bay for 2011 and beyond.  That’s 7/120MM.

You can make a fair argument for Holliday.  But Bay is at least 1 win behind Holliday.  Bay is alot harder to justify.

The Phillies added a bunch of veteran crap that’s currently prevent free crap with possible upside from taking roster spots.  I’m thinking specifically of Ross Gload (2yr/2.6m), Juan Castro (1yr/700k with ‘11 option), and Danys Baez (2yr/5.25m).  These are more frustrating signings than candidates for worst.

I’ll go with Dave Dombrowski’s signing of Jose Valverde after going cheap via trade.  Fernando Rodney is in that same boat.

And I agree with Dave on Bay...Just an atrocious signing when you consider where the Mets are as a franchise and where Bay’s comparables in the market settled at (or have failed to settle at).  Holliday is much better and his contract’s AAV is only .5m more (albeit for a longer time frame).

I think it has to be Lyon, but Rodney has to be a contender as well.  It’s less money (and years) than Lyon, but the players are comparably mediocre.

Having a rule of thumb is important, but when I look at Bay against Holliday, one of those players is much more likely to rapidly deteriorate than the other. 

The Holliday signing at least serves several functions.  It makes the Cards competitive in ‘10 and it sends a message to Albert (which could serve to make them competitive long into the future). 

Signing Bay has no intrinsic value.  You’re adding a player with balky knees onto a roster full of injury problems that doesn’t figure to compete this year.  If they find themselves back on their feet a couple years down the line, they’ve exposed themselves to a potential 16m anchor.  Even with the .5 WAR decline/year he’s a 3.3 WAR player, which isn’t the hardest thing to find on a budget.  The Mets won’t be limited by one weakly performing contract, but they’ll also have an aging Santana and who knows what other aging players on the roster at that point.  That limits what they can do via free agency.

Maybe I’m cheating the question by considering more than just the player and the contract.

I’m going with Bay because it’s not even like any other team was offering close to what the Mets were and they made sure to outbid themselves.

Rodney and Lyon are definitely up there, though.

Garrett Atkins for $4.5mm doesn’t really look like a good deal.  Not when Ryan Garko barely got a roster spot.

That Atkins deal does look like a stumper, but at least it’s for 1 year.  I can see what the Orioles are doing with that move at least...plus if he suddenly remembers how to drive the ball he’ll be team controlled.

I’m not sure it’s the worst, but I’d like to go out on a limb and suggest that Lackeys’ contract with Boston has to be in the discussion. Let’s just take the guaranteed 5/$82.5M protion.

Assuming $3.5M per marginal win, 7% salary inflation, 0.5/win season decline (and that my spreadsheet is done correctly), Boston paid for a 5 WAR player (in 2010). CHONE has Lackey at about 3.5 WAR. Marcel is less optimistic. Even a simple average of 2007-2009 has him under 4 WAR a season.

Now, Boston is at a point where they can justify more than the average marginal value of a win, and one could argue that given many of the “underpriced” players on their roster they could afford to overpay for Lackey in a shallow pitching market. I’m not sure I’d make that argument, but I’d listen to it.

Still, it seems like a pretty significant overpay to me, whether it’s the worst of the offseason is another question.

Randy Wolf (3 years, $29.75mm).  PECOTA projects Wolf will produce 5.3 wins above replacement for that money.  Well played.

Oops, used last year’s projection for Wolf; this year’s is presumably better.  I stand by the pick, though.  The days when league-average innings eaters commanded $10mm/yr are over (for now, anyway), and Wolf is unlikely to be more than that.

I was thinking Rodney, but at least I’m glad Angels didn’t give him 3 years (should have been for 1 and half the $).

Angels at most though, overpaid by 11 million for Rodney (if he’s worthless).  Jason Bay is probably the biggest overpay.  Had they opted for Damon instead it would cost about half a win and save about 15 million over the first two years, at which point they’d be shopping for a new LF again, which might be a much better option than paying Bay for those seasons.

For Bay, he’s being valued at 4.3 wins in 2010, and dropping by 0.5 each year, while being paid at 4MM per win in 2010, and increasing that by 0.5 each year.  That’s 4/66MM.

Where’s that 4.3 wins in 2010 coming from? All winter I’ve been referencing’s Rally’s free agent tracker, and he listed Bay at 2.9 wins in 2010.

And while there are a few signings not on that chart, of those listed, Bay — at $7.2MM — projects to the highest cost per win over the life of the contract.

http://bit.ly/8OV1OS

I should be clearer: he’s being paid as if he were expected to generate 4.3 wins in 2010.

Understood. Thank you.

RE: HOLLIDAY

ALONG THE SAME LINES AS THE HOLLIDAY SIGNING BEING A “SIGNAL” TO MR. PUJOLS....

IT WAS ALSO RUMORED THAT MATT WAS A BIG WISH FOR TONY.  REGARDLESS OF WHAT YOU THINK ABOUT TONY, IT’S WORTH IT TO ME TO TRY AND HAVE TONY KEEP DAVE DUNCAN AROUND!!!!

SO PERSONALLY, I WOULD FIND WHERE DUNCAN RECLAMATION PROJECTS OVER THE PAST 7 YEARS HAVE OPERATED ABOVE THEIR EXPECTED WAR, AND USE THAT AS A *VERY ROUGH* BASELINE AS TO WHAT WE MIGHT SUGGEST IS SOME VALUE OF KEEPING DAVE AROUND (IF HE DECIDES TO STAY FOR 7 MORE YEARS)!!!

CRAPPY, I KNOW, BUT TRANSLATING PITCHING COACH VALUE INTO WAR ISN’T REALLY SOMETHING IVE DONE OR WOULD LIKE TO SPEND A LOT OF TIME ON!!!

Any discussion of Bay’s value inevitably focuses on his defense, which in turn raises questions about how the various defensive metrics account for the pecularities of Fenway park.  As a Red Sox fan, I’ve long been annoyed by locals who attack objective metrics that showed Jason Bay, and Manny Ramirez before him, to be bad defenders.  In Los Angeles, however, Manny’s metrics suddenly show him to be an adequate defender in left field.  Personally, I don’t expect Jason Bay to have the same experience-- watching him play left field was painful in a way that watching Manny never was*-- but it’s at least worth noting that Bay’s fielding stats for the past season and a half are subject to somewhat more uncertainty than fielding metrics are in general.

*-Unlike Manny, Jason Bay unquestionably tried his hardest 100% of the time.  Unlike Manny, Bay looked plain awful out there-- not quite as bad as Kevin Millar, but pretty bad nonetheless.

Jason Bay’s 2007 UZR/150 in Pit: -11.4
Jason bay’s 2008 UZR/150 in Pit: -14.4

Manny Ramirez’s 2008 UZR/150 in LA: -12.8
Manny Ramirez’s 2009 UZR/150 in LA: -15.4

They both suck defensively.  It’s not the wall.

aquaman: if you are going to call Manny adequate in LA and bad in Boston, then present the data.

I have to go with Bengie Molina.  While it’s only a one-year contract:

1) His hitting is at least 1 win below replacement
2) His fielding is below average
3) He is perhaps the worst baserunner in the majors
4) He blocks a younger, better, cheaper players
5) He has put on 15-20 pounds of fat in four seasons
6) He has an outsized view of his own abilities and demands playing time accordingly

If a signing improved a roster spot but required overpaying now or in the future, I could understand the rationale.  But signing a weaker player with poor intangibles smacks of bad process for a management team that didn’t learn from the Barry Zito signing.

Bay, though he may well end up being overpaid by a lot… at least he’s a good player (now, anyway). 

So yeah, maybe it’s a bad contract.  But for some reason I feel like signing replacement-level players to multi-year deals is worse.  This may well be irrational on my part, but I can more easily forgive a GM for looking at a good player and seeing a great one than I can for looking at a scrub and seeing something useful.  Double demerit if said scrub blocks an even mildly intersting young player. 

So I think I’ll go with Lyon.

If Bay’s value, based on WAR projections and the going rate, is 4/36 and Lyon’s is 3/3, then you’ve wasted 30 million to sign Bay and 12 million on Lyon.  So I think the Bay contract is worse. 

But if you use the money you could have signed Bay with to bring in Rodney, Lyon, Molina, and say Orlando Cabrera, then the second package is a bigger waste of money.  Since at least with Bay you’ve got something above replacement level to show for your millions.

I was sort of stumped by Jason Marquis going to Washington. I understand they want a “marquee” name and innings eater to head up the rotation and make them seem respectable, but is it really necessary to bring in a guy for 2/15M to a team with no playoff aspirations? Even though it might be painful, wouldn’t it be worth giving innings to some of their many rotation candidates?

I think a team like the Nats needs to be constantly dealing in upside, e.g. Erik Bedard or somebody like that, not certainty. It just seems like throwing away money. Are they going to bring in $7.5M worth of fans this year by signing Marquis?

The poll is now up:
http://www.insidethebook.com/ee/index.php/site/article/poll_best_worst_contracts_of_the_year_free_agents/

I wouldn’t want to open a full rotation up to unproven minor leaguers unless I had really good prospects.  Ideally I’d want enough room to let those young pitchers who earn jobs pitch, but have enough vets so those who struggle can go back to AAA.  Pitchers who struggle are going to have some real high pitch count innings.  That could lead to more injuries, overwork for your bullpen, and be really frustrating for your fans to watch.

You can probably get away with an all-unproven arms strategy if you play in a pitcher’s park with a strong defense behind you.

Tango,

Manny’s UZR/150

2006: -24.2
2007: -28.3
2008: -3.2
2009: -15.4

Yes, he was bad in 2009, but he was significantly better than he was his last two full seasons in Boston (2006 and 2007).

After the trade to L.A., Manny’s UZR/150 in 2008 was -12.8.  Manny actually scored above average for the first four months of that season; as someone who watched most of those games (including several in person), I can only assume that was a bizarre statistical aberration.

The evidence isn’t as strong as I remembered, but leaving aside his hilariously aberrant numbers from the first half of 2008, his numbers look better in L.A. than they did in Boston.  The difference could be worth a full win if Manny played 140 games in the field, which he might actually do this season if he’s healthy.

Alright, now we’re getting somewhere.  You had said “respectable”, which was really the issue.  Easier to argue with numbers than adjectives.

Ok, so going back to 2003, we have this:
2003 +11
2004 -9
2005 -16
2006 -24
2007 -28
2008 +5 (Redsox only)

2008 -13 (Dodgers only)
2009 -15

Call me crazy, but if you look at Manny 2003-2008, or look at Manny 2004-2008, it’s going to look exactly like Dodgers 2008-09.

In short, I think you proved that the Fenway adjustment worked!

If it’ll help, you can ask MGL to show Manny’s home and road splits 2002-08 while with the Redsox, and we’ll see him as, probably -10 at home and -10 on the road.

Looking at range only, Manny was -3.0 for the Red Sox and -2.8 for the Dodgers in 2008.

Hmmm… don’t know why I didn’t think about it, but let’s see what WOWY says.

Let’s start with his Indians career.  He was a RF from the age of 21 to 28.  If you only look at the batters he faced or the parks he played in, they were fairly league-average, and so, he ended up with a -87 to -115 plays.

However, he had decidedly a groundball staff, enough that he was a minor PLUS outfielder: +6 total over his Indians life.  The batted ball distribution was an almost perfect match, +9.  That is, this is a GREAT example of how WOWY shows that you just need to know the identity of the pitchers.  You don’t need to worry about the distribution of the batted balls.

In Boston, through 2007, he was a LF. The batters he faced were again league-average (no surprise).  However, his parks were decidedly anti-LF (no surprise either).  LF cost him 83 plays over a span of 5 full seasons.  He went from being -253 plays without considering the park to -170 if you DO consider the park.  Just a horrible outcome.  That puts him at -34 plays per season.

Remember, I AM adjusting for the park, such that he is being compared to opposing and mate LF.

In LA (2009), I have him at -18 plays.

Unfortunately, I did not break down his 2008 by team.  With the park adjsutment, he was -8.

Also, I only have (currently) active players, so I can’t see how WOWY treated Yaz, Rice, Greenwell, et al.