from Amazon
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Vladimir
Five years ago, well-aware of being burnt by Mo Vaughn, Jeff Wilpon, owner of the Mets decided:
So what they said to him was this: We will guarantee you $30 million. Then all you have to do is show up for work to make another $40 million. Guerrero reportedly goes for $70 million guaranteed [to the Angels instead]. So would you.
What a horrible way to make a decision. Instead of proceeding from a purely actuarial standpoint, which is what Wilpon would have done in every single other transaction in every any other business, he decides to take his anecdote of how the Mets got burned on Vaughn, change the actuarial tables on how risky it is to sign a player coming off Vlad’s injury in 2003, and decide to make the offer he did. Wow!
This is the equivalent of changing your poker strategy on what to do if you see Ace-Ten, depending on how well it’s been working for you recently, even if you have a great model that has been tested as to how well the strategy had been working already. You don’t do it. You follow the model. And, if the model is broken, you fix the model. If you think the assumptions underlying the model are wrong, then you change the assumptions. But, to look at a single scenario like Mo Vaughn, and then change your assumptions radically based on that? That’s simply discarding the assumptions, and discarding the model. A pure gut move that has no basis in reality. Indeed, a gut move that you would not want to repeat under any other circumstances.
Fangraphs has implemented a financial model that is inspired by what I’ve developed in the past, so it’s as close to “Tango-approved” that’s out there. And for the last 5 years, shows that Vlad returned $67MM in performance. What Vlad has produced was pretty much what the Angels fans expected and should have expected. That, I think, speaks volumes to how well the Angels valued Vlad, and how well the model works.
This, by itself, is an illustrative anecdote that means nothing at all, any more than if Vlad got hurt after the second year would have vindicated Wilpon. It is an illustration which describes the rule, not the exception. Wilpon proceeded to presume the exception (Vaughn) was the rule.
At least he got Beltran, so it kinda works out anyway…
Recent comments
Older comments
Page 1 of 344 pages 1 2 3 > Last »Complete Archive – By Category
Complete Archive – By Date