Baseball 2006 Archives

As usual this time of year, I'm creating new categories for the new year. This is especially important for those of you who come here directly to the baseball category page, which should now be here. Update your bookmarks accordingly. Also note that posts about the 2008 presidential race will be in the Politics 2008 category.

First reaction to the news: this stinks for the Mets, who really could have used Zito and his durability. Second thought: 7 years and $126 million is crazy money for a guy who is a durable quality pitcher, yes, but not a championship-quality staff ace.

One thing that happens in Rotisserie baseball is that you sometimes realize that the economics are shifting - people are throwing stupid money at closers and speed is cheap, something like that. So you change your strategy. Starting pitching still matters, but it matters less than it used to, and yet has become obscenely expensive. I can't criticize the Mets for mostly staying out of the feeding frenzy. Glavine and Maine give the Mets two solid starters, and El Duque will hopefull be OK when available. Dave Williams and Jason Vargas may give the Mets some non-Lima-quality insurance. Which, with Trachsel, Bannister and Zambrano gone, leaves two rotation slots, one to be filled by Oliver Perez in the hopes of progress, the other open for competition between Pelfrey, Humber, and Soler, and Pedro to return at mid-season.

Not a great rotation. But with a deep bullpen and a solid lineup and defense, maybe the Mets are ahead of the game in shifting their strategy and saving their resources.

Good overview of the big fish that might be on next year's market. Carlos Zambrano is obviously the major prize here.

The Royals deal Andrew Sisco to the White Sox for Ross Gload. This is an interesting deal. My gut reaction is to say that it is a horrendous deal for the Royals. Sisco is a 23-year-old lefthander who could throw a feather through a brick wall, and those don't grow on trees, especially for the pitching-starved Royals. He had a fine rookie campaign in 2005 followed by a terrible year, but 6'10" power lefties have something of a history of coming along slowly, and they are dealing him when his stock is down. I'm also not sure it's a great deal for Sisco; while he gets into a much better organization for developing pitchers, he is probably more likely now to get pigeonholed as a situational lefty reliever, which is not the best role for a guy with his upside but also his control problems.

All of that said, though, the deal may yet be partly salvaged if Gload turns out a few good years as a regular. He is a pretty good hitter, probably better than, say, Jeff Liefer or Jeff Abbott or Greg Norton. While his upside is lower than Sisco's, he's a better bet to be productive in 2007. That may not be the profile you are seeking if you are KC and building for 2008-09, but it's something.

UPDATE: Pinto says Sisco may have been dealt for eating tacos during a game in Mexico. Or something.

Boy, the Mariners are just idiots, aren't they? First they trade Rafael Soriano for Horacio Ramirez - at first glance a deal of two young-ish pitchers with good arms and bad injury histories, but really a deal of a guy with a great record (when healthy) as a reliever (2.89 career ERA), who could easily hold down an elite closer job, for a starter who has never pitched decently or had good peripheral numbers at any stage of his career. Then, they trade one of their few promising (albeit also injury-prone) young bats, Chris Snelling, for a manifestly washed-up and expensive Jose Vidro - and, in the process, eliminate the job of 23-year-old Jose Lopez, who for all of his second half swoon last year is a promising young hitter whose top ten comparable players include three Hall of Famers.

Win now, or build around youth. The Mariners will do neither in 2007.

For those of you who have been wondering what I was doing instead of blogging about baseball lately - besides being swamped with work and a not-sleeping-well baby - I decided to take a systematic look at this year's free agent signings thus far, using Established Win Shares Levels. These are all the signings through Monday, drawn from ESPN's list. [UPDATE: Yes, I know the chart is already a bit out of date - I may re-run this later to include Drew, Lugo, and Pettitte, as well as some of the people who sign later in the offseason].

EWSL is explained here, and the age adjustments I used, developed from the 2004-05 results, are here (I have not yet had time to add the 2006 results). As you will recall, EWSL is not a predictive tool and is not individually tailored to the player; it simply looks at the established level of quality a player has produced over the last three years, applies an age adjustment derived from actual experience, and concludes that a particular level of Win Shares is a player's current established level of production. I see it as a baseline or starting point for an analysis of this nature, rather than an endpoint - in other words, if EWSL says a player's current established level is 6 Win Shares, you need a really good reason to explain why you are paying a guy with the expectation that he will give you 20. I don't exclude the possibility that a closer statistical analysis or some teams' scouting and coaching staffs may have such good reasons, but the bigger the gap is, the more skeptical we should be.

The chart below is mainly self-explanatory. The last five columns list, in order, (1) the average per-year contract value, (2) the player's 2007 EWSL, (3) the average contract value divided by 2007 EWSL, (4) the player's average EWSL for the life of the contract, and (5) the average contract value divided by the average EWSL for the life of the contract. The chart is ranked by the final column, with the best bargains in terms of dollars per EWSL for the life of the contract at the top, and the worst deals at the bottom. I explain below some of the biases in the study, however.

EWSL more than a year out was computed by successive application of the age adjustments (I'll spare you the algebra). Obviously that's a crummy way to project a player as far as 8 years into the future, but then I'm not convinced that the Cubs have a better way to project a player 8 years into the future.

As I see it, this analysis has three biases you need to take account of before using it to analyze contracts.

1. You will notice that the top of the chart is dominated by short-term deals for low-cost, low-quality players, while most of the stars are in the bottom half. There's a rational reason for that that doesn't depend on GM stupidity. Lots of players can give you 1 Win Share; very few can give you 30. And there are still only 25 roster spots. In a perfectly efficient free agent market, that marginal 30th Win Share should be more expensive; the stars ought to cost a premium for scraping the right end of the bell curve. That's an argument that the best measures analyze contracts by marginal value, but I didn't have time to run an analysis of that nature.

2. Win Shares accords a fairly large share of the value of preventing runs to fielders as opposed to pitchers. As a result, especially with declining innings totals, all but the very best starters and nearly all relievers will top out in the mid teens, comparable to a solid but not star-level regular. While you could argue that this is a reflection that real-world teams should spend less on individual pitchers, you still need pitching, and accordingly the pitchers generally come in as more expensive. Another way of viewing this is to recognize that pitching is scarce and thus more valuable.

3. Unsurprisingly, players returning from long injuries preceded by periods of injury-reduced effectiveness are rated by EWSL as not being worth much. Naturally, the teams employing Randy Wolf and Octavio Dotel know that they are taking on a risk.

That said, some thoughts:

*I see Adam Kennedy as a guy nearing the end of his effectiveness, at least as an offensive player, but EWSL sees him as a guy who has been a consistent producer and is not that old, and just signed for a lower annual salary than Jose Valentin. The Cards don't need to get a ton of value from Kennedy for that to pay off. Credit the savvy Walt Jocketty for that one.

*Yes, I recognize the inherent skepticism that accompanies anything that rates Kaz Matsui as a good deal. Just because he appears to be a good use of money doesn't mean he's a good use of at bats. Although I do still think Matsui may have a revival in him in Colorado.

*No, I do not actually think Gary Matthews and Juan Pierre are better investments than Glavine. Don't forget the value of their defense, but I do see Pierre in particular as a guy who is in rather faster than usual decline.

*Note that Aramis Ramirez is the only player on the chart who has an EWSL of 15 or higher for the duration of his contract. Obviously, he's a steal.

*I was a little surprised to see Jason Schmidt in the rogues' gallery with Eaton, Wells, Meche, Lilly, and Padilla, none of whom are pitchers of comparable quality.

Slick-fielding, light-hitting 1980s Giants shortstop Jose Uribe was killed in an auto accident late last night; he was 47 and living back home in the Dominican Republic:

Uribe owned a hardware store and other businesses in his hometown of Juan Baron in recent years, and ran unsuccessfully for mayor earlier this year.

For some reason, I found this description especially touching, symbolizing both the importance of ballplayers to the Dominican and the bond between generations of players:

Uribe's death prompted an outpouring of grief in his hometown, where Los Angeles Angels outfielder Vladimir Guerrero led thousands of mourners through the streets.

Guerrero blasted music out of a van as they marched from the Uribe family home to the town's baseball field. Among the mourners was Chicago White Sox shortstop Juan Uribe, a second cousin of Jose Uribe and from the same town.

The article mentions that Uribe's widow is named Guerrero as well, so Vladimir may also be some sort of kin. Pinto notes that his first wife died in 1988. A postscript, not to blame the dead but as a reminder to the living: like Derrick Thomas, Uribe wasn't wearing a seat belt.

Let's see - the wholly unaccomplished Adam Eaton and the injured Randy Wolf sign $8 million/year contracts, Vincente Padilla, Gil Meche, Ted Lilly and Greg Maddux sign $10-11 million/year contracts, even though Maddux is past 40 and got plastered for three months straight last season and Meche ran out of gas in the second half last year and hasn't had a good ERA in seven years.

Now word comes that Andy Pettitte, still in his prime and with a chance at 300 wins and the Hall of Fame if he sticks around, has decided not to retire. Gee, what do you think convinced him?

I'll have to do a more comprehensive roundup of the free agent deals soon, but so many of these contracts are just insane.

Blez gives the pros and cons of Mike Piazza signing with the A's to DH for $8.5 million. Personally I think Piazza's value is wasted on a team that barely uses its backup catcher and will make him #3. Oakland probably would have been better off with Bonds, but I don't know the whole story there. Still, there are only so many good hitters available and freeing Piazza from the daily grind of catching should keep him healthy. I agree that the A's are rather short of offense after replacing Frank Thomas with Piazza, who whatever his other virtues is not Frank Thomas.

Ryan McConnell tears apart a supremely silly column by NY Daily News writer Bill Price complaining about the Mets' patience in waiting out Tom Glavine's decision to re-sign. Price somehow manages this screed without once explaining how the Mets suffered from waiting for Glavine or how he is not worth the $10.5 million price tag compared to the alternatives in the market, and his overwrought comparisons to Tom Seaver and Sandy Koufax just sound stupid, given that Glavine is a certain Hall of Famer who will almost certainly pass 300 wins next season.

It really is amazing how stupid and consumed by petty envy so many sportswriters are.

Matt Welch, as part of his top-ten list of the best seasons by an Angels DH (see if you can guess who is #1), has a lengthy and exhaustive analysis of why the Angels need to trade Chone Figgins for the same reasons as the Dodgers benefitted from dealing away Bobby Valentine before the 1973 season. Welch's analysis sold me, as well as reminding me exactly how much young talent the Angels really have. The interesting question is where to deal Figgins, who has great speed and flexibility but fell off to a career-low .336 OBP last year at age 28, making him a dicey prospect at best as a leadoff man (I'm thinking St. Louis, which has a couple of weak spots in its lineup, a few injury-prone stars at 3B and CF, and a manager who worships defensive flexibility).

The Indians are looking at Keith Foulke to shore up a bullpen that just killed them in 2006. Foulke may well be a good gamble for a team that has made extensive use of re-built relief pitchers like Bob Wickman and Bobby Howry in recent years, but he has to be regarded as a reclamation project unless and until he proves that he's healthy again.

Chris Carpenter signs for five years at $13 million a year. Presumably Carpenter's long injury history (including missing the 2004 postseason) will prevent this deal from being a ceiling on Barry Zito, who is a lesser but more durable pitcher (although I would prefer not to shell out more than $65 million for Zito, given that he's really not a legitimate #1 starter, as Carpenter is).

I know I'm a bit of a broken record on moving starters to the bullpen and vice versa, but I would feel a lot better about the Mets keeping Orlando Hernandez around if I thought there was at least a reasonable possibility that he could be shifted to the pen if needed (I gather he was not happy pitching relief with the White Sox). Hernandez is ideally suited to middle relief work, as he eats up righthanders and his unorthodox motion will be quite off-putting to a hitter who has taken a few at bats already against someone else. I looked at his career record and if you count the postseason, Hernandez has made 10 career relief appearances (mainly with the White Sox, and half of them in October). The results? 0.76 ERA in 23.2 IP, 24/8 K/BB ratio, and just 11 hits al