USSM Year-end Best-of: November 2006
11-6: Discussion of reasons teams supposedly didn’t bid on Matsuzaka
Also: the a review of the Nationals’ amazing haul of almost unnoticed signings, an example of what you can find if you go fishing.
11-8 What the A’s move to Fremont might mean for the M’s.
11-9: Dave on the concept of budgeting wins, not money, and how it changes your perspective.
11-13: Richie Sexson’s contract is an albatross.
11-22 Offseason Adventure
Wayne Krivsky signs Alex Gonzalez.
> examine Gonzalez signing
Alex Gonzalez signed for $14,000,000 over 3 years.
> examine Gonzalez signing
No, you read that right.
Also on the 22nd: graphs on Willie Bloomquist’s offensive performance charted against AL averages and NL pitchers.
Other graphs:
Mariners total payroll and rank among MLB teams
Player previous season contribution to new contract value. I should update this.
11-23: Gil Meche’s Thanksgiving List, by Jeff.
11-25: Bloomquist gets an inexplicable extension, and in response, we offer A very brief reiteration of our position on Mr. Bloomquist
11-27: Jeff on “Collecting Ichiro”
11-29: “A short discussion of McGwire and the Hall of Fame”
11-30: Why Justin Lehr’s a nice little signing for the M’s.
Free agency reaction tracking:
Aramis Ramirez: Dave takes the opportunity to compare him to Beltre
Carlos Lee: a comparison to Emil Brown
Deluccia: nice
Baez: head-shaking
Gary Mathews: more insanity
USSM Year-end Best-of: October 2006
10-1: The first version of Dave’s 2006 off-season plan. Manny the DH! Edmonds in left field!
10-3: Jeff semi-live-blogs from the Twins playoff game.
10-8: A preview of what would happen if this Daisuke Matsuzaka guy posted.
The only thing we can know for certain is that if he posts, it’s going to get crazy.
10-11: Why losing Cruceta is not only bad, but symptomatic.
10-13: Unethical!!!!!
10-18: Dave offers recommended blogs for other teams.
10-20: I go through the matchups and write about why the Tigers should win the World Series. Heh.
during the playoff posts and comment threads I repeatedly said that I figured whoever came out of the NL was likely to be cannon fodder to the AL, and I’ve kept at it, writing that either the Cardinals or Mets were going to be mowed down by the Tigers.
Why, in a short series, would I be so certain about that? That’s a good point – in seven games, the chances the better team wins aren’t all that great anyway. I was being cavalier about it. But here’s my thinking.
Then, weirdly, it’s just a line that says “DUHHHHHHHHHHHHHHRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR”
Anyway, having written some Playoff Prospectus articles at BP, I know how the drill works: you make a call and if you’re wrong, you get the mockery, even if you show your work and your reasoning was good. So be it.
10-23: A brief essay on Kenny Rogers cheating with pine tar in the World Series, by the author of “The Cheater’s Guide to Baseball“.
10-22: How the way the new CBA’s negotiations went is good news. Then, Dave on the new CBA’s rules.
10-26: Why the M’s decision not to pursue Matsuzaka but go after a corner outfielder doesn’t make sense.
A brief discussion of how to best arrange the Tigers rotation. The solution differs greatly from Leyland’s.
10/28 Roster Management and why it’s important
10-30: the first post on free-agency insanity.
If a few general managers get together and decide that a 4 win player like Alfonso Soriano is worth $16 million per season, that doesn’t establish his actual value – it establishes that they suck at their jobs.
We’ll return to this topic, as you’ll see.
USSM Year-end Best-of: September 2006
September was all Dave, all the time.
9-1: In a pointer to a really great article about Ichiro and Johjima. Dave:
Ichiro is disliked by most of the American media who follows the team around on a regular basis. Perhaps they should all spend more time with Brad Lefton and learn about why he does some of the things he does, rather than ascribing arrogance and aloofness to him because he’s not like the kids from Texas.
9-8: Generally, I’ve skipped the Big Board/Future Forty updates, but Dave’s post here talks about how the M’s aggressive promotion policy for hitters is hurting their development.
9-10: Are long-term contracts to pitchers ever worth it? Dave reviews recent signings with interesting results. I’m going to quote part of the ending, because it’s awesome:
It’s easy to look at what a pitcher like Barry Zito or Jason Schmidt is right now and say “do whatever it takes to sign himâ€, thinking you’re getting a pitcher who will anchor your rotation for years to come. We have to remember, though, that guys like Mike Hampton, Tim Hudson, Javier Vazquez, Carl Pavano, Chan Ho Park, and Bartolo Colon were looked at the same way. These guys were Cy Young winners, established playoff heroes, perenniel all-stars, and the best pitchers of their time.
By the years you hit free agency, however, your time is usually running short, and your best days are often behind you. Making a 4+ year commitment to a starting pitcher who has already been worked hard is rarely a good idea.
9-12: Dave, in one of the more succinct bits of analysis all year, compares Washburn 05 and 06.
9-14: Game 146’s intro includes a really good writeup about Odalis Perez.
9-18: Dave reviews his own offseason plan, using the “Dave’s a Genius” and “Dave’s an Idiot” classifications
9-20: Steve Kelley, awful sportswriter, taken apart by Dave, annoyed USSM author.
9-21: Jake Woods, Litmus Test.
Jake Woods is a litmus test. An organization that understands pitching would trade him this offseason. We’ll see if the Mariners are up to the challenge.
9-23: Your guide to Everett alternatives, revisited. I always like to return to previous discussions and see what we can learn from them. Here, it’s interesting to look back at the names being thrown around were and see who did well and who didn’t.
9-24: Dave talks about the cost of the team, and how payroll restrictions meant the M’s certainly weren’t going to sign two quality starters.
9-26: Is the lack of criticism of Carlos Garcia a sign that he’s really good, or that the team’s horrible and we’re focused on other issues?
9-27: In talking about the PI’s Andriesen’s off-season plan, Dave looks ahead to the off-season.
I don’t know anyone who doesn’t want Daisuke Matsuzaka. It’s like asking kids if they want pie.
9-28: The extra-snarky commentary on the M’s after-season letter to season ticket holders.
Dave points to Angel Guzman as a potential undervalued pitcher.
9-30: what were the strong positives of the season?
Weekend random boring stuff
Aubrey Huff agrees to a 3y, $20m deal with the Orioles
Mulder has some teams after him
Ryan Howard fired his agent and isn’t eligible for arb until after 2007 but still appears to be in line for a “big raise,” the Phillies said.
The Mariners can still make the playoffs with a Cincinnati loss and a Denver tie if the Jacksonville-Kansas City game ends in a tie or is won by one or two points.
Nate Silver on the Zito signing
In an “Unfiltered” blog post at Baseball Prospectus (“Barry Zito and “Smart” versus “Dumb” Projections“), Silver makes a really interesting point: he argues that Zito’s contract is entirely reasonable if you think ERA is awesome and predictive of future performance. Over the life of his contract, he should be good enough to earn that $100m (if you assume that the current rate/win isn’t a fluke, etc).
If you don’t – if you’re willing to pay more attention to his component stats, his stuff, look at comperable players, etc, you find that that’s way, way off. $57m off, according to a PECOTA long-term look (which also assumes that paying the current rate/win, etc etc).
Yup. The game is changing, and front offices are getting much smarter, but it’s not changing that fast, really, and teams aren’t getting smarter at the same rate.
Free agent market and the boom and bust cycle
We’ve made some asides in posts and comments about the “market price is market price” and “get in now” crowd, the latter of which need to have their keyboards taken from them.
Dave and I have both argued here, along with a host of smart people elsewhere, that like many markets, free agency is cyclical. New money comes into the market, Mike Hampton gets a bazillion dollars. Soon, second-tier free agents are being frozen out and crying collusion. Then more money comes in, and you get the Juan Pierre/Gary Matthews deals.
We’ve said that you’re better off investing in trades, player development, international free agents, taking on other people’s contracts, whatever – when the market for free agents gets so bad, you shop for what bargains you can get. If there’s nothing there, you’re better off walking away than doing long-term damage to the franchise.
At one point I compared people encouraging teams to spend now before prices went up even further to tulip speculators in late 1636. An even better contemporary analog is housing, though. In February last year, David Lereah (who has a dog in this race) wrote a book called “Are You Missing the Real Estate Boom?: The Boom Will Not Bust and Why Property Values Will Continue to Climb Through the End of the Decade – And How to Profit From Them” and people snapped it up.
The free agent market was compared to real estate investing: overpaying for free agents today meant you were underpaying for them next year. If you were interested in Player X and his asking price went up $10m between phone calls, you should sign him immediately because his price was going to go up again and that meant he was worth even more than his latest demand. And so on, and so forth.
Every time there’s a boom, these arguments come out: real estate is a fixed asset and can’t go down in value. Technology stocks are the product of technology that increases productivity. Tulips will always be pretty.
And the true believers end up underwater on four house mortgages, worthless shares of eTissue.com (the internet’s leading seller of personal and bathroom tissues), and some lovely flowers to plant in their garden.
Fortunately for purposes of our learning, we can go see the housing market stall and in some markets already recede. People who encouraged others to get involved in a bidding wars for houses are now pretending they never said anything like that. “It’s good news if the seller wants more money? Why would I ever say something like that?”
In 2000-2001, there were people arguing that a new free agent market had been established and teams were going to have to pony up if they ever wanted to sign anyone, that Mike Hampton and company would look like great values in a few years, just as today this year’s free agent contracts are heralded as the dawn of a new age. And in a few years, sooner for some of these deals, the contracts handed out will be recognized as clearly insane, the people who gave them derided for their irresponsibility. Then we’ll repeat.
Hampton did not turn out to be worth what he got just because he got it. Priceline wasn’t worth over $100 a share in the boom, even though people bought it, and analysts who pumped up Priceline at $134 a share were wrong, no matter their motivations. We’ll look at many of this year’s deals in the same light soon, but the lesson’s clear: be smart, and look to the long-term.
Anyone who has ever argued that you have to jump into an overpriced market, or that an overheated market can only ever increase is not a serious person, is willfully ignorant of both basic tenets of markets and of history, baseball and otherwise, and should not be listened to.
Rumor mill resumes cranking
Shea Hillenbrand signs with the Angels on a one year deal with option.
Discussions between NY and Arizona over Randy Johnson. Supposedly they’d then spend the money on Zito.
Fox Sports reported that the Mariners are thinking about trading Beltre (to who? who knows) so they can further pursue Zito. That doesn’t seem serious: they’re not going to play Burroughs out there. Are they? Having typed that I realize there’s really no ruling out further offseason insanity.
Caple Eulogizes Boone
ESPN’s Page 2 is doing a series of career obituaries, and Jim Caple is handling a requiem for Bret Boone.
He’s forthright about the steroid speculation, if not drawing any firm conclusions.
There are other fake obits in that link of interest, from Brooks Kieschnick to Briant Grant (one of my favorite all-time basketball players, both for his charity work and that time he got in Karl Malone’s grill). But I’ve got a hunch the thread contains more Zinedine Zidane jokes than anything else. Prove me wrong, yo.
Friday’s news: M’s sign Burroughs
Also: Griffey broke his hand.
Pettitte’s indeed going to the Yankees for 1y, $16m.
Sean Burroughs. 3B-L, 26.
Ah, I remember when he was a superprospect, before everyone realized he hits 200% ground balls and that makes for a pretty poor power hitter. And before it was widely known that he didn’t listen to coaches that tried to help him with his swing. Or anything else.
You know he pitched an inning in 2005? Maybe the M’s scouts saw something they liked and want to use him in middle relief.
He’s a decent glove in the infield, which means, and this is at least interesting to me, that potentially he’s a direct competitor to Dobbs, who will be 28 next season. Burroughs spent some quality time on the DL last year with a back problem, but really, even the Devil Rays didn’t want him – they played Huff and Wigginton over him, and then Upton. He was DFA’d during the season, which is a sign of how little they cared about him at that point.
Here’s the thing, though: Burroughs is, and has always been, potentially a star. Without drawing walks, he doesn’t get on base enough. Without making the adjustments to his swing that coaches fell over themselves to try and help him with, he doesn’t hit well enough to contribute anyway.
For instance, select quotes from the BP annuals.
2000: The power will come, and the rest of his offensive game is already major-league caliber.
2001: Burroughs will be moving Nady and Nevin to other positions–or other cities–sooner rather than later.
2002: As expected, Burroughs’s power is coming around. […] Burroughs is the early-line favorite for the NL Rookie of the Year Award.
2003: Burroughs can still rake, the power’s eventually going to increase, and if there’s anything to worry about, it’s the declining walk rate, not anything more mysterious than that.
(no comment on his card)
2005: Without more walks or extra-base hits, Burroughs is only a moderately useful player, and nowhere near the future star many expected.
I bring this up not to point out that BP was wrong, because especially with stathead-centric evaluation, the goalposts are always moving: if you find out that players with old skills age really badly, you can’t be as enthusiastic about the long-term future of those guys as you were the day before.
I bring this up because those were typical views: everyone saw the major-league pedigree and his raw talent.
He’s an interesting minor-league invite and possible bench player. If his failures have opened him up to listening and the M’s can get him some good people to work with, I’m willing to hold out hope, but what happens if he suddenly blossoms? We’ve got Beltre, and the DH spot’s blocked for that matter.
The chances that would happen anyway are pretty slim, of course. The list of low-walk, extreme groundball hitters who turned their careers around this late would be, pretty much, Sean Burroughs. But at least there’s some kind of possibility here, which is more than we can say for a lot of their moves.
Tuesday’s baseball news and rumor
Ryan Klesko signs with the Giants. I’m going to bet he either gets in a fight with Bonds by June or they become best friends.
Werth signs with Philly.
The Yankees and Igawa have reportedly agreed on a deal.
Crasnick’s got an article on ESPN on potential free agents next year who might be signed to long-term extensions before then. Ichiro’s on there. But I noted this quote, on Carlos Guillen:
Guillen is Detroit’s clubhouse “glue guy,” and manager Jim Leyland regards him as a future managerial candidate and one of the smartest players he’s ever been around.
Remember when he was a bad clubhouse guy and needed to be run out of town at any cost? Ahhh, those were the days.