Open question for discussion: value of need
I don’t understand something in the current discussion and the many many comments about how the M’s “need” more power. I’m hoping someone can enlighten me on the theory at least, if not on the practice.
Say there’s an average team with no first baseman and no internal options. They have two options in free agency for exactly the same price: Doug the Defensive Guy, who would be five runs below average hitting and a wondrous +15 above average on defense. And they could sign Mike the Masher, to get a +15 on offense, -5 defense guy.
Everyone would argue it’s a coin flip in value, right? You’d start to look again for extremely fine differences like whether the team’s pitchers would particularly benefit (or cover for Mike), or if the park suits one or the other. But say you do all of that and those numbers are indeed the same. The average team picks whoever’ll sign first, or knows the manager from the minor leagues, or whatever.
Now what if the team is average by way of sucking defensively and good offensively. The return on both those guys is still +10. Is the theory that they should sign the defensive specialist for balance? How much extra value is that?
And conversely, if the team’s average by way of being terrible offensively and good defensively, does the reverse hold true? How much is that guy worth?
That’s one question: does improving something the team is bad at offer greater gains than improving elsewhere, and if so, how much?
And does it matter how bad they are? Is the return on improving defense more than 10 runs if they’re league-worst? Is there a kind of elasticity to returns, where only the average team values players based on overall contribution?
Because if that’s true, and there’s a value, then we could actually start to discuss this. Say Doug and Mike aren’t asking for the same price. Defense is so highly valued that Doug already has 4 offers on the hood of his gold Land Rover for $20m/year, while Mike is looking at $10m for the next year.
Does the defensively challenged team still want Doug at that price? Or are they better off picking up Mike?
We’ve laid out my (and I’d say Dave’s, to a different extent) view on this — I think all runs are created more or less equally, and you’re as well-advised to take them off the board as put them on, so improving on pitching, defensive prowess, and offense are all equally good. I don’t know of any evidence that if a team needs a first baseman, regardless of how they did last year and how they did it, that they shouldn’t take the player who is so undervalued.
There’s a big caveat to that, which is that (and I know I mention this over and over) in constructing a team you want to get into and through the playoffs there are some things you want to have in place and should think about paying for. But in general, for teams who aren’t budgeting for 85 wins, does valuation change?
What’s the opposing theory, and what’s the evidence for it?
Please do not panic about Figgins not signing yet
It’s a weekend. The contract could be signed and waiting on him to wander up here and take a physical. The team might want a Monday morning press conference with all the brass up front and smiling. Maybe he wants a no-tickle clause in his contract. I don’t know.
But until we hear that it’s off, that the Angels called him at the last minute offering a 6-year deal or something, we should assume everything’s cool. Like Seattle. Holy mackeral is it cold out here. When the high is predicted to be below freezing. Maybe they’re waiting for the weather to get to something temperate before they fly Figgins to Seattle so they don’t freak him out.
The Template
With the Figgins signing basically done, the M’s have made their direction pretty clear, I think. Despite calls for a big power bat from sections of the fan base, the Mariners have gone the other way entirely, signing a guy who has hit nine home runs in the last three years combined. This continues the trend from a year ago, when they replaced Raul Ibanez with Endy Chavez, despite cries that left field was a position where you had to have a power hitter.
The Mariners clearly do not subscribe to the traditional model of needing power at the corners. They have a different template for building a team – the 1985 St. Louis Cardinals. That team is the model for what the organization hopes the 2010 Mariners can become.
They hit 87 home runs, fewer than every other National League team besides the Pirates. Their left fielder hit one home run. Their third baseman hit five (and had a .591 OPS). Jack Clark led the team with 22 home runs, Andy Van Slyke was second with 13, and two other players hit 10. Everyone else was in the single digits. In terms of home run power, they didn’t really have much. Or any.
But they led the league in singles, triples, walks, and stolen bases, all while hitting into the fewest amount of double plays. They were great at all the things that didn’t involve hitting for power, and they ended up leading the league in wOBA. Which, naturally, led to them leading the league in runs scored.
That speed paid off in the field as well, providing the best defensive team in the league. They held opponents to just a .272 batting average on balls in play, allowing a decent but unspectacular pitching staff to allow fewer runs than every other team in the NL besides the Dodgers (who bested them by a grand total of four runs). Having a bunch of elite defenders made life easy for John Tudor and Joaquin Andujar, who finished second and fourth in the league in innings pitched respectively. Danny Cox, the #3 starter, finished 9th.
Minimal power, a ton of speed, patient hitters who get on base, an elite defense, and a few starting pitchers who carry the load for the pitching staff. That formula added up to 101 wins and a trip to the World Series.
You do not have to hit for power to win baseball games. It helps, certainly, but good players are good players. Chone Figgins is a good player. Do not get wrapped up in worrying if the M’s have the type of team you’ve been told is the right kind. You can win with a whole bunch of slap hitters who get on base and run like the wind. The 1985 Cardinals did.
M’s To Sign Figgins?
The Mariners are reportedly really close to signing Chone Figgins to a 4 year, ~$35 million contract. I’m pushing this out now because, while the deal isn’t done, I may not be around much this weekend, and the details aren’t likely to change much by the time it becomes official. Unless, of course, it doesn’t become official, in which case, BOOOOO.
There’s going to be a lot of discussion about this move as we go forward, and I know people will have different views of the signing. Here’s my quick take – we’ll do a full analysis at some point next week, when I have a bit more time.
Figgins projects as a +3 to +4 win player for 2010. Like signing Beltre, this will have the appearance of paying for a career year, but you don’t need him to come anywhere close to his 2009 numbers to justify the contract. At this price, the M’s have built in a lot of regression from his performance last year. $9 million a year is about what an average player signs for, and Figgins is a better than average player. The M’s are not paying Figgins like they expect him to have another +6 win season. So don’t get too upset about the fact that he just had a career year. They know that, and he’s not being paid like that performance is sustainable.
In terms of dollars per win, this is not the most efficient move they could have made. No matter what position he ends up playing, they had a younger player who could have produced 50-75 percent of the value for 5 percent of the cost. Given how much time we have spent over the years arguing for efficient spending, I get that it may be seen as a bit confusing that we are now in favor of a move that does not maximize dollars per win.
However, as we talked about earlier this off-season, the M’s are in a position where they have to consolidate value. They have a ton of decent, cheap, role players, but by going with those players at each spot, they limit the team’s upside to the point that a playoff berth becomes unlikely. Figgins consolidates value into one line-up spot, raising the upside of the team and increasing their odds of playing in October. This provides tangible value.
At the same time, Figgins versatility also significantly decreases the risk. He is the human form of diversification, offering the ability to play third, second, or left field, giving the team the ability to let Tui, Saunders, Lopez, Hannahan, and Hall earn playing time with improved performances. The ability to handle multiple positions makes all of the young players more valuable, because the risk of any of them killing the team with a terrible performance is mitigated – Figgins could replace any of them, giving the team options if Tui hits and Saunders doesn’t or vice versa.
When you get a guy who can simultaneously increase the upside and decrease the risk, you’ve got a valuable asset. As a player, Figgins is a great fit for this roster and ballpark. He’s coming at a price below what you would generally expect to pay for a +3 win player, and the wins he adds are more important in helping the M’s push toward a playoff spot, raising the marginal value of those wins (wins 80-90 are more important than 70-79 or 91-100).
He also has the type of skillset that ages well (despite claims to the contrary, fast guys are effective later into their careers than slow guys), and gives the M’s a significant offensive boost while maintaining their elite defense.
Overall, this is a good deal. It makes the team better at a below market price, increases the options the team has going forward, and allows them to give the young kids a shot to prove themselves without exposing the team to too much risk. Losing the first round pick is a blow, but it’s not a big enough one to offset the value Figgins is providing at this price.
This a good move for the M’s. Welcome to Seattle, Chone. (Assuming this gets done.)
The Figgins Rumor Passes
The newest rumor makes a lot more sense, and this one I’d believe. If the M’s are going to spend big on a hitter this winter, Chone Figgins makes the most sense of any free agent.
Remember how we talked about the team needing options, not solutions, at multiple positions? That’s Figgins. He’s a good glove at third, a solid glove at second, and decent in the outfield. Which infield spot he played could be determined after they figure out what the trade market for Jose Lopez looks like, and even after they see Tui take groundballs at both 2B and 3B in spring training. Or, if they keep Lopez and Tui has a monster spring, easily outplaying Saunders, he could shift to left field for a while.
He would give the team a tremendous amount of flexibility in developing their young players without having to count on any one of them. That type of multi-position availability is a real positive given the construction of the roster. Where a player like Bay would get in the way of the development of the youngsters, Figgins would give the team the ability to let the kids compete against each other.
Figgins isn’t going to repeat his 2009 season again, but he’s probably a +3 win player for 2010, about as valuable as either Beltre or Bay in production. The added value of his positional flexibility and his ability to switch-hit makes him the best fit for this roster, assuming the price isn’t exorbitant. At something like 4/40, Figgins makes a lot of sense for this team.
Don’t buy into the Jason Bay rumors. Do buy into the Chone Figgins rumors. This one passes all the logic tests.
Making Rumors Pass The Smell Test
Geoff Baker has a new post up today, which reinforces what we’ve already heard – the M’s are going after a pitcher, and specifically Rich Harden – but also resuscitates some speculation that had died down involving the M’s going after Jason Bay.
Geoff’s a good reporter, and I’m sure he trusts the source who gave him the information. However, I’d like to suggest that for every rumor, there should be a minimum logic test that gets applied before we give it any credibility. This rumor fails that test.
First, there’s the financial logistics. Everything we’ve heard, including in this same report, has a starting pitcher at the top of the M’s shopping list, with various reports linking them to John Lackey and Rich Harden. Those guys aren’t going to sign cheap. Baker even states outright that “pitching is a priority for the M’s” and that nothing will happen at other positions until they get that role wrapped up. Lackey would command somewhere in the $15 to $20 million per year range, while Harden will require somewhere in the $8 to $12 million range. By our calculations, the team has approximately $25 million to spend this winter.
Jason Bay has already turned down a 4 year, $60 million deal from the Red Sox. Suffice it to say that he wants at least $15 million a year in annual salary. If the Mariners are serious about signing either Lackey or Harden, they do not have the room in the budget to also sign Jason Bay and still fill out the rest of the roster. They just don’t have the available cash to make two big ticket signings this winter.
So, even if we believed that the M’s liked what Bay offers, there’s a real problem. And I don’t believe that the M’s are particularly interested in what Bay brings to the table.
Let’s look at what we know about the front office. They place as much value on defense as any team in baseball. This isn’t to say that they won’t put a mediocre defender on the field (Branyan is no gold glover), but they will discount a player’s value heavily if he doesn’t offer value in the field. Bay is a bad defensive player, and at 31 years old, he’s not getting better.
They also have put a premium on acquiring hitters who are left handed, due to the nature of Safeco Field. Since taking over, they’ve brought in guys like Branyan, Griffey, Hannahan, Carp, and Langerhans, all left-handed. They gave away Wladimir Balentien, a right-handed outfielder with power. They’re known to be considering trading Jose Lopez, and they’re letting Adrian Beltre walk away. There is a clear pattern of preferring left-handed bats to right-handed bats.
They value building through the draft, which is how Zduriencik made a name for himself in Milwaukee. Bay, a Type A free agent who was offered arbitration, would cost them the #17 pick in the draft next summer.
They also value young, cost-controlled players. They made moves for Gutierrez and Aardsma because they offered unproven upside at a low cost, and wouldn’t be expensive even with a breakout performance. They have a young, cost-controlled left fielder in Michael Saunders, who they spoke glowingly of when they brought him to the majors last summer. Saunders, by the way, is left-handed and a good defender, making him the kind of player that we know management values.
The argument against Saunders is essentially that he struggled badly in the first 100 plate appearances of his career. However, we know that these guys get the power of sample size. They didn’t care about Russ Branyan’s platoon split, because they believed he had never really gotten a fair shot at proving what he could do. They didn’t care that Bill Hall wasn’t hitting in Milwaukee, because they believed there was some talent not shining through that they may have a chance to bring out. They didn’t care about Gutierrez’s offensive struggles in Cleveland, because he’d been a part-time player, and they felt he could make adjustments if he was in the line-up regularly.
We know that the organization values young, low cost, left-handed, good defenders with upside even if they don’t have a proven track record. That describes Saunders to a tee. But yet, we’re supposed to believe that the M’s are going to spend a huge chunk of their budget on an aging right-handed bad defender who would require a long term contract and end any chance Saunders had of a career in Seattle?
It doesn’t pass the logic test. It goes against everything the organization has spent the last year building.
I just don’t buy it. The M’s aren’t going to spend $15 million a year on a right-handed DH who would block their best prospect from playing regularly. This time of year, almost every source has an agenda, and there are certainly people in Jason Bay’s camp who would benefit from a widespread belief that the Mariners were bidding up Bay’s value. Bay can tell anyone he wants that he’s optimistic about signing here, but it’s a statement made in self-interest, and one that I dismiss as lacking credibility.
For a rumor to be considered legitimate, it has to pass some minimum standards of logic. This one does not. Don’t believe it.
I Have A Complaint
For most of USSM’s existence, we served as the voice of why everything the Mariners were doing was wrong. Not that we wanted to, but the organization made so many bad decisions that we wrote millions of words explaining why they just screwed up. We pointed out why Horacio Ramirez wasn’t any good, that signing mediocre pitchers to big contracts was a recipe for disaster, that making the offense marginally better while destroying the defense wasn’t actually improving the team, that right-handed power hitters were a bad fit for the ballpark, and the list goes on. Every winter, the team gave us new transactions to rant about, and while it was miserable, it was also really easy to cover. M’s announce move – head to the blog to explain why they shouldn’t have done that.
Yesterday, reports broke that the Mariners were interested in Gregg Zaun, a switch-hitting catcher with some power who would fill the experience gap behind the plate and give the team an option beyond Adam Moore and Rob Johnson. Today, the rumors have the M’s strongly pursuing Rich Harden to slide into the rotation spot behind Felix and give the pitching staff a bit more upside. What am I supposed to write about when they’re doing exactly what we suggest, targeting players we’ve already advocated for because they make a lot of sense?
I mean, yeah, the team is getting better, but I’m running out of material. I don’t know how many different ways to write “woohoo! good move!” I feel like I should just write a script that fills in the blanks when transactions are announced.
Today, the Mariners (signed/traded for/stole) Player X, giving up Worthless Thing Y in exchange. Once again, the team has exploited an inefficiency in the market, adding an asset at a fraction of what he should have cost. This (trade/signing) continues to show how well run the organization is, and how they’re making every dollar count. They are building a team that will win and soon. This is a great organization to root for. Welcome to Seattle, Undervalued Player X.
Sure, it’s nice to win, but blogging about this team is no longer easy. Thanks for making my job harder, Jack. Could you screw up once in a while so that I don’t have to think so hard about things to write about?
M’s Offer Beltre Arbitration
Good news. The M’s took the plunge on an arbitration offer to Adrian Beltre, which will net them something like the 45th pick in the draft next year if he signs elsewhere. The odds of him accepting are very low.
Around the league, the Dodgers declined to offer arbitration to anyone, underscoring just how severely the McCourt divorce is going to hamper their ability to function. Really, the odds of Randy Wolf accepting were none and none, but they punt the draft picks anyway.
All three of the interesting type A second baseman were not offered – Orlando Hudson, Placido Polanco, and Felipe Lopez. If the M’s deal Jose Lopez, expect them to be in on one of those three. Marco Scutaro was offered, which almost certainly takes him off the M’s list. They won’t be giving up the 17th pick in the draft to sign him.
Beltre and Arb. Offers
I did a post over on FanGraphs this afternoon looking at the economics of an arbitration offer. I used Beltre as the example in the post, so if you’re curious about whether or not the M’s should offer him arbitration, that’s probably not a bad spot to start reading.
I think the M’s will offer arbitration to Beltre but not to Bedard. There’s enough information available to presume that the chances of Beltre accepting the arbitration offer are pretty low, which reduces the risk of the offer, even if the M’s determine they want to go another direction at third base. Bedard, on the other, isn’t going to get guaranteed millions even with teams pursuing him – he’ll get a low base with incentives, much like Pavano did a year ago. That kind of contract offer isn’t available via arbitration, so he’d be more likely to accept.
Either way, I don’t expect either to be on the team next year, but I’d guess that the M’s will only end up collecting one draft pick, not two.
Community Projections On A Large Scale
If you remember back a few years ago, Jeff Sullivan and I attempted to give you guys the opportunity to do community projections, taking the idea of the Wisdom of Crowds and applying it to forecasting the performance of our favorite team. It was a nice idea, but was always a pain in the rear to manage, and never got quite enough participation to make it as useful as it could have been.
Well, the community projections are back, and this time, no spreadsheets needed. Just head over to FanGraphs, because David Appelman has built a system to handle the inputs for every player in baseball. We’re taking the projections to a much larger scale and giving you an easy system to use for the projections.
Seriously, go check it out. It’s awesome. Start projecting players that you feel like you have some kind of feel for how they’ll do next year. Once the community has reached a minimum level of projections for a player, his fan projection will show up on the FanGraphs player page, right next to CHONE/ZiPS/Marcel, etc…