Reader Larry Haas asked if there was a way to judge just how much teams were paying for their wins, to help show just how poor the roster management has been this season. The late Doug Pappas invented just such a tool called Marginal Payroll/Marginal Wins. There is a great essay on this in Baseball Prospectus 2004, and you can read the archived works of Doug’s stuff (free of charge) at baseballprospectus.com.
Here’s a brief synopsis of MP/MW. It works on an assumption that a roster of major league minimum players could win 30 % of their games, finishing the season with a 49-113 record. Before last years Tigers, this was worse than any club had ever finished. Its safe to say that Doug’s assumption here is correct, and a team could theoretically win about 49 games on an $8.4 million payroll (28 roster spots at $300,000 each gives a full roster and 3 spots for injury replacements). Therefore, every win over 49 is considered a Marginal Win, and the team’s payroll minus the mandatory $8.4 million is their marginal payroll. Marginal Wins divided by Marginal Payroll gives us a number in dollars for how much each team paid for their wins. It’s a great proxy to realize just how well or how poorly teams spent the money they had. As Doug breaks it down in BP04, there are four groups of teams demonstrated by this method:
Low Marginal Payroll, Low Marginal Wins, good record: Efficient ballclub. (A’s)
Low MP/MW, bad record: not spending enough to win. (Devil Rays)
High MP/MW, good record: Spending its way to the top. (Yankees)
High MP/MW, bad record: Poorly run club. (Mets)
Obviously, the goal is to win games, and if you have more resources, its going to be nearly impossible to have as good an MP/MW as a low-revenue team who succeeds, and you can’t penalize teams like the Yankees or Red Sox for having money to spend. So, as long as we realize that MP/MW isn’t perfect across the board, but gives us a good idea of where to group a team, its a great tool.
Through the site and BP04, Doug ran the numbers from every team from 1977 through 2003. Obviously, with the way the game has changed, there are huge differences in the numbers. In 1977, Atlanta was the least efficient team, paying $1.1 million for 61 wins, or $95,337 per marginal win. 10 years later, in 1987, the Orioles were the least efficient club, spending $635,049 per marginal win, and every team spent at least $140,000 per MW. 1991 saw the big leap where 5 teams broke million dollar mark, led by Cleveland paying $2.1 million per MW. The Indians paid $18 million for 57 wins that year, while Atlanta paid $19 million for 94 wins.
With more recent history, we can look at how the ’04 M’s stack up in terms of financial efficiency. Last year, the M’s paid $1.77 million per marginal win, a pretty solid number for a 93 win team, slightly less than Boston’s $1.97 million for their 95 wins and far less than the Yankees $2.75 million for 101 wins. In 2002, the M’s paid $1.68 million per MW, again a solid number for 93 wins. The 2001 season brought a great $1.04 million per MW number. 2000 was $1.26 million per MW. So, the M’s during the Gillick regime had a pretty clear, consistent standard of performance. They would pay between $1-1.75 million per marginal win, and spend enough to turn that into a 90-95 win club.
So, how about those 2004 Mariners? Cover your eyes. Right now, the M’s are paying $6.87 million per marginal win, which is the second highest number in baseball history. Last year, the Mets were the most inefficient team, spending $6.11 million per MW, and the Rangers were a distant second at $4.25 million per MW. Only the 2002 Tigers, who spent $55 million ($49.5 million considered marginal payroll) to win 55 games (or 6 marginal wins), paying $7.33 million per MW, performed worse than the ’04 Mariners. As it stands now, the M’s are going to win 58 games, or 9 marginal wins, on a $73 million payroll, with $64 million of that considerd marginal.
$64 million bought the team 9 wins. Last year, $74 million bought the team 44 wins. That’s ineptitude of historical standards. Any rational analysis of how poorly the team managed their budget would lead to massive wholesale changes. Someone forward this to Howard Lincoln please.
With the draft Monday, I’m a little disappointed that I haven’t spent more time talking about draft philosophies and such, but really, we don’t pick until the third round, and I’m having a hard time getting excited about what the M’s might do with the 93rd pick. But I still find the draft itself fascinating, and have spent a good amount of time the past few years discussing the merits of traditional drafting vs a more statistical approach, especially since Moneyball took over the world. While I don’t have time to go into everything right now, here’s a few brief snippets of beliefs that I hold about the draft, and some of them might surprise you.
1. The A’s “college-only” philosophy is wrong, flat out. Ignoring high school players as an entity because of their risk fails to allow you to recognize the times when the reward does indeed outweigh the risk. Putting yourself in a box and refusing to see the limitations of a hard-and-fast set of evaluation techniques raises your likelyhood of making a mistake. And, this isn’t retrospective piling on, as I wrote a column about this last year, but the famed Moneyball draft was basically a disaster for the A’s.
2. That said, college players are significantly safer picks, and should make up the majority of early selections. The long range potential of college stars is not any lower than that of high school stars, and the reduced risk makes selecting a college player with your top pick usually the intelligent way to go. There have been numerous studies on the draft in the past year, none more thorough than the work done by a poster at Sons of Sam Horn, with a lot of interesting stuff revealed through his conclusions.
3. Repeatedly giving away first round picks is insane. As the research linked above shows, a huge percentage of major league stars come from the first round, and tossing away the opportunity to pick in one of the top 30 spots reduces your chance of getting one of these players down to nearly nil. Not surprisingly, since the Gillick regime started intentionally throwing away draft choices, the farm system has gone to hell in a handbasket.
While we’re basically branded as statheads here, this is one area where I think the sabermetric teams have been mislead by outdated information. Bill James work on the draft was good 20 years ago, but times change, and the newer research does not support his conclusions. Attempting to imitate the A’s or Blue Jays simply to be in tune with the statistical crowd would be akin to the blind following the blind. Hopefully, on Monday, the M’s draft the best players available. Just as they need to not focus solely on athletic bodies, speed, arm strength, and physical projection, they also need to not focus on college walk rates and on base percentage. Just as a team of nine Neifi Perez’ won’t get you far, neither will a team of nine Jeremy Browns.
Ahhh, I worked up a good head of steam over this at the game only to find Dave had already covered it admirably.
Probability of scoring 3 runs for the tie:
Runners on first and second, no outs — 11%
Runners on second and third, one out — 9.9%
Probability of scoring 4 runs for the win:
1,2 no outs — 5.9%
2,3 no outs — 6%
Tie or win, no sac– 17%
Tie or win, sac– 16%
I’m as surprised as anyone that it’s even that close. Thaaaaaat said, sacrificing’s still a stupid move, as James Click showed in the research he did for Baseball Prospectus, especially considering that sacrificing means that the other team can pitch around Ichiro if they choose in order to get to Randy Winn for the second out, where your best-case scenario is probably that he gets a sac fly and you’re two runs down, two outs, men on 1,2 and your chances of scoring two runs is 5% and three runs for the win is 4%
Aaaand particularly considering that despite his reputation, Wilson’s not a good bunter, and the sacrifice means the White Sox make a pitching move.
Get this; the M’s are down by 3 runs heading into the 8th inning. Rich Aurilia walks, Jolbert Cabrera follows with a single, and the M’s bring the tying run to the plate. They have 6 outs to get 3 runs.
And Bob Melvin bunts. Amazing. He uses Wilson to move runners up so that the White Sox can bring Ichiro to the plate. We’ve demonstrated before how stupid Melvin’s obsession with playing for one run is, but when you’re down 3 with only 6 outs to go, it’s insane.
Why do I care? The M’s have the worst record in the AL, the season is in the tubes, and this game really doesn’t matter. But this still drives me nuts. Bunting Bob has no business making the decisions on in-game strategy. He’s just abysmal at it.
Randy Winn is just a freaking terrible center fielder. Leading off the 7th, Jose Valentin hits a fly ball into the left center field gap. Using our limited blogger abilities, here’s a drawing of Winn’s route to the ball:
Ball
| CF
|_____|
|
---|
|---
Winn
LF RF
Freddy just shakes his head, muttering “Donde Esta Mike Cameron?”
Ibanez to the DL, Ramon Santiago comes back up. Seriously. The M’s lose their cleanup hitting left fielder and decide that the best replacement is a banjo-hitting backup middle infielder, when the team is already carrying a plethora of (f)utility players. With Ibanez on the DL, you know which of the now regular starters has the highest slugging percentage? Ichiro. I’m not joking. His .411 mark edges Scott Spiezio’s .400 SLG for the team lead. Just for fun, here’s the likely M’s lineup for the next few weeks with OPS in parentheses.
1. Ichiro, RF (.794)
2. Winn, CF (.645)
3. Martinez, DH (.730)
4. Boone, 2B (.671)
5. Olerud, 1B (.742)
6. Spiezio, 3B (.692)
7. Wilson, C (.725)
8. Cabrera, LF (.711)
9. Aurilia, SS (.629)
Of course, the logical thing would be to move John Olerud and his .382 on base percentage up in the order, since he’s one of the few guys on the team capable of reaching base. Remember, the guy with the second highest OBP on the team was also the guy who got a “pep talk” and took a good share of the blame for the M’s offensive struggles early on. I don’t see anyone talking about releasing Jolbert Cabrera, and despite the announcers affection for Hole-Bear, he’s been far more of a drain on the team offensively than Olerud.
The league average hitter in the AL this year has a .767 OPS. So, for the next two weeks, the M’s will be sporting a line-up that consists of exactly one above average hitter, and Ichiro is perfectly capable of having a patented off-month where he hits .250/.300/.300. And oh, the bench, let us not forget that group of winners:
Hansen, 1B/DH (.864). Note he can only replace our second and third best hitters.
Bocachica, OF (.628 career mark, since no 2004 numbers to show)
Bloomquist, UT (.605)
Borders, C (.286, 2-14). Seriously.
Santiago (.609 career)
I mean, how do you justify a roster that contains that many below replacement level players? 80 percent of the bench belongs in Triple-A. The only major league player not in the everyday line-up can only fill in for two of your better players. The awful starters are backed up by players even more awful. This is perhaps the worst roster management, factoring in available revenues and desire to be competitive, that baseball has seen in years.
New York Times is reporting that the M’s are sniffing around Jose Contreras. Jose Contreras folks. The team’s got more pitching than we can shake a stick at, and we’re looking at… bleah.
On the other hand, the New York Times has been a pretty bad paper lately, so take what you will from that.
Also, I’m having some weird computer issues that are keeping me off the Internet, so if you’ve gotten used to seeing what, a thousand or more words a day from me on this team, I’m sorry.
Chicago White Sox at Seattle Mariners
Folks, if you liked the Mariners anemic singles-based offense before, you’ll love new Ibanez-free Mariners offense!
Friday, 7:05, RHP Freddy Garcia v RHP John Garland
Saturday, 1:05, RHP Ryan Franklin v LHP Scot Schoenweis
Sunday, 5:05, LHP Jamie Moyer v RHP Estaban Loaiza
Then it’s the wonder of interleague play as Houston comes to town. Please, contain your hatred as our long-time rivals visit. I know emotions always run high when these two teams get together, but we should conduct ourselves as fans with the kind of dignity that becomes our city.
Ibanez is out for at least 15 days. For one, that doesn’t seem like the slight hamstring pull I heard it was, and for two, ow, ow, ow.
Right now, Bloomquist, Cabrera, and Bocachica are circling each other in the clubhouse, switchblades drawn, eyes flicking between each of the two. Only one can win Melvin’s favor this night.
Jack McKeon of the Marlins just pinch-hit Dontrelle Willis, a pitcher, for a pitcher in with two outs in a one-run situation in the 5th.
This is part of why McKeon has done well, while other… less flexible or inspired managers do not. If Willis, who’s a good hitter for a pitcher, gets on, the lineup turns over and maybe they make something of it. If not, no loss, he’s got his bench intact to use if he gets spotted better odds later.
How cool.