2011 Organizational Rankings: Introduction
Today, we’re rolling out our 2011 Organizational Rankings. Like with the team previews, we’re going to do three posts per day for the next two weeks, taking us right up to Opening Day as we count down from the worst to the best. We’ve made some pretty substantial changes to the format this year, though, and I wanted to explain the changes.
The biggest change is the way the rankings were compiled. While previous lists have been based on a collaborative discussion with the staff, the questions posed this time around are different. Rather than asking our writing staff to rank each organization from 1-30, we asked them to grade each organization on four key variables – financial resources, quality of baseball operations department, present talent, and future talent. We then took these individual grades for each area and produced a final tally for each organization based on all the votes from the our staff members, and the list was generated from those numbers.
While there is always going to be subjectivity in an exercise like this, our hope is that this removes the perception of bias as an influence in how the rankings shook out. To further avoid the appearance of bias, each staff member abstained from ranking the organization that they follow the closest. You can rest assured that no team received it’s place in the rankings because anyone on staff has it out for that organization. The aggregating of a broad spectrum of opinions helps limit the influence of any single voter, and grading each individual section allows for more transparency in why each organization is ranked where they are.
In the write-ups explaining where each team ended up on the list, the grades for the four variables will be included. Rather than writing extensively about the talent aspects of each organization, we’ll be linking back to our recent season preview for that team as well as the Top 10 prospect list provided by Marc Hulet or Reed MacPhail. The posts themselves will focus mostly on the two aspects of each organization that we haven’t talked about too much this winter – their financial resources and our expectation of how well they will put those to use.
I know those are two areas where there’s some disagreement about how much weight should be assigned, and I found the conversation about those weights last week rather interesting. From my perspective, a team’s continued access to capital is probably the most important variable in a team’s success. While low revenue issues can be overcome with quality management and shrewd player acquisitions, there is really no clear path to consistently beating a well-run team with a lot of resources. Having a lot of talent on hand, or a really great process for turning prospects into performers, is a great way to compensate for a lack of money, but it’s an inferior substitute because it’s the kind of resource that well funded teams can also tap into. Not every rich team is going to spend their money well, but they have the ability to become both smart and rich, which is a tough combination to beat. Smart teams with fewer resources face a much more challenging climb to reach the coveted “well-run and well-funded” corner.
That said, I know that a pretty good number of you guys prefer these rankings to reflect things unrelated to market size and television contracts, so I reduced the weighting for financial resources from what I had originally targeted it as. The final weightings for the four variables are as follows:
Present Talent – 30 percent
Financial Resources – 30 percent
Baseball Operations – 25 percent
Future Talent – 15 percent
The only area that isn’t necessary to put a winning roster on the field is a team’s minor league system, which is why it was the easy call for the least important of the four sections. Developing players from within is a great way to make up for deficiencies in other areas, but teams can win without a heavy emphasis on prospects. With a large payroll and a front office that targets the right veterans to acquire, a team can consistently reload their big league roster each winter, essentially using the other 29 Major League teams as their farm system of choice.
The other three areas are all pretty vital. The baseball operations department got the lowest weight of the three areas in part due to correct assertion that it’s the most subjective variable to judge. While we can make some reliable claims about how different teams operate, and make some inferences about others based on things they’ve said or done, it’s harder to know the internal processes of an organization than it is to project their future revenue streams or to evaluate the roster they’ve put on the field. There is still a strong need for a quality staff, ranging from the front office to coaches on down to scouts and player development officials, but this area can be tricky to evaluate, so it gets a lower weighting than it otherwise might if there were more objective ways to measure the skill of various organizations in this regard.
More than anything else, this list is supposed to be thought provoking and entertaining. We do not claim that this is an exhaustive, authoritative look at every team after a thorough audit of every part of their organization. It’s an amalgamation of opinions from intelligent people who pay close attention to Major League Baseball, and how they view the organizations from the outside. You won’t agree with everything, and that’s totally fine. That’s what the comments are for. Just try to remember that we don’t hate your team and we didn’t engineer this list in order to anger you.
I’ll be interested to know how these rankings compare to this post: http://espn.go.com/blog/sweetspot/post/_/id/7460/al-east-ranking-organizational-leadership
Which ranked Alex Anthopolous the 4th best GM in the AL East.
Which was written by a Red Sox blogger.
Let’s see what you all think!
I think thats insane. AA is not the 4th best GM in that division. Him, Freidman, and Theo are all really good in my opinion. Would be a toss up.
It’s hard to call AA better than three established guys like Friedman, Epstein, and Cashman just because he magically disappeared Vernon Wells and got solid value back for Roy Halladay. Say what you want about Cashman’s financial muscle, but he’s done exactly what he’s supposed to do with that money, get them to the postseason year in and year out. Epstein’s on a similar level except you get the feeling he could do exactly what Friedman’s done if given the same situation. And Friedman’s pretty unassailable these days.
AA looks good but when compared with 3 successful GM’s with long track records, he should be ranked 4th.
anyone who magically disappears vernon wells is automatically the best
No, it just makes Tony Reagins the worst.
fyi, I wrote this for the hardball times back in January. I’m definitely on the AA bandwagon. I just can’t see a successful argument that he’s a better GM than that other trio when we have such a small sample of performance to evaluate him on.
http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/blog_article/is-alex-anthropolos-a-top-gm/
I dunno, Theo’s been able to make some shrewd trades (although none as good as the Vernon Wells trade), and his scouting department has produced some outstanding young players, but what about his track record with free agents?
JD Drew?
Dice-K?
John Lackey?
Julio Lugo?
Mike Lowell riding the bench for $13M?
That’s $60M+ ill-spent dollars last year alone. AA’s saved the Jays more than that with one off-season trade.
Adam: J.D. Drew has been about as valuable as what he’s being paid, and everyone wanted Dice-K. You really can’t complain about either of their contracts. As for the other three players you mentioned, yeah, they’re bad contracts. But a bad contract for Boston (or New York) isn’t nearly as big a deal as for any other team. Boston can afford to offer Lackey a big contract and hope he returns to dominance. I’m not saying it was a good deal, and certainly not defending Lugo or Lowell’s signings. But as a big-market team, the biggest benefit is that you can afford to make a few mistakes.
The most confusing part of that post is that Rogers is ranked 5th worst ownership in the division? Wha–? How is Angelos any better? Especially when Rogers has taken major strides in improving talent both on and off the field (Anthopolous, more scouting, international signings) and seem committed to winning.
I don’t have a problem with AA being 4th on that list, simply because being the 4th-best GM in the AL East probably makes you, what, about the 4th best GM in baseball? Slightly facetious, but not entirely. The ESPN write-up basically acknowledges that, too. There’s an exceptional bunch of GMs in the East.
On the other hand, I disagree with ranking Rogers below the Steinbrenners, because, again as the author acknowledged, they’ve straightened out over the last couple years, and they tend to send the signals that they’re ready to spend when the time comes. I think a compelling case could be made to put the current Rogers regime directly behind John Henry in the rankings.
Great start to the evaluation. Hopefully, this preamble will remove a lot of the angst around the rankings. Thinking through the comments from last year, you appear to have addressed some of the most common concerns.
The only big item missing is whether we are evaluating teams for this year, the next 3 years, or sustained success over a longer period (like 10 years). Obviously the evaluation is dramatically different if we are looking primarily at 2011 results or trying to see which franchise is best positioned to be dominant through 2020.
I also completely agree that financial considerations should be the most important weight. Nobody likes to admit it but your probability for success is tied closer to your teams checking account and revenue streams than it is to your talent evaluation or GM’s trading ability. That sucks but it’s true.
I know it’s a dissatisfying answer to a lot of people, but the reality is that these rankings take both the present and future into account. 2011 matters, but so does 2012, 2013, and so on. The current year matters the most, as the strong weighting for present talent shows, but teams that have given up some future value to try and win now will be harmed in the rankings by that decision.
This is not an estimate of how likely each team is to win the World Series this year. It is much more of an exercise to determine how healthy each organization is going forward. We’re attempting to discern which organizations are setup to contend both now and in the future.
It’s not necessarily a dissatisfying answer, but it will certainly lead to a more subjective, qualitative conclusion. To me, this series will be less valuable and interesting than if you were to precisely define “organizational success”, as that is the entire goal of the rankings.
When you start out with a wishy washy question, you end up with a wishy washy answer.
Indeed, Telo; and a series evaluating American politicians on the basis of which would make the best president would be more valuable and interesting if you were to precisely define what qualifies as success for a president. Which comment will probably have some yelling “Politics!” — which is the point, because the reason for that reaction is that we don’t all *agree* in that regard: we have different definitions of success based on the different policies we prefer. Similarly, there is no precise, universally-accepted definition of organizational success. You just do the best you can amidst the differences of opinion.
Fair answer Dave.
Although I am sure to have major disagreements I think this exercise is a great idea. Always fun to see what different people think.
@ The Very Ancient Mariner
I have no idea what the point of your comment is, besides to deflect heat aimed at Cameron. As usual.
What I think you are trying to say is: If you were to define “Organizational Success” from the start, folks would argue about that criteria before ever getting to the debate of the actual rankings. This is… illogical, to put it kindly.
SOME GUYS: Hi everyone, we’re going to do a ranking of X, based on the criteria of Y.
OTHER GUYS: Sounds great, I love talking about X. But what exactly is Y?
SOME GUYS: Well, that’s the tricky part. We’re not exactly sure. We know what Y is qualitatively, but our individual opinions on EXACTLY what Y is varies (and we’re sure you have your own opinions on Y, too). And while it would it would be pretty easy to just decide on a set of Y, right or wrong, agreeable or disagreeable, we’re each just going go ahead without our own, vague versions of Y to come up with the rankings. Shouldn’t be a problem.
OTHER GUYS: Well…how are we supposed to judge whether we agree with your rankings, if we don’t know the exact criteria you used when creating them?
SOME GUYS: ::crickets::
Fin.
It was like squeezing blood out of a turnip, but you finally defined what your rankings are intended to rank. Given that you are predicting success and not saying who’s doing a good job, you should have not backed down from a higher percentage for having money.
You still confuse the issue by calling this “organizational rankings” rather than “teams likely to succeed.”
I found it interesting going back into 2010, and looking at MLB payrolls, and while their payroll doesn’t necessarily reflect financial health of an organization, I still found it interesting that only 3 of the top 10 payrolls in MLB last year made the playoffs.
The Giants were 10th, and are a good example of a team that may have a high payroll but not exactly be in the best financial situation, with their park, and the fact that Barry Zito is almost 20% of their payroll.
Obviously financial well being and revenue streams can put you at an advantage, but its the use of the resources that seem important to me. I mean, what good is a lot of resources if you’re wasting them with poor personnel and fiscal decisions?
The Giants are actually in great financial shape and their ballpark is a big reason. Yes, they are paying a mortgage on it, but that mortgage will be paid off in the very near future giving them a nice windfall. The ballpark also creates enormous opportunity for revenue streams that they can keep off the books of the baseball franchise. Other factors:
1. Their ownership groups is very well heeled and not dependent on the financial well being of any one owner such as, say, the Dodgers or Mets.
2. They are in the 5′th largest market in the country.
3. They claim as their territory the Silicon Valley area with a bunch of very wealthy companies and their CEO’s and employees. If the A’s want to move to San Jose they wil need to pay a very hefty territory fee.
4. They increased their payroll to about $114 M this offseason so Zito’s salary is actually less than 15%.
5. They have the windfall of winning the WS, which admittedly is a one time infusion of money, but that led to their season being already essentially sold out for 2011.
6. They have always had a national following, perennially leading the majors in road attendance and perennially being one of the top teams for the sale of merchandise. That has also exploded since winning the WS.
Part of the team’s strength is how it generates revenue. If a team in a small market generates strong revenue, that tell us good things about the team.
I’m a bit concerned you might be double-counting market-size, though. To avoid that, I’d want to adjust financial resources for market size (not unlike DMZ’s revenue-sharing plan), so teams would only get added financial resource credit for the extent to which they out-perform their market.
After all, the advantages of the bigger market are already being counted in the Present Talent (and to a lesser degree Future Talent) section.
Who cares if you outperform your market, but you’re still 27th in baseball in revenues? The important point for retaining the talent you developed, and importing established talent, is the 27th rate in revenue, not that your 27th when you should be 31st.
Overall financial resources is separate from present and future talent, in the sense that if you have good present and future talent with good revenues, you can more easily retain those going forward (See Adrian Gonzalez and Felix Hernandez).
Also, greater financial resources make it easier to improve poor present and future talent (If you have a bad player on a $12m/yr deal, at least when it’s over you’ll theoretically have a second chance to spend that $12m more wisely).
If the purpose is “how healthy the organization” is going forward as Dave said, then I don’t think it’s double counting, because having more financial resources because of a big market doesn’t just show up in current or future talent – it’s an advantage that the organization will always have. And if a big market team spends their payroll poorly they may not even have good current or future talent but they will still have that financial muscle to flex in the future, but your proposal wouldn’t reflect that upside.
However, if the purpose if the rankings is to understand what organization best outperforms their expected level of performance, then yes, I would agree that you’d only want to give credit for outperforming market size.
jays got to be up high
They have tons of money
Great Farm
good present talent
and of course AA
My predictions for the top 10:
1. Yankees
2. Red Sox
3. Phillies
4. Rays
5. Braves
6. Rangers
7. Giants
8. Blue Jays
9. Athletics
10. Rockies
And since I had fun doing that top 10…
11. Twins
12. Reds
13. White Sox
14. Nationals
15. Dodgers
16. Orioles
17. Angels
18. Mariners
19. Cardinals
20. Tigers
21. Royals
22. Diamondbacks
23. Marlins
24. Padres
25. Mets
26. Brewers
27. Cubs
28. Indians
29. Astros
30. Pirates
I’d venture to guess the Cubs will be much higher than 27th. They are around a 0.500 club with a top 5 payroll and about average (slightly above?) minor leagues. Their front office would drag them down, but that should wash with the financials – so I would put them around 15.
That sounds fair. I may have been lower on their current big league talent than I should have been.
Yeah – I’m going to go ahead and say that the Angels should be considerably higher than 17.
Top 5-7 in spending. Top 10 farm system (according to most). Should finish at least at 500 with a chance to do much better.
We’ll see though.
I’d bet on the Phillies being outside the top 10. Just a hunch that the FG staff isn’t going to like the combination of old roster and A-level prospects.
Phillies should fall into the top 7 based on these criteria. Red Sox have to be first this year.
like I said, just a hunch.
Quick critique with no explanation:
Blue Jays, Athletics, Royals too high.
Twins, Cubs too low.
Just so we are clear, those are my opinions about your predictions of what fangraphs writers’ opinions are.
I thought the readers were selecting the weightings via a vote last week?
vr, Xei
From last week: “While the weights that you guys vote on may not match exactly what we end up using for the model, the results of the polls below will be a significant factor in deciding how each category is valued.”
Dave said above: “I reduced the weighting for financial resources from what I had originally targeted it as.” I agree with his original inclination. I would have made financial resources more like 35-50% since market size is the only variable that is relatively static and for the most part can’t be affected. Your current talent, future talent, and front office all can be replaced if they aren’t working (albeit it takes some time).
How are you ensuring cross-rater consistency?
E.g. How do you ensure that 9outof10 in finances equals the same thing across raters and teams?
Wouldn’t it have been better to have one person do all the Present Talent ratings, another person do Financial Resources and so on?
They don’t need to as long as the raters are generally held constant. I’d prefer if they didn’t have voters abstaining but if they legitimately believe that they can’t objectively evaluate something they’re close to, then I suppose it’s for the best.
Ah – I missed the part where each rater is rating each and every org (except their favorites). I thought each rater was doing a subset.
“If *they* legitimately believe”? It has nothing to do with what they believe, or what anyone might legitimately believe; it has to do with the paranoid, self-righteous judgmentalism (and associated schadenfreude) exhibited by a lot of commenters here over the last year’s rankings.
ok ok. I think what I’m getting at is that if you’re a writer for Fangraphs you should be pretty damn objective. As such, your ranking for the team you follow closest should actually be your most accurate ranking rather than simply a biased ranking.
Nah, abstaining from grading your favorite team is a good way to keep independence in appearance and in fact (from the accountant in the room).
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Don’t use that name if your comment is going to be that inane.
In before #6 or-dammit.
Now that that is out of the way…
So you’re saying we shouldn’t expect the genius of Jack Z compared to the apparent dolt Frank Wren to propel the mariners leap the Braves in spite of every other possible, rational factor?
No, he’s saying “Now that that is out of the way…”
I’d just like to say, not all Braves’ fans are this self-absorbed so as to pettily cling to perceived slights pertaining to things that absolutely do not matter.
Of course, given how much outrage I’ve seen over a projected line-up that involves Heyward batting 6th instead of 2nd, I can’t exactly say we always have a good grasp for what matters and what really does not.
Grow up Grow up Grow up Grow up Grow up Grow up Grow up Grow up Grow up Grow up Grow up Grow up Grow up Grow up Grow up Grow up Grow up Grow up Grow up Grow up Grow up Grow up Grow up Grow up Grow up Grow up Grow up Grow up Grow up Grow up Grow up Grow up Grow up Grow up Grow up Grow up Grow up Grow up Grow up Grow up
I have to say, I find this methodology vastly improved over last season. Going with component scores seems like a very reasonable way of doing things. My only little thought is that we may want to at some point look at these components as combining non-linearly. I would think that these would have a relationship sort of like:
Organizational Health = (Present Talent + Future Talent + $$$) x Operations
Where there is some weighting on each of the assets terms, while the range of operations values determines its importance (i.e. max/min of [0.5,1.5] would be more influential than [0.9,1.1]).
I say this because the first three aspects can be considered interchangeable commodities. Present talent can be traded for future talent, vice versa, and money can be exchange for both (within limits). On the other hand, Operations seems to really be a limited multiplier on these. A good front office will steadily grow these assets, while a bad one will steadily lose value of assets.
So using something like that and using these weights, we’d probably be seeing a formula more like:
Value ~ (0.4*Present + 0.4*Money + 0.2*Future)*(0.875 + 0.25*Ops)
Though if we believe our own $ valuations of prospects, I do wonder if its better to use absolute values rather than normalized ones.
I like your formula. I think the current one undervalues Operations. You can have a ton of money, without operations though it is worthless. Look at the Cubs (Sorry cubs fans)
As a Cubs fan – I completely agree. The Operations multiplier should be negative for the Cubs. Even if they had the most money, the inefficiencies of the FO would devalue it.
As a Twins fan as well… They would have a higher multiple. Wisely developing talent, not throwing away money on bloated, stupid contracts (Alfonso Soriano).
This formula could really work. It might take a few itterations to get the exact formula, but it would be worthwile in my opinion.
I gotta say I really like this idea. I think something along these lines should be considered for next year’s evaluations.
Does future talent include only prospects? non-25 man roster types? or is it the measurement of how much projection the entire organization’s current player personnel is viewed as having…
1. For instance, stating the current ability of Pedro Alvarez in the “current talent section”, but accounting his talent projection in the “future talent section”.
or
2. Accounting for only the Allie/Taillon types/projections in “future talent”… Guys who haven’t quite influenced the actual Pirates MLBallclub yet…
Future talent includes anyone under club control beyond 2011, regardless of their major league experience level.
In a similar vein, do players signed to long deals get counted entirely as present talent? Where in the Rays’ ranking is it reflected that they have cheap team options on Longoria through 2016?
Er, sorry, should have refreshed before I posted. But by this measure, future talent may have more to do with players on the current roster than prospects (i.e. it’s not just “the team’s minor league system;” it also includes all the currently-signed building blocks of future rosters). And if that’s the case, shouldn’t it receive more weight? Longoria’s years after 2011 are way more valuable to the Rays than his 2011 year. If we’re looking at the overall strength of an organization, the contributions it can be projected to receive from players in 2011 doesn’t seem any more important than the contributions it can be projected to receive from players + prospects in 2012 and beyond.
I guess that means that winning in 2011 is weighted about 25% importance (maybe a little more, since money matters)?
Bothers me that the most important and least important factors are given approximately the same weight.
But, for this exercise, it’s probably a necessity. If we ranked Financial resources at 60-70%, it’s be a boring series, with little controversy.
I do think the first 3 released were very well done within the parameters fo the activity.
Links to season’s previews and minor league talent have been very useful.
I wasn;t the biggest fan of the series, given the weightings of the categories, but I have enjoyed (and found useful) the first 3 released.
Well done.
Great job on the new format, Dave.
What I like is that it’s laid out a lot more clearly how you’re ranking the teams, and the numbers make it easy for anyone to use your evaluations to generate custom rankings. If you disagree with the weights, it’s easy enough to plug the numbers into a spreadsheet with different weights and come up with a different overall ranking of teams without losing the fundamental ratings. Or, if you disagree with the assessment of a particular team’s management, you can see where the team would fit with your view of that team’s baseball ops. It’s nice and modular, so even if you disagree with certain judgment calls on the specifics, it doesn’t make the rankings useless to you.
This sounds like it’s all going to boil down to finances.
Do you feel that the weighting system employed here would result in an accurate ‘prediction’ if you were to use FG Organizational rankings from 3 years ago?
All future talent belongs to the Yankees, so how did you adjust for that?
Hi,No the pad does not require a Kernel modification, specifically because there are Two connection points for the internal USB system.My point was that connection to ONE of these points causes the Kernel to error, but connection to the OTHER USB point has no significant problems.