Fixing What Went Wrong
After being confronted with failure or disappointment, it’s human nature to look back and assess what went wrong. After all, you can’t prevent the same mistakes from being made in the future if you don’t know what went wrong in the first place.
Fans and general managers use this line of thinking when they look back at the previous season. They want to know what kept their team from making the playoffs. The answer to this questions isn’t difficult to find — a suspect bullpen, injuries to key players, etc. But whatever the reason, the answer to this question is typically the focal point of the team’s offseason efforts. However, it’s imperative to keep the larger picture in mind. Improving one area to the detriment of others doesn’t help the team overall.
I believe that, this offseason, several of the more criticized moves have their roots in the team in question focusing too heavily on last year’s failures. Each of the following three teams addressed one of the main reasons they fell short of expectations in 2010, but the improvements have come at the expense of other areas of the club, leaving these teams in much the same condition as they were last year.
1. Anaheim Angels. The 2010 Problem: Outfield Defense.
The Angels came into the 2010 season considered by many to be the front-runner in the AL West, but they ended up finishing third in the division with an 80-82 record. While some of the blame fell on the unfortunate injury to Kendry Morales and the ineffectiveness of Scott Kazmir, their outfield defense was a major problem. Bobby Abreu, Juan Rivera, and Hideki Matsui all got significant playing time in left, combining to post a -9 UZR. In center, Torii Hunter began to show some of his age, posting a -3.8 UZR, and Abreu and Rivera cost Angel pitchers almost 7 runs with their below-average defense in right. All told, the Angels outfield (pre-Peter Bourjos) cost the team close to two wins!
With Vernon Wells in the fold and Peter Bourjos patrolling center, the Angels now have three center fielders, likely giving themselves one of the better defensive outfields in baseball. Improving their outfield defense was obviously not the only consideration the Angels made when acquiring Vernon Wells, but I think it factored in prominently. Even with Torii Hunter’s likely departure in free agency, Michael Trout’s ascension through the minors suggests that the Angels have made the philosophical commitment to deploying three center fielders over the next several seasons.
2. Arizona Diamondbacks. The 2010 Problems: Bullpen and Strikeouts.
The D-backs came into the season with more modest expectations than the Angels. Still, with a talented, young offense and a rotation led by Dan Haren, they were a legitimate contender in the NL West. But hopes of playing in October were quickly derailed by a bullpen that was nothing short of disastrous. The D-backs’ pen finished last in baseball with a 5.72 ERA — a mark of over a full run higher than the 29th-ranked Cubs. New GM Kevin Towers wasted little time addressing the bullpen, adding J.J. Putz from free agency, and David Hernandez, Kam Mickolio, and Armando Galarraga in trades (Sam Demel was also picked up during the season).
With these additions, it’s near certain that the D-backs pen will be much improved in 2011 (in fact, a regression to the mean would likely have led to an improved pen even if few moves had been made). The problem, however, is that the cost of improving the pen has been steep. The lineup has lost Conor Jackson, Mark Reynolds, and Adam LaRoche. While the 2010 D-backs will likely strikeout less, the loss of power and OBP will likely lead to fewer runs, leaving the Diamondbacks in much the same overall position as they were last year.
3. Florida Marlins. 2010 Problem: Bullpen.
The Marlins didn’t have the quite the same late-inning woes as the Diamondbacks, but they finished second in baseball with 25 blown saves, and the bullpen has been a recurring problem for the Fish over the past couple seasons. With a limited budget, the Marlins were more inclined to trade for relief help than explore the free-agent market, and they ultimately traded Cameron Maybin to the Padres in exchange for Edward Mujica and Ryan Webb. Mujica and Webb are two solid pen arms, both of whom figure to help in 2011. The drawback is that with a hole in center field, the Marlins traded away their best internal replacement. The onus now falls on Scott Cousins and Bryan Peterson. Both players have shown promise, but neither has the offensive upside or the defensive chops of Maybin. The Marlins have a strong track record of player development, so perhaps they deserve the benefit of the doubt. But in moving to strengthen their bullpen, they’ve hurt their defense and lineup enough that I don’t believe the team is any stronger.
Reed McPhail is good! Where are you? I’d like to collaborate with you. Seriously. Contact me, please. I am contemplating a blog in this format and I’d like some advice. Thank you.
I wonder if Dave Cameron will read this and still say there is no rational defense for the Wells trade?(just to be clear, a rational defense is different than saying it was a good trade).
You must be joking.
Nope.
Why the attack on Dave?
I think we all can say that getting Wells was a plus on the baseball side of things for the Angels, but on the financial side it made just as much sense as trading for Barry Zito.
They could have made the same deal and demanded significant money from the Jays and the Jays probably would have paid it. The fact they received no compensation is going to become even more problematic as the contract moves on.
Not sure if your shot at Dave comes from the article on Cain or not. Cain is a statistical oddity that is fascinating to the sabermetric community. To Giants fans like you and I, we believe that he is definitely skilled. It’s tough to convince pure numbers guys otherwise though.
Cameron is a good writer and a credit to the fantasy community though. Don’t let his take on Cain influence your opinion on him as a writer.
Quit making doctors and Giants fans everywhere look bad, please.
What? Vernon Wells’ rating from FG fielding is -29.9(!) combined from the last three years. I suppose if he moves from center to right it might help a little, but Torii is no longer a capable center fielder. BR has him costing 3.1 WAR the last three years on defense as well. I don’t get it.
I echo these sentiments a bit. After all, no one is saying that the Cardinals OF defense got better because “former CF” Lance Berkman is now projected to start in right. Come to think of it, the Astros several years back really put some stiffs out there (Craig Biggio, anyone?)
That said, Wells/Hunter at corners ought to be close to average, and Bourjos will be better than that. So that particular weakness of last season should be remedied.
Bourjos in center, Wells in left, Hunter in right.
C’mon man.
Wells (LF) – Bourjos (CF) – Hunter (RF)
Wells’ rating is at CF, being compared to other CF. Put him in LF with the other semi-DH, and his rating has to get better. The problem with the move is that his batting will now be compared with other LF, instead of being compared to CF.
The other issue is that Wells has a history of injuries…and he’s getting up there in age…and he’s fairly heavy for his height. He might be an average LF now…but he will end up below average in 1-2 years as his range declines.
Well, Mike Trout likely makes Wells a DH at some point. Trout projects to be “ML ready” now. I’m not sure how long they’ll leave him in the minors, or whether he’ll keep up his pace as he moves up in levels. While he’s not likely “Jayson Heyward” (historic season for a 20yo), he’s probably good enough to start in the ML OF in 2012.
That was/is the confusing thing for, in regards to the trade (contract aside). Trout-Bourjos-Hunter will be their best fielders, and ~20+M/y to pay for an average hitting DH (Wells) would be very confusing. I don;t know Kendry’s contract situation, but there’s nothing that says someone like Wells could not convert to 1B in the future.
My guess is that for 2/3′s of the teams “Bullpen” is going to be the reason.
For that reason we should stop asking why teams keep giving multiple year deals to closers that are “better than average” (so to speak).
I said closers, I meant relievers.
If quality relievers were abundant, we wouldn’t [1] see the contracts, and [2] be talking about the consistent problem with lots of teams.
The problem isn’t abundance, it’s consistency. There is an abundance of quality relievers every year. The trouble is, they often aren’t the same players who were quality relievers the year before, and many of them won’t be quality relievers in the year following. That won’t stop some of them from getting big contracts if their FA availability happens to come on the heels of one of those good years, though (or from them disappointing their acquiring teams in many cases)
Many have said the reason relievers are relievers is simply that they aren’t good enough to be starters. I agree with this (Mariano Rivera being a noted exception) largely but I often wonder about this in the vein of Tony LaRussa’s revolutionizing the bullpen in terms of the one inning save… what if a team, got seven or eight average to above average starters, and just went with them for 3 inning outings. So a “starter” on any other team would be constantly pitching, and would not face batters numerous times as starters currently do. I’m not saying any team do this, but I wonder if the outcome would be better than having a 5-man rotation and 7 relievers. Just some food for thought… I’m sure someone could use some sort of software to analyze this but its above my pay grade :)
David, I love that idea! The biggest hurdle to overcome would be to convince the starting pitchers to buy into it. A team could go with their best pitcher for that day as the second pitcher of the game, allowing him an opportunity to qualify for a win. If you were to run a three day rotation, with each pitcher pitching 4 innings, that would give your top three guys around 200 innings each — same as what they get in a five-man rotation. Once they see that theoretically, they could qualify for a win in as many as 54 games, they would be more likely to get on board. It would have to be tried first somewhere down in the low minors, but if it works, a team could gain a lot of advantages over other teams.
I often wonder if we might see something like this as the standard in 20 or 30 years.
david: i think it would be a great idea for teams to try this, especially nl teams – that way they don’t ever have to have their pitchers hit. for an nl team i could see that being a 2-4 win boost over the course of a season.
and even for al teams, it means they don’t have their pitchers facing batters more than 1 or 2 times per game. even a mediocre reliever would be better than all but the best starters the third time through the order.
the problem is, this is outside the box thinking, and carries some risk (what if for some reason it doesn’t work?), so i can’t see any manager/gm actually doing it.
The good relievers are often guys that [1] throw very hard, and [2] have a major out pitch.
That’s something that works very well for an inning (or two), but would not work well for 2-4 times through the lineup or for 6 innings.
I wonder how much of the up and down of relievers is simply sample size (IP in a season) and all the factors that go into that.
If you took a starting pitchers season and broke it up into 50 IP sections, there would likely be quite a bit of variance as well.
Seems reasonable that teams would rather have relievers for a multiple year contract than have to go through rebuilding a bullpen every year through free agency and their minor league system. That certainly could be done, but the best relievers would always go to the teams that offered them multiple years.
I haven’t looked into year-2-year correlations between reliever FIP, so I don’t know if it varies greatly or not.
I thought Coghlan is (for now) the Marlin’s CF, not Cousins or Peterson.
Who are these Anaheim Angels he refers to?
yea isnt it the Los Angeles Anaheim Disney Angels of the Great State of California?
or something like that?
interesting read
-w
Jono -
It turns out Oakland tried it in 1993 briefly a reader of my blog found an article. LaRussa did it differently than I proposed but quite similar in theory. I think for a team like Pittsburgh or a team well out of contention in September could give it a relatively low risk go.
Any chance you can share the article? I’d be really interested in reading that. Or, it’d be even more fantastically awesome if Fangraphs wrote a short article on it.
Doesn’t go too in depth into the idea but: http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=19930720&slug=1711920
Nathaniel –
It really would mess with conventional stats. I assume an increase in 3 inning saves. Also a very strange accounting of wins since the “starter” never would have enough innings pitched to get the win.
Reed (or someone else), I have re-read it a couple times and the D-Backs and Marlins “improvements …at the expense of other areas of the club” are quite clear., but what was the expense to the Angels? Future offense??
Ya, the Angels case is a little different. It’s really the opportunity cost of all that money they are devoting to Wells.
Okay, thanks. Sorry, I still don’t quite see where that is laid out, at least not as clearly as the other two teams. Certainly an interesting read and take on their respective off seasons though. I am curious to see what moves, if any, these teams have left in them before the season or in the first half and then how they actually perform. Thanks again for taking the time to clarify it for me.
CircleChange11- The thing is you wouldn’t stretch out relievers, you would just replace relievers with starters. (Now assuming it caught on eventually thatd be different as the concept wouldnt be starter or reliever but merely pitcher) So… in theory if everyone does a semi-decent job, nobody would ever face all that many people a second time. I think sample size makes a huge difference for relievers look at Lance Painter’s 2000 season with Toronto, his last outing of the year was one inning where he allowed eight earned runs. His ERA jumped to 4.72 from 3.70. I have to assume (though I didn’t calculate) his other numbers quickly jumped too. So much for the other 41 outings that year.
But you hear continually of guys going from being a starter to converting to a reliever. Dennis Eckersley, Mariano Rivera, and so on. Seldom do you hear of the great reliever in the minors and majors becoming a starter and thriving (CJ Wilson is one that immediately comes to mind).
I think the problem would be that the market would never allow the idea to take hold. Picking up 6 or 7 serviceable starters in order to implement the idea would be difficult for teams without the farm depth to make it work. A team that didn’t already have the depth to make it work while their pitchers were under control would have to give a starter salary (even a back end salary) for 100 IP, which seems excessive.
This is exactly what my off-the-cuff reaction was. You would really need nine ‘three-inning guys’ if you wanted to break up three consecutive games by this method. It’s much more likely you’re going to have to end up pushing ‘true relievers’ into three-inning duty, where their performance is likely to suffer.
The second issue, I’m thinking about is the risk of injury. Three innings with only two days off, presumably at the higher effort rate of a reliever, may be more physically taxing than even seven innings every fifth day.
I think it is worth thinking about more deeply, though. Maybe the best way it could be implemented would be in the 5th starter’s spot. If you have two borderline starters, splitting the start into two could be advantageous. Maybe I’ll think about this for my next post.
Deadpool and Reed -
I elaborate this in my post on my blog (click my name) BUT… basically i see it as an 8-man “rotation”. So you have a decent amount of days off. Everyone ends up basically around 180 innings. Which is normal starter usage. You’d have to really overhaul and entire team to do this. So with respect to Deadpool’s 100IP concern, really they all pitch about 180. But my argument hinges on the fact that 4th starters are better than high-paid middle relievers. So there’s a bit of an offset in cost presumably.