John Lackey Inks with Boston
A couple hours after reports surfaced stating the John Lackey was taking a physical with the Boston Red Sox, the rumors are now saying that a contract has been reached between the two. Jon Heyman writes that it’s a five-year deal worth $85 million.
As a fan of a team (the Mariners) linked to just about every free agent on the market, and in particular to John Lackey, I’ve been skeptical of his value all winter long. There are two main red flags that I have when it comes to Lackey.
First is health. Profiled as a top of the rotation arm, Lackey has made just 51 starts the last two seasons, averaging 170 innings. Before that he was more durable sure, but on the wrong side of 30, I lean more toward recent history than past when it comes to injury risk.
Second comes with Lackey’s pitch results. More of his pitches have been resulting in balls lately and dropping rates in finding the strike zone and in starting hitters off with a strike portend a rise in the amount of walks that he allows, long his strong suit. More worrisome to me is this: 10.2%, 9.7%, 8.8%, 8.5%, 8.3%. Those are Lackey’s swinging strike rates from 2005 to 2009 in chronological order. That is a downward trend and not a subtle one either. In other words, projecting Lackey, I’d expect slightly more walks and considerably fewer strikeouts.
John Lackey‘s tRAs have ranged from 3.7 to 3.9 to 5.5 and back down to 4.5 over the last four seasons, a difficult path to project. His xFIPs (and tRA*s) on the other hand, regressing his fluctuating home run rates, peg Lackey at a consistent 4.1, 4.0, 3.9, 3.9 from 2006 through 2009. That’s a much easier trend to deal with.
That trend, with the other information above leads me to think that Lackey is about a 4.1-4.2 FIP pitcher going forward. CHONE’s projection agrees mostly, seeing Lackey at a 4.1 FIP and 186 innings. That amount of production is worth about 3.2 wins, roughly a little less than Lackey’s 2007-9 average on a 5/4/3 weight, reasonable for an aging pitcher.
You cannot assume Lackey holds on that 3.2 WAR level either and over five years, you’re probably looking at a total expected contribution of three wins per year, or 15 wins in total. At the slightly depressed market value for wins and with the long term contract discount, a roughly fair number for Lackey at five years would be about $60 million.
Now, as Dave Cameron brought up a few days ago, not every team should pay the same rate for wins. The Red Sox are in a similar position as the Rays wherein each additional win means more to them. Also, they’re a super high budget team with the resources to offer more money per win. Even still, this looks like a vast overpay in terms of annual value. And possibly worse than that is guaranteeing five years to a pitcher, much less for his age 31-35 seasons.
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Assuming that the Lowell trade does go through, I saw this move as a sign that they may make a trade for A. Gonzalez and include Buchholz in the deal.
While it’s nice that they’ll include Buchholz in a deal, it makes no difference as to the chances of a trade going through, because Gonzalez isn’t going anywhere.
Its great that Jed Hoyer not only reads this site but actively posts his post-season strategies here.
So, mm, you’re saying Theo Epstein is not just one man, but the embodiment of every Red Sox fan who posts on the internet? Fascinating.
Great deal for the Sox. The article says teams were looking at him as a top of the rotation guy, but obviously not. The Sox clearly intend to pencil him in as a #3 guy, givign them a 1-4 of Lester-Beckett-Lackey-Bucholz. Now that’s a playoff rotation. And it makes up for the worries about Dice-K and Wake. Its a great move, at a very reasonable price. This article seems like it would havebeen worded differently if the Mariners had actually landed him.
Dr James Andrews is especially fond of this deal.
AKarl: “This article seems like it would havebeen worded differently if the Mariners had actually landed him.”
I’m not sure about that, considering that Matt wrote almost the same thing about Lackey four or five days ago when it appeared that the Mariners were actively pursuing Lackey.
One of the defining features of the myopic is that they assume everyone else is as myopic as they are. And Red Sox fans are nothing if not myopic.
In fact, a few days ago when it seemed very possible that Mariners might land Lackey, he wrote this.
Your post would have been worded differently if you’d spell-checked it.
Fair point on the other article, he did seem to have this opinion before. And snap on the spell check reference! Kudos to you, oh wise internet guru. Still seems like a fine deal for the Sox. And is the market for starting pitching (or anything else?) really that depressed?
Do Lackey’s injuries really represent any significant future risk? Elbow inflammation happens to most pitchers at some point.
And finally, why do we talk about cost instead of opportunity costs? The opportunity cost for the Red Sox was very low, and the potential reward fairly high.
I tend to agree that his injuries are being a bit over-played. The decline in his k rate is steady, but hasn’t been precipitous yet. Given the Red Sox situation, I think he will be worth that contract. Interesting that the sox are said to be pretty significantly overpaying Lackey, and getting a huge steal in Cameron. I wouldn’t expect the market to be quite that inefficient.
That’s a lot of money for a guy that’s had known forearm and elbow problems.
How long till he has TJ surgery?
I thought the Red Sox would consider Lackey, but only if they could get him for 3 years at some kind of winner’s discount. Five years and $85M seems too much of a commitment for someone of his age and injury history. He would have to produce 4 wins a year to be worth that. It’s good that his GB/FB ratio is over 1, but 1.21 is not that high and the left side of Boston’s infield is not where it needs to be yet. Nor is their OF defense all that great. I would rather have seen them address those issues and for less money. Is this an overpay to keep him from the Yankees?
The left side of Boston’s infield will be 100% different next season, so I’m not sure how you can say that “its not where it needs to be”. Since they’re in the process of trading Mike Lowell they’re obviously going to have a new third baseman, and they just signed a new shortstop, Marco Scutaro to be the starter.
The Lowell trade hasn’t gone through yet. Scutaro’s defensive numbers are inconsistent. And I just wouldn’t overpay for an SP who needs solid defense in Fenway before I had that solid defense lined up with a little more certainty. They have some ideas for replacing Lowell, but they thought they had Teixeira locked up last year (allowing Youk to move over to 3B) and lost him at the last second. I’d give them the benefit of the doubt on both SS and LF if they hadn’t been putting people who don’t field well enough in both positions for years. We’ll see how Scutaro does, but I would have put some of that Lackey money into a better SS. If Matthew is correct, and Lackey allows more balls in play next year (and for the 4 years after that), SS and LF are going to be busy spots.
Goddamn it. This is precisely the kind of deal I was dreading–Lackey is shaky injury-wise, a bad personality, and to top it all off, we’ve signed him through age 36!
I agree. And having spent the last couple years throwing regularly against feeble lineups in Oakland and Seattle, it should be interesting to see how he fares against the Yankees and Rays. Hell, even Toronto and Baltimore are several lengths against the A’s and Mariners.
Yeah, I meant “…ahead of the A’s and Mariners”.
Guess Theo felt pressured to keep pace with NY…I think he’ll regret this one in a couple years.
I’m a little surprised by this. Recently, Epstein made comments talking about the next 2 or 3 years as a bridge period to the next wave of young talent in the Sox farm system (mostly in the low minors) and cautioned against any big long term signings or big trades. I didn’t think that would take the Sox out of the market for some of the big players (Matt Holliday) but I’m surprised they went with Lackey, what with a glaring hole in LF and a possible hole at one of the corner infield spots once the Lowell trade goes through and they decide what they’re going to do with Youkilis. It just seems a little unnecessary to me what with Buchholz ready to crack the rotation for a full season.
Theo Epstein >>>>>> “Matthew Carruth”
Totally unexpected, on my part, but I trust the BOS front office knows their shit. Lackey’s acquisition also just comes down to dollars, alone, unless there’s anyone out there that believes a pitcher of his caliber makes a poor #3.
Beckett, Lester, Lackey, Matsuzaka, Buchholz. I’m not one to complain about that, especially when their chief competition continues with their long-standing doctrine of Best Accumulation of Old DH’s Wins.
So…your conclusion is basically that you trust Epstein to do the right thing? Now, that’s a pretty reasonable position based on his track record, but…why are you reading a baseball analysis website if not for, y’know, analysis?
The Sox have the money to roll the dice, and they saved money on Cameron, supposedly, which doesn’t excuse throwing it away, but they can afford the risk entailed in keeping up with the Yankees for now and not just bridging to the Casey Kelly/Ryan Westmoreland era. :)
So Teixeira, Granderson, Rodriguez, etc. are old DHs? Geez, I’ll take a bunch of old DHs on my team too.
Its impossible to know what is going on right now, not that Mr. Carruth pretends to. Has Beckett balked at extension talks? Does the front office have any faith in Dice-K to stay in shape and perform next season? Will the 2008 version of Clay Buchholz show up for spring training, or the 2009?
Lackey is a heck of a nice #3 starter, but he’s also insurance against any and all of the above happening. In a vacuum this wouldn’t have been the way I spent $80+ million, but his presence sure doesn’t hurt the team. I’m curious Theo does next and how this fits into the overall puzzle that is the 2010 Red Sox. Until I know the answer to that, I’m reserving judgment.
No kidding.
[1] This signing removes Lackey from a playoff rival and ADDS him to your team.
[2] Is there anyone who REALLY thinks that BOS would have gotten away with NOT signing Lackey? By that I mean that their fans wouldn;t have gone ape-poop? Serioiusly, last year NYY sign the 2 best SPs on the market and THIS year BOS is NOT going to sign the best FA SP available? Yeah, right.
I know we’re suppossed to remove the emotional, fan-expectation reality from analyzing trades …. but there’s NO WAY that BOS does NOT make a lot of moves to combat what NYY did last year. It’s what they do.
Some posters are also acting as if BOS had the choice to sign Lackey for 3 years, but agreed to 5, just because.
Had Lackey signed with another team, particularly a team that would compete with BOS for the 4th playoff spot, they’d likely be going nuts in the other direction.
Lackey has been slightly better than Burnett (this time last year) in virtually every measurable performance aspect, so you’d have to say that he signed at the market rate.
Yes. If you base market rate on one signing.
If you check BR.com, most of Lackeys comparables fizzle at 31 or 32 years old. That means the BoSox just paid 85 mil for 2 good years at the most. Expect 10-12 wins per year with ample DL time.
Because Lackey is his comparables. You know, like them or hate them, the Red Sox are a pretty smart organization, and I think they’ve earned the benefit of the doubt. Sure, sometimes they make mistakes, and this could be another one of them, but it’s purely silly to say that because BR.com says Lackey will fizzle out because his comparable pitchers have.
Not saying Lackey will be exactly like his comparables. It is worth mentioning however since Lackey has had injury issues and will be facing much stiffer competition over the course of the contract.
Pitchers get injured and I imagine a partial season or 2 lost is maybe even expected.
i agree with comparing lacker to burnett. sox did better if everything goes as predicted. but you never know ….
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if we get Mike Cameron, which is rumored to be in the works, we will have a solid defensive of.
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that leaves 3rd base – youk with gonzalez @ 1st, or beltre on 3rd, w// youk @1st.
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with 6 starters going into xmas, who gets splinters? somebody is going to get traded.
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things are coming together. about 120 days till opening day!
the rumor on getting cameron, ain’t a rumor anymore.
bye bye bay. and your market value just came down – you may regret not taking the $60M. wasn’t there a red sox ss that turned down 60 to earn about 10 over the remaining years of his career?
Now Cameron is a good pick-up (pending the numbers) and makes the acquisition of Lackey look better. If Jacoby can play LF better than CF (and learn from Cameron for the future), then the Sox have an OF that can run balls down. I’m much more excited about Cameron than Lackey. Hell, it’s not my money, so I’m pretty excited about Lackey, too, from that perspective. I just wouldn’t have spent that much if I were they.
Pokey Reese?
This characterizes Red Sox posters so perfectly.
High budget team? According to the owner the Sox are a small market team who can’t afford high priced free agents to successfully compete against the budget super-powers of the league…
I don’t like this signing. Not because he’s not a good pitcher, but because it’s a bit too long and too much money. The Sox needed a little depth though, so I guess they can push Bucholz back? You’d expect Wakefield to need to take a few starts off here or there unless he gets injured again.
I think I would’ve spent the prospects to get Roy Halladay at a 5 year deal worth $100 million (likely?), you get the far superior pitcher (Lackey needs almost two years for every one for Roy in terms of WAR) and Halladay is a proven AL East beast, maybe the Jays were using the NYY/BOS to drive up the price but with no real intention of moving him to either team.
IMHO that is exactly what Toronto was doing. I never really thought he was going to NYY or BOS, without some insane package that neither the Yanks or the Sox would consider.
If I were Theo, i will be trying to ship Daisuke to the Reds, Astros or Mets. They would love him.
Sorry, but the numbers in this article just don’t add up. Lackey’s WAR totals since 2004: 3.6, 5.9, 6.0, 5.6, 2.0, 3.9
This article is just way too pessimistic about Lackey’s future performance. He has had a consistent swinging strike percentage the past 3 seasons (8.8% to 8.5% to 8.3% is hardly a concerning trend), so why would you expect his strikeout numbers to plummet? And you call him an “aging” pitcher? Since when is a 31 year old pitcher “aging”? That is the middle of a player’s prime. I could see factoring in some age-related decline if he was 34 or 35, but what reason do you have to believe that he should lose any performance due to age next season? The risk here is injury, which does increase with age, but even in injury-shortened seasons the past 2 years he has been worth about 3 WAR a season. That is probably his floor right now, barring something major. His average fastball was actually the fastest of his career last year, so I really am not concerned by any loss of stuff, even if his pitch run values were down in 2009. And 3.2 is a little less than the 5/4/3 weight of his last 3 seasons, but that includes his anomalous 2008 WAR.
What site did you get the swinging strike data from? I wanted to take a look at it but I couldn’t find anything.
Yeah, I think this is a little pessimistic as well. He has been worth more than 17 mil 4 of the last 5 seasons. The length clearly leaves something to be desired but it would not surprise me if it was a creative “5 years.”
I know the internet trend is faster not better for baseball in recent years. I am a little disappointed fangraphs seems to be joining in, going over the moves based on the rumored signing amount opposed to waiting a day or two for the hard numbers.
Good points.
Just a few thoughts …..
On the injury front, it should be noted that Lackey made every start after May 16th and his splits over the final 120 innings were excellent. Yeah, I know May counts and that injury happened, but I am curious to see if the regression argument hold as much water if you isolate his back-half.
The Sox have roughly $41M committed to Lester, Beckett, Lackey, Dice, Buchholz in 2010. That should amount to about 28 percent of the club’s 25-man payroll, which is hardly excessive.
There has been plenty of discussion on left-side defense and if Lowell is still over there in April, there is a problem. But with Cameron in Center, Ellsbury in Left, and Beltre at third, the Sox should be excellent on the left side. Moreover, if you put any stock into Iglesias, you might have a vacumm over there by year three of Lackey’s deal.
The Lackey deal is a good one because he is much better than Wakefield. The dollars only matter if the value of the contract prevents Boston from making other moves. Of course, it could be argued that the commitment to Lackey forced Boston to settle on Cameron. I realize that the defensive metrics for Cameron have been great the last two years, but they were actually pretty bad in 2007. Also, we are assuming Ellsbury will be shifted to LF, but that might not be the case. And, even if he is, Ellsbury value will diminish because of the positional change (unless his awful defensive metrics in CF were real and he winds up impriving in LF). Then again, the Green Monster mitigates against the need for a great defensive LF’er. Right now, the one thing Boston really needs is a top notch bat, not someone like Cameron. Perhaps Holliday and a lesser pitcher would have been a better buy than Lackey and Cameron?
Based on an admittedly small sample, Ellsbury looked better in LF than in CF. And the 2 wins Ellsbury gave back in CF in 2009 would be nice to have, so Cameron’s defense in center is worth it even if Ellsbury doesn’t add much in left. Maybe Cameron ages in 2011 and they switch the two, but they should start with Cameron in CF and Ellsbury in LF.
I agree that Holliday-plus-lesser-pitcher should have been considered, but I don’t think that a big bat is more important for this team than defense. They have Youk, Martinez, Drew, Pedroia, Ortiz?, and Ellsbury’s speed to provide offense. They need to catch the ball better.
Word is Holliday is looking for a Teixiera-like contract. The Red Sox were probably smart to avoid him….huge contracts through a player’s age 38 season are just stupid….Alfonso Soriano anyone? Not comparing them, you just never know quite how a player is going to hold up that long.
I see a lot of defensive analysis saying the Red Sox don’t need a good defensive LF because of the Green Monster. While true, Fenway’s LF is tiny compared to most, it’s can’t be completely irrational to consider the value of defense on the road, right? Last I checked the Red Sox do not play 162 games at home.
I have no problem with the RS, or any other team for that matter, using their payroll advantage to overpay players.
we can all thank the Yankees for setting the bar last yr with the Burnett signing. They over payed, and since Lackey’s better, he too is going to expect that much.
Thank the Braves for driving up the price.
Another signing that proves the Yankees are destroying baseball by trying to flat-out buy World Championships. They just drop $85,000,000 like it’s nothing. Don’t you Yankee fans care that your team is destroying the sport??
Oh, the Red Sox signed Lackey?
Yay! Excellent move by Theo!
I’m glad that someone admits the Sox are no different than the Yankees!
The Yankees are just the best at their own game.
The Red Sox are almost $80 million dollars different than the Yankees according to their ’09 salaries.
True, the Sox have the financial clout to give them a competitive advantage over most of MLB, but the Mets, Cubs, Tigers and Angels are all in the same boat. The Yankees are in their own luxury cruise ship.
The sky is falling!
Just have to sign a couple more $80 million contracts this offseason to catch up!
The Yankees spend what, $400 mil last year? Yeah, that’s completely the same as signing a pitcher.
who’s saying this is a good signing for the sox? are you from boston or a fantasy sports buff? i’m actually from boston, but i think this was a mistake of a signing. a typical move by theo to overpay a free agent. just look at jd drew, julio lugo, renteria, matt clement, etc. theo doesn’t have much success giving out big contracts. judging this deal based on the yankees signing burnett is atrocious. yankees don’t set the market value, they overpay the market value. burnett is getting paid like CC and johan, a tier higher than you’d think, and he’s def not as good.
also, jason bay asked for the same contract and theo didn’t give it to him “because of health concerns”. oh, so paying a 31 year old with elbow/shoulder concerns is the better option? if you had to predict if lackey will win 15+ games for all 5 years or bay going 25/100 for 5 years, my money’s on bay. and his numbers actually improved when we traded for vmart. ortiz isn’t a threat as protection as he used to be, and vmart will find that out this year just like bay before the sox have to make another deadline deal for a bat this season. if anyone thinks bay’s avg was low this year, check out his splits. he was hitting .290 after the vmart trade, and around .270 before it. i wonder if vmart sees that regression with only ortiz protecting him.
You’ve been listening to WEEI too much. First, Drew has been worth slightly more than what we paid him so far. Second, We let Bay go because he wasn’t that good. Third, this is not CC money. Not even close. Finally, nothing in those elbow/shoulder concerns portends any long term problems. Most pitchers miss a little bit of time during their carers. I’m sure if there was a tear, the physical would have picked it up.
Ortiz, June 2nd – end of season:
419 PA, 27 HR, .264/.356/.548.
No threat, nothing to see here.
Now let’s attack all the other wrongness of this:
- JD Drew is good. He has been our best OF each of the past 2 years.
- http://www-math.bgsu.edu/~grabine/protstudy.txt
- Three true outcome hitters like Bay regress quicker than the norm.
- Batting average is stupid
BTW Chip, 98.5 The Sports Hub is WAY worse than WEEI. They neutered T&R to a point where it’s sounds like every other morning sports show, they gave Felger and Mazz a daily show, and of course, curly-haired boyfriend has a weekend show to further pontificate his warped views of the sports world. Leave it to Shaughnessy to praise the Lackey signing as infallable. Something tells me he also owns a mac, will only buy brand name mattresses and TV’s, etc. Got to keep up with the Jones’, Shaughnessy, spend spend spend spend spend.
I actually don’t listen to WEEI or any local radio stations, nor do i read local newspapers. I’m huge on sabermetrics and stat analysis, which is why I’d actually come to a site like this. Yeah, I exaggerated that Lackey got CC money, but he’s up the range of Tim Hudson and Barry Zito among other flops. I’m obviously not making a parallel here, but his salary is where their’s are. They were paid like elite starters and don’t perform like it. As for Lackey’s health, yeah, you want to be optimistic that he’s fine. But wear and tear won’t always show immediately. Someone will be more suceptible for injury, ala Brandon Webb, who also was a workhorse much like Lackey.
Bay “wasn’t that good”? You gotta be kidding me. Both you guys who replied to me obviously didn’t carefully examine the stats. His numbers took a HUGE hit during the months of June and July. But he’s been amazing on all the other months we’ve had him. He wasn’t great at LF, but serviceable. I mean, if Epstein paid Manny $20 mil a year for 8 years, then paying Bay 16 mil for 5 years is well worth it, considering Manny was a total joke at LF. He’ll put up 30/120/.285 each year given a healthy season in a good lineup. fyi, i didn’t say Ortiz isn’t a threat…i said he isn’t a threat as protection. pitchers don’t fear Ortiz like they used to, so they will attack him rather than pitch around him.
As for Drew, do you really think a 20/70/.280 OF is worth $14 mil? I understand he plays good defense, but he isn’t in the lineup everyday and he’s a huge injury risk. He’s also the highest paid player on the roster. Joe R, if you want to talk about 3 true outcome hitters, Ortiz is just that. Funny how you post an old study on lineup protection, but only make an unsupported statement about 3 true outcome players regressing quicker, which Bay is not. OK, avg is an inaccurate indicator, then look at Bay’s OBP and SLG.
I think Lackey was a good player to acquire, but not for the money we gave him. The way the market works…the more years you want, the less money you get. Lackey is worth $17 mil a year, but if it’s 5 years, you gotta knock 2-3 mil off each year, unless you throw in incentives. This reminds me of the Yanks overpaying for Burnett, and as a Sox fan, we cringe at the thought of being compared to how the Yanks buy their team.
As of right now, the Sox are working hard to get Adrian Gonzalez to address the lack of power in the lineup. But we might have to compromise Casey Kelly or Ryan Westmoreland along with Clay to get him.
Ugh, man, just ugh.
1) Stop using batting average.
1a) Bay is a career .280 hitter
1b) Tony Perez was a .279 hitter. Jesus Alou was a .280 hitter. One of these two was a very good hitter.
2) Stop using RBI. Dave Kingman had 1210 in 7429 vs. Todd Helton’s 1202 in 7761. JD Drew has SCORED in 16% of his plate appearances with the Red Sox, if you want to use easy stats.
3) Here’s another easy to digest read: http://www.sabernomics.com/sabernomics/index.php/2008/08/manny-ortiz-and-protection/
4) Manny’s contract was bad. Epstein had nothing to do with Manny’s contract. This is a stupid point.
5) Defense matters. Lineup doesn’t matter (outside of intentional and “unintentional” walks, and since you still love you some BA/HR/RBI, that’s a moot point. Having good teammates doesn’t suddenly turn a .160 ISO into a .240.
6) It’s been proven that hitters w/ Bay’s skill set regress quicker. Guys like Jim Thome are statistical anomalies. Know how Dick Allen’s age 32 year went? .301/.375/.563, 32 HR. Sound kind of familiar? Dick Allen’s one of the best hitters ever btw.
7) No one said Bay wasn’t good in 2009. The question was his contract value and whether it’s worth ponying up the extra $ for him, and the answer is “no”. Mike Cameron is a superior defender, and we have him for less than 1/2 a year for what we’d get Bay for. And the contract ends after 2011. Now we can play around in the 2011 FA market more, and have more funds to re-sign Beckett. This is neat.
8) If Ortiz is going to “be attacked” to the tune of a .284 ISO, please AL pitchers, attack away.
9) Ortiz is a TTO hitter. Bay is a TTO hitter. In fact, Bay is MORE of a TTO hitter.
10) JD Drew was 12th in the AL in OBP. He was 12th in SLG. He was 10th in OPS. If Drew only plays 137 games, it doesn’t mean the opponent is on a friggin power play the other 25, that means Hermida plays. Drew produced 4.7 WAR in those 137 games. And do you or ANYONE ever think that Drew’s self-awareness is helping the team, rather than playing through an injury and ending up w/ a Soriano-esque wash of a season? Why can’t Drew’s production speak for itself? Here’s a partial list of guys who earned more than JD Drew in 2009:
Beltran
Lee
Ordonez
Hunter
Ichiro
Soriano
Burnett
Jason Schmidt
Guerrero
Howard
Rivera
Tejada
Berkman
And we’re bitching about how much J.D. DREW earns? How about we throw Juan Pierre in RF. He’s durable.
BTW, I’d love to hear a listing of players you’d rather have in RF. Of course, it doesn’t matter if J.D. Drew is actually good or not, what matters is that he doesn’t eat nails and iron for breakfast and break bats over his head in pregame. Because the crux of the anti-Drew argument is that he’s not intense enough and misses games, even though there’s always this fun formula:
Drew: 80% time, $14 mil salary .400/.520
Backup, 20% time, .320/.400
Total: .384/.496
Ichiro, 2009, $18 mil salary: .386/.465
So, remind me again, what’s the problem with JD Drew?
lmao…”he also owns a mac”
that’s not keeping up with the Jones’s. windows just blows. it’s proven the mac OS is so much more reliable and robust than windows. let’s not even talk about vista. marketing/advertising has blown the product into a consumer trend and hysteria. unless ppl know how to use linux or unix, windows and mac will be the primary choices.
i just love reading your posts. everything is just so coherent and flawless.
wow, just found this article somehow. forgot about this huge debate. so is Lackey still worth the money? i think the numbers explain themselves
Oh yeah, for our reading pleasure, Shaughnessy is currently getting ambushed:
http://www.boston.com/sports/baseball/redsox/articles/2009/12/15/theyre_starting_to_make_a_connection/?comments=all&plckCurrentPage=5
No reply link on your last reply, so I’m replying here.
First off, you worship Bill James like he’s God. Yeah, sabermetrics tell some of the story and is a good indicator for many stats, but isn’t the be all end all. You’re defending the Drew signing as if all of Epstein’s signings were great. Of course, great protection doesn’t miraculously make one player amazing all the sudden, but it does make a difference. You’re basically saying adding good hitters into a lineup doesn’t make another player better. Well, how good would the Cards be without Pujols, the Tigers without Mig Cabrera, etc. The better the player is on a team, the better the team is and the better the stats others put up. OK, so no Bay in the lineup. Who else is going to drive in runs, who else is going to get on base to put the pitcher in pressure situations. You can read the sabermetrics like the Holy Grail, but it doesn’t explain or predict what’s best. That’s why we play the games. If you want to stick with sabermetrics, then Bill James and Billy Beane projected Jeremy Giambi and Nick Swisher to be amazing players at a certain time in their developing careers. Epstein and other scouts projected Ellsbury to be the “next” Grady Sizemore offensively based on scouting and sabermetrics. Maybe that’s why “easy/simple” stats are what organizations and agents use to gauge a player and negotiate money. Tell me how those turned out. I’d like you to explain Julio Lugo and Edgar Renteria’s contracts. Also, how didn’t Theo have anything to do with Manny’s contract? HE’S THE GM. That statement alone was just absolutely ridiculous.
You’re almost arguing and refuting points just to find a way to make “complex” stats explain something. If computerized metrics or complex formulas were used to predict the Sox chances of coming back to beat the Yanks down 3-0 in the ’04 ALCS, then the Sox shouldn’t have even shown up to the park. If the Pats going into the Super Bowl undefeated all season were so “guaranteed” to win the Super Bowl, then how did the Giants beat them?
Next…yes, defense does matter, but let’s not forget how difficult it is to field in Fenway. LF isn’t easier just because the distance to the wall is shorter. The dimensions are awkward. It took Manny forever to get used to playing the Monster. Even Drew himself needed some time to get used to the field. His RngR and UZR were slightly below avg for a RF the first year in Boston. Take a read at this forum where ppl talked about Bay’s defense with some very good observations and some stat analysis thrown in: http://sonsofsamhorn.net/index.php?showtopic=37806
Bay seems to play a bit deeper in LF and hasn’t gotten used to the dimensions and dynamics quite yet. His range isn’t up to par, because a bit more hits fall into shallow left. Manny adjusted further in his career in Boston and his numbers somewhat got better and runners gradually respected Manny’s arm, since he was playing more shallow so the throws were shorter for him to be quicker and more accurate. 1.5 years of playing at left isn’t exactly enough time to figure out such odd dimensions. His fielding in left is as good as Jim Rice, Mike Greenwell, and close to Yaz. So he isn’t quite a “DH playing OF” as Buster Olney has been reporting and telling all scouts.
This is becoming a long, dragged out argument about why we didn’t re-sign Bay and why Drew is worth the money. The point was that the same contract was either for Bay or Lackey. Both were asking for it, and the Sox went for Lackey. I’m assuming Epstein was thinking he probably had the pitching prospects to give up to get a good bat, like Mig Cabrera or AGonz. Studies have shown that pitchers are more likely to regress in statistics with age than hitters, hence my point about Bay instead of Lackey. We would end up paying Cabrera and AGonz big money anyways. Bay would be cheaper than them and play a position we need offensive production from. We could trade for a SP or wait til next year to sign another free agent SP like Webb or Cliff Lee. It would def be a smaller package to get webb/lee instead of migs/agonz if we traded. Since we went the Lackey route and if we don’t get a deal done, what hitters can we sign next year? Berkman? he’s old and will be overpriced. Carlos Pena? He’s a TRUE 3 true outcome hitter.
This debate can go on forever. But your condescending explanation does no justice in validating Theo’s decisions. Sure, I use HR/RBI/avg, and that seems too “easy”. But “Theo had nothing to do with Manny’s contract. and it’s stupid” is real convincing. try giving an objective argument without contradicting what you criticize in someone else’s argument. and then there’s your use of studies with small sample sizes.
Oh my God you are either a troll or the biggest idiot ever.
DUQUETTE signed Manny Ramirez. Theo Epstein had NOTHING to do with the Manny Ramirez contract. He INHERITED it.
Some of the story? Have you ever bothered to run a linear regression? 7 Simple Results (1B, 2B, 3B, HR, BB, HBP, Out) provide 95% visibility into team run production according to a simple linear regression and it’s r-squared value. There’s not much that’s mystical about run production.
Jesus Christ, lineup protection is a myth. Protection exists only in the weak form of the fact that a good hitter behind a good hitter allows the first good hitter to avoid pitch-arounds. Who hits behind Youkilis will not be the difference between him hitting like Mark Teixeira or James Loney.
Did you read Moneyball? First off, Jeremy Giambi was not a demigod to Beane, he was a good cost-efficient solution. Nick Swisher was also highly coveted and he’s been a very good player. Oh yeah, BEANE TRADED GIAMBI LESS THAN 2 MONTHS INTO 2002.
When did Jacoby Ellsbury become a sabermetric darling? Did I miss this?
Edgar and Julio were terrible contracts. I said they were bad. Theo’s not perfect. I never defended Theo for these contracts. You’re inventing a point.
Oh my God, did you seriously name the two biggest statistical anomalies of the decade to make a point? STATISTICS ARE NOT INFALLABLE. THE REASON FOR STATISTICS IS TO GET PEOPLE AS CLOSE TO THE REAL TRUTH AS POSSIBLE.
Think Bay’s better in LF than I give him credit for? Okay, maybe you’re right. Still don’t think he’s the cost-efficient solution to Cameron, but fair. Of course, if Jim Rice is the gold standard of Red Sox LF defense, that may be why it took 86 years for us to finally win a WS.
And you’ve totally missed a lot of what I said. I NEVER said I didn’t want Bay back. I simply said the price isn’t right. I think the Lackey deal is iffy. And Berkman/Pena, well, yes they are TTO hitters. I’d still approve of signing them if it’s not for a massive 4-5 year contract.
But seriously, you realize Manny signed before, like, the 2001 season, right? Theo was still two years away from the organization. Should we blame Theo for the Carl Everett contract, too? Jesus Christ.
wow, you admitted “stats are not infallable” after trying to throw stats and studies at me only to prove YOUR pts and invalidate mine. why don’t you take your own advice rather than making a 2 faced argument. yeah, stats are created to get close to the real truth. i never said they weren’t. but then you go and state your stats/studies and act like it’s 100% real. who are you exactly to judge what stats are legit and what aren’t. get real man. way to twist what you say in your favor and spin someone else’s to be false.
yes, i was mistaken about theo’s responsibility for manny’s contract. it feels like a long time since theo has taken over. but honestly, he would’ve asked for that contract from any team, so he was going to get paid that or close to it from someone.
you finally addressed my main point about Bay and Lackey. try to stay to the point and not go off on some random tangent about some minute detail (aka if drew is worth 14 mil). sure, i agree cameron is cost-efficient for his package of his bat and glove. theo has a way of bringing in good value to the sox in smaller contracts.
you really need to chill with trying to refute the most trivial words, just to flex your knowledge. you act like you know all there is to know about baseball and what’s legit and what’s not. give me a break, chump
Strawmaning again, Winson, strawmaning again. What two-faced argument? There is no factual evidence to lineup protection. It could exist, but not to a level as indicated statistically.
He asked for it, doesn’t mean it was a good contract.
If you may recall, YOU were the one to lump JD Drew’s contract in with the clunkers of Renteria, Lugo, and Clement. Clement, btw, never had durability issues, crap happens and there was no reason to think he’d fall off by year 2 of the deal. I don’t like this deal much either, but it’s not CC money. It’s also frontloaded so we’re not paying $17 mil when we have 36 year old Lackey.
And then the closing of calling me chump. Thanks, bro, really. I mean, it must take a real e-badass to learn the correct use of statistics, and its real world applications, rather than just going all Buzz Bissinger. You couldn’t even remember who signed Manny Ramirez (I mean, that wasn’t covered and documented on ESPN when it happened, and the guy it followed isn’t a well known figure whose firing in 2003 has been chronicled as well, right?), and seem to think that Matt Clement is an equal strike on Theo as Julio Lugo, so why should one even care what you think about Theo Epstein’s job performance? Because it’s been very good, with errors, but very good.
Yes, I did clump JD Drew with Lugo and Renteria. And I still stand by that statement. He’s insanely overpaid. We can debate that all day. You have yet to explain how he is even remotely worth $14 mil, as opposed to how he’s been a useful player. No doubt he’s had his uses, but that contract is a joke. And sabermetrics isn’t even one of the biggest factors to how contracts are even negotiated. Baseball, like all sports and companies, are a business.
If you want to be real objective about this argument, go look up the 2007 salaries of all outfielders. The 5th highest paid OF and what did he prove before signing it? That he can play more than 135 games in only 4 out of his 8 major league seasons. Only hit 20+ HRs and over .290 3 times in those seasons. I mean, what stats would you use to gauge a player for a contract? Those stats alone tell me he’s an injury risk and pretty inconsistent. Sure, factor in his SLG and OBP. He doesn’t even hit that many doubles for someone who seems to have such “good” plate discipline. I’d rather have a hitters with a .300 avg and .370 obp than someone with a .280 avg and .390 obp. I can’t believe I’m using avg to defend an argument, since I also think it’s a misleading indicator much like you, but hits are what makes things happen. You get more extra bases that way, and base runners have a better chance to take another base as opposed to a walk.
He was paid almost as much as Abreu who was also greatly overpaid. His contract was signed in Philly and the Yanks inherited it. That year, Drew earned more than Beltran, Mags, Ichiro, Carlos Lee, Soriano, etc. If anything, you could claim his value might’ve been similar to Brian Giles and Jim Edmonds, who earned 10 mil a year. Giles and Edmonds actually have performed year after year for a certain period. Drew has done squat. His contract is as high as Abreu and Vernon Wells, yet he hasn’t even had an all-star appearance or a Gold Glove like the both of them. And those 2 guys are making 3-5 mil more than they should be. This contract was simply almost a way for the Sox to sign an OF with a similar salary to an OF on the Yankees.
Contract negotiations have so much to do with politics, the year you’re coming off, your age, the current free agent market, the player’s progression, accolades, awards, recognition, scouting, etc. You can’t even use the Yankees as an example of fair market value, because they ALWAYS overpay. Even the contracts of players coming from other countries, such as Ichiro and Dice-K, because teams are in a bidding war for these players. The way the business works is players in free agent try to make more money than the last guy on his tier, driving up market values altogether. This partially explains the insane salary inflations for baseball players in the last decade.
You talk about cost-efficient players, yet Drew is not even close to cost efficient. He had a pretty good 09. But his first 2 years were average at best. Go look at his 2008 splits. He had one 12 HR month and a couple postseason HRs. Without that month, his aggregate numbers would look atrocious. It took him 3 years to finally put up a slightly above average offensive season. And you’ll counter with “defense matters too”, but guess what, hardly ever has defense dictated contract negotiations. It’s always been the final stats that count most. Unless you are the best defensive player in the league (Torii Hunter) or have the best intangibles/leadership (Jeter), then you would yield a very high contract. And even then, they are overpaid.
As much as you want to justify it with any complex stats or reasoning, there’s nothing that can explain how JD Drew is worth $14 million, which was signed back in 2007. You’re not so cost-efficient as you claim. We’d be in trouble if you were to run the Red Sox, any company, or the US economy. I bet you also defend President Obama’s ridiculous multi-trillion dollar Stimulus Packages and Healthcare Plans too. Talk about wasteful spending.
Winson, read this:
http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/j-d-drews-contract Drew’s value the past 3 years
And please keep politics out of the discussion. There’s plenty of places to go and discuss Obama’s stimulus & health care plan, but this is not one of them. Stick to baseball.
I’ll once again draw to fangraphs, which blah blah blah it’s nerdy, but it’s better than anecdotal backing ($ spent in free agency dividing by expected WAR of the FA class, toughie)
Pre-Sox:
$4.6
$6.9
$25.7 (flukey 04)
$9.7
$16.1
Sox:
$5.6
$18.7
$21.1
Playing time / durability matters, but you’re overrating is, plain and simple. Example:
RB A playing for a football team. 13 games, 1500 yards rushing, 20 rushes / game (260 total), 5.77 YPC
RB B, same team, same talent level. 16 games, 1400 yards rushing, 20 rushes / game (320 total), 4.38 YPC
Is RB better simple because he played more?
And yes, no crap WAR doesn’t rule the roost in contract talk, but stats like it are starting to bear more fruit. Media perception and politics will ALWAYS have something to do with contract talk.
I’m convinced you’re trying to troll, because no one can have such a fundamental misunderstanding of the FA market. Of course FA’s are more expensive than farmed players, all good FA’s are a rip off. Because there’s no opportunity cost to them except money.
If you acquire a guy in a draft or an international fa signing, it’s cheap, but you don’t know what you’re getting.
If you acquire a guy via trade, you’re probably paying him less than you would if acquired via FA, but you need to lose other helpful assets to acquire it.
In FA, you generally know what a guy can do and pay accordingly.
And tell me, what would you have done in Free Agency in 2006-07? Soriano? Lee? Maybe sign a bench player?
And remove a month from Drew’s season and damn him for the rest of it? What kind of bullshit is that? That month in question, he OPS’d 1.309. He helped keep the team afloat during a lull for the rest of the guys.
And now we’re comparing Drew to Abreu and Hunter based on the subjective criteria of writers? Abreu is a bad defender, but we credit him because no one cared enough to give Geoff Jenkins the GG. Hunter’s an okay defender, but has a career OPS+ of 107. Drew, who apparently is worse than Hunter, has a 129. That’s the same gap between Eddie Murray and Carl Everett.
Wells is earning WAY more. Just because Edmonds was a better contract doesn’t mean Drew is a bad contract. I NEVER argued Drew is cheap. I argued that his contract is appropriate given his playing time and production. Edmonds was underrated in his career. This is not a black mark on JD Drew.
For one last point:
J.D. Drew, career, total: .283/.392/.504
J.D. Drew, career, RISP: .280/.411/.496
Same guy, pretty much. So sorry, J.D. Drew is good. Sorry, he’s been one of our best players the past 2 seasons. And sorry we didn’t sign Carlos Lee or Alfonso Soriano or someone more Winson approved.
If Drew’s contract is bad, then what about dozens of other highly paid, less productive guys? And the Dodgers paid him $11.4 mil in 2006, so it’s not like Theo was the only guy who wanted to have him on his ballclub.
Now back to Lackey. Yes, he’s expensive. Sorry, that’s how free agency works.
How could you compare football with baseball in terms of contracts? Yes, your point about those hypothetical stats are correct. That I’m not refuting. But if he doesn’t play all the time, you can’t still pay him or even assume/extrapolate the stats and give him that kind of contract. Football contracts are actually negotiated alot more fairly than baseball, because of salary caps and incentive/performance driven contracts. Baseball has no salary cap and the incentives are few. Loads of guarenteed long-term money. You’re basically concluding that the baseball free agent system works well and fine.
Yeah, i agree that media perception and baseball politics play into why a player is signed for how much he is. And it’s not like I only approve Carlos Lee or Soriano. You need to realize that the more money you sign a player, the more the owner is expecting in return in profits for signing that player….NOT JUST WINS. who puts the fans on the seats, obviously the players who make amazing plays and throws up crazy stats. i’m not defending Manny for his $20 mil contract, but he alone brings so much more revenue for fans to come to watch him, for fans around the country to tune in and pay for Sox and Manny-specific jerseys and merchandise. Manny puts up crazy stats and he has mass appeal. Why do you think A-Rod was getting paid so much in Texas even though they couldn’t win. He brought the fans and the money. Do you want to tell me where JD Drew ranks in jersey sales each year? That’s what I mean about baseball being a business.
You can use WAR all you want to explain how much a player gets paid, but how about the other anomalies in the list for the 2009 season, such as Franklin Gutierrez (5.9), Nyjer Morgan (4.9), Jason Bartlett (4.8), Felipe Lopez (4.6), Marco Scutaro (4.5), etc. Based on your justification, then all these guys deserve $14 mil a year too, huh? You yourself said that “lackey is expensive” and it’s “how free agency works”. Well, don’t you think that the overinflated salaries and the incredibly flawed free agent and payroll system of baseball is skewing the final values of WAR? This calculation is a product of a flawed system, meaning it’s unreliable.
When it’s all said and done, owners and agents look at the bottom line for a player, how much money he generated for the team and how his cumulative stats look. The cumulative stats is what they use to determine if he can help the team win as well.
If you want to pay Drew $14 mil for 120 games a year with subpar final year stats, good for you. Also, the Dodgers paid Drew when he had those good years with them. Drew has yet to even duplicate that production in Boston. Edmonds wasn’t “underrated”. He was a fan fav and he got a fat contract back in 2000 for it.
I read that other link the guy posted above your reply about Drew’s contract, and you defended him as if he was a Hall of Famer. There’s no point in arguing with someone who thinks JD Drew is a Hall of Famer. Yes, it takes intelligence to understand and interpet the stats, but it takes common sense to actually know when to take these stats to the bank (no pun intended). You can’t always take the stats as 100% proof or explanation. That’ll forever be the downfall to stat junkies. Trust me, I’m a quantitative kind of guy when it comes to everything…sports, stocks, personal finances, etc. And from playing fantasy sports and watching real sports, I’ve come to realize that stats don’t always reveal the whole truth.
http://baseballanalysts.com/archives/2009/12/wins_above_repl.php
take a read at that about how WAR and salaries are correlated.
1) Read it. Also, that was the definition of salary values as explicitly told by me from Tom Tango.
2) You realize that just made my point, correct? Using the dummy-variable multi-year, a 4-WAR per year player’s multi-year contract per year going rate was $22.45 million a year. So, that pretty much says we’re paying Drew like a 2.4-2.5 WAR guy. Drew’s practically doubling that. So…what’s the problem?
Either you’re missing the econometric conclusion, or not understanding it.
However, I’d love to see what a Multiplicative, unbiased regression analysis yields on that
I think you’re legit refusing to interpret or carefully read my points about anything. I said and everyone acknowleges baseball has a flawed free agent and payroll system. You are really taking all these metrics like it’s set in stone. No wonder some organizations can make some dumb decisions to prematurely lock up players for big time money. You completely just took numbers/stats favorable to your argument to validate it. Like I said, what about Nyjer Morgan, Marco Scutaro, Felipe Lopez, etc, who scored similarly or better? The WAR on non-elite players will vary so much from year to year for. You only looked for numbers that worked for your argument, but you failed to even realize the theory behind that article, which said that the current salary of a player and WAR are not remotely correlated, meaning WAR is also a misleading indicator. Yes, I understand the mathematical conclusions of WAR in general, and Drew specifically. But I’m saying WAR is not a completely reliable and accurate indicator. Those WAR values are sooo ridiculous. Drew had a higher WAR than A-Rod last year, A-Rod even had better numbers than Drew with 10 fewer games. Zobrist had the top WAR last year at 8.9. Do you really really think he’s more valuable and should be paid more than A-Rod, Pujols, Mauer, Utley? I stand corrected. You can continue to use unreliable data and stats to justify yourself. Go right ahead. This is like talking to a brick wall. Keep taking all these stats literally.
Man, talk about “stats are not infallable”. You’re doing exactly that. Hence, my point about you making 2-faced arguments. You criticized me for using the “2 biggest stat anomalies” of the decade. BUT didn’t you know fielding rating for WAR is calculated with UZR? Do I need to spell out to you how 2-faced this argument is? You can’t even oblige to your own criticism to make your own points. Now, you’re exactly proving me correct. How you like them apples
Please don’t spell out anything else. You are the most long-winded recent troll as it is. And no one is claiming that stats are infallible, simply that some stats are better than others and that there are better and worse ways to *use* even the good ones. You can’t say that Zobrist, Gutierrez, and Scutaro had nice WAR totals in ’09 but no one would pay them based on those numbers, so WAR must be flawed. It’s one year. No one claims those players are all guaranteed to duplicate their win values (or should get paid as though they will), just as no one argues that Aaron Hill, Jayson Werth, and Michael Cuddyer will definitely hit more homers in 2010 than Ryan Braun, Chase Utley, and A-Rod just because they did in 2009. That’s a silly way to use any statistic. Should we change the way we calculate home runs to prevent noise?
In the 3 years before he signed with the Sox, JD Drew produced an average of 5 WAR per season. So, yes, it made sense to give him $14M per *at the time of the signing*. In his 3 years with the Sox, he has contributed enough WAR to justify slightly more than the $42M he has been paid. So, yes, it still makes sense. If you want to pick on WAR, choose another player.
Sure, you asked for another player, I got you one. Check out Freddie Sanchez 05-07. That’s a nice 3-year sample for you, like you asked. His WAR is 3.9 on avg. But seriously take a good look at his numbers that year and tell me how he should earn $10 mil a year back then. Now look at Vlad’s WAR for that same 3-year span, 3.9. But that’s a complete JOKE how this explains they should both be earning the same salary or even worth the same or make the same impact in those 3 seasons. Vlad came off an MVP season in 04, and you’re telling me his next 3 years were the same as Freddie friggin Sanchez the following 3 years. Must I say more.
Also, how in the world does Mark Teixiera have a lower WAR than Drew from 04-06. Just look at the stats and explain to me how that’s possible. You can’t just assume Drew will double his stats if he didn’t miss half a season in 05. Even look at Teix’s last 3 seasons from 07-09 and compare it to 04-06. The first 3 seasons were definitely better than the latter 3, but how is the WAR for the latter 3 higher? Compare both their 04 seasons. Both their stats were incredible, but how is Drew’s WAR twice as high as Teix’s that year? I know WAR weighs OBP pretty heavily, but realistically, you can’t possibly think Drew was worth twice the value for that one year just because his OBP was .060 higher than Teix.
I could go on forever to show you more issues with WAR. Don’t get me wrong, I actually really like the sabermetrics that come out year after year and its improving accuracy, but it’s not fool proof like Joe R and all these hardcore stat junkies are making it. I appreciate the work you quant folks do, because I’m actually going to school for stock/equity valuations, and you guys would prob know how much crazy quant is involved in that. But I mean, sometimes you have to take some of the misleading info and anomalies with a grain of salt, otherwise you’ll be left wondering what went wrong when you were just blinded by the stats. You need to have some discretion and judgment before you go in fully trusting any numbers.
You already have. Not only have you spent hundreds of words to say something others could manage in a few dozen, you’ve talked right past the points your critics are making. Worse, you’re boring. I realize you must really, really love your writing to want to share so much of it with the rest of us but, please stop. We can’t handle such an overflowing gift. We’re not worthy. Pour it onto someone else.
Most boring, yet entertaining troll ever.
I love his ability to baselessly ascribe statements, and then go into attack mode. I mean, it’s totally original. I’m surprised he hasn’t used any 4chan memes to be wicked hilarious and original.
Winson is like every bad sportswriter FJM used to mock.
Tried to lump Drew into the bad contract group out of media-induced bile for him, tried to prove his point using basic stats, failed, tried to bash “stat geeks” for saying and believing things that they didn’t, using convoluted and crazyperson logic.
Jon Heyman would be proud.
If you read some of my examples and thought logically, maybe you’d actually consider whether it’s possibly a credible point. Rather, you were quick to “attack” the second someone or anyone merely questions the accuracy or validity of a metric. The Freddie Sanchez and Vlad case clearly shows some flaws. Some players somehow just are an anomaly, or the metric isn’t 100% trustworthy. Too bad you guys are more trusting of these stat than the sun rising in the morning each day. Sure, I was long-winded. But if it’s a forum. If you don’t like it, you could choose to not read it. And I actually can quote the numerous times you were a hypocrite in your very own posts. Not to mention your other replies on loads of other posts on this site. Regular fans don’t come to this site. Legit baseball and stat junkies do, so if I was some media-bile consumed fan, I wouldn’t be here wasting my time, which I already have.
one person calling another crazy, while he goes out and says “JD Drew will be a Hall of Famer”. i rest my case.
When did I say JD Drew will be a Hall of Famer?
If you’re going to troll, can you please do it right, for the kids?
BTW, for 2009, the standard percent error on WAR was 8.69%. No team fell outside 2 standard deviations of their expected WAR. It’s an effective statistic. And the MUP error term slope is .958, with a standard deviation of .134, which doesn’t disprove a slope of 1 and disproves a slope of 0.
this is off topic, and i’d like to veer away from the drew debate for this one point. but you mentioned that drew would make a “hall of fame” case and that he could be measured up to jim rice, who was somewhat of a sad case of an entry to the hall. the hall has some ambiguous ways to judge if a player is HOF worthy, whether they reach certain milestones, dominated a decade/10-year period, were amongst the top of their era relative to their peers, played years of Gold Glove defense, etc.
but the general argument by MLB and the Hall was that he was one of the top players of his era, between 1975-1985. now, there were other players who had similar situations, where they played really well in half of 2 decades, ie Dick Allen ’65-’75 and Rocky Colavito ’55-’65. is there a way to measure their Win Shares relative to other’s in their respective “decades”. the numbers for the even decades (70s, 80s, 90s, etc) are readily available online, but those other decades would be interesting to look at.
if rice was elected for that reason, then they’re prob leaving out some other ppl. but then the HOF wouldn’t even appear so selective and elite if more ppl came in for other scenarios of their career. the point of making the hall is being among the best all-time, not relative to the time period you played.
From 2005 to 2007, Sanchez’s defense was worth an extra win on average (plus he gets a few runs more for playing 2B). Vlad’s defense, including the adjustment for a RF/DH was worth about *negative* 1.7 wins on average. That means his bat had to make up almost 3 wins per season. That’s why their values were similar across that time span. It’s no big mystery. And no one is saying they should have gotten paid the same amount, given their differing amounts of service time, their teams’ payrolls, etc. That’s not how one should use WAR. It’s about how much teams should expect to pay *free agents* to contribute a certain number of wins – for example, to replace a Sanchez or Guerrero and not miss a beat.
With that example in mind, folks can probably figure out Drew vs Teixeira for themselves.
I’m still trying to figure out when I mentioned Jim Rice or JD Drew for the Hall, too.
it was on the post about Drew’s contract. someone posted the link to it further up. forgot to mention that. you were saying that drew has a case, since rice is the lower baseline with a couple other guys.
you think that kind of study i mentioned above could be done easily?
To MBD, then what about Torii Hunter’s fielding in the last 8 years. his fielding based on UZR is only positive for 2 out of 8 years, but he’s won 9 straight gold gloves. either UZR is off like i hinted or he’s really that average or bad at CF. and no one in their right mind thinks torii is anything else less than an elite fielder.
I said hypothetical argument and recanted.
And Win Shares aren’t readily available online outside of a few years of THT data (from what I know), so from the acheivement viewpoint of the Hall of Fame, aka the more traditional method of election (which is usually fine as guys who achieve a lot of feats are usually excellent players), just use the Black/Grey link tests on b-r.
Black Ink Batting – 33 (51), Average HOFer ? 27
Gray Ink Batting – 176 (58), Average HOFer ? 144
Hall of Fame Monitor Batting – 144 (91), Likely HOFer ? 100
Hall of Fame Standards Batting – 43 (124), Average HOFer ? 50
As much as I have a distaste for Jim Rice, he definitely passes the superficial test with flying colors, and there’s still value in those numbers. .300 hitters with that amount of HR usually end up faring well in a historical view, even though I’m stunned Matt Williams got the shank on the ballot the way he did (.317 OBP sure, but 378 HR, .221 ISO, and was a great defender in both perseption and actuality).
Torii Hunter is an aesthetically pleasing CF, and it’s fine to appreciate that. Most people do. But, when it comes to covering ground and catching the balls in his area, his spectacular jumps and dives don’t make up for the fact that he doesn’t get to more than his share of balls and in some seasons gets to fewer than the average CF. That’s what UZR is telling us, and those balls hitting the ground and rolling to the wall count. So many people in their right minds think he’s about average at preventing runs. That’s valuable, but he’s not an elite defensive CF.
I’m looking over team WAR values, and somehow the Indians last year were 13th although having the 4th worst record. They even placed above the Cards (15th) who had the 6th best record. Not sure how you can explain this once again.
I think Torii Hunter is another anomaly of the flawed UZR metric. How has he played WORSE defense than Manny in the last 2 years? Granderson is an amazing defensive player, but UZR suggests his last 2 years were awful while the 2 years prior to that were awesome. There’s still so much UZR has not considered. There’s ALOT of assumptions and subjectivity in determining what a hit ball can be classified as, like what type of batted ball (flyball or line drive) or how hard the ball is hit (slow, med, fast).
People have different interpretations of what a ball might be. Unless those are quantified like what angle the ball is hit and what speed the ball flies off the bat, then once again, these results aren’t exactly reliable. The calculation also includes Base/Out Situation, but that assumes every batter is the same for each situation, which is far from accurate. The fielder’s stationary point before the play will change depending on the hitter (ie. pull/opposite field hitter)
Let’s not forget all the other factors that directly impact a fielder’s outcomes, such as where in his zone he stands prior to the play, how fast he runs, his height/reach. This could possibly explain how/why Ellsbury might have a terrible UZR because he has to compensate for a terrible LF, so he needs to shift over or cover more ground, which in turn hurts his numbers in the CF zones. Maybe something more accurate is determining the distance the fielder must cover to reach the ball at the amount of time the ball is in flight. The wind may also be a factor.
Please don’t interpret this as me trying to refute the validity and usefulness of UZR. I am not presenting an argument about why “UZR is unreliable or sucks”. I’m being a contrarian to show how it could be improved. Hence why its correlation is not yet in high confidence levels, not to mention that even alot of newer, complex hitting and pitching metrics also don’t have high correlations.
Easy to explain, Hunter v. Manny.
Hunter has been -29.8 UZR since 2006. That’s kind of expected, since center fielding ability usually is going in the wrong direction by that time (not to mention playing on turf probably doesn’t help the longevity). He’s played 4,717 2/3 Innings of CF since 2006, or 524.185 games worth. So project that out to 150 games, and he’s been about -8.5 UZR/150. CF is more difficult than LF, though, so that’s about the same as a +1.5 UZR/150 LF’r. Also, the peers of Hunter are far more difficult than the peers of Ramirez defensively, and yes, absolutely nothing can change in a player’s ability or actual performance, and his UZR can fluctuate due to better performances from other guys. UZR is a weird stat in that way and hard to explain without a PBP index handy and a 5,000 word essay per player, but it’s still better than the eye check.
As a Sox fan, that’s basically what’s going on with Ellsbury. His instincts stink. Instincts matter more in CF than LF. Hence his current UZR gap. Neither one is too big a sample, though.
I think UZR fluctuations also look more severe than they really are due to the baseline of average, while batting stats usually are baselined at replacement. Say an average 1B is expected to have a 90 RC score in a 162 game season. One year he gets 100, next year he gets 85. Instead of maybe measuring on a replacement baseline of +28 and +13, I use an average baseline and say +10 and -5. The confusion is, negatives immediately imply badness. It doesn’t. It just means sub-average relative to the current standard of the position. The standard is pretty high right now in CF, and the middle IF spots.
UZR isn’t perfect, obviously. Example, if you use the 1B defensive valuation method Bill James uses on his write up for Keith Hernandez in the 2001 Abstract, Mark Teixeira checks out to be a very good defensive 1B. UZR, Dewan, FRAA, what have you say average to slightly below average. Eyes say above average. Where’s the truth? I’m not sure. But I’m willing to say that in most instances, I’ll put more weight in what thousands of hours of research tells me over BBTN’s Web Gems.
There’s a little formula I like to use to compare pitchers; it basically translates performance in FIP, xFIP, and ERA over the past 3 years into a simple number of runs–from ERA–over or under the average of FIP and xFIP. I ran the numbers on Beckett, Lackey, Halladay, Lee, and the man with the same contract as Lackey, Burnett.
I discovered some interesting things. Beckett has allowed 20 ERs more than his peripherals would suggest over the past three years, which says “really nice season coming up” to me, given a little better luck. Lackey has been 30 runs luckier than his FIP/xFIP account for the past three years…he could be due for a downturn, especially entering a stronger division in a smaller park. Halladay was 20 runs better than his peripherals suggested, but even at his projected level, he’s better than any of the others. Lee’s numbers are thrown off by his atrocious 2007. Burnett…well, he was a funny surprise. At exactly 0 runs of difference, Burnett has been literally the same pitcher that my FIP/xFIP-amalgam predicted he would be.
In terms of best peripherals, Halladay leads the pack, followed by Beckett, then Lee, then Lackey, then Burnett. So while Lee had a terrible 2007, his 3-year numbers still beat Lackey. And Lackey is better than his contract-mate, Burnett. However, everyone but Beckett is predicted for a downfall by my metric.
We’ll just have to see–the formula may need tweaking. I just thought the results were worth sharing.
The Red Sox apparently frontloaded Lackey’s contract a bit, $3.5M signing bonus, $18M next season, $15.25M a year after that.
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