Do the Media and Blogosphere owe Omar an apology?
by Stephen Schmidt on Feb 9, 2010 8:28 PM EST
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Every morning I turn on my laptop and can find a fresh article offering their take on the Mets GM. Joel Sherman seems to have a one a day quota of Omar hit pieces to reach, and even the normally more analytical folks at Fangraphs have gotten in on the fun. While it's amusing, it is really starting to show in a generally angry fan base who's anger may not be entirely deserved. In a recent article, Fangraphs has established the current going rate per win share at 3.56 million for position players and 3.42 million for pitchers, and those figures will be important throughout this post.
Before the offseason got rolling, both Ted Berg and I called for Omar to avoid the temptation to move prospects to fill the holes in the Mets roster. To date, the only trade Omar has completed has been sending Brian Stokes to the Angels for Gary Matthews Jr, so mission accomplished on that front. Matthews is costing the Mets one million dollars, and CHONE values him at -0.1 WAR. Using the numbers above which Fangraphs have provided, Gary Matthews is being overpaid to the tune of 1.36 million dollars. Those dollars could certainly have been spent better, but it is hardly an overly damaging move. So for his one trade this offseason, Omar has wasted 1.36 million compared to what someone of similar value should have cost on the open market.
Omar has signed 7 players from the free agent market to major league contracts. These include Chris Coste, Jason Bay, Henry Blanco, Fernando Tatis, Kelvim Escobar, Alex Cora, and Ryoto Igarashi. Igarashi was signed to a 2 year 3 million dollar deal, but has no projections available due to the fact that he's never thrown a major league pitch. For the purposes of this discussion, I'm going to avoid trying to put a value on his production due to the fact that we really have no idea what to expect, so he won't be covered beyond this. It's worth noting that he's being paid 1.25 million for this season, and is one of only 3 players the Mets acquired that will still be guaranteed a contract with the club next season.
Bay was the big move, being signed to a 4 year deal that guarantees 66 million. For the purposes of 2010, Bay is being paid 15 million dollars, and CHONE projects him to be worth 4 wins. Using the 3.56 million per win figure that we have, Jason Bay should be paid 14.24 million for this season. That results in a net value of -0.76 million dollars. Fairly close to his projected value, so any real criticisms of the deal will likely result from the latter years of it (which has been heavily debated several times on this site).
We had a large hole at the catcher position (which we tried to fill with a very large man), and Omar has given major league contracts to two players. Chris Coste will receive 0.65 million, and Henry Blanco has a 0.75 million dollar contract with possible incentives (which are broken down at Cot's). For this exercise I'm going to assume that Blanco will earn 1 million after the incentives are added. CHONE projects Coste at 0.7 wins, making his projected value 2.49 million. The projected surplus value of his contract is 1.84 million, so this looks like a nice little move. Blanco is projected to be worth 1 win, which would be worth 3.56 million. Blancos surplus value is a neat 2.56 million, meaning Omar has made two nice moves in the catching dept, and has likely covered his tracks if one doesn't produce.
Omar also signed two bench parts, although both were with the team last year. Alex Cora was given 2 million dollars, and is expected to be exactly replacement level. That's a net waste of 2 million. Fernando Tatis will be paid 1.5 million for his projected 0.5 WAR (which I feel may be low after his last two seasons). That would make his value 1.78 million and a .28 million dollar surplus value.
Kelvim Escobar was the only free agent pitcher Omar gave a major league deal to outside of Igarashi. Fangraphs doesn't have CHONE projections for pitchers, but they do have Fan projections. The fans value Escobar at 1.4 WAR. For the purpose of this discussion, I'll cut that number in half. Escobar was also given a fairly incentive laden deal, so I'll assume he ends up earning 2.75 million when the season plays out, which would be fair for a 0.7 win season. Using the valuations of pitchers win shares, Escobar should have been worth 2.39 million dollars. That would leave the Mets overpaying by a sum of 0.36 million.
Without including Matthews (we'll add him in a bit), Omar has spent 22.9 million dollars on the free agent market while receiving a projected value of 24.46 million dollars. That gives us a surplus value of 1.56 million dollars, which indicates that Omar Minaya has actually been 6.8% more efficient than the average major league GM in the current free agent market (hardly "contest" worthy). If we include Matthews into the numbers, we see Omars surplus value drop to 0.2 million, and Omar is still operating at a slightly more efficient rate than the rest of the GM's in this market (still not really "contest" worthy).
Now I don't want to be accused of saying Minaya has done a great job this offseason, as there is still a gaping hole in the rotation along with several question marks in the lineup. At this point the team looks like it should be a fringe contender, and the Wild Card is much more realistic than the division, and adding one top starter would go a long way towards improving that. What Omar has done this offseason is act in a quietly efficient manner and not touch the farm system at all, which might be the right approach while we wait to get out from under a few bad contracts. He hasn't added enough in future payroll that we shouldn't be involved in the free agent market in 2011, and he has certainly done right by the farm system this winter. Had this same offseason been had by any other franchise, it would probably be drawing praise from the media and blogosphere as a whole. Omar could clearly have done more, but what he has done has generally been positive as a whole. Without knowing the exact budget constraints set by the Wilpons, I really find many of the criticisms I've been hearing unwarranted.
As an aside, if anyone knows how to import a spreadsheet from excel, I do have one to add...
This FanPost was contributed by a member of the community and was not subject to any vetting or approval process. It does not necessarily reflect the opinions, reasoning skills, or attention to grammar and usage rules held by the editors of this site.
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The Bay deal is pretty bad
I agree Bay won’t hurt the Mets this year, but it does hurt them in the future. I don’t know how that is any better than trading away a decent prospect, and losing future value in that way.
I agree though that all of those other minor moves don’t amount to much. And it seems that every little move gets criticized. I actually think Cora was a better signing than Tatis, and that CHONE has those wrong. A healthy Cora will be better than last year, while I doubt Tatis will be as good. I also think Francoeur will be worth 1.5 WAR, reasonable for his salary. And that the Blanco/Coste tandem is maybe being under rated as well.
My big complaint though, other than the Bay overpay, is the opportunities missed.
Here are some of the free agent sigings, along with each player’s WAR last season (using statcorner rather than fangraphs for the pitchers, because I prefer tRA to FIP) :
WAR name contract
5.3 Pineiro 2/16
4.3 Cameron 2/15
2.4 Byrd 3/15
1.2 (3.8 in 2007) Crisp 1/5.25
2.4 Johnson 1/5.75
2.4 LaRoche 1/4.5
4.5 Scutaro 2/12.5
- (2.8 in 2008) Duchsherer 1/1.75 (w/ incentives up to 5.6)
2.2 Marquis 2/15
0.5 - Hawkins 2/7.5
2.9 Uribe 1/3.25
2.9 Hudson 1/5.0
This is a market where, in low risk short term deals, you could have easily added 12.0 wins this year for about $30M, if you had a need for an above average SP, 2 above average outfielders, an above average 1B, and a good defensive 2B.
I have problem with filling out the bench and bullpen with the kind of guys Omar signed for those roles. But, they missed out on a lot of cheap starting caliber players at positions of need, who they could have afforded had they gone in a different direction than Bay.
I do think Omar is a middling GM. But most of his critics would be as bad, or worse. I’d much rather see him criticized for spending on Bay, when he could have had Joel Pineiro, Coco Crisp, and Juan Uribe all for the same $16M, with no long term contracts. But I’m not seeing too many of these critics making this point.
I've been going back and forth on the Bay/Holliday thing for some time now.
On the one hand, I’m pleased with Bay from the standpoint that even if his fielding continues to decline at the rate it has, his bat will likely still play in the middle of the lineup for the majority of his contract. I really don’t see his UZR output dropping to Adam Dunn levels of performance, so I really question whether he will follow the general trend laid out in the book and be worth only 2 wins by the end of his deal. He likely will not be worth 16 million in 2013 (although it is possible), but he’ll likely still have significant positive value. I think that will always be the unfortunate truth to signing the best players on the market.
I really believe that in this economy, the 7 year deal to Holliday would be the better long term deal. Holliday is slightly younger, and the going rate of the market should eventually return to a level closer to years past. If it was to jump back up to the 4.5 million per win share of a few years ago (or even the 4.04 of last year), the Holliday and Bay deals may actually look like a bargain. There have been only 3 guys to sign for 4 or more years, and an improved economy would certainly make 16 million a more reasonable price. If the market returns to the point it was at two offseasons ago, Bay would only need to be worth slightly over 3 wins to actually be worth the value of the deal.
The Bay deal and deals like that only typically work for large market teams. Even if our budget is slightly reduced, we are still one of the few teams that can come close to paying market value per win share to the entire roster and reasonably expect to have a winning team. If we can produce several young players who are capable of provinding decent to good production at the minimum, our budget is certainly large enough to carry some overpriced contracts which attempt to squeeze more production out of a single position. As we’ve seen over the last three years, that plan will not work if we can’t produce some solid complimentary pieces that allow us to spend somewhat loosely on the bigger ticket items. By developing several youngsters who can produce 1.5 WAR at the minimum, we would create millions of dollars in surplus value which would certainly make Bay less of a concern. That doesn’t make it a great signing by any means, but I certainly can’t see it being a franchise cripplingly bad one.
On the other hand, there were guys who have provided similar WAR totals going much cheaper. While most of those guys had more questions about their track record, they certainly have a good chance to be just as valuable as Bay next year. I think Bay ends up being very similar to the rest of Minaya’s offseason in the long run, not really all that noteworthy. He likely won’t be worth the total amount he gets paid, but he likely won’t be a real “what the hell were we thinking” type of contract either. I really don’t think this offseason will look to noteworthy several years down the line.
"We're just as bad as the old Mets, but this time nobody's laughing"
-Dallas Green
by Stephen Schmidt on Feb 10, 2010 2:28 AM EST up reply actions
Has he done good?
Not particularly, no. Has his performance this off-season been deserving of the heaps of negative articles on him, or the organization? Certainly not. Since whenever, it’s become chic to bash the Mets. Omar is the most obvious target (and frankly, the weakest link). As such, serious and valid criticisms of him get written, and those who see it as being “the thing to do” in bashing the Mets jump on board. So, you have, say, 33% of the criticism that is valid, and 66% that isn’t.
"Blinding ignorance does mislead us. O! Wretched mortals, open your eyes!"
Gil Hodges IS a Hall of Famer.
by Brooklyn Dodgers Mets Fan on Feb 10, 2010 9:19 AM EST reply actions
No apologies necessary
Why? Because he (and Wilpon the Younger) failed to deliver (or outright lied), and dramatically so, about basically everything.
Read http://www.metsblog.com/2009/10/05/note-jeff-wilpon-and-omar-minaya-on-wfan-at-5-pm/ and think about the off-season through that lens. Everywhere, fail. Starting at the bottom:
1) Last year was unacceptable.
Failure: So why is virtually everyone coming back, from the front office to the coaches to the players?
2) The team needs to make sure that their doctors, and not third party doctors, examine players. And the team needs to develop a protocol to discuss injuries with the press/fans.
Failure: See Beltran, Carlos.
3) Wilpon stated that the Mets have money to spend.
Failure: Turns our, we’re broke.
4) Minaya claims we have talent in the minors.
Failure: OK, that’s fair, I think. But it’s also meaningless.
5) We’re told that Minaya’s role hasn’t changed.
Failure: John Ricco presser.
6) Minaya believes that Jerry Manuel got a raw deal b/c of all the injuries.
Failure: Minaya believes that Jerry Manuel got a raw deal b/c of all the injuries.
7) Minaya wants to build a team around pitching, speed, and defense.
Failure: We signed Jason Bay, who gives neither. With the money they saved, the Red Sox signed Mike Cameron and John Lackey, who provide at least two of the three.
8) “Wilpon said he will give Minaya the resources he needs, ‘whatever that is,’ to put a Championship team on the field.”
Failure: Still broke. Money used on Alex Cora, Jeff Francoeur, etc.
9) Minaya said he will look at the trade [market], to see how we can change it up,’ in an effort to improve the team, because they cannot just limit themselves to the free-agent market.
Failure: One trade. Netted us Gary Matthews Jr.
10) Minaya said he doesn’t believe the team needs to be rebuilt. Wilpon feels the team has ‘two or three holes,’ which they can fill through a combination of free-agent signings and trades.
Failure: Holes still unplugged.
11) Minaya said he has already been talking with his staff and scouting department about an off-season strategy, while pointing out, "We don’t just want to compete, we want to win a Championship."
Failure: He isn’t talking about “in 2012.”
12) Wilpon said the team will not make a big-ticket move just for marketing purposes, or simply in an effort to sell tickets, concluding, "The team will be as aggressive as it has been in the past."
Failure: Then why did they leak the Jason Bay signing right before ticket plan renewals were about to expire?
13) In parting, Minaya wants Mets fans to know he and his staff are working hard, and Ownership is committed to putting the best product possible on the field.
Failure: In the same interview: "We are in a results town in a results business," Wilpon said.
by Dan Lewis on Feb 10, 2010 10:12 AM EST reply actions 1 recs
You are doing exactly what the MSM has been doing.
You’re blaming Minaya because the Mets don’t have the money available for him to spend that you would like, when in reality it’s not really anything he’s at fault for. If the Mets available budget is being reduced from last year, thats pressure that both the media and fans should be placing on Jeff Wilpon, not Omar Minaya. The thing that has been aggrevating me is that the majority fans and media are not, they are still screaming at Minaya. I’m not thrilled that the budget appears to have been cut, but I’m at least trying to direct my unhappiness towards the correct outlet.
You’re criticizing Minaya for signing Bay when he could have signed other players to focus on pitching and defense, using the Red Sox as an example. The example you picked is awful. Theo did not use the money he saved to sign both Lackey and Cameron. Lackey alone is guaranteed a larger contract than Bay (5/82 as oppsed to 4/66), and If Bay’s option vests (making it 5/82) both contracts will be for the same dollars and years. Cameron was an expense exceeding either move, and should really be looked at as such.
You’re (sort of? I can’t tell for sure) criticizing the farm sytem lacking talent, yet in the same comment you are calling Omar a failure for not making enough trades. Trading for impact players is going to cost us talent from the farm, so you can’t really have it both ways.
You’re also criticising Omar for bringing the majority of the roster back intact, when in reality most of the guys that we’d like to see gone were already under contract and nearly unmoveable. If the criticism is the fact that Omar should have never signed guys like Castillo and Perez in the first place, I can certainly see that as a fair criticism. Not being able to find a sucker to take them is not. In the case you think he’s incapable of doing his job, your criticism should once again be directed at Wilpon who gave him an extension and continues to employ him.
Just looking at the numbers listed above, the majority of Minaya’s work this season has been decent. There have been bad moves here and there, but there have been enough good ones to balance them out. His arbitration decisions end up pointing to the same conclusions, that while Francoeur may not have been worth 5 million, enough guys should be more valuable than their pay to balance it out in the long run. We as a fan base are past the point where we are criticising Minaya for stupid moves, and have reached the point that we are attacking him for things that are beyond his control or not even poor moves.
"We're just as bad as the old Mets, but this time nobody's laughing"
-Dallas Green
by Stephen Schmidt on Feb 10, 2010 11:45 AM EST up reply actions
It seems like most of those failures would be blamed more on ownership than Omar
1. Seems more like a PR issue, and as far as I know the Wilpons control hiring decisions when it comes to PR.
2. No one really seems to know what happened there but it seems like at worst equal blame lies on ownership as on Omar
3. That’s clearly on the Wilpons
4. I’m not sure what the failure here is
5. on Wilpons
6. I suppose this is on Omar but it seems inconsequential
7. I agree not a fan of the Bay deal, especially when you consider the clauses in Lackeys contract regarding injuries and Bays easy vesting year the money almost comes out even for their two contracts. On the other hand there doesn’t seem to be much reason to think Lackey/Cameron would have ever come here, which is as much an issue of the Wilpons run their organization as it is an Omar issue.
8. Still on the Wilpons
9. We don’t have many tradeable resources that we can afford to move. And most of the players rumored to be on the block aren’t worth their prices
10. On the Wilpons, most reports said they overly complicated free agent negotiations because Omar had to get every deal approved and was given no budget, and they seemed to have cut off funds.
11. That seems to be a PR issue as well which comes back to the Wilpons
12. Wilpons
13. Wilpons
"We have a plan, and our plan, I like our plan'
it's Omar's world, we're just livin in it.
You must be snowed in
I thought about going point by point, in response, but then I remembered I had work to get done.
by Coolpapabell on Feb 10, 2010 3:32 PM EST up reply actions
I'm in class
"We have a plan, and our plan, I like our plan'
it's Omar's world, we're just livin in it.
Pretty funny
That poor professor is lecturing his heart out. But I am sure the Mets are more interesting than Industrial Econ. WIFI in class is a beautiful thing.
by Coolpapabell on Feb 10, 2010 3:51 PM EST up reply actions
Lol if it was Industrial Econ I'd be much more interesting
it’s intro stats, which is boring enough by itself but on top of that my TA is a tiny little asian girl who barely speaks above a whisper. Surfing AA is all I can do to not fall asleep.
"We have a plan, and our plan, I like our plan'
it's Omar's world, we're just livin in it.
Now I feel old.
When I was in college, there wasn’t Wi-Fi, and pretty much nobody ever took their laptops to class.
by BobbyV_Incognito on Feb 10, 2010 4:55 PM EST up reply actions
I only take it to this class out of boredom
and my programming class out of necessity, but I couldn’t imagine leaving it. My laptop can take a dropping though it’s been through some pretty tough times, I live hard.
"We have a plan, and our plan, I like our plan'
it's Omar's world, we're just livin in it.
When I was in college we used punch cards in computer classes
And we had to pay for them too! (My brother ws in grad school and he had free cards, I got him to get a couple of boxes for me.) Even worse: standing on line to get to a machine, waiting an hour for the results only to find out you made a syntax error and bombed the program. Repeat procedure until either: a) you got it right; b) the semester ended before you finished the program; or c) you took it out on someone or something.
"I've been trying transcendental meditation, and that helps me be passive and wait on the curve. I've got to find something else to hit the slider." - George (The Stork) Theodore
Were the computers big enough to walk into?
by BobbyV_Incognito on Feb 10, 2010 10:59 PM EST up reply actions
They wouldn't let us in there.
You had hand in your cards to somebody, then wait for the results. And in other news, I did not have to walk there 20 miles going uphill both ways. (Seriously, it was about a year or two before the first PC.)
"I've been trying transcendental meditation, and that helps me be passive and wait on the curve. I've got to find something else to hit the slider." - George (The Stork) Theodore
In Russia, you don't take laptop to class,
laptop take you!
/yakovsmirnoff
"He's definitely mixing it into his repertoire. That's French for 'repertoire' " - Keith Hernandez
by Catsmeat Potter-Pirbright on Feb 10, 2010 6:36 PM EST up reply actions 1 recs
Excellent post
Good info, and a solid method to fortify your point. These things tends to bring out some really well reasoned rebutals, schmid’s and ace’s in particular.
I tend to agree with you. I think Omar finally learned how to put together a bullpen. He also learned how to stand pat on mediocre talent, but I have a feeling Jeff forced him to, in light of his past failures coming in the form of the Castillo, and O.P. contracts.
I am not crazy about how he pieced together his bench. I think he could have brought in a better defensive infielder to counter balance Castillo.
I have no problem starting Murphy due to the fact that we need to get a better sample on his production. One more year’s worth of data would allow us to see what we have with him. His defense would also be a huge boost on the right side and help off-set the Castillo vortex.
I think your right on all accounts
But I’m afraid that Jeff has now used the Castillo and Perez deal to interject himself into the baseball side for good and if he doesn’t like a player or an idea he will then withhold the funds for that move.
Dear Omar, I'm sorry
Sorry you’re such a dummy!
HELLO HELLO MR WILPON... BUY THAT MANSION. WE DONT NEED A CONDO.
by kendynamo on Feb 10, 2010 1:34 PM EST reply actions 2 recs
Castillo is the real problem for me this offseason as far as Omar is concerned
even if we are stuck with his contract and even if the Wilpons woud veto any attempt to bring in a big money replacement, a more creative forward thinking GM should be able to find a upgrade at that position at least with regards to defense. Lopez come to mind as one name and I am sure there are others. and yes Hudson would have been fine too. An infield with more range would take away some of the pressure on our pitchers and might even have enticed Pinaro to come here earlier in the process. It was a low cost chance to upgrade the ball club and he did not do it. Maybe he still loves Castillo too much to make him a bench player.
Agreed and at this stage I would believe that Lopez would come very cheap
I’m sure he is concerned no offers have come in and pitchers and catchers are making their way south.
"Wait till Biggus Dickus hears about this!"
by scott from peekskill on Feb 11, 2010 12:32 AM EST up reply actions
There were a few people Uribe, Polanco Lopez
but what do you do with Cora?
good post overall though
I agree with many of your points
Fangraphs mongos are going overboard with this "Contest" stuff
But I have a hard time saying this was a good offseason. I could see this offseason garnering praise if the Mets were a playoff team in 2009 but throwing all the available $$ at Bay while ignoring so many other holes looks pretty dumb in retrospect.
by James Kannengieser on Feb 10, 2010 3:57 PM EST reply actions
I think its good
if you make the baseline the average mets off-season.
"We have a plan, and our plan, I like our plan'
it's Omar's world, we're just livin in it.
Also if you ignore the Beltran debacle
"We have a plan, and our plan, I like our plan'
it's Omar's world, we're just livin in it.
Yeah, that wasn't a move,
but it makes the entire franchise look disorganized and chaotic. My Yankees fan friend e-mailed me when that happened, asking “WTF is going on with your team?” Publicly announcing you’re considering filing a grievance against one of your own players b/c people didn’t communicate with each other regarding his surgery is a wonderful way to make yourself a non-target destination for other FAs. Honestly, that might overshadow all the good things Omar did this season. It’ll take a lot of work to overcome the image people (especially the fans) have of a front office that’s got its head completely up its ass.
by BobbyV_Incognito on Feb 10, 2010 4:58 PM EST up reply actions
I wish it was a little more clear what happened there.
The organization as a whole looked pretty dumb, and I really still don’t fully understand where the confusion happened. It makes Omar look pretty bad, but I’m still not entirely sure he even knew what was going on. If he really has that little control over the franchise, I can’t imagine we’ll be able to attract any better candidates to replace him.
"We're just as bad as the old Mets, but this time nobody's laughing"
-Dallas Green
by Stephen Schmidt on Feb 10, 2010 5:11 PM EST up reply actions
I don't really think it made Omar look that bad
just because it seemed like he was out of the loop, and Ricco and Jeff seemed to be the ones throwing around accusations. I think it made the whole front office look bad but it kind of made me wonder if this is the mess Omar deals with on a daily basis.
"We have a plan, and our plan, I like our plan'
it's Omar's world, we're just livin in it.
It had to be Jeff and his minions that threw the temper tantrum.
Omar has already said he knew Carlos was having surgery I think Jeff feels Beltran had the surgery just for the hell of it or to screw him or something. T.B.W.S.B.S. ( Typical born wealthy spoiled brat syndrome)
This post is hilarious!
Although I suppose it fits with the “contrarian” angle.
Now that the rest of the world (the evil enemy, MSM) has noticed Omar sucks, we need to “prove” them wrong by arguing that Omar is really a good GM.
I love it!
by Mex_17 on Feb 10, 2010 9:06 PM EST reply actions 1 recs
Nowhere in the article does Schmidt say that Omar is a good GM.
In fact, he specifically says, “Now I don’t want to be accused of saying Minaya has done a great job this offseason…”. The condensed thesis of the post is that Omar is an easy target, and as such, there is unduly criticism and mocking of him. Given some of what’s been written targeting either him or the organization, in the past month or so, and some of the…stretching and maneuvering used by the authors to smear either him or the organization, it’s certainly a point that carries a great deal of merit.
"Blinding ignorance does mislead us. O! Wretched mortals, open your eyes!"
Gil Hodges IS a Hall of Famer.
by Brooklyn Dodgers Mets Fan on Feb 10, 2010 10:44 PM EST up reply actions
Didn't you invent the contrarian angle?
This sounds like contrarian groupthink to me
by James Kannengieser on Feb 10, 2010 10:53 PM EST up reply actions
Why isn’t $/marginal win a function of team payroll or pre-deal expected wins? Does it stand to reason that a team would overpay to get into the playoff bubble?
If you’re a 85 win team, wouldn’t that last 3 WAR piece be worth a lot more than $10.5M if it bumps your playoff chances from 25% to 50%? If you’re a 72 win team, is there any monetary value to a 1 WAR player? You’re not going to sell anymore tickets as a 73 win team and you playoff odds are nil either way.
Am I way off base here?
I think it stands to reason
but I’m not sure there are many specific examples of it actually happening, at least not that I can think of in the last few years. Where a team that’s in the fringy play-off team position has over payed players to add wins, at least not any more often than teams that know how to manipulate market inefficiencies have added those same marginal wins at a below market price.
"We have a plan, and our plan, I like our plan'
it's Omar's world, we're just livin in it.
You're exactly right, and it's a complaint I've seen with Fangraphs' evaluations.
The Mets, of course, are at the point where marginal wins are worth a lot more to them than they are to the Royals.
by SeanSchirmer on Feb 17, 2010 4:06 AM EST up reply actions
Well, if you’re using the CHONE WAR projections listed on fangraphs, you’re going to be overrating everyone. They haven’t done a good job on those. Look at why Blanco is projected for 1 WAR. It’s because his defense is supposedly worth +6 runs in 188 PAs. So +20 in a full season? That’s not right. He’s not Ivan Rodriguez c. 1999. They took CHONE’s defensive projections without adjusting for playing time. Secondly, their replacement values are all screwed up. Blanco gets 6.3 replacement runs and 4.9 positional runs for 188 PAs. So in a full, 700 PA season, he gets 41.7 runs just for playing every day. He’s a 4 WAR player if he just shows up? An 18.2 run positional adjustment for catcher? No, that’s all wrong.
If you want to know actual WAR projections for CHONE, you have to go to his free agent tracker. Unfortunately, Bay is the only one of Omar’s signings that is good enough to be worth tracking, and CHONE values him at 2.9 WAR for 2010, 1.1 WAR less than listed on fangraphs. You’ll also see there that that works out to a ridiculous $7.2M per win, twice the going rate for position players.
Besides that, spending $7M on 3 WAR from six role players (even assuming the inflated fangraphs projections) when your roster has gaping holes at multiple positions is flat-out incompetent. These moves don’t happen in a vacuum. Zaun signed for $2M, Olivo for $2.5M. Barajas still isn’t signed. Value or not, Coste and Blanco for $1.4M really aren’t a smart way to go.
by epoc on Feb 14, 2010 4:44 PM EST reply actions 1 recs
Fielding is Fixed
The fielding projections for CHONE have been fixed to reflect the per / 150 games.
However, you are incorrect about our replacement values or positional values being “screwed up” They still sit at 20 runs per 600 PA. No catchers get 700 PA, so you are being unrealistic in your 4 win assessment of him just showing up.
In reality a full time catcher that plays almost every day will get around 3 wins for “showing up”, but don’t forget in Blanco’s case that he is also a rather large negative with the bat and that’s going to definitely cancel out a lot of his value and he ends up being about a 1 win player if he played an entire season.
Bay’s value difference between FanGraphs and BaseballProjection is mainly a difference between how we calculate offensive value, but I don’t know exactly how Sean does those and I’ve double checked our numbers, because admittedly, that looked weird to me too.
Thanks for responding, David. We can disagree on this, but I stand by my statement that the replacement/positional adjustment you use is screwed up. Fangraphs uses a 20 run per 600 PA replacement and gives a full positional adjustment for 600 PA. You can see here that Tango uses 700 PA for a full season. You can do as you like at fangraphs, but in my opinion you are overrating playing time.
Obviously, my statement about Blanco being a 4 WAR player was a counterfactual conditional. It was not meant to suggest that fangraphs/CHONE projects Blanco to be a 4-WAR player in a realistic amount of PAs for a full-time catcher. The point is that, according to fangraphs, over the course of a full, 700 PA season, the catcher position will earn over 4 WAR just by being filled by a live body. Check the Mets’ catchers, for instance. In 2009, Thole, Santos, Schneider, and Castro combined for 636 PAs at the position and 36.9 RAR in replacement and positional runs alone. Like I said, you can do it that way if you want, but I still think you’re giving too much credit for showing up.
Actually, we give a full positional adjustment over 162 games, not over 600 PA. I think pretty much every site that calculates WAR uses something around 20/600 for replacement level. And if you read that link, Tango states he sets his replacement level between -25/162 Games and -20/162 Games. Let’s for the sake of argument say the average is -22.5 / 162, that’s just about 22.5/700, or 19.3 / 600, extremely close to 20/600. As you can see, this isn’t going to change how any individual players are valued.
We can certainly disagree on what the replacement level should be, but our replacement levels are not as you put it “screwed up”.
Using Tango's numbers
I believe Tom has said in several places he uses +2.25 wins per season as the replacement level. That would be about 22.5 runs. And, he also applies a +12.5 run positonal adjustment for 162 games for the catcher position (here for example).
So you would expect about 35 RAR in total positional and replacement adjustments for the team’s catchers. So that’s not very far off.
As for Blanco, Mets catchers last year had 630 PA. So if he is projected for 188 PA, you should be able to multiply each number by 630/188=3.35 and get close to a full season equivalent projection.
What I get is:
Batt. Field Repl Pos.
-22.8 +8.4 +21.1 +16.4 = 23.1 RAR
That doesn’t look too unreasonable either. That’s only a slightly above average catcher, and that’s with the unrealistic assumption of playing every day. The only one thing there that does seem a bit off is the positional adjustment should be more like +12.5 for a season. It also seems odd that his positional adjustment last year was +4.4 runs in 508 innings, and 232 PA, but goes to +4.9 runs this year despite the playing time projection presumably being lower.
My guess is that the playing time projection being used for the positional adjustment is not the same as the Chone offensive forecast. Still, the overall Blanco projection would only be higher than expected by about 1 run. If the positional adjustment were +3.9 runs, it would all add up nicely, and Blanco would project to 0.6 WAR instead of 0.7 WAR.
Okay, I retract the phrase “screwed up.” And I apologize for assuming I knew your methods for implementing positional adjustments. I do not want to seem mean or unappreciative, as fangraphs is the best statistics site I know of, and I am thankful you put so much hard work into it.
But I did read that link, and it says that the replacement adjustment should be 2.0 wins for the NL and 2.5 for the AL, not just an assumed average between the two. As I said, I don’t care if you do it differently (nobody said Tango was God), but I do not agree with the way you calculate replacement level.
As for the positional adjustments, they are probably complicated by the fact that most players play multiple positions (including pinch hitter), and I’ll assume you do the hard work of taking all of that into account. And I see that you have changed them to correspond to innings rather than games, which should help (though of course it hasn’t changed Blanco’s [or anyone’s] CHONE projection for 2010, which is still too high). So I have no beef with them at the moment, and since I can only assume that my criticisms led to the changes implemented in the last two days, I hope you’ll agree that my criticisms are valid, even if you object to the phrase “screwed up.”
Thanks again for responding.
Also, on catchers
Also worth pointing out, Tango has said the positional adjustments generally are based on a lot of research that has been done on defensive value, primarily using UZR. But he has said the one position where the adjustment is most uncertain is catcher, because we really don’t have good reliable measures of defensive value there to work with.
So arguably, the catcher adjustment could be something like +10 rather than +12.5. That’s probably the one that is the least supported by solid research.
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