FanPost

A Look Back At the 2013 AAOP Finalists

AAOP season is fun season. While I don't partake I do enjoy the fruits of others' labor and the passion of comments this year is both fascinating and intense.

I was particularly struck by a comment from one of the current finalists who was also a 2013/14 finalist when they noted last year's entry didn't really work out so well. The honesty and willingness to cop to anything less than "GM Genius" is refreshing and arguably in short supply in these parts.

This exercise is hard - really hard. That finalist's revelation and some real disappointment from some who missed this year's cut got me wondering how AA's version of the College Football Playoff Selection Committee did with choosing finalists a year ago.

So in an attempt to see how our selection committee did, I'll take a look back at the five finalists from 2013/14 without naming the finalists - it's not my intention to criticize anyone. You've all got more knowledge about players than I do. I find myself having to look up the names of proposed acquisitions far too often to think my AAOP would have anything real to offer. I want to explore how tough it is to get these things right and how the best laid plans on paper can easily go awry. My take is that while the process is fun as hell, expecting it to accurately predict a specific outcome is a fool's errand. Of course that could make me the primary "fool in chief," since I'm attempting to analyze the outcomes to prove the point that you shouldn't . . . value the outcomes.

But that's an entirely other post and we need some sort of methodology so let's get to it. Obviously, there's probably no perfect way to measure the apples to oranges that are various AAOPs and account for the unintended consequences inherent in player acquisitions. Injuries and bad starts (TdA) can mean big playing time shifts, force in-season trades, early minor league promotions and the like.

So I'm going to be a little crude here and look at what I'll call the actual Mets "Primary Starting Eight." I got them by taking the player with the most PAs that was a primary contributor at a given position. That was clear cut everywhere except for LF where Eric Young actually had 120 more LF PAs than Chris Young. The eight Mets position players with the most PAs last season combined for 16.5 fWAR. Here's that lineup and their fWAR.

C Travis d'Arnaud

1.6

1B Lucas Duda

3.0

2B Daniel Murphy

2.8

SS Ruben Tejada

1.2

3B David Wright

1.9

LF Eric Young

1.2

CF Juan Lagares

3.8

RF Curtis Granderson

1.0

While this methodology misses things like Wilmer Flores 1.3 fWAR - it also misses Chris Young's -0.6. The Mets total non-pitching fWAR last season was 19 so these eight players captured all but 2.5 of the club's position fWAR. For the full team, positive contributors delivered 21.2 while the negative guys took away 2.2. So with all those caveats, let's see how the five finalists did at building an every day lineup compared to what Sandy put on the field.

Each of the five finalists kept d'Arnaud, Wright and Lagares. Overall, not bad calls since those three guys accounted for 7.3 fWAR - an average of 2.4+ each. Here's a look at how they filled the other five positions. The number next to the name is the fWAR that player delivered in 2014.

Finalist A

Finalist B

Finalist C

Finalist D

Finalist E

1B

C Hart -1.2

Duda 3.0

C Hart -1.2

Duda 3.0

Ike 0.3

2B

Murphy 2.8

Murphy 2.8

Flores 1.3

Flores 1.3

Murphy 2.8

SS

Rutledge -0.9

Andrus 1.3

Andrus 1.3

Hardy 3.4

Peralta 5.4

LF

Blackmon 2.0

Dv Murphy -.5

K Johnson 0.5

Cespedes 3.4

McLouth -.6

RF

Choo 0.2

Choo 0.2

Beltran -0.5

Byrd 1.9

Choo 0.2

T

10.2 fWAR

14.1 fWAR

8.7 fWAR

20.3 fWAR

15.4 fWAR

+/-

-6.3 fWAR

-2.4 fWAR

-7.8 fWAR

+3.5 fWAR

-1.1 fWAR

So four of the five finalists did worse (by this one limited measure) than the real Mets while one did an impressive 3.5 fWAR better. On average the five finalists Top Eight guys were 2.8 fWAR worse than the actual Mets. 2.8 wins doesn't sound like a ton but when compared to 19 basis number it's close to 15%.

Maybe picking good players isn't so easy after all. There were 13 outside position players brought in by the five finalists to help improve the every day lineup.

38% of the new guys (5 of 13) brought in to fill starting position slots posted negative fWAR. (Cory Hart, Josh Rutledge, David Murphy, Carlos Beltran, Nate McLouth). Another 15% (2/13) posted 0.5 fWAR or less - Choo (0.2) & Kelly Johnson (0.5).

Added together, 54% (7/13) of the guys brought in to improve the club combined for -3.0 fWAR.

But 23% (3/13) were respectable to decent. Charlie Blackmon managed 2.0, Elvis Andrus 1.3 & Marlon Byrd 1.9.

And another 23% (3/13) were very valuable. JJ Hardy, (3.4), Cespedes (3.4), and Jhonny Peralta (5.4) all had very good to great seasons.

But valuing the most valuable was a little trickier. It was proposed Peralta would sign for 3/$15m - not even close. He got 4/$53m. It's hard to believe someone that values a player at 1/3 of his market value would still be around when the bidding climbs towards reality. The JJ Hardy acquirer did so on the presumption that he'd sign a 2/$24m extension. He just signed a 3/$40m extension with the Orioles. Close on AAV but a full year difference in term. And the Cespedes acquisition only cost us Familia & Montero while in reality the Red Sox gave up John Lester, Johnny Gomes and cash while getting a competitive balance pick. In-season deals often have different valuations but Familia/Montero, while offering length of control wasn't a package that would have interested the A's in season. And of course, we know with certainty that they held onto Cespedes last off-season.

In other words, the three most valuable position pieces were not properly valued by the 2013/14 finalists.

But hey, that's only the starting eight. Maybe the pitching staff did better than the actual Mets. Right? Well all five of the finalists had Wheeler, Niese & Gee in the rotation. And four of them also had Jenrry Mejia.

Finalist A was the only finalist to pass on Jenrry Mejia in the rotation so Scott Baker ($3.5m) and Johan Santana ($6m) were called upon to fill the two vacant slots. But since he did not trade Mejia he would have been around to fill the innings that Johan wasn't around to toss.

Essentially Finalist A would have replaced Bartolo Colon with Scott Baker - a net negative. Baker largely worked out of the pen, made 8 starts and accrued -0.4 bWAR/0.2 fWAR compared to Bartolo's 0.5 bWAR/2.1 fWAR & 202 innings.

Finalist B would have replaced Bartolo with a vague "Daisuke/Fausto Carmona" type. I'll let you draw your own conclusions on how well Daisuke would have held up over 33 starts. Roberto Hernandez (aka Fausto) had a solid/bad year measuring a 0.8 bWAR/-0.5 fWAR in 165 innings. We would have needed 35 additional starting innings from somewhere. Hard to say that choice would have made the staff stronger.

Finalist C went with Phil Hughes on the staff and looks great for doing so. Hughes pitched 7 more innings than Bartolo and posted 3.8 more bWAR and 4 more fWAR than Bartolo did. That goes a long way - but not far enough - towards offsetting the -7.8 from the starting 8. He also penned Hughes in for 2/$15m when the former Yankee wound up getting 3/$24m but perhaps he would have met the price.

His staff would have been without the traded Rafael Montero and his rotation depth acquisitions of James McDonald and Josh Johnson would have been busts.

Finalist D ran +3.5 in fWAR based on the eight primary position players - and that's using Wilmer Flores ½ season fWAR number of 1.3 which presumably would have been higher had he been handed the 2B starting job in April - though he might not have benefitted from the full SS positional adjustment but it seems safe to assume there would have been more positive value net/net.

His 5th starter was Josh Johnson until Syndergaard was ready. Tough to say how this would have worked out. Without Bartolo and an injured Johsnon the club probably would have leaned on Daisuke out of the gate. So there would have likely been a dropoff from Colon to Daisuke for however long Dice could have held on to his job. Would Mejia have been moved to the pen when he was? This plan traded Rafael Montero so maybe deGromm would have come up sooner or Noah might have been parachuted in? Most likely a trade have been made when Johnson was lost. It's likely the club would have struggled to receive the kind of production they got from Bartolo but we'll never know for sure.

Also worth noting is that our pen would have been sans Familia who was dealt with Montero for Cespedes & BJ Boyd. But the pen would have added Rex Brothers, TJ McFarland & LaTroy Hawkins.

So it's very hard to assess how this club would have worked out. Had the package for Cespedes actually gotten him, the offense would have been much more dynamic but not having Bartolo, Montero or Familia around might have led to a panic rotation move or perhaps 100+ starting innings of Daisuke.

Finally Finalist E had Tim Staufer as the #5 starter who only started 3 games all season. Hard to see that staff being anything but weaker without Bartolo's 200 missing innings. As previously noted, this plan had Jhonny Peralta signed for a wholly off the mark 2/$10m with a $5m player option for year three.

So the only Finalist whose rotation was identifiably better than the real Mets had a lineup that was 8.7 wins worse than the actual Mets.

Since just looking at the five finalist AAOP's was a pretty big task, I have no idea if they are an anomaly or the norm. But we could try to find out. If you posted an AAOP last season and want to post the actual fWAR from the starting 8 from your plan I'd be happy to try to compile those numbers into some sort of chart. Did your plan outperform the 2013/14 finalists?

AAOP's are a blast to read and debate but in the end anyone that didn't make the finals shouldn't be too upset - in retrospect, the folks who did last year would probably love to wind back the clock 12 months. And come to think of it, the folks that picked the finalists might have too!



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