All right, I was going to talk about skills and ratings and even the platoon thing, but to be honest I found myself 2,000 words into this and hadn’t gotten there yet. So, yeah, I know what I promised, and I promise I’ll get there, but this is what came out when I first sat down and I realize that it makes some sense to talk about it this way. Player evaluation is not so much about seeing how good a player is (or might be)—though that’s the right baseball way of looking at it. For me and my concept of Sustained Winning, player evaluation is as much about simply seeing how every player fits into the structure of the team over time.
So, all right. Let’s do it. I admit I’m not sure where this is going to go, but let’s find out.
What am I looking for in a player who can help support Sustained Winning?
That’s the question, right? The answer, of course, is that I want minimum salary Superstars in every position, staggered such that I can control them through their full arbitration years, and then trade them for young stud Superstars and do it all over again.
I hear you now.
Riiiiiiiight, you say. Blue skies and white light, baby. Welcome to the Land of Milk and Honey. If only it were as easy as all that. Alas, that isn’t going to ever happen. Instead, here on Eath One you get a hodge-podge of players and just have to deal with it.
With that, let’s start at the top:
Superstars
I’m not an idiot—I mean, I’m as suspect to the Dunning-Collins effect as anyone, I’d suppose—but I’m not, at least, such a blatant idiot that I recognize it in myself. This is my way of saying that I’m not going to pretend that the average Joe or Jolene can’t know a David Simpson or Dennis French or Dong-po Thum when they see one. Superstars are flat-out simple to spot.
(Or are they?) he says mysteriously.
The real question is how to value them. How much should you pay them, or how much should you give up in trade?
The answers to those questions (1) are: as much as you can without killing your plan (which means it’s a different answer for me at any particular time in the cycle), and (2) there’s not really enough. This last question is the classic FanGraphs/Mike Trout question—there is pretty much no value the Angels could ever get back that would match him—at least at his peak. Now that he’s been hurt, we’ll see.
And, yet, the fact of the matter is that there are instances where Superstars are actually traded in real life (as well as here in the BBA). I suggest that this is because there is an intersection between those two answers. Sometimes it’s in the best interest of a team to deal a Superstar for whatever the market will bear, even if it’s less than his real value, simply because that Superstar has begun to clog the plan.
(Yes, I can hear Dusty Baker in there, too: walks just clog the basepaths … heh.)
Anyway.
The example I want to talk about right here is Rex Foster (10/12/9/5/8). If you look at those ratings at the top level you can’t help but salivate. The guy can rake. And, on the whole, his numbers support that. Dude’s been over 5 WAR three times, and peaked at 6.9. The full picture, however, is a little more complicated. The true picture is that he’s a total stud, except where he isn’t—which is against LHP. I mean, he can kind of hit them barely a little, but really, there are better options. That’s the differentiator between a Dennis French (who could hit lefties a little) and a Rex Foster. French is a Superstar (or was prior to a bit of aging). Foster is a demi-Superstar, meaning to my mind that he’s like the Dave Lee version of hitters—a Very, Very Good Solid Player.
Remember when I said I look at every hitter as if he’s two guys?
The biggest issue is that he flat-out cannot walk against LHP (sub 5%). It all adds up that in 426 PA against LHP, Foster is putting up replacement figures (.2 WAR in 7+ years). Against RHP he’s made 34 WAR. So, yeah. Against RHP, Rex Foster is an elite of the elite. Against LHP he generally has to sit if I want my offense to actually work. This becomes a problem then. A half-a-Superstar is not a Superstar.
I’ll come back to why that’s important in a moment.
First, though, let’s look at another example: David Simpson (9/9/10/9/8). You know, that guy who I said up above we could tell was a Superstar. He’s entering his tenth season. In those ten seasons he’s seen 1,221 plate appearances against LHP, good for a .246/.319//447 slash that totals 3.9 WAR. That’s right David Freaking Simpson is a .4 WAR a season guy against LHP. Against RHP he’s made 58.9 WAR.
Holy heebejeebies, Batman.
Dennis French (9/10/7/4/10) is better … 6.1 WAR against LHP, 54 WAR vs. RHP.
Of course, I’m cheating again. Simpson and French (and for that matter Foster) only face lefties about a third of the time in a season, so to get the full picture you need to do some projections and see that Simpson is probably 1 WAR player vs. LHP and French probably close to 2.0. That’s really what does make them Superstars while Foster is not quite there. Foster is a 0 WAR replacement player in those weak moments—Simpson and French are at least positive additions to the team, hence do not require an additional roster spot to give them peak value.
Why is this important?
It comes to money, of course, as everything does. I recently signed Foster to a six-year extension that pays him during the first three seasons at $11-$13.5M. That’s the right level in our league. A Superstar is worth considerably more than that, and sometimes will go for upward of $30M (like I gave Dong-po Thum). It’s important that I recognize the difference between Foster and Simpson/French because I cannot possibly afford to pay him Superstar money—which is what he was originally asking for. He wanted to be paid like a Superstar, and if I were just scanning the top numbers I’d possibly have given I to him.
Remember what I said earlier about bad contracts?
Bad contracts in the out years will scuttle a team. Or might. This is the real difference between a team that has transitioned from working on Wave Winning to performing Sustained Winning. Teams in full Sustained Winning mode have a major advantage when it comes to the risk of bad contracts.
Case in point, Foster.
Yes, his first three seasons pay him what I think he’s worth. He’s a half-a Superstar making about half a Super-star’s cash. The deal, however, is for six seasons—and those last three are at $17M, complete with player opt-outs and options for every year. The bottom line is that I don’t want to pay those last three seasons, but I had to give him those dollars for him to sign (good on OOTP, really). That said, I structured the deal with two escape routes. The first is a hope that he’ll have a great year in there, and decide to opt out and go to Free Agency—hence leaving me with a nice compensation pick. The second (and more painful) is that as long as I keep my budget up over $150M, or more, I can simply just eat the dollars on a release. The third option, recalling the idea that there is no such thing as a bad 1-season contract, would be to find a trade partner who doesn’t mind the overpay.
Regardless, at this point I don’t suspect Foster will be in Yellow Springs in year 4-6 of the deal, but I suppose you should never say never.
Here’s the important take-away, though. If I were in my early build process, I would probably never have given Foster that contract because eating $17M for three years would likely kill a path to Sustained Winning if it goes sour (Sounds a lot like that quote from Ted that I keep going back to, doesn’t it?) Alternatively, I’d strongly consider giving Dong-po Thum the deal I gave him (or front-loading it more), because Thum is a true Superstar.
It would be a tough decision, though.
Very tough.
Age and Skills: Superstars or Not
Something I haven’t talked about is the age curve. Bottom line: For my money, players out past 30 are scary as hell. Foster will be 29-32 when he’s done with his Nine contract. Thum will be 32. As a general rule I want to sign long-term deals that end before the player is 32 or 33 simply to avoid risk of aging curves killing them. This, of course, is simple. Again, no one really needs me to tell them that, but I want to mention it. Rockville, for example, gave Cannon/Dempster long deals into their late 30s, and it basically worked okay for them—but by then Rockville was pretty stable. Still they had to make a few actions to avoid the worst of Dempster’s decline.
So, yeah, there are steps that can be taken, but if I bite off big contracts before my finances are in place (budgets are big enough), I am taking a big risk and in for a bad beat.
For may way of thinking I want to know what those steps to slide out of things are when I cut the deal.
Age is another thing I think of as I’m building value. Younger players get better. Right? I mean, that’s the thing about development—it happens. My feeling is that usually when we think of development, we are talking about Potential bumps. You know, the guy who drops a changeup out of nowhere, or whatever. That is not what I’m talking about there, though. I’m talking about the 22-year-old with a 7 Contact (out of 10), and who will make it to 26 years old with that same 7 Contact rating. The chances are that the 26-year-old will be better than he was as a 22-year-old even though it doesn’t look like it. Chances are that by age 29 that same guy will be getting worse, even if his Contact is still 7 of 10. There is a wide range of performance values in those 10-point scales, and it’s possible for an entire development curve to happen inside a single span.
Perhaps I’m being pedantic here, but there is a bit of an art to the mindset of watching a guy develop. A low seven is of similar worth to a high six, and a high seven is considerably mor valuable than a low six. But all you can see is that one player is a 6 and the other is a 7. Unless you dig deeper. In other words, Stats Matter. Or at least they can.
I said before that Superstars are great because their whole skillset is so good that they can make up for a bit of a flaw. No one cares if Dong-po Thum’s Gap is 10 or 9. But these differentiations can matter as you make most of the other decisions you’re going to make—and I think they make their biggest impact in your ability to sus out those fillers … the line between a Role Player and your garden variety basic Solid Starter can fall into the middle of a “5” AVK, or a weird platoon split.
I’ll point to Jacksonville as an interesting example in today’s BBA world. I’ve been watching Gregg’s team come together for a bit now. I have no real idea that the Hurricanes will ever move into a Sustained Winning kind of franchise or not (though I’m not sure the team has the prospect grunt to really carry forward…time will tell), but he’s done a great job letting solid young 22 and 23-year-old players grow into their productive peaks. He’s paid Simpson the Superstar money, and Zuniga Top End Solid Player cash. Only in Daryl Pris is he kind of strung out—but the core carried Jacksonville to the post season last year, and have them in the mix again. If nothing else, that approach has resulted in a quite nice Wave Winner/Compete.
So there you go.
Still, I started this piece by asking what I look for in a player who can have a role in a Sustained Winning plan? The very general, very generic answer is “A younger guy with team control who can perform at least one thing very well, but ideally can do a lot of things with some success.”
In the early days I took no little joy in seeing people question my choices (Juan Arevalo at shortstop? Are you kidding me?). I still do at times. I admit to grinning at Aaron’s comment in the Media Guide this year that I was sticking with my aging DH Javier Rodríguez despite him having never proved much value. I respect Arron, of course. He’s got lots of trophies, whereas I have only zero. So, I suppose you should say he’s right. But in Rodríguez’s first six seasons (hitting almost exclusively RHP) he has posted 10.5 WAR as a platoon DH. Looking at his ratings I’d agree I expected more, but he’s also been very cheap during this time period. If a WAR is worth $2.5-3.0M then he’s earned more than his keep.
Rodríguez is 30 this year, though. To be honest, I’d probably have let him walk this year if a better/cheaper option showed itself (I’m looking at you again Burhan Tahir). But he’s here again because (1) he fit an on-field need and I know that as long as I can keep him hitting RHP, he’s valuable.
I bring Javier Rodríguez up here, though, not to talk about Javier Rodríguez, but to talk instead about John Weber.
Weber is a perfect example of an invisible value in the inner workings of the YS9 Way.
His rating bars are nothing spectacular (7/7/3/7/8), and he can barely play a decent 2B … 5/11/4/10. To be fair, I guess, that profile means he can’t really play second base. I have, for example, offered him in a couple trades, and I’d guess that’s why he’s routinely declined. But here’s the thing about John Weber. He’s 25 years old—so I’m guessing he’s still growing just a little. Despite having a profile counter to just about everyone’s view of a Designated Hitter (he has no power), he can hit right handed pitching pretty well and he can really run the bases. He’s also getting paid a paltry $500K.
Teaming him with Javier Rodríguez made sense. Since he’s been the RHB DH to Rodríguez’s LHB, Weber has posted a .352 OBP (last year) and is sitting at .373 this. If you can get a .373 OBP out of your #8 hitter, I think that works out okay, wouldn’t you? (There is probably a reason why Dong-po Thum has 30 RBI out of the lead-off slot at only a third of the year through. I suggest John Weber is a part of that…want a weird fun, probably meaningless except it’s not stat? Weber has gone to the plate 51 times and scored 8 runs. That ratio is just a tick below Thum himself.
How long will Weber keep it up?
I have no clue.
All I can say is that his value to me has been huge, specifically because, though I never had him penciled into the plan for DH, necessity made me find the right place for him. The NEXT challenge is to keep paying attention, because he’s 25, right? Maybe he’ll keep doing this for a while, and that would be great. Like I said before, my guess is that he’s going to run just fine for another season or three. If that happens he’ll “cost out” in that his arbitration seasons may well be too pricey for us. We shall see. But most likely he’ll get covered up by a prospect coming along.
That’s the thing.
I could say that Weber’s role and timing on a Wave Winner and a Sustained Winner might well look the same. The difference, I think, is that as most teams come up the curve they look at a guy like Weber as a simple “place holder.” Which, I guess, he would be if he was playing full time. But to me he’s tool that saves the team from needing to suffer the hole in Javier Rodríguez’s game, and in the process unlocks the actual value of Rodríguez.
Maybe it’s just two ways to describe the same thing. Dunno.
But to me there’s a difference.
The first feels like I’m accepting something substandard, second is about finding things that a player can contribute and letting him do just that—and only that. John Weber cannot really field, but he can get on base and score runs. So, yeah, sign me up.
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All right. I’m nearing 3K words on this one and I haven’t really talked about relative values of player skills and only barely touched on platoon advantages. I’ll probably do that next…though as you can tell by now, I’m kind of winging things, so we’ll see, right?