The dividing line that I subscribe to does not suggest that money is meaningless.
My view is that the there is a distinct difference between "becoming" competitive and "staying" competitive.
The WAR paradigm viewed solely through the lens of "efficiency" ignores the realities of aging (old players are expensive and their production tends to drop), young players get better and are cheap.
The amount of flexibility a team has is vastly different if they are ALREADY paying $80-100 million before they reach 35 WAR vs they are paying $50 million when they get to 35 WAR. And if you're paying $117 million for only 15 WAR, this is evidence that your ability to spend money wisely is beyond abysmal.
If you KNOW that you're utterly and completely dreadful at something, why would you want more of it? What kind of sense would it make for a coach to encourage Shaq or Dwight Howard - (we need you on the free throw line more often)?
Honestly, while Seattle doesn't sign a lot of long deals ... how many 3-year (or more) contracts have they inked in the last decade that were worth the outlay? How many were imports and how many extensions to existing Ms?
IIRC, Ibanez is the only 3+ year contract that resulted in production that was not below outlay. After all the Sexson, Beltre, Vidro, Silva/Bradley disasters, Jack's first dip into the long-term pool was Figgins. Not exactly problem solved.
Could the Ms spend an extra 20-25 million in 2013? Sure. But, which kids do you write off completely - for multiple years - when you make that choice? Seager doesn't play before May if Carp doesn't get hurt. Saunders doesn't play at all if Guti doesn't go down. Jaso isn't even on the roster if most of blog-o-sphere were in charge during ST.
The Ms got very, very lucky in 2012 that Seager and Saunders got to play all year. So, is the call on which kids will post 110 OPS+ figures this year any more likely to be accurate in 2013 than 2012? THAT is my issue with going the FA route "immediately". I don't have any real faith that I know who will advance and who will wash out.
For me, when the six kids prove themselves and you know what your three black holes are - THEN you start plugging holes. For me, I do not subscribe to the notion that the club really knows where its black holes are ... yet.
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Q. The Angels spent $300 million last year to bring in Pujols and Wilson, but the A's won more games. Money isn't very important.
A. Dr. D is confused.
The entire point of the WAR and VALUE statistics, woven into the fabric of Fangraphs' every page, is to position teams to spend money efficiently.
And they want to spend money efficiently, of course, because if they spend money intelligently, they can get 45 WAR for their $100M instead of 40 WAR.
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Then a team decides to raise its payroll by $40M, purchasing an extra 13 WAR, and now these 13 WAR don't matter very much?
The same people who obsess over the correctness of every new contract are --- > the same ones who tell it doesn't matter how much you spend. Hey, babe, I was enjoying myself trying to squeeze an extra 2 WAR out of my $80M here. When you start talking about dumping in an extra $40M and an extra 13 WAR, now ... well, that's just gauche.
Dude, it's not whether you spend $100 or $200; it's whether you're getting 95c for your dollar or $1.05 for it.
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Fangraphs has always had a certain palpable subconscious bias against marquee players, giant contracts, and teams spending a lot of money. Admittedly, there is benefit to having this argument around.
But don't spit down Dr. D's neck and tell him it's rainin'. :- ) If WAR matters, then cash to buy it matters, and spending sprees on 6-WAR players matter.
Can we stop arguing that more cash isn't a competitive advantage? What do you think the chemical precursor to WAR is?
Your friend,
Jeff
Comments
Sandy, I have a lot of respect for this POV - and for your experience following an actually well-run MLB franchise in the Braves (counter to most of us Seattleites). But I think Baker's argument is, you don't get to freeze time and fill all your holes at a point of your choosing. There might not be viable options to fill those holes when you want to, at least not without overpaying (which we all know the M's are not in the business of doing just about ever). So, let's say we find out by the end of 2013 our current crop of prospects is not going to pan out at positions A, B and C. But it turns out we can only fill position A in the 2013-14 offseason. Well what do we do then? It's not like our WS Game 1 starter King Felix is getting any younger or cheaper.
It just seems like a long game that you are proposing - and one that has its own very real risks and uncertainties, mainly driven by timing. And it also involves our wealthy owners hoarding annual profits that are generated from free taxpayer money (not to keep beating this drum but no one except Baker seems to want to talk about it).
I'd also say - just because the M's are historically awful at picking veteran FAs to sign on medium length deals...doesn't mean it's a fool's game in general. The main problem I see is that it's hard to play the right poker strategy when you are short stacked to begin with. If one very moderate sized bet going wrong (Figgins) is going to result in exiting the poker table for years...I question the financing method and overall risk tolerance, not the strategy of making these type of bets in poker hands.
I know you've thought through all this so would be curious your thoughts on the timing challenge especially.
. . . isn't just bias, it's also its reason for being. WAR is just a method of evaluation one can use to determine market inefficiencies that can then be taken advantage of. It's who they are. At some point we all forget why we're doing something; it's what we do. And if the original reason we begin doing something is a powerful intellectual, or religious, idea, it's very hard to shake.
I did a profile of the great Seattle architect Fred Bassetti once and in the course of it we talked a lot about his evolution from pure modernism to a more practical, place based kind of design. One example of this was the shape of his roofs.
Here from the piece:
"The intellectual hold of Modernism was so strong that Bassetti can remember precisely the moment he began to question it:
"He was on the roof of a house he had built for himself in Bellevue. It was night. It was raining. He was holding a flashlight in one hand, a bucket of tar in the other. He was wearing pajamas and a raincoat and an additional cloak of exasperation when the skies opened and something other than water fell out: This is stupid, he thought. This is Washington. It rains here. People would not have to get up in the middle of the night to patch leaks in their roofs if the roofs did not leak. Flat roofs leak. Hence: Build sloped roofs.
"Bassetti had never been intentionally hostile to the people who would inhabit his buildings. His first house, for example, had such user-friendly features as a fireplace mantle set at precisely the height of its owner’s elbow, the better to lean on at cocktail time. The promise of perfection offered by Modernism was so powerful, however, that when clients would ask about the possibility of a flat roof leaking, Bassetti would tell them – and believe – that technology had solved the problem. Then he’d build the roof. And it would leak.
He sometimes went to extraordinary lengths to honor the creed. Before he came to his senses and put a new, pitched roof on the Hilltop house, he bolted a ladder to an exterior wall so he wouldn’t have to search for it in the dark when going up top for a midnight patch job. He was aware that the mounts he manufactured to secure the ladder, pieces of steel he bent into heretically decorative shapes, were violations of Modernism, but he went ahead with them, thinking himself something of a rebel, never realizing that the absurdity of putting the ladder there at all defined just how tiny his rebellion was."
Fangraphs gets lost in the theory at times.
It's a very strong argument - wait until you know where the last pieces need to go, and then put them there. As you probably know, this post isn't replying to your position Sandy, not at all.
All things being equal, it would be nice to spend your money late in a roto draft, although I don't take the principle as the most important one in the game. But it's an advantage.
Honestly, I do not believe that having 9 kids at once is the "optimal" way to build a franchise.
I would be much happier if the club had 2 or 3 relatively young, (28/29) players with proven production over several seasons. But, the club doesn't. This is what I mean when I say "it matters where you start from".
Seattle spent a decade NOT developing talent internally, and the end result was a roster bloated with bloated contracts for declining production. But the 2004-present reality was a direct result of allowing a very, very good team of players going through their prime to age-out simultaneously. When the entire roster crashes into the 32-34 age bracket en masse, the outcome is (IMHO) a foregone conclusion.
The 2000 Ms and 2010 Phillies are scary similar in regards to disregarding the impact of "massed" aging.
By 2004, the Ms had an entire roster of players who would only get worse. The unwillingness to accept the reality of the situation led to the Sexson/Beltre signing. Beltre wasn't all that bad, given the situation, but Sexson was.
My issue with the Ms today - right this minute - is I have zero faith in regards to the production from ANY of the current hitters on the roster. None. Oh, I have my personal favorites, (Seager, Ackley ... which I concede some homerism here, being a UNC alum), Carp, Montero, Jaso and my not-so-favs, (Smoak, Saunders, Trayvon). But, Smoak is the only one I'd suggest has enough of an MLB statistical footprint to feel anything close to confidence in projecting forward, (but how much of this is because Smoak has done basically what I thought he would do from day one, vs. an unbiased analysis?).
Here's a thought experiment. Pretend that the Ms landed Prince Fielder for the 2012 season, (he fell in love with a local stripper who insisted he get divorced and move to Seattle). Anyway ... who would have lost PT ... and what would the WAR difference have been, (assuming exact production from everyone else except those losing PT to Fielder).
Well, Ichiro and Ryan and Figgins don't lose PT. But, Jaso may not be on the team at all. Fielder only played 3 games at DH. So, Smoak is the guy most likely to lose PT ... except as one Jack's annointed, he's the likely winner of the DH sweepstakes.
Montero probably loses PT, as you get mostly Smoak as DH.
The "likely" fall-out from adding Fielder in 2012, (IMO) is that the club makes Smoak a DH, Jaso doesn't make the team and Montero gets a PT reduction.
Jaso LED all Seattle hitters in WAR (3.3) in 2012. Fielder amassed 4.4 WAR, btw.
I get that this is an over-simplification, but adding Jaso instead of Fielder gave the team a LOT of flexibility in regards to PT. Of course, skip opted to continue shoveling Olivo into the lineup ... but that's a different issue. The key here is that all other things being equal, Fielder would have likely kept the best bat on the Seattle team in 2012 off the roster.
Two years ago, I was saying CF was the #1 area of need for Seattle. Then Saunders pops up with a remade swing and shoves my words down my throat and Guti has a really nice showing in the second half of 2012.
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Another arena for "it matters where you start". When your club has ALREADY developed Napoli, Kendrick, Morales, Aybar, Izturis in the recent past, then making a call on Trumbo and Trout starts from a foundation of "Yeah, we have a decent handle on this whole development thing." When you last decade's highlight developmental results are Jose Lopez and Yuni Betancourt, then not only does the notion "We feel good about Smoak" not carry much weight ... it shouldn't carry much weight.
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This "long game" I am proposing BEGAN in the middle of 2011. This "long game" plan has been running for 18 months. That was after giving the "buy happiness" plan almost a full decade to try and work out the kinks.
All this assumes that while your waiting for this lengthy rebuilding to actually show some results the fans don't desert you in droves. You can talk about the rebuild really starting in 2011, but to the fans the rebuild started in 2004 and still hasn't borne significant fruit. Thus the Seattle Times article revealing the M's as having the worst attendance dropoff among all pro sports teams of the last decade. The Mariners have sowed to the wind, and they are reaping a whirlwind which has the potential to engulf any rebuilding plan which does not take it seriously.
Perhaps it could be said this way: The M's have a whole lot more to rebuild than just a baseball team.
What does it matter if they have to draw back the fans? Assuming they do (they do), how does that affect their rebuilding plan? It's been proven many times that signing marquee free agents gives a tiny attendance boost that dies very quickly and doesn't help to increase payroll much at all. We've shown that making like the Marlins and winning for only one year at a time doesn't bring attendance; attendance tends to show up the year after the team first starts winning and goes away pretty quickly if the team starts losing again. If they want the payroll back, they need to build a sustainable winner--which is what they're trying to do. What change in game plan are you suggesting?
There is a difference between drawing back "the fans," which sound rather innocuous and easily obtainable, and drawing back so many fans that have been so deeply alienated that the team tops the honor roll among all pro sports franchises for lost fans over the last decade. Granted that winning cures most ills, but some ills are more serious, long-term threats than others. As Sandy says regarding talent, I say regarding fan support: "It matters where you start from..."
As far as my suggestions for a change in game plan, it is not so much the game plan (tactics and strategy) as it is the ethos that is my concern (see Doc's article "Josh Hamilton Talking Points"). Besides, my quailfications as a GM are hardly commendable. Still, as one human being amongst a sea of them, I look at the overall futility of the M's for a decade and compare it to the fortunes of other teams with resources similar to the M's, it speaks for itself. Criticism such as mine is entirely warranted. I have followed successful franchises in the past. I know what they look like. And the M's don't look like one to me.
Whether I am right or wrong, whether you are right or wrong has yet to be determined.