ASSUMPTIONS

What do you get when you begin with assumptions?

sum into pass
must piss on a ...
u spit on mass
sit maps on us
spam is not us
spasm on suit

What the above demonstrates is that order is important.  On the field, this is easy to see.  A homer, triple, double, single, walk (in that order), scores two or three runs.  In the opposite order, it scores five.  The reality of roster management and team building is not so different.

After the 2007 season, there was a choice about "going for it" in 2008.  The club had just won 88 games, and finished a paltry 6 games behind the Angels for the West division title, and the same 6 games out of the wild card spot.  The choice at that point was to make a major trade of prospects for Erik Bedard.  Bedard was a dominant pitcher ... but one with a short resume, and a history of health problems.  But, the club opted to ditch its top near-ready CF spec, a solid veteran bullpen arm, and an additional pack of longer term prospect projects.  The result was a complete disaster in 2008.

There were many who railed against the deal, (high on AJ or low on Bedard).  There were some who argued, (and in hindsight rightly), that the club was not NEARLY close enough to being a legitimate contender to take that kind of gamble.  The 88-74 club had been outscored 794-813.  Of course, there were those who argued that the pythag projection for that team didn't tell the whole story, (79-83).  So, BEFORE examining the choices the 2009 club has heading into 2010, let us try and identify what errors were made in the 2007 to 2008 assessment, hopefully to avoid making the same ones.

1) Failure to heed pythag -- When wins and run differential don't match, the won-loss record almost always wins the hearts and minds of even the most analytical minds.  The danger is in believing that the win/loss record is catching some magical component of the team WHICH IT CAN MAINTAIN.  This has been disproven so many times that it is hard to believe that people still fall into this trap.  For the 2007 club, the argument was that the horrid back end of the rotation was so horrid that they bloated the runs allowed, so the club was REALLY an 88 win team, to only a few extra runs prevented could push the team to 90 or 92 or 95 wins.

It is sadly amusing to note the complete illogic of the position.  The argument is that because the team was losing lots of 4-14 games, that getting slightly better pitchers would result in wins.  It won't.  It CAN'T.  If the assessment is correct, then addressing the very position that caused the abberation will have *NO POSITIVE IMPACT AT ALL*.  What will happen is that you will those same games 4-6 or 3-5.  But, you will STILL LOSE.  The unrelenting reliability of pythag is this --- that while teams can (and do), sometimes have run distribution that doesn't match up with normal run distribution, the ONLY way to maintain a pythag skew is to maintain whatever it is that is causing that abberation.  In the case of the foul BOR pitchers, the only way maintain the mirage was to continue to have miserable BOR starters.  Does ANYONE believe that is a recipe for success?  Anyone?

So, word of warning #1 for the 2010 projections.  The 2007 club was outscored by only 19 runs, while winning 88 games.  The 2009 club was outscored by 52 runs, while winning 85.  Even if one believes they can identify why the 2009 club beat pythag ... before one begins projecting 2010, one would need to find a BUNCH of similar teams that managed to maintain said skew the next season before buying into the notion that they have SUSTAINABLE magic that can help the next season.  I'm skeptical that such a list exists.