Hamilton

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If Dr. D reads 20 USSM articles, 19 of them remind him of the Jim Bowden - Gary Huckabay interview on Baseball Prospectus a few years back.  Saber consultants, Bowden sez, are useless because "there isn't a dime's worth of difference between you guys.  You like pitchers who strike out a lot of guys, who walk few, and who keep the ball on the ground.  Well, no kidding.  Us dumb-nuts scouts woulda never thought of that."

And 19 times in 20, reading Cameron's stuff, I smile at Bowden's self-aggrandizing complaint that sabermigos naturally agree on everything :- )

That's 19 times, though ... the 20th time was today's USSM article on Josh Hamilton.   The article is based on the idea of calmly buying out a player's missed time and risk, and it even comes to exactly the figure that Dr. D guesstimated:  6/130 for Hamilton.

Here is our Sept. 14th shtick on Hamilton.  To me the Mariners' roster is a sensationally precise fit for Hamilton:  when he misses 40 games in a year, well, those are 40 games per year that you wanted to give to other outfielders anyway.  The Mariners no longer have Ichiro, so they put Hamilton in CF and rotate 3-4 young outfielders around the corners.  

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When Whitey Herzog took over the Cardinals around 1980, he decided he had to get Ted Simmons, Pete Vuckovich and Rollie Fingers out of his locker room.  (For you kiddies out there, this would be loosely comparable to Davey Johnson taking over the 2013 Angels and deciding he wanted Jered Weaver, C.J. Wilson and Albert Pujols off his team.)  Herzog called Harry Dalton in Milwaukee and asked him, How would you like to win the pennant next year?  Dalton's reply was classic.  He deadpanned, "I'd like that fine."

Supposing that the Seattle Mariners won the World Series next year in a 4-game sweep.  Would that be all right with you?  

Let's say that Zduriencik brought in Josh Hamilton, that Paxton and Erasmo had big years, that the Mariners posted a 107 ERA+ and 95 OPS+.  Let's say they Pythag'ed 88 wins, had 88 wins' worth of run differential, but actually won 94 due to an excellent bullpen, some rawhide-tough hitting in close games, and/or some random luck.

Here's the question.  As sabermigos, would you take joy in that?  Or would your "knowledge" that the M's weren't the best team spoil a lot of it for you?  Wouldn't spoil any of it for me:  my saber-mig'ing would enhance my appreciation of a championship.  Will tell you exactly why.

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=== Point Counterpoint "You Ignorant Misguided Feeb" Dept. ===

Brian Sabean, having won two World Series in three years, chortles about a victory for tools scouting.  Baseball Girl tears him a new one.  I mean you think we get pithy around here?  Check that article out...

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We're like you.  A little bit different.  -- ad seen on a bus ... for an insurance company, of all things

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The Seattle blog-o-sphere has definitely always been a little bit different.  One of the ways in which it is different is the way in which we all one-up ourselves in the hustle and bustle to take 1st place in line at the Most Objective counter.

Monday, Dr. D will smile wryly as a writer informs The Faithful that Hultzen, Franklin and Wilhelmsen aren't worth nearly as much as we homers assume that they are.  Tuesday, he'll smile sardonically as we're warned to stop noodling about deals for Wil Myers and Billy Hamilton; teams don't trade the diamonds of their farm systems.  They play the cheap guys and trade the arb guys.  C'mon, don'choo know anything?

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Cory Schwartz won this year's mixed Tout Wars with a record points total.  He's won multiple championships in the National Fantasy Baseball Championship and is currently vice president at the stats department of MLB Advanced Media.  So he's the state of the art.

It's interesting to see that the state of the art in roto is precisely where Dr. D left it four or five years ago, and where Ron Shandler left it twenty years ago.  (In the Hardball Times article, Schwartz is taking the Yoo-Hoo shower made famous by Shandler in a galaxy far, far away.)  It's possible that there are no fundamental gains to be made in macro baseball roster strategy.  Hitters are what they are, and pitchers are what they are.

A few excerpts from Estimable Schwartz' post-game interview:

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I prioritize offense first, bullpen second and starting pitching last in all leagues, with the exact distribution of dollars and draft picks determined by the league format. In a 15-team mixed league like Tout Wars I usually maintain a relatively typical 70/30 split during auctions, but the distribution of that 30 is somewhat atypical compared to other clubs. My split at Tout Wars this year was 71/29, with the $79 I spent on pitching only a dollar less than the league average...

John Benson, one of the pioneers of using analytics in fantasy baseball, taught me that "strength loves certainty, but weakness loves risk." As a result, I try to look for reasonably predictable offensive picks, with balanced category value and some upside, while I spend more aggressively and take on more risk in my starting pitching.

This aspect of Game Theory will be as true in two years as it is now.  It will be as true in 100 years.  In backgammon, if you're winning, you don't want a bunch of loose blots.  Time is on your side.  You want a conservative game, to let the dice and the clock do your work for you.  In a baseball game, if you're up 5-2 in the sixth, you don't want a sudden wild change in the weather.  The loser wants things muddied up.

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Q.  In 50 words or less, explain again why all the roto champs (and current MLB contenders) play Stars & Scrubs?

A.  Your big contracts ossify your roster.  You can't win any kind of game, board game or otherwise, if you tie your own hands.  Your opponents will be working hard enough to do that for you.  

There's a solution.  If you pile as much of your resources as possible into as few players as possible, say 5 aircraft carriers a la Verlander, Cabrera, Fielder etc., that leaves you able to swap players in and out of the other 20* roster slots.

Agility -- dynamic options during gameplay -- is the very first principle of game theory.  Almost any game.  If you have three different Monopoly groups you could finish - the purples, reds, and yellows, you're orders of magnitude better off than if trying to complete one specific group, the yellows.

Chess is all about multiplying options until you have 5 attack variations and the defender only has 3 defense maneuvers.  You cannot overstate the importance of Billy Beane's roster fungibility strategy.  The only way to get to roster fungibility is to pile 80% of your resources into 20% of your roster -- the superstars.

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It's a question of player-pairs.  Would you rather have Hamilton at $25M along with the best Romero/Liddi you can find, or two Nick Swishers?  Talented rookies can overperform their contracts.  The Scrub can give you far more value than his salary.  With two Civics, you're not going to get one of them who's worth $15M more than his salary.

Don't get wrapped around the axle with pairs as such.  It's a subtle and dynamic principle.  The more your roster polarizes towards aircraft carriers vs minimum-salary players, the more opportunity for overperformance you have.

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Besides that, great players win big games.  Great teams tend to have great players.  Not fairly good players.

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Q.  What would be the delta between Nick Swisher and the best of the M's young-player field?