Our reaction article on Langerhans was that he was a Swiss Army Knife journeyman, a player that Earl Weaver (for example) avoided like the plague.
Good managers find specialists for their benches, and then they outsmart opposing managers and create +1.5 players out of +0.5 players.
There was nothing wrong with Langerhans, except that he was Jeremy Reed, a dime-a-dozen journeyman who might (theoretically) block Stars & Scrubs developmental players.
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After about a month, SABRMatt noticed that Langerhans had a slider-speed bat. This is precisely the kind of thing that escapes us as bloggers, and that causes Ryan Langerhans-es to bounce around baseball freely available.
Langerhans hit .218 without BB's or power in 2009, and hit .192 for us this year, again without walks or (enough) power.
Edit to add, the overall OPS+ of 85 is about twenty points shy of his getting any serious PT. But Ryan works the count, no doubts there. Thanks Mal.
He didn't hurt the M's. But in SSI's humble opinion, he underlined the fact that you can't win Roto, or MLB championships, by picking up cans by the side of the road and cashing them in for a nickel each.
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I'm not trying to be coy, or petty. Different people see the game differently. Langerhans was the poster boy for how a sabermetrician, with a real sharp pencil, would vanquish his fellow GM's.
I honestly don't believe that saving $2M at this spot, and $2M at that spot, is what leads to pennants. You then give it all back when you make one bad $6M call, you know?
You don't nickel-and-dime your way to 95 wins. You go get TALENT!, with UPSIDE! You guess right on the key players, and then you win. It's how Zduriencik & Co. won in Milwaukee.
Stars & Scrubs baby.
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If I had been an amigo who threw his cap 50 feet in the air, when the M's acquired Ryan Langerhans, I'd have gotten a couple of light bulbs out of it, after Langerhans' acquisition turned out to be meaningless.
Those light bulbs, in my sincere opinion, include (A) the realization that your typical 29-year-old journeyman is traveling around ... for a real good reason.
It's not as easy to snarf "free wins" off the waiver wire as it might seem. There are about 30 GM's with Voros McCrackens, handing the GM's lists of "free VORP" sitting around baseball.
You've got 2, maybe 3, roster spots at which to stash your "free wins." It's not as easy as it seems.
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And, we humbly suggest, VORP/$ efficiency isn't quite the Holy Grail that it's sometimes made out to be.
Guys like Franklin Gutierrez, Jason Vargas, and David Aardsma, those are "finds" that you can win pennants with. But! Those guys aren't VORP/$ finds. They're talent projections.
You win by forecasting improvements in ability.
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We did like the stories about the way that Capt Jack out-negotiated the Nationals for Langerhans: Offer A, rejected. Offer B, rejected. Offer C, "Oh well, he's worth nothing to you, but if you want to give him a chance to play, give us a call."
OVERALL GRADE: A nice example of Zduriencik's ability, and willingness, to work roster improvements midseason.
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Next deal: the Daniel Cortes miracle
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To say that Langerhans provided no power is a reasonable assertion, though I would call a .168 ISO he posted in '09 acceptable, but to say that he didn't walk is quite an injustice, as he walked 11.5% of the time last year and 18% this year. The strikeouts are the thing that keeps him a bench role player, with a rate that would have been among the league leaders last year and would be the league leader this year.
He walks plenty, no doubt.
His OPS+ has been 87 and 86, about 20 points shy of serious playing time in the OF, but the BB correction is well taken.
Thanks amigo.
Morse is actually starting to look like a late bloomer. Huh?
I liked that trade at the time. Can't complain.
A) I liked Morse more than most Mariner fans before he was dealt....but,
B) Morse is not a late bloomer...he's playing in the minor leagues again...still waiting for the commish to realize the obvious and declare the NL the game's elite minor league.
but, ya, here he is with a 128 OPS+ in half a season's AB's.
The early John Valentin comp -- decent AVG with 20-25 homers -- remains realistic, probably. Morse could wind up having 2,000 AB's in the bigs, at various positions.
He'd wind up being worth a lot more, careerwise, than Langerhans, but I doubt many of us would hold that against Capt Jack. Morse wasn't going to play here, and we still wouldn't have a place for him in 2011 if they offered him back free. Rather give the AB's to other developmental players.
But ya Champ, Morse could wind up having value.
Real quick Matty, with AL being 100 on the index, where would you personally ballpark the NL, NPB, and AAA at the moment?
Whats funny is that a lot of casual fans were really upset about losing Morse, but the Sabers and scouts didn't see anything in him.
I didn't care about Morse at all, but here he is looking like he might pan out as a Ibanez type late bloomer.
I wouldn't go that far (NL is still Major Leagues), although the gap is still there.
When you see guys like Pat Burell fizzling in the AL for two years and going back to his old self THE SECOND hes traded back to the NL, it does make you wonder.
I do think Morse could be another guy in the fringe between leagues, but you never know.
Per the last decade of interleague play results, the NL is Pythagenmatting it at a .387 clip. A .387!! clip. For a whole league in ten years worth of interleague games. That's a LOT of games to be THAT bad.
If you called up the five best PCL teams and had 'em run shotgun with the AL for 162 games each...would they play .387 ball? It would be close.
I liken the gap between a major and minor league to the gap between a grandmaster and a master in the ELO ratings. A Grandmaster's 2400 will beat a master's 2200 about 2/3 of the time. If the NL is Pythagenmatting barely better than I'd expect the PCL to do...then yes...I call the NL a minor league and don't look back.
To answer Doc's question above...I would rate the leagues thusly:
AL: 100
NL: 92
NPB: 90
PCL: 90
IL: 90
Although a lot of stars have come out of the NPB, it's not significantly better than today's AAA if only because there does not exist a very deep player pool who can play with team Japan. Japan's best players can play with anyone...so could the best players in the Negro Leagues...unfortunately, the Negro Leagues were also minor leagues based on the kinds of statistics the stars routinely posted as compared to what they did in the big leagues when allowed to play.
Thats kind of extreme IMO. You have to consider that a group of AAA stars would typically be a replacement level team at the MLB level. A group of NPB stars would lead the AL in Ws and a group of NL stars would break the MLB record for Ws in the AL.
The NL is significantly better than AAA and clearly better than NPB. NPB is also clearly far superior to AAA. Heck, I think the gap between the AL and AAA should be larger as well.
AL is the strongest league by a healthy margin, but I see NL as still WAY closer to AL than AAA and NPB is closer NL than AAA as well. The minor leagues are still a lot worse the Major Leagues.
but we knew that Matty would bring numbers, facts and logic to the question.
Taro's counter-argument tells, also. NPB stars smack down on touring MLB stars pretty good, and of course dominate the WBC.
I'm not real sure that the best NPB team might not play .500 in the NL. Not sure if that jibes with Matt's indexes.
I'm sure Sandy will love this :- )
A) I don't think a team of the best PCL players would be replacement level, no. I think you'd have a mix of up and coming studs and AAAA talents...I think that team might easily play .,500 ball in the NL...hence why I don't think the NL is that far above AAA.
B) And I know with pretty high certainty that the NL is enough weaker than the AL that the NL plays replacement level baseball against the AL. Internalize that for a moment.
C) And I also know that the conversion factor from NPB is typically worse than it is for the NL...so I know that the NPB, as a league would be worse than replacement level against the AL and probably about as good as the NL is against the AL...against the NL.
D) The difference between the NPB (and the Negro Leagues) and AAA...is that the NPB stars are significantly better than most of the rest of the players in that league. There isn't talent parity there...it's 30-40 really good players and then a whole bunch of really bad ones. The same is true of the Venezuelan Winter League, the Negro Leagues, Cuban Baseball etc. There's a reason that fringe MLB players can go to Japan and OPS 1.000 without breaking a sweat. The NL is probably better than the NPB since there is more talent parity there...but no, I don't think a team of NPB stars would break the MLB wins record...I think they would be competitive with the Phillies.
E) And I'm also fairly certain that so far, the NPB has produced ONE hall of fame level talent that stuck in the big leagues. Ichiro. No one else has come close. Not Godzilla, not Nomo, not Sasaki, Look what happened to Kosuke Fukudome...look what happened to Daisuke Matsuzaka...how about Kazuo Matsui...these were all players on the Japanese all star team, taro. EASILY!! And they all became run of the mill big leagues...average at best.
A AAA star team would consist of guys barely above replacement level. AAA is a farm system for the MLB and anybody good enough to be in the MLB usually is.
An NL star team would dismantle the AL. Theres no way its closer to AAA than MLB. If you were to theoretically NUKE NL Central and spread that talent over the rest of the NL, the AL-NL disparity would essentially vanish.
Name the fringe MLBers that became 1.000 OPS types. There are some some MOTO type that wouldn't be successful in the bigs, but this has shown to be true from the NL to AL as well. 1.000 OPS type in the NPB will translate unless they have horrible eye or K% ratios.
Matsui translated just fine (generally a 3 WAR player), and then went through gradually age decline. Nomo was great for two seasons and then declined. Sasaki was effective as a closer.Matsuzaka and Fukudome entered physical decline IMO. Matsuzaka has lost his stuff and command and you have to remember that guys come over past the age of 30.
Johjima had two 3 WAR seasons, then entered decline and hasn't been the same since. Iwamura had a couple 2.5-3 WAR seasons, then entered decline. Iguchi was 3 WAR player then entered decline.
K. Matsui is true old fashioned bust IMO. But give me any NL player with those eye and K% ratios and I wouldn't be too optimistic about their translation over to the AL either.
These guys come over old. Look at some other guys that haven't aged as badly like Ichiro (5.5 WAR), Hiroki Kuroda (star SP in NL that has prorated to around 4 WAR per season), Koji Uehara (was a star SP for a short period in AL, injured, star closer).
Colby Lewis has had a 4.4 WAR season so far. He was in the NO DH LEAGUE in the NPB with 9.35 K/9 and 2.96 ERA in his walk year. Its 8.8 K/9 in the AL.
So generally what we've seen from star level NPB position players is that they are 3~ ish WAR players in the AL. Asides from Ichiro (an outlier) and probably Norichika Aoki (who I think is another 4+ WAR type). This type of talent isn't laying around in AAA.
We've seen that the star SP is even more effective. They are generally 4+ WAR types and the guys haven't broken down have all translated well.
I think the average NPB team would play around replacment level against against the AL, and just as poor against the NL as NL vs AL. However, that is NOT the same thing as AAA. A STAR AAA team is typically a replacement level team. The level between the Majors and Minors is pretty vast.
NL and NPB are both Major League. They are below the AL comfortably, and some players DO depend on beating up fringe talent that doesn't exist in the AL, but it is still Major League caliber and not minor league.
First of all, you say that 3 WAR players don't stay in AAA, and of course this is true, but AT ANY GIVEN TIME there are probably DOZENS of those kinds of players down there. Your typical AAA stint for even most uber-prospects is several months. The game's top players are continuously passing through, Taro. So yes, the top minor leagues will be able to assemble an all-star team at any time that can compete with the NPB. And yes, I think an all-star team from AAA at amy given time could play .500 ball in the NL.
Second of all, your 3 WAR estimate for NPB stars is IMHO optimistic. The best of Japan's best might be 3 WAR players, but second level stars are likely to be RLPs. Using that logic, I would estimate that a Japanese AS team would be wortj 48+(10*3)+10...or about 88 wins. Competitive with the Phillies as I suggested earlier.
I wonder if we should split out the thread...