ashbury

https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2017/11/process-for-signing-prospects-stripped-from-braves.html The MLB Trade Rumors article stated it pretty directly. "They may elect to draw from either their current signing period pool allocation or that of the 2018-19 period (but not both)." I'd be surprised if this hadn't been pretty carefully vetted.

If someone can explain the masterstroke in last winter's Rule-5 draft, where we chose Miguel Diaz and then hilarity ensued all the way through July 24, I will be more inclined to decide on crushing versus non-crushing. What did we net, in exchange for the investment of a 25-man roster spot for more than half a season during which we wound up in post-season contention?

I took French in high school, and know that this is the word for "shirt". Not that I want to encourage this tangent....hint hint

Mod note: I took this to be entirely in jest, from what appears to be a regular poster at Twinkie Town, and thus left it in view, but if anyone is going to pursue this tangent seriously, I'll ask them all to stop now.

Yeah, I was about to recommend his series of articles. They are at: https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/author/matts/ Probably should scroll down to the first of his July 2017 articles and work your way back up chronologically. Anyone with serious concerns about trying to understand the cost of acquiring MLB-ready talent on the open market should read these critically, along with the comments that have been posted there by readers. He says on his LinkedIn page he consults to a MLB team (the Nationals), as well as doing risk management for an insurance company (Cigna), so his POV should not be dismissed out of hand.

That's undisputed. I don't know why you keep coming back to this point. Even the largest market teams do not pay market prices for their entire 25-man rosters. Aaron Judge, Gary Sanchez, Aaron Hicks, Luis Severino, along with the various low-salary role-players, all make the Yankees' front office jobs much easier. Teams don't pay $8M (or whatever) per WAR. Full stop. They pay $8M (or whatever) per WAR to players who, by virtue of 6+ years of service, can more nearly control their own destiny. This includes free agency, but also players who agree to deals with their teams so as to buy out their free agency. Smaller market teams pay this same price, otherwise they get outbid for an individual player. They simply do it a lot less frequently, perforce, than the big boys.

I always applaud an analytic approach to decision making. You seem to be aiming toward a forecast of WAR, at the time the contract is signed. I think the studies computing $6M or $8M (or whatever) per WAR are doing it in terms of value delivered, looking back after the contract is signed (so the jury is still out on recent guys). That is, they are asking the question, what do teams typically get for their FA money? I think it stands to reason that front offices' forecasts are getting better and better, so as time goes along the actual value delivered (at least insofar as WAR represents "actual" value) becomes a better and better proxy for the forecasts. But even in trying to come at the question from the forecast WAR for these players, a simple average of previous years seems awfully far from what teams probably use. I don't think you would use that kind of average for a product life-cycle study, for instance, unless at a very particular stage (probably mid-life) - you would draw dangerous conclusions if in the early years, or if at the end in maintenance mode when you're trying to wean customers off. Ballplayers, as a "product", surely aren't static enough in their "life cycles" to try that with. With the horizon you specified, I would weight the most recent year more heavily than the prior year, and much moreso than two years back - almost ancient history in some cases. But I would also factor in growth or (more usually, for these free agents) decline relative to age. Injury risk also comes into play. It may be that teams are (in the privacy of their own processes) putting a very large downward factor on their forecasts over the life of the contract they intend to offer. That would move things in the opposite direction from your conclusion, since it makes the denominator smaller. Another thing that makes the methodology difficult is that players' "accurate" forecast of value, by whatever procedure you think best, is probably in the middle range of what teams will compute for themselves; and it's highly likely that whoever computes the highest value will make the largest offer, and in turn the player is highly likely to accept an offer very near the top of the range. This of course would move things in the direction you suggest, as it makes the denominator larger. All things considered, it's hard to approximate teams' forecasts with a simple average. Beyond hard, I think - misleading, or even not useful. We'd be dividing $$/WAR using something basically unknowable. Cespedes, the first guy on your list, seems like a good example. He was a highly sought Cuban free agent in 2012, and when he became available again in the 2016-17 offseason his resume was a bit spotty. He was coming off a 2.9-WAR season (I'm using b-r.com) after a 6.2, decidedly his best, and he had missed a few games in August after putting in two full seasons the prior years, after starting off with two injury-impacted seasons. I could imagine some widely differing forecasts by competent professionals in the field. When the Mets prepared their eventual winning offer, it's not preposterous to think that another 6-WAR season could be expected. But, he was already turning 31, and for the four-year contract the team was contemplating, a decline could be expected. An injury during any of those four seasons could further harm the value delivered in that season just due to his absence, while also perhaps accelerating his declining ability for future seasons. All in all, just spitballing here, a four-year WAR of (6,5,4,3), times an 80% chance each season for not having a really serious injury, comes out to only about 14 WAR over the life of the contract, or about 3.6 a season, rather than the 4.4 you came up with. That comes out to around $7.5M per. If I did the math right. Again, I'm only spitballing. Now, given that the Mets won this sweepstakes, it's fair to assume that most other teams* came up with a lower WAR estimate and made commensurately lower offers to the player. Unless you believe the Mets are super geniuses and have a unique ability to forecast future value, it's very likely that the actual value he returns will be more in line with the crowd and thus lower than they thought they were paying for. Ergo, the cost per WAR will likely be higher than their forecast (and perhaps this guesstimate). That's the so-called Winner's Curse in any free market, right? (Not that MLB markets are all that free. ) I'm not going to invest the time with my rinky-dink eyeballing methodology, on the other players you listed, but you probably see my point, that trying to infer MLB forecasts of WAR is harder than just averaging some recent seasons. * Even if you rule out the small market teams, there are enough other deep pocketed teams to make this line of thought work.

A project leader from one of my early jobs passed along this sage rule of thumb: "It takes about 10 Attaboys to make up for 1 OhSh[oo]t". Said another way, a chess player who grinds down the opponents through a sequence of small tactical positional advantages leading to small gains in material can still lose the game in the blink of an eye due to a careless blunder. I'm encouraged by a lot of these moves, but Terry Ryan was also adept at small-ball GMing, and we have yet to see a really big move by our new guys to start to tell what will happen under their regime. They aren't likely going to win a WS doing only what we've seen from them so far.

My working assumption since October has been that it's less than 50-50 that Sano plays anything resembling a full season at third, so they darn well better have a very good Plan B for 2018, even though he is by far the best Plan A they have for the position. Tough and important decision for the brain trust.

Leave Who at First where he belongs!

My inner ball guy topped out at truly bad rec-league slow-pitch teams, with an ugly inside out swing that mainly assured getting to third base on occasional doubles near the RFer just because of the level of play. Any differences I spot (more pronounced backswing? hand flying off the bat sooner at the end of the swing? slightly funky head movement?) would be random in my mind, where, if you told me you were kidding and you had switched the identities of the two hitters, I would be picking the wrong one as "good" versus "bad". I'll hang up and listen (in awe at those who can spot these things).

Yes, I'm looking forward to getting my next oil change written up by Jake Mauer himself.

Looks like it will happen, according to MLBTR. Marlins get middling prospects plus Starlin Castro - any bets on how long until he is flipped for further salary relief?

Trick question, they are both pitchers just screwing around in the batting cage? I assume the real, underlying, point is that short-season ball numbers just don't tell you much about a young power hitting prospect. Unless, one genuinely had "no power" in his scouting reports coming out of high school, in which case I confess to having "not a scout" on own my scouting report.

Or, said another way, it mandates either an additional member of the pitching staff, or else a bullpen full of rubber arms who can handle the extra workload. Given the skimpy benches of position players in this day and age, the idea of one more pitcher might be a (pun alert) non-starter.

I don't think anyone's claiming that $8M (or whatever value) is the cost for all talent. Obviously young players under team control provide value at a far, far lower cost. The $8M figure amounts to the marginal rate on the spot-market. I like to think of FA contracts as the "Stupidity Tax" when you have to admit you didn't develop a suitable player of your own at a position of need. No one wants to build a team entirely this way. People have done amusing articles on what it would cost to build an entire car from parts purchased at a parts shop. No one sane would do that. Yet we all go to NAPA or Pep Boys when the need arises. One further analogy. I presume you are in the 39.6% tax bracket (soon to change). But you don't fork over 39,6% of your total income, because of deductions and a graduated tax rate. That 39.6 number is very meaningful, but also not very illuminating if you use only that one number for your thinking. As a side note, I also kind of doubt that true 1-WAR players get X, and 2-WAR players get 2X, etc. The value of a player to a team contending for the World Series isn't linear. So any number like $8M is just for back of the envelope calculations of players at a certain fairly high level of ability and demand for their services.

The Astros?

Coors hasn't had the highest park factor for HR in many years. But if you focus on simply Runs, rather than an individual component of scoring, you'll note that Coors continues to sport the highest Park Factor of all MLB, and it's not particularly close, same as most years. There are various working theories about why (big outfield, fly balls carry better, breaking pitches don't bite), but a pitcher leaving Coors is a decent bet to do better.

It's not just "sources", some members of Congress have chosen to speak openly in these terms. Sounds to me like the groundwork is being laid for Trump to fire Mueller very soon. I believe Mueller is getting very close to a smoking gun, making even desperate measures the only way for Trump to proceed at this point. I half expected to read of the firing in this morning's news feed.

Ok, but this is somewhat conflating pool limits with green dollars. In the case previously mentioned where the Cardinals voided a $3M contract due to vision issues, the kid wound up signing for $500K with Arizona. Obviously this doesn't define anything for Marte, but indicates what can happen to teams' forecasts of future value in light of a bad vision report. Pool dollars may get passed around, but when actual dollars are spent there are many things that can spoil the deal.

Assuming words match feelings. If he's getting good advice, he may understand that the $3M is gone, but high six-figures may be attainable if he doesn't burn bridges. That realization wouldn't erase a feeling of having been squeezed. I don't know either way. I just don't read much into that statement.

I know it's cynical times, but I don't see a reason everything needs to be orchestrated like you seem to be suggesting. Do the right thing, then move on. Individual party members will have their individual ideas, and it will come together.

I'm with you on the optics of this. I am in the camp generally hoping they don't sign him; I don't want questions about "my" team putting the squeeze on players financially. The news about "no hard feelings on either side" suggests it could happen though. When the news of the contract voiding broke, the Baseball America article mentioned a similar case from about a decade ago; a different team signed him for half a million instead, and afterward his career quietly fizzled. I don't hope for bad luck like that for this player, but it's a way this could end up playing out.

Mod note: Mike, and everyone, please don't use strawman arguments like this one.

At Plimoth Plantation the other day, Native American speakers referred to a matriarchy in the pre-Pilgrim society. I don't know how that bears on "today" as you asked.