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Major League Ready

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Everything posted by Major League Ready

  1. Major League Ready
    Another year of evaluating the potential replacements will put the team in a better position to determine what to do about Dozier at the end of this year. We would also have to pay him top dollar and 5 years to sign him now. There is no upside of signing the deal now. I would think they will also have a much better idea of the likelihood of Lewis sticking at SS. This is no small part of the decision. This team has a number of prospects that could (probably should) continue to elevate this team for the next few years. We don't need a Jacoby Ellsbury scenario of our own.
  2. Major League Ready
    Dozier's OPS for the last 3 years = .751 / .886 / .856 Blackmon's OPS for the last 3 years = .797 / .933 / .1000 Plus CF vs 2B Is the team better in 2018 with Gordon at 2B and an additional 20M to spend on a FA, especially given Santana is gone next year? It really becomes a bad idea if Lewis sticks at SS. Polanco to 2B, Lewis at SS and 20M to spend on FAs 2019-2022. I love Dozier but let him go. Take the money coming off the books next year and lock up some of our core. If you get those guys locked up, we have some great additions in the wings. Romero and Gonsalves are close and Graterol is probably not far off either. Thorpe and Mejia add depth and Thorpe is a good candidate to jump up on prospects lists. Let's maintain the ability to keep the core around instead of spending the money required to keep them on players likely to decline. Let's lock some guys up next year on contract that won't require us to go to age 35 or 36.
  3. Major League Ready
    Really great article. I try to watch the box scores for all of the farm teams to see if there is anyone that might break-out. This is a nice heads up on who to watch.
  4. Major League Ready
    Gomez or even Jackson at the price they signed are good examples of what you are saying. Grossman would have brought something back (nothing great but something). My hope is that not signing these guys leaves room to sign Lynn or Cobb. Neither one of these guys are top of the rotation guys but still good assets and would give us good depth of solid starting pitching. We have not had that in a long time. It would be wonderful to have a problem of excess if we are so fortunate as to have Gibson, May, Sanchez or Hughes or a couple of them exceed expectations. I am sure we can find someone willing to take our excess for a decent return. Santana | Berrios | Odorizzi | Lynn | Gibson | Mejia | Hughes | Sanchez | Gonsalves | May - I like our odds of coming up with a solid rotation out of this group and maybe even having some trade assets at the deadline. I am not sure how we workout the roster issues but that seems to have a way of working out.
  5. Major League Ready
    Gomez was a great value at $4M as was Jackson at 2/6M. It might be that they just don't want to give up on Kepler developing against LF pitching which I can get behind.
  6. Major League Ready
    You are absolutely right Morrison had a career year but given the money we are talking it makes no sense to assume this decision had any bearing on them not signing a RH OFer. AT least Morrison is in his prime and its reasonable to believe last year was a break-out season. I also think it is a stretch to say their were multiple viable options available. The only guy you listed that was considered in the top 50 available free agents was Gomez. Gomez was good last year and he might have a couple good seasons left in him. Perhaps the front office did not believe in him or he simply might not have been interested in coming back here. I just not that as simple as there were several good options.
  7. Major League Ready
    Gonzalez, is a LH hitter. I forgot about Jackson. He had a nice year last year and is still in his prime. That would have been a decent move but he is the only FA that would have move the needle. Gomez had a good year last year too but he was bad a couple years before that so I would not have cared for him. Holiday has been declining for about the last 5 years so I don't think he is a difference maker and Bautista had an OPS+ of 76 last year and will be 37 this year.
  8. Major League Ready
    What free agent OFer other than Martinez would that describe?
  9. Major League Ready
    It's pretty easy to calculate actual cost. What I am wondering is how they are forecasting and determining market value. Has there been a considerable gap in forecasted vs actual performance. Of course, this includes how long the player will add significant value. It seems like there was a tendency be overly optimistic. Does WAR even have any significant role in contract valuations. Honestly, I have never dig into it by it seems highly suspect. How accurate has Streamer been? I have never seen a metric this suspect used in any form of valuation in any other industry. Are we seeing an adjustment this year? There are more business school educated personnel in front offices now. There appears to be an adjustment in-process this season. Are the front offices finally recognizing the odds of defying aging and the cost of losing cost controlled players. It will be very interesting to see how this shakes out in coming weeks.
  10. Major League Ready
    Are the estimates you referenced in the highlighted part of your post the average production per WAR after signing or are this calculated based on the price free agent signed and there war for 2-3 seasons leading up to free agency? I think you are confusing production per WAR with what players are signing for in comparison with this historical WAR. For example, Lorenzo Cain averaged 4.6 WAR over the last 3 years. He signed for $16M/year which equates to 3.8M per WAR. Zack Cozart signed for $12,666,667 per year. His war the previous 3 years was 2.97 which equates to 4.265M per WAR Chatwood was hurt sand missed a lot of time so it's hard to go by his historical numbers. Streamer projects him at 1.9 WAR which equates to $6.666M per WAR. There is a lot of variance but the premise that the market value is $10M per war is not accurate unless they are signing them even though they expect their production to be half their historic rate. One would think they are basing their offers on the previous 2-3 years productivity and the end result has been much poorer than expected.
  11. Major League Ready
    That's a very one-sided point of view. There have been numerous players who received enormous contracts and failed miserably to deliver. Those payers don't give back a dime and the premise of them doing so is never even a remote consideration. The union would go nuts. It might even be a result of injury but why is it fair that the team absorb 100% of the risk associated with injury or non-performance. To say the owners should pay beyond market on a new contract with all the uncertainty associated with these big deals is wildly biased.
  12. Major League Ready
    Why do people keep insisting that the window will close once Buxton and Sano are past their arbitration years. Why can't we extend one or both, What if Lewis comes up in a couple of years and is better than both of them? Then, we have Buxton and Sano in their prime plus Lewis. Why can't we have a pleasant surprise or two. Judge was not a top 50 prospect. Why can't Rooker or Thorpe or Graterol and Romero step up big time? The window does not need to close in 4 years.
  13. Major League Ready
    There is absolutely no inference we should blow it up. My position has been consistent. Continue to develop and acquire young talent until we are actually seriously positioned to contend. (ie Houston)d) We have a long ways to go to develop the starting rotation and bullpen of a contender. Cole would help but our pitching staff as a whole would still have a long ways to go to be on par with teams that are serious world series contenders. Our strength is our young core which still has plenty of question marks. Santana, Dozier and Mauer could all be gone next year. This team is by no stretch of anyone's imagination in a window of contention and we do not have the revenue to buy it. Trading away long-term assets for players with 2 years of control is a great approach to mediocrity. It only makes sense when you need a final piece and we are not close to that point. Cole and the assets we gave up for him will be long gone when we are there or could have been there had we not given away the assets that landed him. Get Darvish and then trade for Archer if you are going to push in your chips. At least then you have 4 years to enjoy a better team and if the rest comes together we probably contend for a couple years.
  14. Major League Ready
    Cole is a good SP but it would take him and Kershaw to give us a chance to win the division so we would be expending considerable assets trying to get a wildcard. The wildcard used to mean you earned a playoff series. Now it means you get a one game shot at getting a playoff series. In addition, the contending teams have better #1s so we would still be poorly positioned for a playoff run. Plus, we would still need a major overhaul of the BP to be even close to most of the contender's bullpen. So, expending good assets for 2 years of Cole makes no sense to me.
  15. Major League Ready
    Question 1 - I think the odds makers have answered this question or we could ask ourselves what we need to add to be competitive with Cleveland first and foremost because you don't go all in for a chance to get to a 50% chance of getting to a playoff series. Then, we need to consider what we would need to be competitive with Houston, NY, and Boston. If we are honest, we could gut our farm system and max out our payroll and bot get there unless a few of the players we already have make big steps forward. Cole does nothing to position us for a playoff run so why give up inexpensive long-term assets for Cole? Question 2 - I don't really know but if we are to let him go it should be part of a package for a player that enables us to better compete in the playoffs.
  16. Major League Ready
    The position/complaints vary but how was anything other than a major acquisition going to change our chances in the playoffs. If the complaint is that we traded Garcia and Kintzler, Again .... what is the point. We did make the playoffs so it's hard to understand the argument that they would have helped us make the playoffs. I am guilty myself of asking things like why didnt the go after Keven Maitan. Turns out we did and he did not want to come here. It's likely there are many of these scenarios that we don't find out about.
  17. Major League Ready
    Because fans have wildly unrealistic expectations. We ignore that Detroit simply refused to trade Verlander within the division or that he would have refused to come here or perhaps did refuse to come here. Fans also have an extremely short-sighted view .... Damn the future, let's go all in on our 5% shot and make it a 15% shot even though it cost us our future. My firm has a a word for that when we evaluate management teams and practices. The word is incompetence. We ignore that the team DID reach the goal they would have hoped to achieve had they traded away important parts of the future. Instead, we increased assets while getting to the playoffs. If the premise is we could have traded for enough assets to win a series against the Yankees or Astros, someone needs to show me the plan that would have made that happen. The net was a gain in assets that should help future contention and we made the playoffs and somehow quite a few people see this as a failure.
  18. Major League Ready
    The odds makers were giving the twins something like a 5% chance of making a one game playoff in order to get into an actual playoff series. To characterize this as the Twins being in a good position is a very colorful interpretation. This is management 101 and to paint the decision to improve the long-term instead of depleting assets for a very low probability of success is a fanatical position as skilled leadership doe not ignore the odds.
  19. Major League Ready
    Everything you have pointed out is very fair. It would have actually lowered the dollars paid per WAR had I used 2 years and I would agree that teams are definitely going to weigh the newest information more heavily. Had I added some common sense in cases in terms or whether to use the last year, two years or 3 years, the amount per WAR would have come down. I only used the 3 year approach because it was conservative and others could not suggest I was cherry picking. The point I am making is not this granular. It's this simple. It is crystal clear that a model paying $8M per WAR is not sustainable for even the largest market teams. To say its reasonable or sustainable for all of the teams in the league is to ignore many economic and business principals. I guess it's this simple .... If the MN Twins or any team of similar revenue produce at a rate of one WAR per $8M, the probability of success is extremely low if FAs are relied upon to any significant degree.
  20. Major League Ready
    OK Let’s look at ALL of the players who received contracts of 3 years or greater last year. That would be the definition of assessing market value, right. I used these players because they obviously were the best positioned of all of the free agents. I also picked the best players because I don’t think most TD participants are much more interested in the Johnny Cueto types as opposed to Jason Castro. Yoenis Cespedes … 4.4 | 27 | 6.136 Jason Castro … 1.43 | 8.167 | 5.711 Josh Reddick … 2.5 | 13 | 5.200 Justin Turner … 4.23 | 16 | 3.783 Ian Desmond … 3 | 14 | 4.667 Dexter Fowler … 3.1 | 16.5 | 5.323 Edward … 4 | 20 | 5.000 Mark Trumbo … 1.65 | 12.5 | 7.576 Kendrys Morales … 1.4 | 11 | 7.857 Ivan Nova … 1.4 | 8.666 | 6.190 These 10 top free agents averaged 5.74M per war. It’s probably an anomaly but Trumbo / Morales & Nova brought that average up. The other 7 players averaged 5.12M per WAR, RPs Bret Cecil … 1.13 | 7.625 | 6.748 Aroldis Chapman … 2.666 | 17.2 | 6.452 Kenley Janzen … 2.333 | 16 | 6.858 Mark Melacon … 1.8 | 15.5 | 8.611 Average … 7.167. Top BP arms got a premium last year. I suspect this average comes down if you look at the masses but I am not interested enough to look them all up. Is the market data from all of the FAs able to get 3 year contracts adequate evidence for you?
  21. Major League Ready
    Agree completely while qualifying that the 5 or 6 largest markets have enough incremental revenue to absorb contracts that go terribly bad as long an equal number of them work out. All we need to do is observe which teams sign these enormous contracts. Small market teams rarely (almost never) sign these kinds of deals. It is very obvious that mid and small market GMs agree with you.
  22. Major League Ready
    A better measure of market value would be what free agents actually get paid comparted to their average WAR for the previous 2-3 years. Here are examples of contracts from 2016 & 2017. I mostly used players in their prime to get a reasonable measure and averaged their WAR over the previous three years to determine market value/WAR.. I did use David Price at age 32 and I omitted the year Cueto had only 60 IP. I threw Jason Castro in just to add an example of that type of player. Year | Average War | AAV | AAV per WAR 2017 Yoenis Cespedes … 4.4 | 27 | 6.136 2017 Jason Castro … 1.43 | 8.167 | 5.711 2017 Josh Reddick … 2.5 | 13 | 5.200 2016 Jason Heyward … 4.86 | 23 | 4.733 2016 David Price … 5.63 | 31 | 5.506 2016 Johnny Cueto … 4.43 | 21.67 | 4.891 2016 Justin Upton … 3.46 | 16 | 4.624 It is clear that the market does not value free agents anywhere near $8M per WAR. These players averaged 5.257. My guess is that RPs might bring this number up a bit. Cespedes missed some games which brought down his salary/WAR. If we use 2 previous years instead of three his value is 5.55/WAR which is very consistent with the others. BTW … Mike Napoli got 7M on a 1 year deal in 2016. That’s about the best comp I can come up with for Mauer. Totally different player but a similar caliber 1B.
  23. Major League Ready
    This valuation has been thrown around here quite a bit. Is one WAR worth $8M or is one WAR the average production of free agents? Those are two quite different things. If we attempted to build a team on this premise, the payroll required to build a 98 win team would be roughly $400M. Our team has to average about $1.5M/WAR. No team can actually afford a $400M payroll, therefore I don't think one WAR is actually worth $8M, especially to teams with 50 or 60% of the top teams.
  24. Major League Ready
    How are you calculating this value?
  25. Major League Ready
    I hope they are out trying to trade some of the guys we have been talking about that need 40 man protection for international dollars. You would think that's feasible given these players are considerably closer to contributing at the ML level and not as big of a crap shoot as 16 y/o international players. It still might not matter. I would have to think NY offers more appeal and more income potential in endorsements.Our hope might be allowing him to DH if NY won't make the same promise.
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