[Note by FuquaManuel, 03/29/11 1:15 PM EDT: Obvious frontpage is obvious. Spectacular work Trev.]

I’ve been meaning to write this series of thoughts about luck down into a fanpost for a while now, but I’ve consistently put it off.  This is partially because of the time commitment necessary to actually write up anything in even a halfway convincing or effective manner, but it’s also because I’m wholly unconvinced that the topic is at all interesting to anyone but myself.  While I’ve found the baseball community to be impressively and widely intellectual about the sport, I think it’s fair to say that most of what I’ve seen has come from a more statistically minded viewpoint, which is to say, in the parlance of the blog, a more left-brained viewpoint.  I’m not at all hostile to this, but that focus, as well as my general alignment with a more sabr-slant, does give me pause.  If the goal is to provide yet another solution to the stats vs. non-stats debate, then how exactly am I doing any favors to "my side" by ignoring the objective in favor of a more ethereal lens.

And then, of course, I read this frankly brilliant piece by the immortal Joe Posnanski, and this similarly excellent analysis by the inimitable FuquaManuel, both in response to not-really-necessary-to-link pieces attacking advanced statistics in general, and it got me to thinking about what exactly the argument was about.  I mean, obviously the argument is about what method is best in terms of evaluating and valuing baseball players, but I started to think about what the actual rhetoric of the argument entailed, why it was so tense on either side.  And I certainly don’t absolve myself from this either – I get as frothed and angry at the Murray Chasses of the world as anyone; I love Fire Joe Morgan just about as much as I love anything on the internet; and I participate actively (if poorly) in a fantasy baseball league that uses FIP, which can only be seen as a suggestive middle finger to more traditional W-L or ERA qualifications.  But aside from my intellectual commitments to it, why do I, and presumably others, feel that the SABR vs. grission debate is like a literal war of words?  This seems to me to be a pretty significant question, and, along with the general right-brained tendencies of TGP, seems to set the stage for a recontextualization of, if not a solution to, the terms of the argument we’ve been having all this time.

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After the Phillies' unfortunate exit from postseason play this weekend, one might expect some generalized negativity: a team in which we all had a lot invested ended up a bit short. That's the quintessential "depressing sports" experience. But along with this natural disappointment, frustration, etc. comes a much worse specter: the off-season storyline. For the winning team, the storyline can often be irksome, with cautious optimism or wrongheaded analysis stymieing the attentive fan. But, in general, it's all positive. For this Phillies team, I fear, and as we've already begun to see, that will not be the case. With this in mind, I humbly present the following media guide for the Phillies fan on the go. When you feel the need to respond to the more repetitive and nauseating critiques about the only team to have a perfect game and a no-hitter, not to mention the team with the best record in all of baseball, you can refer here. God knows I will.

What follows are the top three things that I am guessing Philly sports media will obsess over in the coming long winter months. This has, of course, two caveats attached. The first caveat is that I'm aware that Philly sports radio/TV will be mostly focused on the Eagles for the next three or four months. That said, there will undoubtedly be some talk over the hot stove and during mid-week doldrums. The second caveat is that this is all guesswork; I've recently moved out of the Philly area, and as a result, haven't really had any taste of the media outside of the morning links for a while. I know, tragic. Still, I stand by the predictive powers of my talking points (barring the occurrence of 2010's "Trade Cliff Lee" moment). So without further ado, inspired by frustration and encouraged by our own WholeCamels, your 2010-11 offseason media guide:

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Or, "The TGP Socialists club form like Voltron, and FuquaManuel just happen to be the head."

So, after watching the end of a tough loss, I do, in spite of myself, feel a little down; what better to do in that state than think about Marxist economics?  Well, truthfully, I’m not entirely interested in Marxist economics here – no worries, this isn’t a political rant – but instead, I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the issue of payroll discrepancies in baseball, and what exactly they mean in terms of competitive advantage or disadvantage.  A lot of this has to do with the comments some Atlanta trolls were throwing around towards the end of the season, insinuating that the Phillies had become the new Yankees, given their 140 million dollar payroll.  This isn’t an argument limited to trolls, admittedly, given a recent, and intelligent article by our own David S. Cohen about the new, winning-er Phillies.  Admittedly, it’s difficult to think of them as such at this point, but the Phillies have at many times been the class (joke intended) of the NL, and there are certainly those out there who would suggest that this periodic dominance has everything to do with money.

Now, I don’t want to suggest that payroll is meaningless, nor do I want to suggest that the Phillies don’t have a higher payroll to thank for some of their success; what I want to do is try to think through the actual implications of salary in baseball.  Two clarifications here: one, this is mainly an intellectual exercise, so as such, I haven’t really read up on this issue; if I’ve missed out on some pertinent analysis or am redundant here, you’ll have to forgive me – I didn’t really have time to research this. The second clarification is that this isn’t especially political consideration, nor is it terribly statistically complete – the former is because this issue fundamentally cannot hinge on the political, the latter is because a full spate of research would, again, take too long.  Besides, this is already going to run a bit long, so it’s worth cutting back where we can.

So with all that said, let’s ask the question: are the Phillies the new Yankees?  Well, off the bat, no, since there are two teams between the Phillies’ salary ($141,927,381) and the Yankees’ ($206,333,389): the Boston Red Sox ($162,747,333) and the Chicago Cubs ($146,859,000).  That’s a bit mincing though, so to answer the question in a different way, let’s ask another question: are even the Yankees the Yankees?  To make this a bit clearer, I mean to ask if even the Yankees are the kind of monolithic, capitalist nightmare team that comes to mind whenever they come up in a conversation about fairness and salaries and buying a championship.  In other words – is there even an Evil Empire?

To start answering this question, let’s first consider if this denigration of the Yankees and Phillies has any sort of moral or ethical backing.  That is to say, we ought to ask whether it’s reasonable to call big budget teams "evil," as seems to be implied in the rhetoric surrounding salaries and salary caps.   The simple truth is that baseball teams aren’t good or evil, for two basic reasons.  One, you can simply hate a big budget team, but it proves no real ethical point if you just think they’re loathsome.  I hate all kinds of sports teams for various reasons – none of which prove much about good or evil.  No matter how much I dislike hearing about Derek Jeter’s aura or how the Red Sox have a "nation" of fans, it really doesn’t speak to any moral or ethical set of ideas – we root for teams and against teams for, essentially, irrational reasons.  To bring money into the equation is simply a false rationalization.  Secondly, the political argument that rooting for the Yankees, and their payroll, over, say, the Pirates is ethical because of the discrepancy in salary seems misguided to me, regardless of your politics.  If you take a capitalist bent, there’s no real reason to hate the Yankees or the Phillies; in a pure neoliberal critique, teams ought to make as much money as they can.  Obviously, I disagree with this reading, but even coming at it from the other end, a Marxist understanding of MLB salaries has to disapprove of the highest and the lowest salaried team; if every team makes and spends millions, making rich owners richer in almost all situations, this means that there’s no moral or ethical economic high ground in MLB: we all root for corporations at core.  Thus, FM’s rejoinder to the Steinbrenner hate-fest a few months back that any owner dying is effectively the same basic non-tragedy from a social perspective is definitely pertinent here.  There’s no actual "poor" team to root for; that’s just a function of the popularity of sports.

So if it isn’t a moral or ethical good to root for small market teams, then why do it? What exactly makes them underdogs at all?  Principally, they have to rely on luck a lot more than big market teams.  Certainly, randomness makes a lot of people uncomfortable in terms of baseball analysis, but in this case, it seems to make complete sense – small market teams have to rely on draft prospects panning out and players that outplay their contracts (see: Longoria, Evan).  This also of course means that small market teams need savvy GM’s – this is the basic point of Moneyball, despite what Joe Morgan might say.  This does make small market teams more enjoyable from a baseball nerd perspective, insofar as hidden gems, intriguing prospects, and lopsided trades are definitely blog porn.  That said, even though the smaller market teams have little room for error, and thus make it rather interesting for their fans, it can’t logically follow that the larger market teams can simply and blithely "buy championships."  The margin of error absolutely still remains, it’s simply that it’s larger.

So this brings us to the upshot, if "the Yankees" as a mythology means a team that, due to its unlimited salary, can just buy championships at will, then no, no team is the Yankees.  I will admit that the Yankees do occupy a pretty rarefied air, if only because of their international appeal and marketing capabilities; conceivably, they could increase payroll to obscene levels beyond what they already have.  That said, that lives in the realm of speculation, and in the realm of reality, even the Yankees are hurt by payroll mistakes.  AJ Burnett is making 16.5 million dollars this year, and every year until 2013, and if he replicates his 1.3 WAR from this year, this will be a bit of a rock around the Yankees’ neck.  Furthermore, the Cubs are paying Alfonso Soriano 18 million dollars, through 2014, and while 2.9 WAR for this year isn’t bad, it’s not 18 million dollars good (and his 0 WAR from last year is problematic too).  Add on Carlos Zambrano at almost 18 million for this and the next two years at least (2013 has an option), with a WAR of 2.4, and that’s a lot of lost capital.  I need not really add much about the Ryan Howard contract, which, in 2017, is going to look like a terrible 23 million (or 10 million dollar buyout), barring a miracle.

So with that said, the Phillies are only the Yankees insofar as they are a baseball team with a reasonably high salary – they can afford to make some mistakes, but they are always at risk of making too many and becoming the 2010 Cubs.  And yes, it does seem unfair that they can make more mistakes than, say, an Atlanta Braves team or a KC Royals team, but the money discrepancies don’t determine the standings.  Good teams can’t rely on all bought players – careful drafting and development and intelligent use of the free agent market, both of which, yes, include some luck (Jayson Werth and Domonic Brown say hi) are required as well.  As much as you or I (and trust me, I do) hate the Yankees, we can’t simply deride them because of their salary.  High budgets don’t mean that a team is any better morally, ethically, or even athletically: it simply means that a team can make more expensive mistakes.  As a warning to the 2010 Phillies though, mistakes can’t simply be made over and over again – add up a lot of Danys Baez, Juan Castro, and Ryan Howard (new contract edition) sized mistakes, and 140 million dollars will soon not seem like much of an advantage at all.

((PS: All salaries come from the MLB salary list on CBS Sports (http://www.cbssports.com/mlb/salaries/teams), WAR from Fangraphs, and salaries from Cot's Contracts.))

On an occasion worth celebrating, and with inspiration and apologies to two master poets: Shelley and Halladay.

I met a traveler from Pattinson Avenue
Who said: Four vast and guileless flags of cloth 
Fly forever in the stadium. Near them, on the infield, 
Half cuttered, a broken-off face lies, whose futile at-bat, 
And frustrated scowl, and inability to hit bold command, 
Tell that a hurler well the pitch counts read 
Which yet dominate, stamped on lifeless leather, Chooch fingers, 
The hand that mocked them, and the CGSHO that fed; 
And on the flags these words appear: 
"My name is Halladay, ace of aces: 
Look upon my works, ye Cy Youngs, ye hitters, and despair!" 
No outs beside remain. Round the decay 
Of that colossal wreck, well fed and homeward bound 
The lone and level stand(iing)s cheer loud away.