Blog: SB Nation

devil_fingers

joined Mar 29, 2008 last login Jul 04, 2009 posts 304 comments 21209

I'm some guy who likes baseball. I also write for Driveline Mechanics.

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Bruce Chen? Really? In the same season the Royals ran Horacio Ramirez out there? What, was Terrell Wade not available? Jung Bong won't return your calls, Dayton? Aw, don't look at me like that, whaddaya gonna do, ban me or someth----

ShysterBall

about 18 hours ago devil_fingers comment 2 comments 0 recs

"UPDATE: The Royals and I have resolved our differences amicably. Details to follow on my website shortly."

Rany, Just a few minutes ago on Twitter. YAY.

1 day ago devil_fingers comment 13 comments 0 recs

I'm still trying to get my brain around this. I mean, the Royals organization obviously reads Rany, or else they wouldn't have gotten mad at what he wrote. However, if they do read Rany, surely they realize that he's one of the best fans in the history of fandom. For years and years he has been optimistic about the Royals, giving them way more benefit of the doubt than they were probably ever entitled. No, it's never been blind faith -- Rany is not some mindless fanboy -- but he has long avoided the cynicism and hopelessness that tends to take over your more critically-minded followers of historically poor performing teams. More importantly, Rany is one of the team's most high-profile fans. In that capacity he gives voice to what many thousands of fans are thinking.... Call him a sonofabitch in the privacy of the team office and make it clear to anyone who matters (i.e. the trainer Rany went after) that he has the team's support and no one cares what this blogger thinks.... But they didn't do that. They got defensive and pissy in a very public way. And by doing that, the Royals sent a signal to an important segment of their fan base -- the plugged-in segment -- that they can't tolerate reasoned criticism. And if one can't tolerate reasoned criticism, one isn't going to act on it.

Which raises the question: In light of this, why on Earth would anyone with a brain continue to be a Royals fan?

Shysterball.

1 day ago devil_fingers comment 7 comments 1 recs

Rany Gets Banned By the Royals

Geniuses at work!

1 day ago devil_fingers comment 0 comments 0 recs

Rany Gets Banned By The Geniuses Who Run the Royals

Read the link for the details... basically, in a previous blog entry he dared to criticize the Royals handling of injuries.

So now they're going to "ban" him from the upcoming Baseball Prospectus event at Kauffman Stadium. Classy... If I were being funny, I'd comment on the irony of the timing, given that BP is barely more sabermetric than the Royals Front Office that is Above Reproach, but this isn't the time.

Gee, I wonder if this will backfire? Let's make sure it does.

I wonder if Rany knows anyone with connections to a major sports media outlet...

[Update:5:46 ET. On Twitter, Rany reports that he and the team have reached an amicable resolution, he'll be posting soon on his blog, apparently yay.]

[Update 10:38 EST: Back to Normal. Good, although I sort of think the Royals only recanted because they got caught.]

1 day ago devil_fingers comment 5 comments 0 recs

[Frank White] had a little smile that he would flash many times a game. I always took the smile to be not a sign of enjoyment, but a kind of coping mechanism; when he was dumped at second base, when he got his pitch and fouled it off, when he dived for a ball but was unable to make a play, he would get up and flash the smile. I always took it to be his way of saying to himself 'I can deal with this. That was nothing; let's focus on what we need to do.'

--Bill James, The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract, 504-505. James ranks Frank White as the 31st greatest second baseman of all-time.

[What this is]

1 day ago devil_fingers comment 7 comments 1 recs

Trey Hillman has done plenty that's worth questioning -- the above paragraph included -- but no big league manager should even have as an option substituting Hulett for Hernandez for Pena.

Mellinger. Dayton Moore isn't mentioned in the article.I guess it's just one of those things -- the team just has these guys, and can't do anything about it. I also like the part of the article where it talks about the Braves wanting to trade Yunel Escobar to some team, but only if that other team could offer a better-hitting SS in return. I can't imagine why they can't find a trade partner!

1 day ago devil_fingers comment 4 comments 1 recs

Contract Retrospective: Vernon Wells' 7-year, $126 Million Contract

While hindsight is 20/20, I try to "go back in time" to the contract signing using some simple "retrojection." I look back at the Blue Jays' Decemeber 2006 extension of Wells to see how what he was reasonably projected to be worth over the life of the contract at the time.

[Quotes below added by Sky. I love these things, keep 'em coming, Mr. Fingers.]

"Wells plays center field, so that is +2.5 runs per season. The replacement level for AL position players is 25 runs/season. So 27.5 prorated for 150 game is about 23.4 runs. So, in total, we have 23.4 runs positional and replacement level, + 14.6 runs batting + 5.7 runs defense = 43.7 runs above replacement, or about 4.3 WAR.

Remember that we said the Jays were paying for somewhere between 4.5 and 5 Wins Above Replacement... which means that they seem to have come pretty close. Except that they were paying Wells that $126M starting in 2008 -- and we projected for 2007. It is closer than we thought, but attrition has to be taken into account -- if not immediately, over the life of the contract. So Wells was likely to be closer to a 4 WAR than a 4.75 WAR player in 2008 when the contract started. That may not seem like a lot, but according to the salary chart, that implies that something closer to $96.5M than the $126M Wells received. And that's without figuring in the long-term commitment the Jays made."

1 day ago devil_fingers comment 0 comments 0 recs

Contract Retrospective: Vernon Wells' December 2006 Extension for 7 years, $126M, 2008-2014

by devil_fingers on Jul 2, 2009 6:15 AM EDT Comment 12 comments

Vernon Wells and the late Ted Rogers (owner of the Blue Jays) at the press conference announcing Wells' 7-year, $126 million extension.

It is easy to criticize a bad contract after it's gone bad. And I would guess there are few, if any people, who think that Vernon Well's 7-year, $126M contract signed in December 2006 and covering 2008-2014 has been anything but bad. It probably suffices to say that, as of this writing, in 2009 Vernon Wells is the 2nd least valuable player in all of baseball, being 1.4 Wins Below Replacement (-1.4 WAR, Brian Giles is the worst at -1.6), and the worst in the American League. And this is only the second year of the deal. In the first year, 2008, Wells was at 1.2 WAR according to FanGraphs. Sure, he was 2.0 WAR in 2008 according to Rally's WAR calculations, but it doesn't take much baseball knowledge to realize that a 2.0 WAR player (about league average) doesn't come close to cutting it, either.

But again, it isn't that interesting to criticize a contract in hindsight. Any contract can turn out better or worse than it seemed at the time. The question that interests me (and hopefully you, too) is whether a contract made sense at the time it was signed. Hence the Contract Retrospective.

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