SB Nation User Blog: devil_fingers

Bruce Chen? Really? In the same season the Royals ran Horacio Ramirez out there? What, was Terrell...

devil_fingers — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 16:33:02 -0000

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

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

devil_fingers — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 21:37:09 -0000

"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.

I'm still trying to get my brain around this. I mean, the Royals organization obviously reads Rany,...

devil_fingers — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 20:15:33 -0000

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.

Rany Gets Banned By the Royals

devil_fingers — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 17:45:00 -0000

Rany Gets Banned By the Royals

Geniuses at work!

Rany Gets Banned By The Geniuses Who Run the Royals

devil_fingers — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 17:43:36 -0000

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.]

[Frank White] had a little smile that he would flash many times a game. I always took the smile to...

devil_fingers — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 15:37:50 -0000

[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]

Trey Hillman has done plenty that's worth questioning -- the above paragraph included -- but no big...

devil_fingers — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 15:10:27 -0000

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!

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

devil_fingers — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 14:41:33 -0000

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."

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

devil_fingers — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 00:00:26 -0000

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.

What Did the Jays Pay For?

According to Cot's, while Wells signed the contract in December, 2006, it didn't begin until 2008. Wells can opt-out after the 2011 season, but given that the option is a player option, the Jays needed to plan for being on the hook for the whole thing. Since the contract actually began in 2008, need to use a projected 2007-2008 salary chart. Here is one by Tom Tango. To use it, simply look at the column across the top for the number of years of the contract then look down for the number of dollars (in millions). When you find the one closest to the amount of the contract, look on the right-most column to find the numbers of Wins Above Replacement the team is paying for in the first year. The chart assumes the player will decline by half-a-win a season, and also that the league dollars-per-marginal-win will inflate by 10% a season (both the dollars-per-WAR and inflation have been pretty accurate until the collapse of the economy at the end of 2008). $126M falls right between 7/$117.3M for a 4.5 WAR player or 7/$138.2 for a 5.0 WAR player.

Which is it? One could look at it in two different ways -- either Wells accepted a slightly lower haul for long-term security, or the Jays not unreasonably thought that Wells might decline a bit more slowly than 0.5 WAR a season over the life of the contract, given that he was "only" 29 when it started. In the spirit of generosity, let's assume that he was paid like a 4.5 WAR player, that is, 4.5 WAR starting in 2008, but it's a bit trickier than that, since the contract was signed the year before it started, so like the Blue Jays we only have data through 2006, and have to figure in attrition. So he probably needed to project at at least 4.7 WAR at the time the contract was signed, at the very least...

Offense

I like to keep these retrospective projectoin (retrojections) short and simple. wOBA gives us a good offensive "total value" stat that is easy to convert to runs above average. I'll use the version implemented at FanGraphs on Wells' player page which also shows league average for each season. Again The Book (as usual), we need to regress each seasons' wOBA* against 220 plate appearances of league average. We then take a weighted average of Wells' regressed wOBA from 2003-2006 and add slight age adjustments. Here are the regressed numbers:.

Year	Age	PA	wOBA*	lgwOBA	Regressed
2003	24	573	.386	.328	.372
2004	25	578	.350	.330	.353
2005	26	563	.335	.326	.334
2006	37	661	.382	.332	.369

Once age adjustements are factored in, we have a projected wOBA of .356 for Wells in 2007. Assuming the same weighted average for league offense levels, that projects as 16.4 runs above average per 700 plate appearances. As Tango notes, it's not a good idea to project a player to play almost every game. 150 games is pretty close to 85% payng time, and a .356 wOBA comes out to 14.6 per 150 games/625 PA.

Defense

Wells had (and to a certain extent still has) a great defensive reputation as a center fielder. Defensive metrics have come a long way, although they have the problems. I will take an average of three publicly available systems (well, two systems, three data sources) for those years: Utlimate Zone Rating as found at FanGraphs that uses data from Baseball Info Solutions (and is thus sometimes called "bUZR"), the "original" Ultimate Zone Rating that isn't public for recent years but had full data fro 2003-2006 and uses data from STATS, INC (sUZR), and Sean Smith Retrosheet-based TotalZone. I'll also add some regression to the average -- probably not enough, but this a crude methodology, anyway. The UZr numbers are both the UZR/150 numbers, and I've prorated the TotalZone (plus arm) numbers to the same playing time.

Year	bUZR	sUZR	TZ	Avg	Regr
2003	-18.7	5	-12	-8.2	-5.9
2004	12.2	17	-6	7.7	5.7
2005	3.2	15	-1	6.7	4.3
2006	7.9	16	21	15.3	11.4

You can see the variations between systems quite clearly -- the contrast between bUZR and sUZR in 2003 is especially striking. A 5-4-3-2 weighted average of the averaged and regressed numbers is 5.7 runs above average per 150 games.

Adding it up

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. To, 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 immediatelty, 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.

Final Thoughts

While the Jays have certainlly taken a bath since then (since the deal started, at the time of this writing, Wells has given then -0.2 Wins Below Replacement), they were actually closer than one might have thought. Still, over a long-term deal like that, even a half-win "miss" can mean a $20M loss. No, Wells injuries as well as his collapse on both offense and defense weren't foreseeable. But projections aren't predictions, that is, "densities of probabilities," so taking the "middle road," while it doesn' t eliminate all risk, means that "shooting high" is going to end up hamstringing a team more often than not.

I should add that I've always liked Vernon Wells -- sure, we don't really "know" atheletes and celebrities, but he always has come across to me as a smart, hardworking guy, and I loved watching him play. My first full summer living in Ontario was 2003, when he and Carlos Delgado both had monster offensive first halves. In addition, I really hate the phrase "[underpeforming/injured player] is stealing money." Unless that player is faking an injury or not trying, he's living up to the terms of his contract, just as he did when he was providing 20+ his value in his free free-agency years.

I haven't read much about the backstory, but some Jays fans have told me that they think the contract was never J.P. Ricciardi's call -- that the order came down from then Blue Jays Team P resident Paul Godfrey.Whoever called the shot, perhaps they fixated Wells' career year in 2006 -- FanGraphs has him at 5.8 WAR after a 4.0, 3.8, and 3.1. Rally has him at 7.0 after a 5.4, 2.2, and 2.6. Another lesson -- use multiple years and account for regression to the mean and aging.

Whatever the rationale at the time, doing out best to ignore what happened afterwards, while it might have been closer than I thought, I'd have to say now that given the data through 2006, the contract was clearly too big, and was a big mistake. This BlueJay is an albatross (sorry).

The Five Least Valuable Position Players in the American League at the Moment According to WAR (FanGraphs)

devil_fingers — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 20:23:30 -0000

The Five Least Valuable Position Players in the American League at the Moment According to WAR (FanGraphs)

Vernon Wells -1.3
Orlando Cabrera -0.9
Jose Guillen -0.9
Yuniesky Betancourt -0.8
David Ortiz -0.5