SB Nation User Blog: ohmangoAs

Baseball Projections. How much do they tell us?

ohmangoAs — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 00:03:50 -0000

Margin of error is a huge component of statistics. When you see a political poll with candidate A leading Candidate B by 6 points, with a MoE of 3 points, you can be pretty confident that Candidate A is actually ahead.

Why don't we think in similar terms for baseball projections? Witness this exchange:

Anderson — 3.63
Cahill — 4.53
Mazzaro — 4.53
Braden — 4.58
Tomko — 4.65
Outman — 4.75
Edgar — 4.79
Eveland — 5.22
Gio — 5.88
Mortensen — 6.28

So ZiPS thinks that Cahill will be just fine in the near future, no matter how bad he was in the beginning of the year. It predicted that he’d improve in the second half and he did, by K-rate and K/BB.

Clearly he’s one of the 5 most talented starters on the team and talent mostly wins.

This is very typical analysis at AN (and I love it--I learn from this kind of stuff all the time), but I have a question. The conclusion above is that Cahill is "clearly" one of the 5 most talented starters, since his ZIPS_ros is .26 lower than our 7th best starter (E-Gon). That seems compelling, but what's ZIP's margin of error?

Citing a statistic/projection without stating its confidence level strikes me as basically meaningless. For example, if a player is projected for a .760 OPS, but with a confidence interval of [.660 .860] my conclusion would be that the projection is 100% meaningless.

Unfortunately, I downloaded the Zips_ros spreadsheet, and it is literally a black box. This is akin to saying Obama leads McCain by 5 points, but refusing to specify any sort of margin of error. I'm sure Zips has some explaination of Margin of error somewhere, but I couldn't find it in 10 minutes of searching...

I've noticed that we talk about the components of the metrics a lot but we never talk about their precision. And, when the projections are wrong, we shrug, and say, well, that's luck. And that's fair- no model can project the future perfectly. But Confidence Intervals and Margin of Error are tools designed to let us know how reliable a model is. I think we should give more scrutiny to arguments that cite fairly small differences in projections and fail to provide any sort of margin of error analysis. Lets look at what the Margin of Error for two projection systems are:

Chone provides some interval analysis, via its "10th percentile" through "90th percentile" projections. By the way, for Chone, the daring prediction for Giambi was that he would OPS somewhere between .700 and .960...that's a HUGE interval. It had Rajai between .550 and .770 on OPS. With intervals that large, I'm going to (inwardly) laugh every time I hear Chone cited.

PECOTA (using Phillies because I'm not a subscriber)

Raul Ibanez: 10th percentile: 740 OPS, 90th Percentile: 946 OPS

Jimmy Rollins: 10th: 735 OPS 90th: 915 OPS

Chase Utley: 797-987

Matt Stairs: 809 OPS (50th percentile)

These ranges are so large that you can't make a meaningful conclusion that any player is better than another. These projections should be read as "Rollins is projected for an 824 OPS, plus or minus 100 points. LOL. Since Stair's median OPS is within Utley's 80% confidence interval, statistically speaking, Pecota cannot be used to conclude that Utley is a better hitter than Stairs.

What am I missing? I like statistical analysis as much as anyone, but these intervals suck. Citing these stats is akin to citing a poll that lists Obama ahead of McCain by 3 points, plus or minus 15 points.

And, if I'm not missing something obvious, why are these metrics more reliable than a 40 year veteran scout? I bet he could tell you Utley is likely to OPS between 800 and a 1000. I bet he could have told you Rajai would hit better than a 550 OPS, but that 770 was near the peak of his potential.

And you know what? Lots of the ANers who go to games could have told you that too.

Have the A's been the victims of a tough schedule?

ohmangoAs — Wed, 20 May 2009 18:10:18 -0000

Disclaimer: This is a long post, with a lot of text, and some charts that require interpretation. It also has ambiguous conclusions, because of some hard-to-account for errors. There's a solid chance you will feel this is a waste of your time. I do believe it can provoke good conversation, and I also want to post this anyway, since I did it. Please do skip this if you don't want to think about it. Thanks.

The A's have played some good teams, including Toronto, Tampa Bay, Boston, New York, Texas, and the Angels. These teams may represent a stronger early schedule than typical for the AL. On top of that, with injuries, call ups, and random luck, each player on the A's has faced an extremely varying set of opposing batters and pitchers. For example, Anderson has pitched against tougher lineups than Cahill.

When we evaluate the performance of the A's personnel, we don't correct for "strength of schedule". For example, we look at Braden's .743 Allowed OPS, and think "Ok, above average". The AL average OPS is .766 in 2009. What we don't account for is the fact that the batters Braden has faced are actually averaging a .792 OPS so far in 2009, making Braden's pitching exceptionally good.

In this ~~diary~~ fanpost, I'm going to use Baseball Prospectus' data on the Average OPS of batters faced for our pitchers, and compare it to the OPS our pitchers have actually allowed. This will allow us to correct for the possibility that the A's have faced tougher lineups, and for the possibility that some A's have faced particularly tough tasks. I'll also do a similar analysis on the quality of pitching our hitters have faced.

The conclusions of the analysis (here ahead of time for clarity) are:

1. The A's have faced tougher than average (or hotter than average) lineups, and better than average opposing pitching.

2. Some A's pitchers performances thus far, such as Bailey, Braden, and Anderson are better than they appear, since they faced tougher opponents.

3. Cahill and Wuertz have faced below-average opposition, and thus are worse thus far than they appear.

4. Powell, Holliday, Ellis, and most of the A's lineup have faced exceptionally tough pitchers, making them look worse than they are.

5. Nomar was not as good as he appeared, as he faced weak opposing pitching.

Finally, these conclusions are seriously dependent on a few key assumptions. A list of these assumptions, and defenses of them, are in Comment #1 (in order to avoid bogging down here). I expect that AN will find many more flaws in this work than I cover in comment #1. On to the real analysis...

EVALUATING THE A's PITCHERS

So the first step in adjusting performance is to look at the how good the opposing batters each pitcher has faced have been in 2009. Below is a chart of the average OPS put up by opposing batters in 2009.

What this chart shows is that Trevor Cahill has faced below average batters in 2009. The players Cahill has pitched to have averaged a .75 OPS, whereas a league average OPS is .766. In contrast, most of the A's pitchers have faced extraordinarily good hitters/lineups. The biggest example is Andrew Bailey, whose opposing batters are putting up a .797 OPS, the equivalent of facing 2009 Ichiro in every single at bat.

Next, I take the OPS that the A's pitchers have actually allowed, and compare it to the league average OPS, as well as the OPS of the batters they faced. For Bailey, this meant calculating two values:

Differential relative to league average = .766 (league average) -.417 (OPS allowed thus far in 2009) = .349

Differential relative to opposing batters' normal OPS = .797 (OPS of Bailey's opponents in 2009) - .417 = .38

Thus, Bailey appears to have allowed an OPS .349 lower than the OPS an average pitcher would allow. BUT, given how good the batters he faced were, he actually saved .380 points of OPS.

A chart with the OPS differentials for each A's pitcher is below:

So what this chart shows is that Bailey, Casilla, Outman, Ziegler, and Braden have not only done better than average (blue bar = positive), but also done so against really tough lineups (red bar = bigger than blue bar). Wuertz has done above average, but not as far above average as one would think, since he faced easier than average lineups. Similar analysis for the below average pitchers. For example, Cahill appears to be .13 OPS points worse than average, but in fact was even worse, since he had a slightly easier than average set of opponents.

ANALYSIS OF THE A's LINEUP:

The cumulative 2009 OPS allowed by opposing pitchers for each A's hitter is shown in the chart below.

This shows that Powell has faced some really stingy pitchers, who are allowing only a .670 OPS thus far in 2009. In contrast, Nomar faced some relatively easy pitchers, who allowed a .781 OPS.

Next, we calculate the differentials, which show how the hitter compares relative to league average (blue), and relative to the OPS that the pitchers they face normally give up. (red). This is similar to the analysis for pitching above.

So Chavez has been atrocious, no matter how you put it :( . Holliday, Cust, Suzuki, and Kennedy have been above average. Holliday appears only average, but given he faced tougher pitchers, doing average (.766OPS) was a victory. His opposition usually gave up just a .710 OPS.

So, to conclude. The A's have faced tough competition. They have also been WAY below average in the lineup and the SP rotation. However, they are less below average than they appear, since they've faced a tough schedule. Thanks a lot if you've made it this far. I'm just trying to help AN waste even more of your time :)

A Defense- It's misguided to overreact against Beane

ohmangoAs — Mon, 18 May 2009 05:52:40 -0000

First, this is generally not a response to Nico's post. I'd be hard-pressed to answer most of his well-stated points. What I really disagree with is the overstated criticism I saw in the comments of that post. I also think there's a reasonable defense of Beane's treatment of 3B.

Beane made a foreseeable mistake with Geren. Unlike Nico, however, I think the 3B question was murky, and that Beane's approach is defensible--I think that Beane would be wrong to trade an asset for a 3B before he knew Chavez was done for absolutely sure, and that Garciaparra would not stay healthy. He can still trade the exact resources he would have last season. He can trade Gio, Gallagher, or Outman for a 3B solution. It is a mistake to make it an absolute requirement that he acquire a 3B last year, and to say he was short sighted for not doing so. FIrst, it's always a mistake to have absolute requirements; if the best offered talent was elsewhere...take it, and deal w/ 3b later. Second, and I can't stress this enough: we're not out of fungible assets just because we traded Haren, Harden, and Blanton. We STILL have resources- the talent Beane got in the trades I outline below.

The motivation for this diary comes from the fact that much anger is being directed at Beane, when, in fact, he's the only thing standing between us and the Royals(where one good start is huge news). I understand the frustration at 3B, and with the Holliday trade. However, some things (like the success of a team) require a larger sample size than a 3 year period to evaluate. A confluence of bad luck can happen to any GM, and make any 3 year period look good or bad. Think about how many bad breaks the A's have had. NOBODY disliked the Chavez deal at the time it was inked. The recent trades and deals, to me have been "fucking A" trades...and most people saw it that way at the time. The recent strain of thought is that those who defend Beane are in denial. To them, I say: Check the recent track record. It's not perfect but it's far above average. To suggest that Beane has checked out of baseball ignores just how good the "Rebulding" trades really were.

If you don't want to see a summary of trades you've already read about ad nauseum, now is a good time to skip to the comments. I just thought a reminder of recent history might be useful a this dim hour.

First, I'll highlight the past trades and deals, and argue that they were awesome given Beane's existing information, and only put us in trouble in HINDSIGHT:

Ellis signed to a team friendly deal- The consensus on AN, if I remember correctly, was that this deal was good. Injuries have ripped that idea. Question: Would AN have had Beane NOT sign Ellis? What better alternatives did Beane omit?

Swisher for Gio, FDLS, and Sweeney AMAZING. FDLS was a hotter prospect than Gio, and Gio was the reigning minor league strikeout leader. In Hindsight: FDLS gets TJ surgery, Gio is not catching fire, might be a headcase. Sweeney (THE THROW-IN) has no power.

Haren for C-gon, Smith, Eveland, Anderson, Carter, Cunningham WOW. This is an A+++ trade. Would anyone rather have the Santana package? We're still drooling over Carter and Anderson...and Cunningham is an unbelievable 3rd piece.

Harden for Gallagher, Donaldson, Murton, and Patterson The market was not as strong for Harden as we'd like. Gallagher is a plus arm, and Donaldson has preformed well. Also, Patterson/Murton don't seem like much, but Beane takes fliers on recovery projects all the time. If you enjoy Beane's success with Gaudin and Cust, you should tolerate his occasional miss too.

Blanton for Cardenas, Outman Outman has outperformed Blanton in 2009: 108 Era+ vs. Blanton's horrible 66. Even if that seems extreme, Blanton's career ERA+ is just 99, so you can't worry too much about losing him. The real reason to love this trade is Cardenas, for obvious reasons.

Smith, C-Gon, Street for Holliday This is only one I think you can question, up-front, without hindsight. It is pretty early to judge here...Holliday could start preforming well, or he could slump. The answer will dictate the value of the trade, along with C-Gon's value. I'll admit, this is the hardest one to argue. The best defense is this: this is only a negative trade to the extent that we lost out on Carlos Gonzales. But howevermuch of a loss you believe that is, it makes the Haren trade that much better. You can argue Beane pissed away an asset, but he earned that asset too.

The bottom line is this. If FLDS, Gio, Cahill, Anderson, Outman, Gallagher, and Eveland were all doing AAA or better, Ellis were healthy, and Holliday was closer to his career averages, you'd be looking at a team that easily competes with the Angels. On top of that, among those 7 arms, you'd easily have an extraneous asset to fill the hole at 3B. By the way, news flash: Cabrera's not going to hit this badly all season. He'll improve, even if he doesn't end up being a plus preformer.

You can say that Beane didn't fill 3B soon enough. But if you do that, make sure you know exactly which prospect you wish Beane had acquired. My guess is that he was supposed to reach this crisis point if Chavez were injured, and then have a surplus of pitching prospects to trade for 3b. Guess what- he still has that surplus, even with the FDLS injury. That surplus exists EVEN though those players are not plus MLB starters yet. They all have the potential to be plus starters.

The Holliday trade made it so that if things broke well, we'd be a playoff team. As it is, there's no reason that the loss of the hope that we could compete this season should make us question a huge body of work from Beane. It should take more than a 3 year period (with one ALCS appearance!) for us to start questioning Beane's intelligence, commitment, or ability. If you wanna call him out for Holliday, or 3B, go ahead. The questions on the recent thread are much deeper than that, and I think that's way premature.

I get the frustration with Lew, Geren, and the team. Blaming Beane for that is wrong.

Best and Worst Playoff Teams Since 1995, and how they did

ohmangoAs — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 09:41:23 -0000

So, this all started with my dislike for the "Playoffs are a crapshoot". I don't like the argument, because

I like the thought that the playoffs select the best team.
I think that the playoffs aren't completely random...the better team has a better chance of winning
I fear that thinking of the Playoffs as a crapshoot causes complacency.

The feedback I got is that those 3 arguments are semantics, obvious, and/or wrong. I'm perfectly fine with that- This was my gut feeling, and actually, I'm pretty much done with those arguments.

The best explanation for the "Playoffs are a crapshoot" argument, I thought, came from WhiteElephants (near bottom)

the best strategy might not necessarily be to put together the best team in any given season if it means sacrificing playoff berths in future seasons. I think the main point in Moneyball is that the best strategy seems to be: just get to the playoffs as often as possible.

Anyways, I agree with this strategy...definitely want to get into the playoffs. So why am I writing a diary? Well, I wanted to look into how well regular season preformance predicted playoff outcomes.

First, I'm using run differential as my measure of regular season preformance. The reason for that is that I think RD is a better measure of how "objectively good" a team is. It's also reasonably accessible. We want a measure of "Objective goodness" because our putative goal is to see if good teams win in the playoffs.

Next, I'm using data from 1995-2008. This is how much data I entered before getting tired. There's nothing scientific about the bounds. For those keeping count, w/ 8 playoff teams a year, that's 14*8 = 112 Playoff teams.

So, I took the average of the regular season run differentials for the last 14 world series Winners and Losers. What I found is that the regular season run differential is NOT a good predictor of the outcome of the world series. In fact, the loser averages a higher RD than the champ! (132.4 vs. 131.3). So the world series is a coin flip...good.

I took similar averages for each level of the playoffs. Here's what I got:

Average run differential of teams who reached a given level of the Playoffs:

WS Winner          131.3
WS Loser            132.4
LCS Losers        113.
LDS Losers        107.4
Playoff Teams    114.6

The good news is, although the WS is a coin toss, there is some tendency of WS participant to have better RD's than Playoff teams in general. The winner of each playoff round, in general, does have better RD.

Ok, so next, I thought it'd be interesting to see who the "best" and "worst" playoff teams were, and how they fared:

Worst Teams to make the Playoffs.

Team RD OUTCOME

10. 2006   Oakland           44    ALCS Loss
9.   2003   Twins               43    ALDS Loss
8. 2003   Cubs    42    NLCS Loss
7.   1995    LA Dodgers 25    NLDS Loss
6.   2006    St. Louis       19    WORLD SERIES CHAMPS
5.   1995    Colorado          2    NLDS Loss
4.   1997    Giants      -9    NLDS Loss

3. 2007 Arizona -20 NLCS Loss
2. 2005 San Diego -42 NLDS Loss
1. 1998 Cubs -100 NLDS Loss

So, the sixth worst playoff team in the last 14 years won the World Series. Good! The playoffs aren't a crapshoot at all! In fact, these ten teams won the division series 4/10 times. Sounds like a crapshoot. Haha.

So lets see how the best teams did.

Best Teams RD Outcome

1998 Yankees 309 WS Champs
2001 Seattle 300 ALCS Loss
1998 Houston 254 NLDS Loss
1998 Atlanta 245 NLCS Loss
2001 Oakland 239 ALDS Loss
1995 Cleveland 233 WS LOSS
1999 Arizona 232 NLDS Loss
2007 Boston 210 WS Champs
1997 Atlanta 210 NLCS Loss
2002 Angels 207 WS Champs

Yes folks, those 2001 A's were actually really good. As a whole, this group won 7/10 Divisional Series Games, 5/8 Championship Series games, and 3/5 World Series Games. As a whole, those numbers seem good. So if you're a top 10% regular season team (this is the top ten out of 112 teams), this SMALL SAMPLE SIZE says you have a 30% shot. Remember, this is not really predictive, its what happened.

Lastly, I broke down the outcomes by percentile (it was a histogram, but I don't want to have to upload graphics, so I'll do a table.

Teams 1-10: 3 WS titles, 2 WS losses, 2 CS losses, 3 DS losses
Teams 11-20: 1 WS title, 2 WS losses, 1 CS loss, and 6 DS losses
Teams 21-30: 1 WS title, 3 WS losses, 1 CS loss, and 5 DS losses
Teams 31-40: 1 WS title, 0 WS losses, 2 CS losses, and 7 DS losses
Teams 41-50: 0 WS title, 1 WS loss, 5 CS losses, and 4 DS losses
Teams 51-60: 1 WS title, 1 WS loss, 6 CS losses, and 2 DS losses
Teams 61-70: 1 WS title, 1 WS loss, 0 CS losses, and 8 DS losses
Teams 71-80: 1 WS title, 2 WS losses, 3 CS losses, and 4 DS losses
Teams 81-90: 1 WS title, 1 WS loss, 1 CS loss, and 7 DS losses
Teams 91-100: 2 WS titles, 1 WS loss, 2 CS losses, and 5 DS losses
Teams 101-112: 1 WS title, 0 WS losses, 4 CS losses, and 7 DS losses

Hope this all didn't bore you guys too much, but as you suspected all along, it appears the playoffs are pretty damn close to a crapshoot.

After the signings...A look at the cap situation

ohmangoAs — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 01:15:22 -0000

After all the signings, a look at the salary cap situation for the next 6 years.

2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013

Ellis-                    11   M          11M       11M         11M        11M        11M
Maggette-           10.0M         10M        10M         10M        10M
Biedrins-             10.5M      10.5M      10.5M      10.5M     10.5M    10.5M
Turiaf-                     4M         4.0M        4.0M         5.0M
Wright                    2.5M       2.7M       3.4M
Belinelli               1.45M      1.55M       2.4M
Azubuike                   3M            3M          3M
Randolph              1.4M         1.5M    2.5M(opt.)
Harrington                9M          10M
Jackson                 7.1M         7.6M
Foyle (buyout) 6.9M

Total 66.91 61.91 45.96 36.6 31.66 21.66

This years Cap is at 58.68M so, we are 8.23 M over the cap right now, which is 4.3 M below the Luxury tax threshold of 71.15M.

I REALLY like some of the things Mullin has done here.

He didn't backload the Ellis and Biedrins contracts. This is awesome because it means we get them at 11 and 10.5 M dollars respectively right in their prime years of 2010 and 2013. Having three (Maggette included) position players locked in at good prices through their prime is a huge luxury, and will make us an appealing destination for free agents as cap space clears up.
Since Foyle, Jackson, and Harrington come off the books by 2010, we'll have 12M in cap room then. Since 2010 is such a deep FA class, we could get a pretty solid piece (though not a max player) then. You have to expect one of Bosh, Amare, Ray Allen, Tyson Chandler, Ginobili, Richard Jefferson, Joe Johnson or Steve Nash to fall into our price range. Not picking up our option on Wright, Randolph or Belinelli (whoever doesn't pan out) might open up another few million of space as well.
in 2011, assuming we don't do anything big in 2010, we have 22M with which to resign our pick of Wright, Belinelli, or Randolph, or to sign a max player.

Basically, the warriors set themselves up nicely with cornerstones Biedrins, Ellis, and Maggette. They have enough flexibility to make more moves in the future. With this core, I feel confident the W's will be playoff bound many years, and might very well contend for a championship if they add the right piece in 2010 or 2011.

The only thing I might change, if I were Mully, would have been to be really creative with the Ellis and Biedrins contracts. For example, use the 4M of space under the Lux tax this year to give both players 13M this year, and give Monta 16M next year, and Beans 14 M next year as well. Then, starting in 2010, pay Ellis 9.5M the rest of the way, and Andris 8.5 M the rest of the way.

Doing those crazy contracts would give both players the same money (but sooner) AND give the Warriors 17.4 MILLION dollars in cap space in 2010, 26.6 MILLION in 2011. The warriors would be able to sign a max contract AND a mid-level exception in the 2010 summer, and I bet, they'd be contenders. Basically, this strategy uses the fact that we're well below the lux tax now to create space under the cap in the huge 2010 summer.

Just sayin...

How other pitchers "Control" The A's

ohmangoAs — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 05:33:58 -0000

So I've been wondering why Pitchers like Ervin Santana dominate us, and at the same time, we hit decently against better pitchers such as AJ Burnett. My theory, which may not be surprising to many of you, is that pitchers with good control (who do not issue walks) absolutely destroy the A's. Even though this may be obvious, I want to take a closer statistical look at the issue.

Scope: I used statistics from 95 starts against the A's in 2008. These 95 starts came from only 76 starters. This is because some starters have played the A's multiple times (for example, Garland has started 4 times vs. the A's this year).

The relationship between opposing starters' walk rate and the number of runs the A's score:

On the Vertical Axis, I've placed the ERA posted by the opposing starter in their start vs. the A's. On the horizontal axis is that same starter's Walks per 9 innings in 2008. So, for example, the point at (2.5,20) represents a start by James Shields, who posted a 20.32 ERA in his start against the A's, despite having a 2.33 BB/9.

Next, I ran a linear regression on this data, and found that OPPERA = 1.3*BB/9 + 1. In other words, this model predicts that a pitcher who has a 2.0 BB/9 would post a 3.6 ERA in his start against the A's. For each additional BB per 9, a given pitcher will allow an additional 1.3 runs. Note that this is only a model (and the r-squared value for the regression was only .2811). So BB/9 has substantial predictive value for how a pitcher will fare against the A's, but isn't perfect.

So now, I'm sure you're thinking that this was a lot of work for nothing. After all, it's obvious that pitchers who issue a lot of walks will issue a lot of runs. Well, here's where it gets interesting.

The Relationship between a starter's 2008 ERA and his 2008 BB/9

So I was curious whether Walk Rates predict overall ERA's vs all MLB teams in the same way they do vs. the A's. In other words, is the model in the section above similar to the relationship we see for starters in general.

The Plot above uses the same 76 starters (IE the ones who played the A's) and investigates the relationship between their walk rate and their ERA.

Here, the correlation is stronger (R squared = .4), but the slope is much less pronounced. For a typical starter, an increase of 1 walk per 9 innings resulted in only a .39 increase in their ERA.

So, against all of MLB, for these starters, giving up one more walk cost them only 0.4 of a run, but against the A's, it cost them 1.3 Runs.

I think this says a lot about the how extremely Patient the A's are, but also how dependent they are on Walks. Another way of looking at this is that if a pitcher has a BB/9 of 1.0 against the A's (IE they focus very very hard on not walking players), the A's would only score 2.3 Runs.(Remember, it's only a model- so don't take this as gospel).

The ultimate point is this- it's good that each additional walk increases the A's scoring substantially, but the steepness of the slope shows that if a pitcher controls his walks, the A's are in deep trouble. They live and die by walks.

Remember, this was based on only 95 starts, and only 75 pitchers. The correllations were statistically significant, but not extremely strong. So, this isn't proof, per se, that the A's live and die by the walk, but it does help support our suspicion that more than other teams, the A's need walks to succeed.

Community Guidelines on Ad-Hominem attacks

ohmangoAs — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 06:15:19 -0000

In my opinion, recent diaries have shown some of the ugly side of this community. The best example is the number of personal attacks on Iggy in recent diaries. He's been called a "numbskull". He's been accused of slinging BS, called a joke. He's been told to stop talking because he keeps getting shut down.

And honestly, the sad part is that most of those comments came from highly regular, respected members of this community.

This community should value attacking the argument, not the person. That's the only thing that makes this place different from an ESPN board.

I'm not sure what can be done, besides a general plea for people to explain why the other person's argument is wrong, rather than calling them out personally. I also think that regular contributors need to build that mentality by never making ad-hom arguments themselves. This is not purely an issue of moderation, but really, an issue of commitment from regular community members to help create a stigma against ad-hom arguments. The next time you hear someone insult another community member, ask them to debate the argument, not the person.

Although this issue has to be self regulated by the community, there are couple things I think we should try to do in terms of site policy/organization:

Finally, there are some institutional things that could be done to help this situation.

Have a coherent set of community guidelines, beyond the warning to not be racist, homophobic etc. Right now, most of our diary guidelines are about content quality, not guidelines.
Some sort of recommended diaries feature. This is 100% an issue of self-interest for the site. Everyone would benefit. I understand that we've been trying to get this for a while, but I think that it's gotten to the point where more needs to be done. The coding for recommended diaries has already been done, on other SB Nation sites. This is a relatively high-traffic SB Nation site...why aren't we pushing for technology to meet the demands of that traffic? Email SBNation people to let them know this matters.
Perhaps some sort of system of evaluating Community guideline violations? Beyond simplistic banning by site managers, I think there should be a procedure for bringing a comment under scrutiny and perhaps some sort of three-strikes system.

I realize that this is a tough issue, and I have no doubt that the people who run GSOM (Atma et al) are doing a lot of work. But this is an important issue, and frankly, I believe the lack of quality discussions on this site is quite possibly a product of poor structural support for good writing. I know that I'm not going to write a diary as long as it gets pushed down right away, regardless of quality. I've been reading for two years, and this is just the second diary I've written.

A lot of improvements have to come from the community itself. We need to politely ask others to not make ad-hom attacks, and we need to let SBNation know that we need a recommended diaries feature.

Poll

Did you email SBNation?

Yes

1 votes

No

14 votes

15 votes | Poll has closed

Creative Ways of Buying out Foyle/long term cap-management

ohmangoAs — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 21:18:14 -0000

Foyle's contract pays 8.9 million this year, 9.8 million next year. There is a 10.5 million team option after that.

In the event of a buyout, the sum total of the buyout is divided over the remaining years of the deal, and applied to the salary cap evenly.

The Warriors have less of a salary cap crunch in 2009-2010 then they do in 2008-09. This is because Monta and Bean's new contracts first hit in 2008-2009, and by 2009-10, Foyle is gone, and Baron is gone (pending an extension). Now undoubtedly, if the W's can squeak under the Lux Tax in 08-09 after signing Biedrins and Monta, they'll make it in 09-10. I believe using that fact can help the Warriors buy out Foyle.

The Warriors could begin by "picking up" Foyle's team option for 2010-11. Immediately after doing so, they can buy out all three years from Foyle for around 19 million.

This is a win-win. Foyle gets the full value of the next two years in the buyout. He does not get the value of the third year-the only reason the W's picked it up was so that the buyout could be spread out over THREE years, rather than two. In this solution, the cap hit from foyle would be 6.3 million for each of the next three years, rather than 9 million this year, 10 million next year. The Salary cap relief is the Warrior's benefit. Foyle should be willing to accept a buyout for full value of the two years- he knows the Warriors aren't seriously going to pick up the third year, so he wouldn't demand the buyout for the third year as well. Getting his 19 million up front is also more valuable to him than getting it over two years, because money in hand actually has more economic value than money to be paid later (because Foyle can make interest on next years' 10 million starting right away).

This shaves 4 million from the critical 2008-2009 season, helping fit the two new contracts for Beans and Monta in. It also frees 3 million this season, which gives us more options right now...

Another major idea I have is to extend Monta or Biedrins right now, and pull some of their salary into this season. For example- Monta is only making 770,000 this season. Suppose his future contract extension is going to be 5 years, 35 million. I made this up completely, it's just an example. Rather than paying his 770000 this season, and then 35 million over the next 5, they should just pay him 36 million over the next 6 seasons, starting now.

This would make Monta average 6 million a season for the next 6 seasons, starting right now. We have the cap room for that right now. Extending him later would result in 770,000 this year, but then a 7 million a year hit over the 5 years after that. In other words, incorporating Monta's next year into his extension allows the W's to spread his cap hit more. Remember, all the numbers regarding Monta's extension are made up-I don't really know what it will take to resign him. Still, I would think that Monta won't object to this because he would get money up front, without losing any value on his extension. If the warriors were really daring, they could even front-load Monta's contract, and use every bit of space we have this year. That would give us lots of flexibility later. In fact, when Baron is off the books, we could resign him for less (there's no way he should be paid what he is until he stays healthy), and go for a second star, or we can go after a bigtime superstar (hopefully better than Rashard Lewis lol) with all the space.

After all these moves, Ellis and Beans would be the long term cornerstones, with SJax, Al, and Baron around for the next two years. After two years, the Warriors would have more flexibility to keep Baron or whatever, and after three years, Foyle's Buyout would come off the books.

This was pretty long, but I think it gives one good strategy for the next three years. This strategy does leave this coming year in some limbo because we don't add another piece for next year, but it leaves the Warriors in good position for the next 5, and gives us room to make real runs at the championship with cap room over the next 5. What would you guys do? Is spreading the Foyle buyout over 3 a bad idea? Is signing Monta now and paying him more this year bad?

Potential uses of the 10 million trade exception

ohmangoAs — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 03:34:37 -0000

The 10 million exception is a dilemma. One of the biggest advantages of sending JRich packing was the cap space created. That space can be the key to resigning Monta and/or Biedrins next summer.

Another use for the exception would be to use it to add another key piece. In this situation, the major downside is that such a trade takes the cap space which trading JRich created. So the new player(s) would make resigning monta and/or Biedrins impossible.

The one way we could eat our cake and have it too would be to trade for another piece, but make it someone with only one year left. Such a trade would allow us to win now, while still having the option of resigning Biedrins and Monta.

Players who fit the exception and have one year left include Maggette, Arenas (assuming he opts out, which seems likely), and Kwame Brown...

Any trade for those people would probably take some combination of Wright, future picks, POB, etc.

If the goal is to win now, but keep Monta and Biedrins, we need a one-year rental.

Yi Movement and the Salary Cap

ohmangoAs — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 12:11:09 -0000

The Salary Cap affects our decisions regarding the Draft, including whether or not we trade up.

According to HoopsHype, The Warriors 2007-2008 Salary number will be at 55 million BEFORE offers to Pietrus, Barnes, Powell, Taft, and Azubuiki.

If we were to get Yi (somehow) with, for example, the 5th pick (he should go between 3-7 from what I've seen recently- his stock is rising), the Salary would be 2.5 million. This would put the W's at 57.5 million, with the Cap likely to be at roughly 56 million (it was at 53 million this year). No matter how you put it, the Ws are at the Cap after this pick. (BTW, the 18th pick gets 1.12 million, which would put the Warriors at 56.1 million)

The difference is 1.4 million. Now in trading up, it's unlikely we would shed any salary at all. Our huge salaries (i.e. the ones that are 8 mill plus) aren't appealing for a team moving down in the draft. Most likely, the price for moving up will be young cheap talents or future picks.

Pietrus would cost 7 million minimum, and Barnes is likely to get 3-4 million somewhere. The mid-level exception is all we'd have, and that assumes either of those players would take a 1 year deal (longer would jeopardize extensions for Biedrins and Ellis, which are going to be problematic anyways). Also, we must have 12-13 contracts, so we must sign at least 3 players out of Pietrus, Barnes, Powell, Taft, Azubuiki, or other options.

In the end, taking on another 1.5 million for Yi might not sound like a lot, but the Luxury tax is at 65 million, so we have 7.5 million left for 3 players if we take Yi (again, this all assumes we somehow get the higher pick-I'm not thinking about how; I'm just checking out if its even pragmatically possible). With 7.5 Million, Pietrus is impossible, Barnes is barely possible, and 3 vet. minimums would barely fit.

Also, for 2008, the Warriors already have 50 mill. in salaries just for JRich, Baron, SJax, Harrington, and Foyle. Even if the Lux tax hits 70 mill that year, 20 mill. is not a lot for 7 roster spots, including needed contracts for Biedrins and Ellis, both restricted FA's.

So, when looking at Yi, remember that not only do we have to trade for the pick, but we also pay an crucial additional 1.5 million, and we leave only 7 million in play money this year, 17 the year after that.