First, congratulations to Mike Rizzo and Ryan Zimmerman for getting the extension done. I think that’s very good news for the future of the franchise.
With spring training getting underway, I thought I’d take a look back at the off-season. If I had to describe the Nationals’ offseason in one word, it would be “confusing.”
Going into the off-season, the Nats had a lot of young talent, but they still had holes. Stephen Strasburg would be back in 2012, but would face an innings limit. Bryce Harper might make his debut, but probably wouldn’t be ready to contribute. Anthony Rendon was at least a year away from the majors. With young players like Danny Espinosa, Wilson Ramos, and Jordan Zimmermann who were still improving, this year’s offseason seemed like an opportunity to fill some of the gaps and build toward championship runs in 2013–15.
Rizzo went into the off-season with two announced priorities—a center fielder (preferably one who could bat leadoff) and starting pitching. Without any good free agent center fielders available and unable to find a willing trading partner, Rizzo gave up on the center fielder and re-signed Rick Ankiel. He was more successful with the pitching, where he delivered the Nats’ two big deals of the off-season—trading with the Athletics for Gio Gonzalez and signing Edwin Jackson as a free agent.
The thing I find confusing about these deals is that both are “win now” deals—the Gonzalez trade because the prospects the Nats gave up are likely to provide more value after 2012 than Gonzalez, and the Jackson signing because it’s a one-year deal. For a team that is set to peak in 2013 and later, I find these deals confusing.
With respect to evaluating these deals, I agree with Dave Cameron of Fangraphs, who rated the Jackson acquisition as the fifth-best transaction of the off-season, but the Nats’ trade for Gonzalez as the fifth-worst. While there’s a chance that Gonzalez could become the dominating work horse that Rizzo envisions, that will depend on him turning around his walk rate. That’s possible, but it’s a gamble. If he doesn’t, the likely outcome is that the Nats just paid a boatload of talent and money for five seasons of league-average performance.
A perhaps more interesting question is what deals the Nats missed out on that they could have made. There weren’t many bargains in this year’s free agent market. It was mostly characterized by overpayments.*
*A fair deal requires a balance between the risk of a player’s performance falling below the the contracted level and the risk that they will surpass the contracted level. At a minimum, that means you have to be able to imagine the player surpassing the contracted performance. For example, consider the Pujols contract—10 years, $240 million—is essentially paying for 48 wins above replace (WAR) at $5 million per win. Is it possible that he could surpass that? Based on history, I’d have to say it’s very unlikely—according to Baseball-Reference.com, only four players since 1920 have recorded more than 48 WAR during their age 32 to 41 seasons. And two of those players (Babe Ruth and Willie Mays) were distinctly better than Pujols going into their age 32 seasons, while a third was Barry Bond (enough said). That leaves only Hank Aaron as a comparable player who surpassed 48 WAR (with 51 WAR). In contrast, many comparable players (e.g., Jimmie Foxx, Frank Robinson, etc.) fell well short.
So, looking over the list of high-profile free agent signings from the 2011/12 off-season, I see lots of deals that I’m glad the Nats didn’t make, including the two players most associated with the team in rumors floated in the press (Prince Fielder, 9 years and $214 million; Mark Buehrle, 4 years and $58 million). Despite the overpayments for Pujols, Fielder, Buehrle, Jonathan Papelbon, Aramis Ramirez, and Michael Cuddyer, there actually were a few prominent deals this off-season that weren’t obvious overpays. A couple of these deals could have made sense for the Nats.
Yu Darvish (6 years, $112 million including the $52 million posting fee) wasn’t a bargain, but his contract did seem like a fair price to me. There’s obviously some elevated risk for this pitcher because of his lack of major league experience, but it’s clear from observing his velocity, control, and mix of pitches that he has skills that can be effective at the major league level. He will need to average about 3.7 WAR per year over the next six years for the Rangers’ contract to pay for itself. The people who are most knowledgeable about Japanese statistics, however, think he can be even better than that. I was quite disappointed that the Nats didn’t even submit a bid. With a sealed bid auction, all they needed to do was pick a fair price and submit a bid without the risk of getting into the kind of bidding war that so often leads teams to overpay.
The next one really was a bargain. When I heard that the Marlins had signed José Reyes for six year, $106 million, I immediately wondered why the Nats hadn’t made a higher bid. I understand that his health is a question mark, but when he’s healthy he’s the second best shortstop in baseball. And it’s not as if the Nats couldn’t use a leadoff hitter and an upgrade at shortstop. Between Desmond and Lombardozzi, the Nats would have had a backup to cover the position when Reyes wasn’t available.
Trades are trickier to evaluate since we usually don’t know what other teams were willing to offer. This week, though, Tom Boswell of The Washington Post revealed a stunning deal that the Nats let get away from the mid-season of 2010. Apparently, at the time, the Rays were willing to trade Matt Moore (now considered the top pitching prospect in baseball) for Adam Dunn. Of course, it’s unfair to judge a trade a year and a half later based on what we know now, but this article by John Sickels of Minor League Ball provides a contemporary perspective on Moore’s prospects. Even without knowing what we’ve learned since, that one seems like too good a deal for the Nats to have passed up.
Looking over this year’s off-season, while I think the team is better than before (at least for this season), I still found it confusing. I don’t understand why Rizzo seems to be pursuing a win-now strategy when I think it clearly would make more sense to focus on the 2013–15 time frame. And I still don’t have a sense of how much the Lerners are willing to spend in pursuit of winning. The Nats are still spending like a small-market, budget conscious team, though Washington clearly has the potential to be a large market.
There’s a perception that in 2012 the Nats are finally going to field a competitive team and that if they can sign Prince Fielder, they’ll be real contenders. How do these perceptions square with the numbers?
Some interesting calculations are available from “SG” of Replacement Level Yankees Weblog. He runs a projection system called “CAIRO.” What I found particularly interesting is that he then takes the projections and runs them through a simulator, simulating something like 10,000 baseball seasons with each team’s projected lineups. This allows him to do calculations like the odds of each team making the playoffs.
As of January 4, SG projects 82 (actually 82.4) wins for the Nationals. This result roughly confirms what I’d already guessed my back-of-the-envelope intuition. Starting from the Nats’ 2011 Pythagorean record of 78 wins, I added a couple of wins for Stephen Strasburg increasing his workload from 24 innings to about 160 innings, 1.5 to 2.0 wins for adding Gio Gonzalez, and another 0.5 to 1.0 wins because I anticipate more incremental wins from the guys whose performance is likely to pick up next season (Jayson Werth, Ryan Zimmerman, Adam LaRoche) than losses from the guys whose performance is likely to drop off (Michael Morse, Tyler Clippard, John Lannan).
So where does that put the Nats relative to their playoff aspirations? Better than they’ve ever been at the start of a season in Washington, but still a ways to go before they can be considered likely to reach the playoffs. SG projects the Nats to finish third in the NL East, behind the Phillies with 93 wins and the Braves with 87. Furthermore, the Marlins are projected to be neck-and-neck with the Nats with 81.6 wins, and the Mets are not entirely out of it with a projected 76 wins. Assuming that MLB switches to a format of two wild-card teams, the Nats are projected to have a 25% probability of reaching the postseason. (If baseball retains the current format of a single wild card, the Nat’s postseason probability would drop to 17%.)
A 25% chance really isn’t that good—it places the Nats 8th in the NL, behind the Phillies, Cards, Giants, D-backs, Braves, Reds, and Brewers. But the Nats are at the bottom of the “sweet spot” that runs from about 82 to 92 wins, where each additional win would increase their odds of making the playoffs by roughly 5 percentage points. So if the Nats sign Prince Fielder and he adds 3.5 wins to their projected total, their postseason odds would go up to about 45%. (In contrast, the Phillies postseason odds are shown as 84%, but an incremental win wouldn’t raise their postseason probability as much.)
This helps explain one of the reasons that the Nats are considered favorites to land Fielder—his incremental value in terms of postseason probability is larger for the Nats than it is for the other teams that are mentioned as suitors, because the Nats are the only one with a projected number of wins in the range of 82 to 92. (The Rangers are projected at 94 wins, the Mariners at 77, the Cubs at 71, and the Orioles at 65.)
If the Nats don’t sign Fielder, I’ll consider this off-season to have been a disappointment. The only significant deal so far, the trade for Gonzalez, decimated the farm system and is really only explainable as a move to win now, rather than later. Yet a 25% chance to reach the postseason can’t be considered a win-now position.
If the Nats do sign Fielder, is there anything else they could still do that would also significantly boost their postseason chances? I’ll suggest one possibility—sign Roy Oswalt, who is said to be available for a one-year, $8 million asking price. He would probably push John Lannan out of the rotation, but Oswalt’s projection (3.47 ERA, 3.52 FIP, 171 IP according to Bill James) is substantially better than Lannan’s (4.40 ERA, 4.49 FIP, 180 IP). With only a one-year commitment and a reasonable asking price, this seems like one of the best ways to boost the Nats’ postseason prospects.
The Nats’ other need is for a center fielder, and unfortunately I don’t have a good suggestion there. While I think the Cuban defector Yoennis Cespedes could prove to be a good deal for the team that signs him, he’ll probably need a year to adjust to major league pitching, so I don’t see him as an option for immediately improving the team. With a scarcity of free agent or trade prospects, it looks like the Nats will be playing Werth in center field this season.
By the way, Harper of Nationals Baseball has a nice post on the frustrations facing teams that are in the same position as the Nats, where deals potentially can have a big impact on the playoff probabilities, but also could go massively wrong.
Another comment – the Yankees acquisition of Michael Pineda in exchange for Jesús Montero illustrates a point I made earlier—the Nats overpaid for Gonzalez. While none of the prospects that the Nats sent to the A’s individually were as valuable as Montero, collectively they represented a much more valuable bundle. Furthermore, Gonzalez isn’t the pitcher that Pineda is (Bill James projections of 3.07/3.19 for Pineda’s ERA/FIP, compared to 3.83/3.94 for Gonzalez). Finally, the Yankees will get five cost-controlled seasons from Pineda, compared to four for Gonzalez. In comparison to what the Yankees paid for Pineda, the Nats deal for Gonzalez was a massive overpay.
With their trade for Gio Gonzalez and continuing rumors of an effort to sign Prince Fielder, the Nats appear to be aiming for the post-season in 2012. This places them, however, in an unusual situation. Stephen Strasburg, clearly the Nats’ best pitcher, will be facing a projected innings limit of about 160 to 170 innings as part of his recovery from Tommy John surgery. If his workload is managed the same way as Jordan Zimmermann‘s, who was at the same point in his own recovery in 2011, Strasburg would be pulled from the rotation in mid-to-late August and would not be available for the post-season.
Most Nats observers are convinced that the Nats are resigned to losing Strasburg in September and (possibly) October. Pete Kerzel of MASN writes:
One thing you won’t see is Strasburg pitching deep into September – or, if things break just right, in the playoffs. Rizzo and Johnson want to win, but they’re big-picture guys and realize that the promise of another dominating decade or so from Strasburg is much more enticing than the immediate gratification of seeing him in a pennant drive or the postseason now.
A few observers have suggested delaying his first start until mid-May, or possibly shutting him down for a few weeks in mid-summer. But starting Strasburg in May would mean he’d lose the benefits of spring training and have to prepare for the season in instructional league or the minors. Furthermore, without their ace early in the season, the Nats risk losing momentum and slipping behind in the race.
I’d like to suggest another approach that harks back to baseball of the 1930s and 40s—assign Strasburg to pitch just once a week on six days rest. Seventy years ago a few teams used “Sunday pitchers” with great success. The premier example was Hall-of-Famer Ted Lyons. From 1939–42 (ages 38 to 41), Lyons made 61 of his 85 starts on Sundays, producing a 52–30 record and a 2.96 ERA. Other prominent pitchers who were used as Sunday pitchers included Red Ruffing and Tommy Bridges. This type of usage was mostly reserved for older pitchers.
Why do I think that a once-a-week pattern would work for Strasburg? First, that’s the usage pattern in college baseball, so it’s a frequency that Strasburg is accustomed to. Japanese baseball also uses a pattern of weekly starts with considerable success. The Book by Tango, Lichtman, and Dolphin finds that five days rest is optimal, so six days rest is a bit longer than the optimum, but it does have the advantage of stretching Strasburg’s work throughout the entire season. Pitching once a week would give Strasburg 26 starts, the same number of games that Zimmermann started last season.
Another advantage of starting Strasburg on a weekly schedule is that it would boost ticket sales, by making it easier for casual fans who want to see Strasburg pitch to plan their ticket purchases.
Now I’ll mention that I wouldn’t actually recommend starting Strasburg on Sundays. The reason that Lyons and others pitched on Sundays is because there were many Sunday doubleheaders scheduled in the 1930s and 40s, a reason that is now irrelevant. A disadvantage of Sundays is that they are mostly day games, and the afternoon sun in Washington in July and August can be brutal. Since the purpose of the innings limit is to avoid placing stress on Strasburg, I’d rather not add the stress of lots of day games. Furthermore, I remember some research by Bill James in one of his Baseball Abstracts that found that power pitchers did better at night.* Instead of Sundays, I’ll suggest scheduling most of Strasburg’s starts on Fridays. Most Friday games are played at night and it’s the start of the weekend, when I think there would be an especially significant impact on ticket sales.
*I wonder if anyone has ever tried replicating James’s study on power pitchers in night games with more recent and comprehensive data.
The objection to my argument is going to be, wouldn’t such a plan play havoc with the rest of the rotation? How can the other pitchers’ schedules work when one of their battery mates is not rotating at the same rate? I think these problems could be worked around by bringing in a sixth pitcher as a spot starter or “swing man”—a role that used to be common in most pitching staffs until teams adopted strict rotations in the 1960s. Fortunately, the Nats have a natural candidate for this position in Ross Detwiler, who will probably be used to fill in for Strasburg’s missing starts regardless of when they occur. Furthermore, since he’s out of options, he should be available to fill this role throughout the year, and also would be available for long relief when he isn’t needed to start. Basically what I’m proposing could be thought of as a “5-and-a-half man rotation,” where Detwiler would play the role of half starter/half reliever.
Let me illustrate how such a rotation might work, looking at the schedule for April 2012. For each week, I’ll list the scheduled games by day of the week, starter(“St”=Strasburg, “Go”=Gonzalez, “Zi”=Zimmermann, “La”=John Lannan, “Wa”=Chien-Ming Wang, and “De”=Detwiler), and number of days rest for that starter. The season is scheduled to open with a game on Thursday April 5, followed by an off day on Friday.
Week of April 1:
Th-St; Sa-Go
Week of April 8:
Su-Zi; M-La; Tu-Wa; W-De; Th-Go(4); F-St(7); Sa-Zi(5)
Week of April 15:
Su-La(5); M-Wa(5); Tu-De(5); W-Go(5); Th-Zi(4); F-St(6); Sa-La(5)
Week of April 22:
Su-Wa(5); Tu-Go(5); W-Zi(5); Th-La(4); F-St(6); Sa-Wa(5)
Week of April 29:
Su-Go(4); Tu-Zi(5); W-La(5); Th-Wa(4); F-St(6); Sa-Go(5)
You can see that the four regular starters other than Strasburg all pitch on four or five days rest, and their schedule is quite similar to a traditional five-man rotation. Detwiler, as the swing man, would pitch only twice during the first month, and would move to the bullpen when he isn’t scheduled to pitch.
During the season, I’d also try to conserve Strasburg’s innings by pulling him out early in low leverage situations. For example, after five innings, if the Nats are ahead by three or more runs (or behind by two or more), I’d recommend pulling him early even if he hasn’t reached his full pitch count. That way, I’d save a few innings and allow him to pitch into the post-season if the Nats make it. If the Nats are careful with Strasburg’s innings during his 25 or 26 regular season starts, he should be have enough innings saved to make at least two or three post-season starts.
If the Nats remain in the race in September, I’d start modifying his schedule to line him up to pitch in the most important single game of the post-season—the new wild card game (assuming the Nats reach the post-season as a wild card team). Since this will be a one-game series, it will be critical for the Nats to arrange for their best pitcher to pitch this game. He would then be in position, if the Nats win, to pitch game five of the divisional series, and potentially even a game or two in the league championship series or the World Series.
If the Nats are really serious about going for it all this year, I encourage them to consider a plan like this that would protect Strasburg’s arm while still making him available for the full season and post-season.
It’s year-end summary time, when publishers retread their favorite material from the past year. In that spirit, here’s a look back at this blog’s top 10 posts as determined by you, my dear readers. (I’ll note that a list of my own top 10 favorites would comprise most of the same posts, albeit in different order.)
- A look at 2012 player projections (November 14). It appears that readers love looking at projections.
- Bryce Harper’s eyesight (May 15). For once, I wrote a post that shows up near the top of the search engine results. If I could do that more often, I might have a future for myself in this world-wide-web business.
- Envisioning the 2013 Nationals (Part one – the pitchers) (July 11). With last week’s trade, I guess I need to update the part about Brad Peacock and Tommy Milone being regulars in the 2013 rotation.
- Washington’s last, forgotten World Series championship (October 5). This post, about the 1948 Negro League World Series championship won by Washington’s Homestead Grays, was my favorite post of the year to research and write. I hope that some of you enjoyed reading it.
- Erik Komatsu major league equivalencies (July 30). I did other short pieces on major league equivalencies, so I’m not sure why this one drew the most readers. Maybe because it was read by both Nats and Cardinals fans.
- Fireman extraordinaire (October 2). A statistical tribute to Tyler Clippard‘s excellent performance in 2011.
- What’s the Nationals’ plan for Bryce Harper? (June 19). A bit of speculation.
- My new favorite stat (September 25). I explore the interpretation and uses of “RE24.”
- I’m no lawyer, but something about the new CBA… (November 26). I react to the new collective bargaining agreement’s slotting system for draft picks and restrictions on pay and bonuses going to international players.
- Envisioning the 2013 Nationals (Part two – the position players) (July 15). This post has held up better over time than has the post on pitchers. We still need a center fielder.
I’ll also take this opportunity acknowledge my worst post of the year—the one I’d most like to retract. On May 24, John Lannan was off to a slow start and I wrote, “Is John Lannan getting close to the end of the line?” How was I to know that over his next 14 starts, Lannan would go 6–2, giving up only 2.85 R/9 with an average game score of 55? Fortunately, it looks like only about eight readers actually read the post. Unfortunately, during the last six weeks of the season John seemed to have returned to his early-season funk, giving me some concern for his projected performance going into next season.
Finally, I close this post by wishing the Nationals a successful 2012 season and all of you a happy new year!
I periodically post links to items that, in my opinion, have lasting significance, or that I’d like “to remember.” I haven’t added one of these posts since early September, so some of these links are going to be dated. Here are links from the last few months that I’d like to remember:
- Dave Cameron of Fangraphs did a really nice analysis of the Nats’ newest pitcher, Gio Gonzalez. Although I still don’t like the deal, I’m encouraged to see that several comparable young pitchers have been able to tame their wildness and transform themselves into outstanding pitchers.
- Tom Boswell of The Washington Post takes the Lerners to task for not investing in the team.
- John Sickels of Minor League Ball selects and discusses the Nats’ top
2016 prospects. - Although not written about the Nats per se, this research article by Matt Swartz of The Hardball Times finds that fastball velocity is an important independent factor in projecting pitcher performance, a point with obvious implications for Nats flamethrowers like Henry Rodríguez, Stephen Strasburg, and Drew Storen.
- The most memorable event this off-season, of course, was the kidnapping and dramatic rescue of Wilson Ramos. We’re all grateful that he came out of this safely.
Finally, I usually like to include links to a few video highlights. There are several memorable videos from the last few weeks of the season:
- On September 3 against the Mets, Tommy Milone crushed the first pitch he saw in the majors into the bullpen. It’s too bad that he won’t get to show off his bat in the other league.
- On September 14, again playing the Mets, Rick Ankiel‘s diving catch saved the win and ended the game.
- Here’s another nice Ankiel catch on September 24 against the Braves.
- The next day, the Nats’ home closer, featured several memorable highlights. In the top of the seventh, the Nats ahead 1–0, Henry Rodríguez struck out the side. In the bottom of the inning, Michael Morse hit his 29th home run to give the Nats a 3–0 lead. Then, in the ninth inning Ryan Zimmerman made an amazing play.
This morning I was thinking about doing a post about how boring this off-season had been so far–nothing more interesting going on for the Nats than signing minor league free agents, Rule V draft picks, and claiming guys off waivers (yawn). Then I read Tom Boswell’s stunning column in the Washington Post (more about that later), followed by breaking news of the trade with the Oakland A’s for Gio Gonzalez.
In exchange for Gonzalez, the Nats gave up four of their top prospects, righties Brad Peacock and A.J. Cole, lefty Tommy Milone, and catcher Derek Norris. The A’s also threw in Robert Gilliam, a single-A right-hander who’s apparently no prospect.
I don’t like the deal:
- Gonzalez is not really a top-of-the-rotation pitcher. Probably the best way to assess a player’s abilities right now is to look at his projections for next season. That’s because most projections have already averaged a player’s statistics over recent seasons and taken account of aging, etc. The Bill James projections are currently available at Fangraphs. (I’d prefer to look at two or three sets of projections, but since others like Zips and Marcel aren’t available yet, I’ll stick with the Bill James numbers.) For Gonzalez, James projects the following:
. K/9 BB/9 ERA FIP
Gonzalez 9.0 4.2 3.83 3.94
Compare that projection with those for some true top-of-the-rotation pitchers on our divisional rivals:
Halladay 7.3 1.2 3.03 2.96
Lee 7.5 1.4 3.18 2.99
Hamels 8.4 2.1 3.22 3.50
Hanson 9.0 2.9 3.18 3.39
Beachy 10.6 2.8 3.14 2.83
Johnson 8.2 2.6 3.09 2.92
As they used to say on Sesame Street, one of these lines is not like the others.
- The Nats gave up too much talent. Beyond the Boxscore has a nice graphic showing how the projected WAR over the next three years for the prospects the Nats traded was nearly twice as large as Gonzalez’s projected WAR over the same interval. Yet that actually understates the lopsidedness of this trade, since the Nats are buying four years of control of Gonzalez in exchange for six years of control for each of the four prospects. I think there’s a high probability that either Peacock or Cole will actually prove to be a better pitcher over their six-year period of team control than Gonzalez will be over his remaining four years (and that’s ignoring the additional value provided by Norris and Milone). I think that Norris, Milone, and one of Peacock or Cole would have been a fair exchange, but not both right-handers.
- Even if the exchange of talent were more balanced, it doesn’t make sense for the Nats because the value they’re getting is concentrated in 2012, when the Nats aren’t so likely to contend, whereas the value they’re giving up is concentrated in 2013 and later, when the Nats’ chances are much better. I see two reasons for thinking their odds are better in 2013 or later: first, much of the Nats’ own talent is not fully developed—Rendon will be in the minors next season, and if Harper arrives, it may be later in the season and he’ll be making adjustments to major league pitching. On the other hand, two of their divisional rivals—the Phillies and the Marlins—seem likely to peak in 2012 and face aging rosters thereafter. So while I think the Nats have finally reached the point where they can think about contending in 2012, I think it’s foolish to weaken the team in 2013-15 in order to strengthen the team in 2012.
- The trade removes a lot of talent—especially pitching talent— from our system and doesn’t leave us with many good prospects available for future trades. While it looks like the center field trade isn’t working out this winter, I’d like us to have the flexibility of making a move if a good player becomes available in July. Without the trading chips on board, it makes future trades more difficult.
I said I’d come back to Boswell’s column. First, I’d like to apologize for a comment I made about Boswell in my last post. I really respect the way he took on the Lerners, arguing that ownership’s penurious ways are hurting the team. While we can debate the specific transactions he discussed in his column, I think the broader point is correct. The Nats have consistently spent less on salaries than would be expected for a team serving a market with Washington’s population and income. Other than Jayson Werth, they have never spent big on a free agent.
I’m not asking the Lerners to spend money just to be spending it. If they can emulate the Tampa Bay Rays and win without spending on salaries, more power to them. But Washington isn’t Tampa Bay. If we could consistently field a winning team, there’s no reason Washington’s ticket sales and revenues couldn’t match a team like the Phillies, which lags behind only the Yankees and Red Sox in income. The Lerners lack of spending has been matched by a notable lack of winning. I’d really like to see the owners make the investments that they’re capable of making and that most winning teams need to make.
And the Gonzalez trade really confirms the broad point that Boswell was making. Gonzalez almost certainly isn’t a better pitcher than C.J. Wilson, Yu Darvish, or maybe even Roy Oswalt, but he is cost controlled for the next four years. To acquire Gonzalez, ownership didn’t have to give up much money, but they did give up talent. I’m afraid that decision will come back to bite us in a couple of years.
I’m no lawyer, but something about the new CBA (collective bargaining agreement) seems like it really shouldn’t be legal.
Like I said, I don’t know what the law actually says, so I’m just going by my intuition.
Let me try to explain my concern using an example from another industry. Let’s suppose all the U.S. airlines got together and unilaterally decided they wouldn’t pay any of their pilots more than $100 per hour. I’m pretty sure that would be illegal, though I admit I don’t know which specific law it violates–maybe it’s labor law or antitrust, but I’m pretty sure that companies can’t do that.
On the other, if the airlines got together and bargained with the pilots union and the outcome of the negotiation was an agreement that says no pilot would be paid more than $100 per hour, that seems like it should be legal.* That is, because representatives of the pilots are at the negotiating table and the pilots’ union gives its assent, we would recognize it as a valid agreement. The key idea is that it’s not unilateral, and the pilots have a say in what the limits on wages are going to be.
* I’m aware that in practice in the United States, each airline generally negotiates a separate agreement, and that some airlines are not unionized. But in some industries, union agreements are made collectively with multiple employers, so the basic point remains.
Next suppose the airlines and the pilots get together and they decide that not only should the limit on pilots’ pay be $100 per hour, but also that the flight attendants pay should be no more than $25 per hour and the baggage handlers should be limited to $10 per hour. Furthermore, assume that no flight attendants or baggage handlers were present at the bargaining table. Would this agreement be legal? It seems to me that it wouldn’t be, for the same reasons that the unilateral limit agreement by the airlines wouldn’t have been. The fact that the pilots may have agreed to it would seem to be irrelevant if we’re talking about the pay of flight attendants and baggage handlers.
Now isn’t the CBA essentially the same thing? The teams and the Major League Baseball Players’ Association get together and not only agree on the rules under which MLB players’ salaries will be set, but also on the rules and limits governing the pay and bonuses of U.S. and international minor leaguers. The new rules for the amateur draft are expected essentially to function like a hard slotting system, with very little flexibility to pay more than the recommended amount for each draft slot. Furthermore, the minor leaguers are not represented at the bargaining table–the Players’ Association membership is limited to the 1,200 players who appear on the major league teams’ 40-man rosters. Like I said, I’m not lawyer, but it’s hard for me to believe that such an agreement could be legal.
Now maybe baseball gets away with this because of its antitrust exemption. To tell the truth, I’m not sure what the antitrust exemption does for baseball. In most respects, it seems to operate about the same as the other major professional sports that don’t claim such an exemption—maybe it’s its operations with the minor leagues that are protected by the exemption.
Or maybe MLB just figures that no one is going to challenge them in the courts. Who would? Certainly not some 17-year Dominican kid who sees baseball as his only ticket out of poverty. Probably not the 19-to-22 year-old draft-eligible American kid who dreams of major league glory either. None of them would want to rock the boat. And even though most minor league players are terribly exploited, they aren’t the type of workers who are likely to organize a union. So maybe the CBA is illegal, but MLB has decided that it can get away with it because no one will challenge it.
How much difference will the CBA really make? The reactions are all over the map. Brien at It’s About the Money describes it as
“a truly terrible deal, basically the worst case scenario and then some. It’s a horrible deal for amateur players, and will certainly push a large amount of them to college, and a fairly substantial number of young athletes to other sports altogether.”
At the other extreme is Tom Boswell of The Washington Post (have you noticed how he’s seeming more and more like a PR flak for the Nationals and MLB lately?), who writes that the CBA
“is so monumentally symbolic for the sport, and such a shock to our cynical systems, that millions of fans, accustomed to 35 years of labor warfare or steroid disgrace, may suffer from the same delighted whiplash. We hardly know how to cope with optimism in such unaccustomed quantities.”
For a more balanced discussion, we can read Rob Neyer of Baseball Nation:
” I think it’s far too early for say exactly what effect the new rules about amateurs will have on competitive balance and quality of play, generally.
My guess, though? Whether positive or negative, the overall impact will be small enough that it’s difficult to measure.”
My view is similar. Looking specifically at the Nationals’ last couple of drafts, what players were we able to sign that we probably wouldn’t have signed with the new rules? My guess is that there were really only two—A.J. Cole in 2010 and Matt Purke this year—who wouldn’t have signed without extra money. Yes, the Nats have signed a lot of other players over slot—Stephen Strasburg, Bryce Harper, Sammy Solis, Robbie Ray, Anthony Rendon, Alex Meyer, and Brian Goodwin—but my sense is that if the new rules had been in effect, most of those guys would have gone ahead and signed and taken less money. So, while there’s some effect on the team, it’s mixed (the team loses out on a couple of prospects, but also saves quite a bit of money). Furthermore, because the new rules create hard expectations about bonuses for each draft slot, disasters like the failure to sign Aaron Crow in 2008 become much less likely.
The other thing to think about with the new rules is that, like other restrictions on mutually beneficial contracts, there will be efforts to evade the restrictions that will lead to unintended consequences. We can sort of guess what they might be. Will teams start buying cars and condos for their prized prospects? Will the kid (or the kid’s parents) get cushy off-season “jobs” with partners of the team? We can look at some of the shenanigans that go in the NCAA and get a sense of what happens when an external authority tries to prohibit payments for talent.
So I don’t like the new CBA limits on amateur and international contracts—they basically are intended to transfer income from relatively poor minor leaguers to rich owners and MLB players—but I think they will be evaded and have a relatively small effect on the talent available to baseball as a whole or to the Nationals, specifically, as a team.
Other parts of the agreement are also a mixed bag. There will be more interleague play (probably inevitable) and another pair of wild card teams. Contrary to some suggestions, it will not reduce the probability of a wild card team winning the World Series—yes, the probability of any individual wild card team winning will be only half as large, but there will be twice as many wild card teams competing, so the probability of one of them winning the championship won’t be perceptibly different. There will be expanded drug testing and a ban on smokeless tobacco, which I count as pluses. But on the whole, the changes seem fairly modest and unlikely to upset the fortunes of the rich and powerful who run the game.
It’s always fun to look at projections for how players will do next season. Any individual projection is, of course, very likely to be wrong, but a group of player projections will often get the story generally right. Fangraphs has posted the 2012 Bill James Handbook Projections.* I’m going to run through them for the Nats players, adding a little commentary where appropriate. I think they provide an interesting view of the potential strengths of our current roster, along with warnings about potential risks ahead.
For position players, I’ll give the following lines of actual or projected statistics:
Games/Plate appearances — Average / On-base percentage / Slugging — wOBA (weighted on-base average)
For pitchers, I’ll just report the actual and projected:
Innings Pitched — ERA / FIP (fielding-independent pitching)
* While I used to faithfully buy the Bill James Handbook every winter, I have to admit I quit buying them two or three seasons ago. When my better half asked me to clean out the overcrowded bookshelf, I decided that books filled with statistics that I can mostly find online were among the easier choices to dispose of.
I’ll start with the players who are projected to decline relative to 2011, then move on to players who are projected to improve. In each case I’ll report the player’s 2011 actual line, the Bill James 2012 projection, and then add a brief comment.
Projected declines
Michael Morse
2011 Actual: 146/575 — .303/.360/.550 — .387
2012 Bill James: 140/553 — .291/.347/.505 — .369
Following a career year at age 29, a drop-off in performance shouldn’t be surprise anyone. My own guess is that he’ll lose a little more than projected in average, but do a little better in isolated power.
Wilson Ramos
2011 Actual: 113/435 — .267/.334/.445 — .332
2012 Bill James: 113/425 — .267/.317/.431 — .321
This season, Ramos exceeded his minor league projections, so I assume that’s the reason for projecting a slight sophomore slump.
John Lannan
2011 Actual: 184.2 — 3.70/4.28
2012 Bill James: 180 — 4.40/4.49
Ouch! I’ll admit that I’m part of the camp that’s been skeptical about Lannan’s future as a pitcher, and this projection is certainly consistent with that view. I’ll also point out that while Lannan was overall a league-average pitcher for this season, his performance was quite inconsistent. From May 27 to August 17, he pitched 14 games, going 6–2 with an average game score of 55 and allowing 2.85 R/9. But during the periods before May 27 and after August 17, he performed pretty poorly, pitching 19 games with a 4–11 record and allowing 5.71 R/9.
Ross Detwiler
2011 Actual: 66 — 3.00/4.21
2012 Bill James: 109 — 4.46/3.87
Ouch again! I guess his relatively unimpressive AAA stats from last season affected this projection.
Jordan Zimmermann
2011 Actual: 161.1 — 3.18/3.16
2012 Bill James: 175 — 3.39/3.51
As I’ve pointed out a couple of times, JZimm has had some good luck this season with his home run rates and some regression is appropriate.
Projected improvements
Ryan Zimmerman
2011 Actual: 101/440 — .289/.355/.443 — .347
2012 Bill James: 139/596 — .291/.363/.486 — .366
This projection has his power returning, but not quite to the level it had reached in 2009/2010 (though that’s probably mainly a reflection of the league-wide drop in offense).
Jayson Werth
2011 Actual: 150/649 — .232/.330/.389 — .323
2012 Bill James: 146/579 — .259/.360/.451 — .354
Again, a nice bounce back, though not a return to the levels he reached in 2008/2010. In addition to the league-wide decline in offense, he’s also dealing with a less hitter-friendly ball park and the effects of age.
Adam LaRoche
2011 Actual: 43/177 — .172/.288/.258 — .258
2012 Bill James: 87/293 — .255/.333/.445 — .341
The uncertainty in his return from injury seems to be exhibited more by reduced projected playing time than by a reduction in his rate statistics.
Danny Espinosa
2011 Actual: 158/658 — .236/.323/.414 — .325
2012 Bill James: 158/623 — .248/.329/.445 — .330
Since his 2011 statistics were generally consistent with his previous minor league stats, his 2012 projection shows a modest improvement.
Ian Desmond
2011 Actual: 154/639 — .253/.298/.358 — .290
2012 Bill James: 143/561 — .268/.317/.394 — .312
If he can hit this projection, that should be enough for him to retain his roster spot.
Roger Bernadina
2011 Actual: 91/337 — .243/.301/.362 — .303
2012 Bill James: 96/292 — .261/.327/.399 — .323
It would be an improvement, but not enough to justify a promotion to a regular.
Chien-Ming Wang
2011 Actual: 62.1 — 4.04/4.57
2012 Bill James: 119 — 3.78/3.80
Obviously, a risky projection.
Fangraphs didn’t show a projection for Stephen Strasburg (I’m not sure whether the Bill James Handbook did one), and I’ll skip the projections for relief pitchers, who are notoriously hard to project. Overall, the message seems to be that while Nationals’ hitting is likely to improve, the starting pitching (other than Strasburg and possibly Wang) is likely to drop off. So Mike Rizzo’s search for a starting pitcher seems justified.
I’ll end by presenting, without comment, the projections for a few players who have been mentioned as possible targets in free agency or trades:
Potential free agent or trade acquisitions
B.J. Upton – 2012 Bill James: 153/637 — .251/.344/.424 — .340
C.J. Wilson – 2012 Bill James: 215 — 3.31/3.41
Roy Oswalt – 2012 Bill James: 171 — 3.47/3.52
Mark Buehrle – 2012 Bill James: 208 — 3.98/4.08
Update: November 15, 2011
It turns out I missed the most remarkable of the Nats’ Bill James Handbook projections (hat tip: Carson Cistulli of fangraphs.com). When I saw that projections weren’t available for either Strasburg or Brad Peacock, I didn’t bother checking projections for other players who didn’t have much major league experience, so I missed this shocker:
Tom Milone
2011 Actual: 26 — 3.81/3.56
2012 Bill James: 52 — 3.29/2.70
The FIP is based on a projection of 8.3 K/9 and 1.2 BB/9. Cistulli wrote, “Whatever methodology James’s projections use, it appears convinced that Milone is more than a soft-tossing left-hander.” I can sort of understand how James and his staff came up with those numbers based on his AAA stats, but after watching Milone pitch in September, I’d be shocked if he met these projections.
The hot stove league kicked off this week with the Nats signing Chien-Ming Wang to a one-year, $4 million contract. While the signing was widely anticipated, it is likely to have effects in both short-term, impacting the plans for the Nats’ 2012 starting rotation, and in the longer-term, where it may enhance the team’s ability to recruit international talent.
Mike Axisa of FanGraphs views the contract as a bit of an overpay. I, on the other hand, think the price was reasonable. Wang’s projected performance for next season obviously has a large variance. At the high end, the Nats are hoping for a 2.5 to 3.0 WAR performance, which would be consistent with his performance over eight of his last nine starts in 2011. At the low end, however, he is reinjured or fails to establish consistent command and doesn’t make it through the season. A mean projection for 2012 is probably about one WAR, for which $4 million isn’t unreasonable in view of the potential upside.
How will Wang’s signing affect the plans for the Nats’ starting rotation? At the moment, the opening day rotation appears to be shaping up as Stephen Strasburg, Jordan Zimmermann, John Lannan, Wang, and Ross Detwiler, with Tom Milone and Brad Peacock (who have options) returning to the minors. At least in Peacock’s case, I think the time in the minors can be helpful, since he needs to work on developing another pitch.
Of course, as Mike Rizzo has emphasized, the team really needs to have eight or nine starting pitchers available (especially with Strasburg facing an innings limit), so it’s quite likely that we’ll see Milone and Peacock later in the season. Furthermore, Rizzo continues to pursue a top-of-the-rotation starter. On this point, I fully agree with Rizzo. While our pitching prospects have impressive potential, our current rotation remains weak in comparison with those of our main competitors—Philadelphia and Atlanta.
After earlier speculation about the Nats pursuing C.J. Wilson and Yu Darvish, the talk now seems to be focusing on Mark Buerhle. Rob Neyer of Baseball Nation concludes that Buerhle is the second best free agent pitcher on the market. I think pursuing Buerhle rather than Wilson makes sense—Buerhle will probably require a three-year commitment, while Wilson will probably demand at least a five-year contract, which just seems too risky. I’d still like to see the Nats take a run at Darvish, but Buerhle would be a good acquisition who would make the Nats’ rotation competitive with any team except for Philadelphia.
Of course, if Rizzo succeeds in signing a top-of-the-rotation starter, Detwiler, who is out of options, will likely be pushed into a long-relief role. I think that’s somewhat unfortunate, since I view Detwiler as likely to have a better season than either Lannan or Wang. And if Detwiler is destined for the bullpen, that probably implies that Tom Gorzelanny would be non-tendered. I’d sort of hate to see Gorzelanny go, since I thought he pitched pretty well overall with the exception of some bad luck on his home runs per fly ball rate. Another possibility, of course, is that Detwiler would be used as trade bait in Rizzo’s effort to land a center fielder. That could be a sensible strategy for the Nats, since Detwiler has established some trade value and seems replaceable by other prospects in the pipeline, like Milone and Sammy Solis.
Another aspect of Wang’s signing perhaps hasn’t received as much attention. Watching the Taiwan All-Star series, I’ve been impressed by what a major celebrity Wang is in his home country. I learned that the Nats games he pitches are broadcast there, which has the side effect of turning Nats players like Michael Morse into Taiwanese celebrities.
I hope that the Nationals take advantage of Wang’s celebrity to expand their scouting and recruitment efforts in Taiwan and elsewhere in Asia. I can foresee such an effort yielding dividends long after Wang’s contract is over. In addition, an expanded the scouting operation in Taiwan would position the Nats to eventually move into China as that country’s baseball program advances. At some point in the next 25 years, I expect China to embrace baseball, and when they do so, it will have a huge impact on international baseball. If our team can develop a scouting and recruitment system that’s comfortable with Chinese culture, we could have a leg up on an enormous source of talent.
The Nationals lost utility player Brian Bixler after the Houston Astros claimed him off waivers, the Astros announced this afternoon.Bixler, 29, started the season with Class AAA Syracuse. He appeared in 79 games for the Nationals and hit .205/.267/.265 in 94 plate appearances. The Nationals valued him for his blazing speed and versatility, as he played every position this season except catcher, pitcher and second base.
One of the great things about the old Bill James Baseball Abstracts was seeing how he developed sophisticatedly simple methods for organizing data. For example, for a study of rookies, he organized players into six buckets. “Fives” were the all-time greats, players like Aaron and Cobb. “Fours” were the major stars, players like Whitey Ford and Bob Gibson. “Threes” were players who could be described as marginal Hall of Fame candidates, players like Ron Guidry, Dick Groat, and Chick Hafey. “Twos” were the “very good ballplayers/minor stars,” and “Ones” were merely “good ballplayers.” Of course James set statistical criteria for each bucket – to qualify as a “One,” for example, a player had to play 1100 games or have at least one big season, scoring or driving in 100 runs or hitting 30 home runs. A pitcher might qualify by winning 90 games or saving 140.
Of course the great majority of major league players in history, more than 80%, were in his final bucket—the players who didn’t even qualify as “Ones.” James described them:
Though some of them do turn in two or three good seasons… these are players who either have limited ability or “fail to reach their potential,” passing out of the game leaving only a scattered memory. Their personal accomplishments, though significant in isolation, are of such a magnitude that their exclusion is not deemed to damage an evaluation of the rookie crop of which they are a part.
Brian Bixler is, of course, a member of this large group. I’m not a person who especially enjoys memorizing trivia, and I tend to forget most players of this type. In Brian’s case, however, I think I’d like to remember this catch.
Nats Noodles 