Cup of Coffee

December 2, 2015: Onus

26 Comments

Three of the four full-timers in my department left in the past few weeks. I'm the other, so I'm stuck with a bunch of new people with no experience at the most critical time of year.

26 thoughts on “December 2, 2015: Onus”

  1. Yesterday Cliff Corcoran of SI published an article arguing Jason Heyward is worth over $300 million. Corcoran describes his projection of Heyward's career through age 35 as pretty conservative. (As conservative as a ten year projection without any allowance for injury time can be, I guess.)

    Plenty has been written about Heyward's exceptional defense, which is pretty atypical for a non-Ichiro right fielder. I took a look at B-Ref's list of his comps through age 25, since it seems like we've heard much less about Heyward's bat since his rookie year (still his career best at the plate). In order (with one omission): Lloyd Moseby, Jeff Francoeur, Johnny Callison, [omission], Claudell Washington, Jack Clark, _elm_n, Grady Sizemore, Gus Bell, and Jeff Burroughs. A near-HoFer (Clark), a Hall of Pretty Good player (Callison), a couple guys who were done pretty early (Moseby, Sizemore), some role players, some flotsam, and _elm_n.

    The omission? Barry Bonds. If a player's going into free agency at 26 I suppose that's the best comp he could hope for, but dang, $300+ million for any guy seems like a pretty big role of the dice.

    Side note: The $11 million/win figure for 2025 is eye-watering.

      1. I'd like to see a bit more recognition of the variance in these point estimates. For example, while Edwards shows an age 26-30 fWAR comp list average of 24.4, the standard deviation for that list of 11 comps is 6.8.

        to say that a player at age X projects to a value based only on a point estimate without considering risk strikes me as bad economics.

        1. I don't know if we even know enough about aging that including the variance would help. If anything, it seems like it might imply we do know enough that standard deviations of his future performance are accurate.

          1. My point is that just providing a point estimate of future value, based on some model driven by a player's history and comps, without explicitly acknowledging risk, is weird.

            Economists typically assume that individuals' utility functions reflect risk aversion. Hence, employees prefer more money up front to less when comparing two packages with identical expected values. Employers' offers should likewise recognize performance risk, often by shifting away from guarantees in future years to optional years and performance-based pay.

            1. I'd bet that free agents tend to have pretty similar risk--you have to play a pretty long time to be a free agent, so all free agents are "proven veterans" and while age matters to risk, age is also factored into the point estimates already, at least if you are doing age comps and not just overall comps. That is, older players being grouped with older players should bring down the point estimate, which makes the point estimate (anti-)correlated with the risk.

              So I think there's a fair amount of entanglement between the point estimate and the risk, and I don't know that we can really say well that certain players are more risky than other players, at least to the extent that it's not already reflected in the comparables. Basically how it's difficult to find clutch because if you're a good hitter, you're probably a good clutch hitter, too, with the correlation making it more difficult to detect any underlying signal.

              As a GM considering a 10-year deal, I'd be more wary about Winner's Curse than trying to calculate a really precise variance of a player's projection. I feel like you can generally get a feeling for players that are more or less risky (pitchers and catchers being more on the risk side and other position players tending to be more on the safe side) and adjust a bit up or down from the point estimate as necessary.

              1. I may not have been clear. It's not about precisely estimating variance. It's about recognizing that the value projection itself is "plus or minus". All the stories projecting a player's cumulative value over a span of years should be phrased as a range, not a point.

    2. I think the $/WAR figure for 2016 is too low. FanGraphs has been using $8 million per win for 2016 albeit with a lower inflation number of 5%. Using $8 million and 5% inflation gives $12.4 million per win in 2025.

    1. I would like to know if Jim Pete has any interest in coaching an NBA team. The Wolves should want to find out.

      1. He's an assistant coach with the Lynx. He's talked a lot about he's learned a ton from the Lynx head coach, which is interesting. I don't know if he wants to coach, but he's a real joy to listen on the broadcast.

        1. He applied/interviewed for a job with a different WNBA team. I selfishly hope he doesn't get it so he stays with the Wolves.

          Cheryl Reeves is in my top 3 choices for head coach of the Wolves. She might be number one.

            1. Interesting to almost no one, but I remember Jim Pete from a hoops tournament I played in as an eighth grader. He was a ninth grader. And not the best player on his StL Park team. (IIRC, we won our division in the tournament, they did not).

    1. So long as they don't use the addition to jettison any of the corner options (Mauer, Sano, Byung-ho, Plouffe, Arcia, Vargas...) without actually knowing what they've got, I don't really care where they line 'em up.
      That being said, moving Miguel to the outfield makes sense to get his bat in the lineup, but I sure hope they don't expect much more than _elm_n level _efense outta him.

      1. It's also possible Ryan would still entertain a good offer for Plouffe but isn't going to devalue him by mouth in the market.

        ...because the Twins never do that.

      2. It's amazing how much more willing to tolerate _elm_on level defense I would be so long as it comes with SanO level offense.

        1. I'm gonna go do a google image search to check if there are any of him in an affliction shirt.

      4. If you slot Sano in RF with Buxton in CF, that minimizes the ground he has to cover, and he has a fair cannon for an arm. I can see the reasoning, but agree about defensive expectations.

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