Aggregate 2: The Attack of the Clones

For those of you who haven’t read Moneyball, an extremely entertaining book about exploiting market inefficiencies (who knew economics could be fun?), there is a moment where William Beane talks about replacing players. Now baseball traditionalism, an autonomous collective governed by an anonymous panel of insiders, much like that movie Skulls or the American government (was that too scathing for a sports blog?), suggests that when you trade a player, who does perchance exceed your payroll expectations, said player should parlay into a player of equal or better value in return (run-on sentence?). In other words/lay man’s terms, if you trade some dude, the (main) dude you get back, should be, like, good and stuff. William says this is not the case. Rather, the aggregate should replace the traded player.

To use the Star Trek model, we’ll take an example then an analogy… The Cleveland Native Americans trade Carsten Charles Sabathia. Trading a very good pitcher, whose value was boosted by a bullshit award based on wins, should net you something valuable in return, no? Enter his almighty Matt Laporta. The guy can frickin’ hit (career .285/.382./577 in the minors), but how can his mere 210 lbs. replace Sabathia’s 670 lbs. of Cy Young-winning fastball? Well…there were some other people involved—namely Zach Jackson (a #5 starter or a long reliever), Rob Bryson (reliever with 11.45 K/9 in the minors, who could become the overvalued “closer”), and a player to be named later. Of the rumored four PTBNLs, two have been made public—Michael Brantley (CF with a .399 career OBP in the minors) and Taylor Green (a slugging 3^rd basemen, who would become a Jeff Kent type 2^nd basemen). When you put Laporta, Jackson, Bryson and Brantley or Green together, does not the total, the aggregate, replace monsieur Carsten Sabathia? 4 average-to-decent players for one very good player. For Star Trek fans, it’s like a math problem. You’ve got 10 and you trade 10 for 5+3+3+4. 5 isn’t better than 10, but 5+3+3+4=15. 15>10. I took collegiate mathematics. The aggregate of 15 is more valuable than the singularity of 10.

Now, after that painstaking, protracted preface, we come to my true subject—Matt Holliday. The guy probably won’t take the hometown discount; he’s probably looking for a huge contract—and for good reason. The most valuable left fielder in baseball should be paid a lot of money. His 5+ years/$100 mil+, however, is out of the Rockies price range. Hence, that contract, which expires at the end of 2009, will only help the Rockies, in their business endeavors, for so long. In our milieu, sport is a business and wins are its currency.

How many wins can we extract from Holliday? Well, I, the preeminent authority on all of existence, am here to tell you. Just joking—my theory is that Holliday will win us more games if he is not a Rockie. Confusing? Heck, frickin’ yes.

Back to the aggregate, which was my subject about 80 paragraphs ago—Holliday will leave the Rockies. It's inevitable. It’s about time we got something good for him instead of watching him walk away—just walk away with your lives.

Adam Dunn is but 28-years of oldness. He is approximately 2 months older than Holliday. He is approximately .004 worse than Holliday in terms of career EqA. Ergo, he is approximately not much worse than Holliday at hitting. But he approximately seems much worse because of Holliday’s batting average. Dunn also will, in free agency, be valued approximately as much as Holliday is in his current contract ($9.5 mil/yr). So… if you trade Holliday, and sign Dunn for about 4 years (up to his dropoff in production years—32+), you get good prospects for Holliday and you pay about the same price for his replacement. Yes, Dunn is a lesser fielder. And, yes, Dunn is a slightly lesser hitter. But does not the aggregate replace Holliday? For Holliday you could get ace starting pitchers, great hitters, lockdown relievers, whatever. And, on top of that, you still have Dunn getting on base at a .380 clip, hitting 40 homers, and, for you situational hitting enthusiasts, posting 100 RsBI. None of the replacement Keanu Reeves (players) is as good as Holliday, but with all of them combined (Dunn + whatever good prospects you’d get for 6 years at a discount price), you have something more valuable than but one Big Daddy. You've got future talent and a Big Donkey.

Moneyball, My Ass!

I think Friedrich Nietzsche could say it better than I possibly could—“The poison from which the weaker nature perishes strengthens the strong man—and he does not call it poison” (Thank you, college). That quote is overwhelmingly astute in reference to the sport of baseball. The poison of which I vicariously speak through Nietzsche—Moneyball.

Moneyball, the word that scares Joe Morgan worse than people realizing that he has no idea what he is talking about and never does any research. Moneyball, the word that single-handedly destroyed baseball. Moneyball, the book that detractors don’t even know the subject of. Moneyball, the book that has epitomized any new-fangled, crazy, baseball-hating, on-base percentage enthusiasts, despite the fact that so-called sabermetricians have been influencing baseball since 1977, 26 years before Moneyball was published. You can see it everywhere in baseball now—this battle between the baseball traditionalists and the people who try to objectively evaluate players.

Just the other day, in a nationally televised game, Steve Phillips, Orel Hershiser and that deep-voiced bald guy tried to ruse Mark Shapiro into their trap. Shapiro talked about minor league boxscores and stats. They asked him about what scouts said. He avoided the trap by saying he liked to incorporate every kind of evaluation. I prayed for Steve Phillips (possibly the greatest general manager in the history of history, as well as the most intelligent baseball expert ever, ever) to ask Shapiro why he hired that crazy weirdo who invented VORP into his front office. But, alas, my prayers went unanswered.

…And the battle rages on. I shall make my offensive, probably to no avail…

Let’s start with the simplest—on-base percentage. It measures how often a player gets on base, or, more accurately, it measures how often a player avoids making outs. Last time I checked, baseball is chronologized by outs; so, someone who is good at avoiding outs, is good at baseball, yeah? No, the prophet Joe Morgan says on-base percentage is only good for lead-off hitters. The prophet 2.0 Dusty Baker says nasty OBP-ers like Frank Thomas and David Ortiz “clog up the bases” with their speedlessness (I patent that word).

Then there is that crazy-ass VORP shit. I’m pretty sure VORP was invented by some jerk to try and make Adam Dunn look like a good hitter. VORP, to review, stands for Value Over Replacement Player. It measures how many runs (not runs-runs, but runs created) a player adds to a line-up over the average AAA replacement player. Screw that crap, give me a .350 hitting first basemen who hits only singles and never walks, that’s what I call a baseball player; a baseball player who is extremely average and doesn’t really help a team much at all. VORP not only includes how many times a player hits per at-bat (even if they’re all singles), it even adjusts for a player’s position. Bullcrap, who cares about position? Shortstops, catchers and centerfielders hit just as well as first basemen.

Obviously, I am being facetious, because advanced statistics, in the most statistic-driven sport, might, perchance, be useful (that was six commas in one sentence!). Take all six of the main baseball statistics par example:

Batting Average: Like I said before, .350 hitter + all singles + no walks = crap.

Home Runs: The best a hitter can do, but only one of many possibly beneficial outcomes for a plate appearance.

RBI: A situational stat. Let me reiterate, a SITUATIONAL statistic. Justin Morneau can’t get 130 RBI in ‘06 without people on-base in front of him. Let’s take this a step further… Pretend there is a team with 8 me’s and Alex Rodriguez. I can’t avoid outs at all and A-Rod is all alone in his douche-ity. A-Rod’s OPS+ is 147 (according to his career average). A-Rod hits, say, 40 homers. With my major league talent, he has 5 runs to drive in (and that’s generous). That means he gets about 45 RBI. Seems like a pretty limited way to evaluate a hitter, no?

Wins: The most limited, stupidest statistic in the history of statistics. We can take another extreme example: Jake Peavy pitches 240 innings, striking out 300, walking none and “gives-up” 20 runs. His offense, meanwhile, never scores one run for him all year (not that much of a stretch when you think about it). Peavy goes 0-20. He, therefore, sucks at pitching and isn’t a “gamer.”

ERA: Tolerable, but there is so much that goes into it outside of a pitcher’s control—luck, defense, relievers, park.

Strikeouts: Like home runs, the best a pitcher can do in a plate appearance. There are still a lot of other things a pitcher can do, like walk everyone as Carlos Zambrano does.

Each of those statistics provides you with a tiny, little aspect of a player’s abilities. Don’t get rid of them, just don’t dogmatize them. EqA (equivalent average) or VORP encompass a great deal more than batting average, homers or RBI. They are statistics, as in facts. They aren’t something that some nerd pulled out of his ass. They are carefully calculated scientific fact.

The whole thing reminds me of Christianity vs. evolution. Evolution is basically proven, yet Christians are skeptical. George W. Bush is “undecided.” People come up with these scientific facts, but the baseball traditionalists don’t believe it because Adam and Eve boned and created everyone, forget all the incest. These stats are new, evil and Nietzsche’s poison. I mean, look at the front offices that are openly down with sabermetrics: Oakland (obviously), Boston, Cleveland, San Diego and Toronto (though I’m skeptical, since they signed Eckstein). All of those teams are relatively successful, and some are very successful. Poison? Nay, I say advantage—"and [they do] not call it poison."

Ok, I know this was more analytical than funny and entertaining, but I’ll come out with something funny and entertaining soon (I hope).

“Billy Shakespeare wrote a whole bunch of sonnets” – LFO in the 1999 hit song “Summer Girls”