Jim Bowden Is Every General Manager

Obligatory Bowden-on-a-Nats-Segway photo!
AP Photos / The Washington Times, Peter Lockley

By Bill

I've done my fair share of ripping GM-turned-internet-and-radio-baseball-expert Jim Bowden, particularly on Twitter. More in the last few weeks than previously, I'd say, but I did quite a bit of it before that, too. He makes it pretty easy.

Near the beginning of the offseason, Bowden wrote a piece that seemed like one of the most ridiculous things he'd ever come up with, called "Pricing the free agents" (Insider only). In it, Bowden listed what he saw as the top 50 free agents, and attempted to predict the contract they would receive, or, in his words, an "estimate of what I would pay the top 50 free agents if I were a GM of a club that had the budget and need for that kind of player."

Very nearly every prediction seemed absurdly high to me, and to many others. I admit, I mocked it quite a bit (I can't take the time to scroll back and find examples because it was too long ago, but they're there if you want to look). Four years for Madson? $30 million for Cuddyer? Please.

But as the chips started to fall and players signed, it became clear that he was probably not as far off as many of us assumed. As we went further along, it became clear that he wasn't off at all. The bloom might be coming off the rose a bit as some holdovers end up going at bargain prices, but still, almost all of Bowden's picks have been close enough to be considered right on.

Here's a chart of the top 25 players on Bowden's list who have signed big-league free agent contracts (some have accepted arbitration, like David Ortiz, and a couple haven't signed yet, like Roy Oswalt). The first two columns are Bowden's predictions for contract length and average annual value (AAV), the next two are the actual length and AAV at which the player signed, and the final two are the amount by which Bowden missed (in either direction) on those two numbers:

To Brad Radke! - A 2012 Minnesota Twins Commercial

By The Common Man

The Common Man is very much in a Twinkies kind of mood at the moment, with TwinsFest happening this weekend, and Spring Training getting ever closer.  Plus, Brad Radke promises to be at TwinsFest for the first time (we think) since he retired. 

Radke's career grows to mythic proportions when TCM and Bill discuss it.  He was a good pitcher for a very long time that suffered through a lot of bad teams to ultimately emerge as the stallwart member of the first competitive Minnesota clubs in the 21st Century.  He took the ball almost every turn, and was the pitching version of running back LeRoy Hoard.  If you needed your starter to go 7 innings and give up 3 runs, to win, Brad Radke would go 7 innings and give up three runs.  If you needed your starter to go 7 innings and give up 1 run to win, Brad Radke would go 7 innings and give up 3 runs.  He became the archetype to which every single Twins pitcher since has been compared and evaluated.  And by the time his career ended in 2006, his shoulder was completely shredded (he had pitched 21 starts through immense pain) and he couldn't brush his hair anymore without help.

So it's only fair we commemorate him with his own commercial to celebrate his TwinsFest return, and to celebrate the fact that he could still probably outpitch 3/5 of the Twins rotation.  Here's The Common Man's suggestion:

Question about Win Curves and Value

Watching Miguel Cabrera and Prince Fielder hit back-to-back for the next few years is going to be awesome. Despite the fact that it may not look so good 6 or so years from now, it will be awesome for a little while. That money, though, gives many pause as they begin to look at his contract, but as Mike Rogers pointed out, the value of adding wins isn’t constant. All of the research points to a win being worth around $4.5-5 million, but that isn’t true for each team. For teams in the 70-73 win range, it doesn’t make much sense to pay that much for a win when it won’t help. For teams in the 87-89 win range, the value of additional wins goes up because adding a win or two might be the difference between making the playoffs (thus having the opportunity to win the World Series and make tons of extra money) and not. The Tigers are that type of team, so paying a little extra for him makes sense. The question, however, becomes how much. Mike and I started talking on Twitter, and we discussed who exactly gets credit for those “additional wins”.

When I’ve seen some things on Jonathan Papelbon or Fielder’s contracts, people point out their respective team’s place on the win curve. As I’ve already said, teams in the 90-win range can justify spending a little extra for wins, but when it comes up, it almost seems as though those players are given all the credit for those additional wins. For instance, the Tigers are a (spitballing) 87-win team for 2012, but by adding Fielder, they are now a 91-92 win team. Thus, the Tigers should be okay spending a little extra for each win because Fielder is responsible for upping the win total. The thing is that I’m not sure that makes sense.

The team was constructed as an 87-win team before Fielder signed, so it seems like he is responsible for wins 88-92. But is that true? It’s not as if Fielder sits the bench until those wins are needed and then comes on to single-handedly win those four games. His value is spread throughout the season just like everyone else’s. Can you really give him credit for those wins?

And how would you react if you make multiple signings? What if you’re an 82-win team that adds two four-win players? Does the first player signed not get the added bonus because he was first? Does the second player get all of it because he was the last to sign? It doesn’t make sense to give both of them the bonus. The first one only put you into the mid-80s and shouldn’t get the bonus if you use the above line of reasoning. If you planned to sign both of the players but not necessarily the order, do you spread it evenly?

And how many years of the contract do you give him a bonus? If you think your window is 2 years but the contract is for 5, do you give him the bonus for all five years, knowing that he might not sign now if you don’t?

And say you sign a guy the year before to put you into the 90-win range, and you give him that bonus for the however many years of his contract. This off-season, you lost a four-win player, and you’re now going to sign another one (or the same one to a new contract). The player you must sign this off-season will technically now put you in the 90-win range. Does he get the bonus, too, even though you’ve already paid for those wins? And if he does and you did this again, just how many wins are you paying for, especially when you have that other guy who will be a free-agent next year?

Now let’s say you don’t pay for full wins. Instead, you pay by a ratio of wins added. Let’s say you predict (which is all you can do when you make the deal) to win 90 games and the player should add 4. That’s 4/(90-48=52) to get 7.6 or 8% of the possible bonus. You pay a little extra, but you won’t use it all. You can’t really split it evenly because you’ll still end up in a situation where you’re paying too much for wins as the contracts pile up (split it 2 ways this year but that won’t work next season).

I suppose this really just a on-the-fringes question, but it does puzzle me a bit. I understand the logic behind paying more for certain wins, but I’m not sure how much sense it really makes as you look at it further. You could argue that you just live with it because you’re just continually in that spot and that it only matters for free-agents, but you’ve decided on a number for those wins and continue to pay it to multiple people, though you only meant it for one. I’m entirely sure how to rectify it other than to say that this is the difference between theory and reality. In a one-year perspective, it makes sense, or at least more, but as you continue further out, it makes less and less sense as you move out further and further. Teams are responding to their situation, economic forces, market pressures, their placement on the win curve, and the need to win now and damn the future. It’s just a question. I have no official conclusion. It’s just something that’s been on my mind.

12 Simple Rules for Surviving TwinsFest 2012

By The Common Man

This weekend, as you might already know, is TwinsFest, the annual autograph party/baseball card show/memorabilia auction/other stuff put on by the local Minnesota nine. Last year, due to the actual collapse of the Metrodome, the Twins were forced to relocate their celebration to a venue that was excessively crowded, confusing, and generally unpleasant for everyone involved. This year, though, with the Teflon baggie back up, the Twins and their fans are for once glad to be headed back to the team’s former home.

The Common Man and Bill will be there on both Saturday and Sunday, with special guest and fan of experiences Carson Cistulli, of FanGraphs and NotGraphs fame. He is pictured, sans his new, unwieldy mustache, to your right. If you see a really tall guy walking around with a really short guy, that’s probably Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito reliving their glory days in Twins. But if you see a marginally tall guy with a marginally short guy arguing about something or cracking themselves up, while the skinny guy pictured to the right looks on bewildered, that’s us. Say hi. (Or conversely, shoot us an email or a message over Twitter, and we’d love to meet you.)

Anyway, a couple years back, The Common Man wrote up his TwinsFest experience, and included a list of rules to help the uninitiated get the most out of their TwinsFest experience. As a public service, TCM thought it was time to update the list to reflect some changes in the rules for the event, and to account for the fact that TCM is a much better writer now. Anyway, here are a dozen simple rules for having a blast at TwinsFest:

And Now, a Great Story About Orlando Cepeda, Which TCM Will Proceed to Ruin

The lecture The Common Man recounted yesterday was followed by a brief question and answer session, where Dr. Samuel Regalado, of the California State University, Stanislaus, told a story to illustrate how issues language and competitiveness became entwined in both the Latino and Asian-American games.

According to Regaldo, the Giants and the Reds were playing, with Orlando Cepeda on second base, Matty Alou hitting, and Joey Jay on the mound for the Reds. As Alou came up to bat, and in between pitches, Cepeda starts yelling advice at Alou in Spanish. Jay turned and yelled “Hey, don’t you speak any English?” At which point, Cepeda yelled back, “Sure! I think you’re a cocksucker! How’s that?”

That is a great story. Unfortunately, it’s not true. Or at least not as Dr. Regalado told it last night. Because in all the games that Joey Jay pitched for the Reds against the Giants between 1961 (Jay’s first year in Cincinnati) and 1965 (Alou’s last year in San Francisco), there was never a game where Cepeda was standing on second base and Matty Alou was hitting. That doesn’t mean it’s a total bust, however. There are a lot of ways the story could still have elements of truth in it, especially when we’re looking back through 50 years of fuzzy memories.

JoeD and Teddy Ballgame: Appropriately Rated.

By Bill


So I hope you're aware by now of the High Heat Stats blog, which is basically what the Baseball Reference blog used to be, but is no longer hosted at BB-Ref.

They've done a fun couple posts lately, attempting to list the 50 most overrated and then most underrated hitters in baseball history (today, they're starting on the pitchers). Being specifically a stats blog, of course, they were pretty limited in the ways they could come up with to arrive at lists like that. I think the one they devised (with the help of the excellent Sky Kalkman) was pretty brilliant.

Basically: use the player's career rWAR as a proxy for his true worth/value/talent/etc. Then take BB-Ref's EloRater -- a system which gauges where the thousands of BB-Ref users rate each player -- as a measure of how the fans view the player. Then, figure out an expected WAR (eWAR), representing the career rWAR we'd assume a player would have if his production merited the rating he gets on the EloRater, based on the players surrounding him in the EloRater rankings. So, the players with the highest eWAR-rWAR are your most overrated players, and the ones with the highest rWAR-eWAR are your underrateds.

Ingenious...but not necessarily perfectly attuned to tell you what the headlines promise (which they happily recognize, and I'm not sure any stat or collection of stats could do that). Some of the guys who show up on the "overrated" list spent time in the Negro Leagues, or were otherwise prevented from putting up a career rWAR that accurately reflects their worth; most of the underrated list ends up being nineteenth-century guys, whose "replacement level" was likely much, much lower than the current ones. They're interesting lists, but they don't necessarily reflect the most under- and overrated players in baseball history.

I want to focus on two names in particular, though, from the overrated list: Ted Williams and Joe DiMaggio.

The Prince Fielder Logjam

by Jason Wojciechowski

More badonk!
Photo by Steve Paluch

Prince Fielder came out of more or less nowhere, to the extent that any man his size can ever come out of nowhere, to sign a nine-year, $214 million deal with the Tigers. I haven't seen yet how the dollars break down year-by-year, and the Jose Reyes and Albert Pujols deals have proved that we can't assume the classic slight rise through the course of the contract these days. Teams and players appear willing to be creative in structuring their deals.

What this means as an initial matter is that if you're a fan of looking at total deal value in present day dollars, examining team payroll situations, adding up the WARs, or other analysis of that type, you're S.O.L. at the moment and you should probably hold your horses on deciding just how good or bad the deal is.
This doesn't mean there aren't interesting questions to examine, though. Like, for instance, what this means for Miguel Cabrera. Sadly for the speculatarati, that's been decided: Cabrera is moving to third base. (Hilariously, he calls that his "natural position." FRAA, which has, over the past four years, rated him as something like a -5 to -10 run defender at first base, might disagree, but hey, we all have our blind spots.)