Community Projection Review: Shortstop
by Charlie Wilmoth on Oct 18, 2009 3:23 PM EDT
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PrintNext up in the list of community projections is Jack Wilson.
Community: .271/.313/.360
ZiPS: .267/.317/.358
Actual: .255/.292/.362 (includes 31 games with the Mariners)
Bonus: We predicted Wilson's last game with the Pirates would be August 13; actually his last game was July 27.
The closest guesser was Bolton, who had Wilson at .249/.294/.350.
Wilson actually hit relatively well for him during the portion of the year when he was a Pirate--his .691 OPS with the Bucs was a bit above his career average. After being dealt to Seattle with Ian Snell for Ronny Cedeno, Jeff Clement and minor league pitchers Brett Lorin, Nathan Adcock and Aaron Pribanic, though, Wilson completely fell apart, missing time with a hamstring injury, the flu, and then a heel bruise that shut him down for good in mid-September. He also failed to hit when he did play.
The Mariners have an $8.4 million option on Wilson for 2010, with a $600,000 buyout. Back when the Pirates had Wilson, that option looked somewhat reasonable, especially in light of the mediocre shortstop free agent class and the Pirates' absence of credible shortstop options in the minors. Given the way Wilson finished the season, $8.4 million (or, subtracting the sunk cost of the buyout, $7.8 million) seems like way too much to pay. The Pirates also dodged a bullet by not signing Wilson to an extension while they still had him.
Given all that, Neal Huntington did very well to buy low on Cedeno, ridding themselves of the problem of what to do with Wilson while acquiring a credible alternative. Cedeno isn't Wilson on defense, but he isn't bad, and offensively he did a good impression of a decent Jack Wilson season, hitting .258/.307/.394 with the Bucs. He's also five years younger than Wilson, so he has at least some chance of improving in the next couple of years. Obviously, he hasn't yet proven himself to be a long-term answer at shortstop, but it's equally unclear that Wilson would have been. It is, of course, possible that Cedeno will fall apart next year, but it's also possible he takes a step forward, and anyway the Pirates really just need someone to get through the next year or two until a real big-league shortstop (possibly Chase D'Arnaud) finally emerges from the minors.
Meanwhile, Snell showed few genuine signs of improvement in Seattle--he somehow posted a 4.20 ERA there, but he walked more batters than he struck out. Clement struggled after a quick start in the Pirates organization, but that may have had something to do with an oblique strain that may have cost him a chance at a September callup. Lorin pitched very well down the stretch at West Virginia, and Adcock and Pribanic still look like at least marginal prospects. (Pribanic had a terrific ERA for West Virginia, but he still isn't striking anyone out.) Unless Snell improves, it may turn out that the Mariners get almost nothing from the Wilson trade. Cedeno alone could make it a good one for the Pirates.
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Totally agree
Although I loved Jack Flash and Ian Snell, they were total dead ends at the end of this season. I forgot we got so much out of their trade with Seattle.
"Baseball is better than football. Think about it, eighty degrees, a cold beer and a short-sleeve shirt is better than 30 degrees, a hip flask and six layers of clothes under a lap blanket. Take your pick: suntan or frostbite. " - Thomas Boswell
Jack
“Obviously, he (Cedeno) hasn’t yet proven himself to be a long-term answer at shortstop, but it’s equally unclear that Wilson would have been.”
It isn’t unclear at all. Wilson is clearly NOT the long-term answer. The guy has a very good glove. But he has played 87 and 106 games the past two seasons and he is entering his age 32 season. $7.8 million (net of the buyout) is a joke. For the 100th time, I’ll be shocked if Jack does better than the reported $8 million/2 year deal the Pirates supposedly offered. He is not longer a good or reliable player any longer. I wish him well but a couple million bucks as a defensive replacement for a few years is where Jack is headed.
1.9 WAR isn't "good"?
Really? Fangraphs puts him at a $8.7M player this year – and that’s with a catastrophic August. If he signs for $8M over 2 years, he will almost certainly be earning below market. Even last year, in just 87 games, he was worth $7.1M. In fact, he’s in a sense a perfect match for a team like the Pirates – we have an SS who’s ok but not great, and would probably benefit from playing fewer than 160 games. I wouldn’t want to rely solely on Jack for a season anymore, but every game he plays, he’s a plus player – best defensive SS in baseball, 16% better than the next-best by RAR. Best part is, if you’ve got another SS, you can rest Jack when he’s slumping.
That said, I don’t want to resign him – not worth the drama. But he’d gain the team a win or two.
WAR
Even the guys who developed WAR are doubtful about how it values replacement and position and even defensive value. That is were Jack gets all his value. The numbers it throws out numerically I think are of very little value, particularly in changing economic times.
I think there are much better ways to evaluate a player. It is incredibly hard for me, with hindsight, to think Jack is worth anything close to $8.7 million this year. Also, defensive stats are still hard to get a handle on so I wouldn’t unilaterally declare Jack the best defensive shortstop in baseball.
by David Todd on Oct 20, 2009 4:04 PM EDT up reply actions 1 recs
When the defensive stats accord with what you see with your own eyes, I’m not sure they should be hard to credit. In general they’re tenuous, no doubt; I brought up the specific numbers just because it’s such a big gap – even with discounting for uncertainty, I don’t see how you can say he was anything other than one of the top defensive SSs in MLB – that’s not nothing.
Where do the dollar values in WAR come from? If it’s from comparisons to current contracts, they have no validity because most veterans’ contracts at this point in time weren’t based on the market conditions that Wilson will face this winter.
Explanation of the dollar figures here. Basically, it is " the mean of the dollars per win handed out to free agents in any given year" but there’s a more detailed explanation at the link.
The fact that it is to free agents is critical. Its hard to balance out other available choices like Cedeno.
You guys understand how markets work, right? The fact that I can grow a tomato for a marginal cost of $0.50 in my home garden doesn’t mean that the tomato isn’t “worth” $2.50 – if I set up a stand outside the local Giant Eagle, which is selling identical tomatoes for $2.50, then I can sell mine for $2.50, and that’s what it’s worth. Furthermore, if I don’t grow my own tomatoes, I have no way of acquiring one for $0.50, even if people in my neighborhood are growing them at that cost.
Actually, that’s not quite right – I could trade them something for their $0.50 tomato – maybe some basil I grew, or some baby clothes I don’t need anymore, or 20 minutes helping them move a piano into their house. Those things have various values, which may or may not be $2.50 or $0.50 – which is why we use the Giant Eagle price to say what that $0.50 tomato is “worth.” You may be able to get it without spending $2.50, but the one way you’re (fairly) certain to be able to get it is to pony up $2.50 at the big bird.
Similarly, if you want a SS as good as 2009 Jack, you could either pay ~$8.7M on the FA market, or have some alternate plan. But that alternate plan is unquantifiable (what’s worth more – 1/3 of XNAdy + DMarte or 1/4 of JBay? Depends on which pieces you look at, doesn’t it?).
As for the argument about shifting values, that’s crap. We know what players have been worth up until now – we know what a “$10M player” looks like and what a “$2M player” looks like. The fact that this offseason may see a (short-term, not to be repeated) downwards shift in those values doesn’t make them suddenly meaningless. Jack won’t get an $8M contract this offseason, but that will be because of forward-looking factors (economic and player-specific), not because the value attached to WAR is meaningless.
There's no good reason...
…why we’d see a significant downward shift in values this year. The sport’s revenues aren’t down, and we already had a drop last offseason.
As for the argument about shifting values, that’s crap. We know what players have been worth up until now – we know what a "$10M player" looks like and what a "$2M player" looks like. The fact that this offseason may see a (short-term, not to be repeated) downwards shift in those values doesn’t make them suddenly meaningless. Jack won’t get an $8M contract this offseason, but that will be because of forward-looking factors (economic and player-specific), not because the value attached to WAR is meaningless.
I can’t say much of this makes any sense. The key to it all seems to be the unsupported assumption that there will be a unique and un-repeated downturn in the market this winter. As Vlad points out, there already was one last winter, although I don’t agree with Vlad’s notion that there won’t be another this winter. For one thing, the owners generally have a lot of investments other than their teams, and many of those investments have taken big hits. In at least some cases, that’ll almost certainly affect MLB team budgets regardless of MLB revenue.
The whole Giant/Eagle example is meaningless because there is no measure for a player’s value like there is for tomato prices. Players are unique items, tomatoes aren’t.
As for player values shifting being crap, try explaining that to Bobby Abreu. He’s five times the player Jack is and he’s playing for $5M now. In fact, your last sentence contradicts the rest of your post. The problem with WAR values, if they’re based on existing salaries (and I don’t know that they are, which is why I originally asked), is that they’re not capable of looking forward toward shifting market conditions.
Did you read Dave Cameron’s explanation of how he comes up with the dollar values? It’s not that complex. There are really 3 steps:
1. Figure out how many major league free agents signed for how much. For example, say 40 guys sign for a total annual value of $400M.
2. Figure out how many wins those players were worth over the past three years, using a weighted average WAR and adjust for aging by multiplying by .95. Say our 40 FAs were worth 100 WAR.
3. Divide figure 1 by figure 2. Wins are nominally worth $4M each in our hypothetical example.
So, what they’re really measuring is how much teams are willing to pay for an expected win in free agency in a given year. We’ll have a new value this spring after the free agents sign.
It is a tool that measures free agent value and only free agent value, so as long you keep that in mind it can be useful.
Then what I’ve said stands: It’s based on past contracts (getting a new value next spring doesn’t help this winter) and is of limited use when the market is being impacted by outside factors. It’s like taking the stats from Jack Wilson’s last four seasons, averaging them out, and saying that’s what he can be expected to hit next year.
Right…the Fangraphs numbers don’t tell you what Team X should offer Jack Wilson this winter. They just wait ’til the feeding frenzy is over and figure out how much teams actually were willing to part with in order to buy a marginal 2010 win.
This is the fundamental problem with statistical projections. Statistics are inherently backward-looking, so when you invent a “statistic” that says what somebody will do next year, or what he’ll be worth next year, you have to recognize the limits of what statistics can do. What Fangraphs is really telling us is what Jack Wilson is worth in 2009, based on the 2009 salary structure. It is not telling us what Jack Wilson should get on the market this winter. They’re not the same thing.
What JRoth seems not to understand, based on his comment below, is that being a seamhead is not just a matter of seeing value in statistics, it’s also seeing the limitations of statistics.
Furthermore
Nyjer Morgan has been paid less than a million dollars in his career so far. Do you really want to claim that this is an accurate reflection of his value? That’s what “WARFA” suggests.
The whole point of the valuation is to set aside the vagaries of the CBA, and to focus on what it would take for a club to assemble a team ex nihilo. If you’re lucky, you can get NyMo’s production for virtually nothing. But if you don’t want to rely on an untested, ex-hockey player, you’d best plan to pay out several million dollars (tens of millions, per the formula).
I probably shouldn’t say this, but I can’t help it: this seems like yet another case in which seamheads love stats until the moment they clash with their preferences – Fangraphs thinks Jack Wilson is a pretty valuable guy? Then it must be crap! Granted that the valuation is a bit of an extrapolation, but I’ve never heard it complained about here before.
If Jack could be signed for $4M/year
I think he would be worth re-signing. Now that we do have a credible replacement in Cedeno, having Jack give you what he can for 2 years would help the team win some games.
Jack’s defense alone makes him a valuable player. If Cedeno plays above replacement level the next 2 years, I’ll be very surprised.
It’s true Jack can’t be counted on to play more than 110 games, but he’ll be a lot better than Cedeno for those 110 games.
I think:
This wouldn’t be a bad situation, then we could get rid of RV.
by BlindSquirrel on Oct 21, 2009 8:40 PM EDT up reply actions
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