Building a team the Astros way, and building a team the smart way
by Evan Hochschild on Aug 29, 2009 6:00 AM CDT
in Stat Geeky
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PrintThe Astros are going to have to indulge in the free agent market of 2010 in order to field a competitive team next season. I don't think that anyone here would try to argue that point. How and who are the two questions that go along with free agent signings, as in how much to spend, and who to sign?
Well, it's still too early to really get down to the nitty gritty of things, but what we can do is look back and identify bargains and trends in the marketplace. Sky Andrecheck of Baseball Analysts did just that in a recent post which looked at the free agent class of 2009 and built a team from those players. He describes his experiment much better than I ever could, but suffice it to say, bargains do exist.
Who did he select to be a part of the club?
Catchers: Gregg Zaun, David Ross
Infielders: Wes Helms, Felipe Lopez, Casey Blake, Juan Uribe Craig Counsell
Total $ spent: $15.3 million, Total WAR: 13.1
Outfielders/DH: Bobby Abreu, Juan Rivera, Scott Podsednik, Raul Ibanez
Total $ spent: $35 million, Total WAR: 23.6
Starting Pitchers: Mike Hampton, Brad Penny, Carl Pavano, Randy Wolf, CC Sabathia
Total $ spent: $78.8 million, Total WAR: 35.3
That club is good for a 71-49 record through 120 games, solid enough for a playoff spot. Bargains are easier to find offensively than in pitching, so the Sabathia signing was by leaps and bounds the most outlandish contract he chose to take on.
Painfully, let's determine the Astros' team WAR, or at least a rough approximation of it.
Offensively: The entire Astros' offense (not counting the negative values that most of our pitchers/bench has contributed) is good for a WAR of 15.1. Unlike the all free agent team, the Astros offense has gotten 43% of its output from two players: Lance Berkman and Michael Bourn.
Sort of a "fun" sidenote: Pudge's WAR in total is .8, while his Astro-WAR is .6. He's added .2 WAR since joining the Rangers....less than 2 weeks ago.
Pitching: Just counting our starting pitchers' contributions, including the negative WARs for Brandon Backe and Felipe Paulino, the staff WAR is 7.5. Add it all up, and the Astros have a 22.6 team WAR, 12.7 wins less than Andrecheck's fictitious club. Drayton McLane has also spent roughly $20 million more on the players who I used in this article, not counting fairly large contracts for relievers like LaTroy Hawkins, Doug Brocail and Tim Byrdak, and bench players like Jason Michaels and Darin Erstad.
I come to the same conclusion as Andrecheck does: it's possible to build a playoff contender just in free agency, but it's too difficult without being able to look back on things. There are plenty of ways to be successful in MLB, but it's becoming obvious that the Astros aren't doing any of them.
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If you believe this guy’s “smart team,” the Astros made one smart signing with Mike Hampton, who appears on the smart team. I think a lot of Astros’ fans would get upset with that contention. I see a lot of anger aimed at Hampton on other Astros’ boards. I don’t think the Hampton signing was all that bad, though; but the mistake was believing that he could be a No. 2 or 3 starting pitcher.
Also, what happened to the bullpen? Does the smart team have one?
right
and i think he mentions that he would have to go with replacement level players in the bullpen and on the bench..generally speaking though, his point still holds that there are ways for a spendthrift team to succeed. its difficult to do it this way, but its possible.
by Evan Hochschild on Aug 29, 2009 9:32 AM CDT up reply actions
the smart team has no bullpen...
after writing the post above, I checked the baseballanalysts article to answer my question.
The $77 million salary total isn’t as impressive if it only covers 16 players. If you add in a bullpen, you would have to decide how much to pay a closer, for example. If the bullpen costs $10 million, for example, the payroll is no longer super-cheap.
By the way, I think if you followed the smart team principles in building a bullpen, the Astros’ Letroy Hawkins probably makes the list. In fact, he might be the choice for closer.
The other problem is that no team gets through a season with just 5 starting pitchers. Most can’t do it with fewer than 8 pitchers and the Astros have usually been closer to 10. Sure, most of those pitchers are only paid league minimum, but at nearly half a million dollars per callup, it adds up quickly.
I’d also like to see a list of all free agents from 2008-2009 offseason and their 2009 WAR. My guess is that picking out the positive WAR from all of those names is going to be quite difficult without either hindsight or large amounts of spending.
In fairness to the baseballanalyst author, he summarized by pointing out that he used 20-20 hindsight. His point, apparently, is that even with that advantage, the team would only have been the 4th best in baseball.
Going back to the bullpen example, putting together low cost free agent relievers is particularly difficult. One reason is that mediocre relievers tend to be unpredictable: they are up and down from year to year. This could be a combination of factors, such as fatigue, sample size, and marginal talent. A guy who looks to be replacement level in advance, may turn out to have negative value after the fact. That is why teams pay more dollars in order to get relievers with track records for successfully playing particular roles as relievers.
As I look over the smart team list, some of the players’ performance seemed predictable, and for others it wasn’t. I voted for David Ross as an Astros’ signee back in an early off-season TCB poll. (The Astros offered him a contract, supposedly, too.) I suggested Craig Counsell as a signee for 3d base early the off-season. However, I would never have predicted that Scott Posednik and Carl Pavano would have the success they had this year. Posednik in particular probably just had a lucky season.
picking relief pitching
is a gamble, one that the astros put themselves in the position to have to bet on to be successful this season. like you say sample size and lack of talent make it difficult to project relievers beyond the current season, or even beyond the next month in some cases…
by Evan Hochschild on Aug 29, 2009 2:38 PM CDT up reply actions
right right
I wasn’t criticizing the use of hindsight…I think it actually gives some interesting results…I was just curious as to the difficulty of finding the gems in the rough
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