Tuesday, December 07, 2004 |
The Other Side Of The House
While many blogs tend to use sabermetric tools in analysis and commentary - and often make compelling points in doing so - the best bloggers understand that decisions are not made in a statistical vacuum. After the Dodgers-Marlins trade July 30, I read blogs in which DePodesta was crowned as the winner of the trade on the basis of VORP alone. But there are many other factors that even DePodesta would tell you he would consider - salaries in current and future seasons, eligibility for salary arbitration, minor league depth at various positions, the upcoming class of free agents, etc. that statistics alone do not tell the story.This amounts to a fair heaping of heresy among Angels bloggers. Certainly, the sabermetric point of view is that you don't offer $8M/year to a guy who's only had a single good season in his career (see also, Adrian Beltre); it's one I've made before. I take Shaikin's point as salt to that mix, because the great unknown was, who would have been available prior to the offseason?Another example: When the Angels signed Darin Erstad to a four-year, $32-million contract extension in 2002 (in annual salary, a slight raise), several bloggers ripped the deal on the basis that Erstad’s offensive statistics did not warrant the contract. True then, true now. But there was little to no analysis of other factors -- and not just defense and intangibles, which are notoriously difficult to quantify. Those factors included the lack of minor league outfielders the Angels had to replace him, the interest of other teams in bidding for him as a free agent and the likelihood that he would reject a severe pay cut. At the time the deal was signed - in August 2002 - the Angels had no idea they would win the World Series, no idea Disney would grant a huge payroll increase for 2003 and no idea who could replace Erstad if he left. It was too simplistic to conclude the Angels should have either (A) offered him $3 million per year or (B) sign a replacement-level center fielder, when the Angels had determined they needed to retain him and toward that end the more than 50 percent pay cut in (A) was not a feasible option.
Just ask the Mariners.
I know that sabremetrics doesn't allow for "clutch", but it's no accident that Erstad has been in the middle of everything good that has recently happened to this franchise.
: 12/08/2004 07:06:00 AMNewer› ‹Older
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