Trading Soriano

[Little Slide Rooter]

Whether we like it or not, most of us have come to terms with the fact virtually every move that Theo and Co. make will be with 2015 and beyond n mind. Like Jack in the final season of Lost, Kyle seems to be the last to accept this fate.

 

This being said, moves such as trading a productive big league player for a prospect with a rapidly fading star with minimal, if any salary relief, which once would have made no sense will likely be the norm over the next few years. Soriano for someone like Dom Brown would be one of those moves. Is Brown likely to match Soriano's 2012, or even 2010 or 2011 production? No. Does he have a chance to come close, or at least give us some type of useful production?Yes. The difference being that whatever he does manage to do, he's more likely to continue to do so for the next 5-8 or even 10 years. And yes, the same can be said about Ian Stewart vs. any other realistic 3B options.

 

Best case scenerio, Dom Brown is a major piece of the Cubs future. Worst case scenerio: Soriano gives the Phillies a year or two of solid production, Brown ends up in Japan. While Soriano's value in July may not drop from whatever it is today, I really can't imagine it going up. There's also the NTC, so even if we do get an equal or better offer next summer, there's no guarantee that he'll accept it. If we have a fish on the line, we need to reel it in.

[Hairyducked Idiot]

So we're considering the possibility that his bad performance that came immediately during and after his injuries might be related to said injuries. Might?

 

I'm not sure it's intellectually honest to count those as two separate strikes against him. If you still don't want to take a shot with Brown, whatever. But let's not pretend that there was some chance he would have his best performance while injured so the fact that he didn't is some negative data point.

 

I think everyone acknowledges that they might be related. I think many times, people want to overlook the possibility that they aren't. It's Ian Stewart all over again: He comes into 2011 swearing he's healthy, hits brutally, then says that in late July he felt something in his wrist during batting practice. Why are we so sure that the cliff-dive in his ability to hit came because of the injury?

 

Sometimes, guys who were hitting AA at 22 stop hitting in AAA and the majors at 23 and 24. The fact that he was injured doesn't mean we can just assume the train would have kept rolling along for those seasons.

 

With Brown, besides that, there's the even larger possibility that the injuries have permanently effected his athletic ability. When you start talking about wrist, knee and hamstring issues for a guy whose calling card is his athleticism and potential power, then you have to wonder what the long-term effects are going to be.

 

 

So in summary, you have a 25-year-old who was on a good path at 22, we have no idea what his 23 and 24 would have been like, and he has health question marks for 25. Why am I supposed to want to give a guy like that a big-league opportunity, let alone give up a tradeable asset to do it?

[abuck1220]

do your arms ever get tired from all this typing

[Hairyducked Idiot]

do your arms ever get tired from all this typing

 

No.

[CubInOK]

do your arms ever get tired from all this typing

I'm not sure which of the two posters before this post this is meant for.

[KingCubsFan]

So we're considering the possibility that his bad performance that came immediately during and after his injuries might be related to said injuries. Might?

 

I'm not sure it's intellectually honest to count those as two separate strikes against him. If you still don't want to take a shot with Brown, whatever. But let's not pretend that there was some chance he would have his best performance while injured so the fact that he didn't is some negative data point.

 

I think everyone acknowledges that they might be related. I think many times, people want to overlook the possibility that they aren't. It's Ian Stewart all over again: He comes into 2011 swearing he's healthy, hits brutally, then says that in late July he felt something in his wrist during batting practice. Why are we so sure that the cliff-dive in his ability to hit came because of the injury?

 

Sometimes, guys who were hitting AA at 22 stop hitting in AAA and the majors at 23 and 24. The fact that he was injured doesn't mean we can just assume the train would have kept rolling along for those seasons.

 

With Brown, besides that, there's the even larger possibility that the injuries have permanently effected his athletic ability. When you start talking about wrist, knee and hamstring issues for a guy whose calling card is his athleticism and potential power, then you have to wonder what the long-term effects are going to be.

 

 

So in summary, you have a 25-year-old who was on a good path at 22, we have no idea what his 23 and 24 would have been like, and he has health question marks for 25. Why am I supposed to want to give a guy like that a big-league opportunity, let alone give up a tradeable asset to do it?

 

He was once a top 5 prospect in baseball. He's the type of high-ceiling guy this organization needs to take a gamble on, and trust that our coaching staff can fix some of the flaws he may have. He's obviously not a sure bet, but waiting on trading Soriano (and whether he's a valuable "tradeable asset" is debateable) so we can get 2 guys with the ceiling of Darwin Barney isn't going to help us much. Neither is signing another veteran stopgap. If the front office doesn't care that much about winning or losing this season, I'd rather take a chance on as many Domonic Browns and Ian Stewarts as possible, with the hope that 1 or 2 will live up to their potential even if the rest flame out. Then you've got some real assets to work with.

[WrigleyField 22]

Kyle, you bring up some decent points (although I'd like to see how your specific age range was settled upon)

 

However, in the instance of Brown, we know the asset we are talking about giving up is a 37 year old LF with leg problems. And a year ago, his value was no where near this. We could also save 10M that could still go elsewhere.

 

Its an interesting proposal at the very least. Not a slam dunk by any means, though at this point it looks like it probably won't go down, so we should move along and hope Jed gives us an actual deal to discuss.

 

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Hairyducked Idiot]

I took the old Bill James "early peak" of 25-29 and pushed it ahead a little bit because we're in an era where defense is becoming highly prized, and defense tends to peak a little earlier than offense.

[treebird]

I took the old Bill James "early peak" of 25-29 and pushed it ahead a little bit because we're in an era where defense is becoming highly prized, and defense tends to peak a little earlier than offense.

 

slow down nate silver, stop backing this up with so much data

[Hairyducked Idiot]

:( If I've lost Treymon, I've lost America.

[abuck1220]

I took the old Bill James "early peak" of 25-29 and pushed it ahead a little bit because we're in an era where defense is becoming highly prized, and defense tends to peak a little earlier than offense.

 

oh did you now

[WrigleyField 22]

Well you've lost me. I'll just go with Bill James number instead.

 

 

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[Hairyducked Idiot]

Well you've lost me. I'll just go with Bill James number instead.

 

That's fine, but the Bill James number was derived in the 1980s. It's hard to get an accurate look at prime right now, because right now is always changing. I happen to believe that there are a couple of factors at work right now (the weeding out of PEDs, the increased emphasis on defense) that are shoving it a little earlier than usual.

 

I mean, the real answer is that a baseball player's value comes from an odd mix of disparate skills that all have different age curves, and every player possesses those in different mixes. And really, none of it matters because as I mentioned earlier, age curves for established MLB players suffer from huge survivor's bias issues and don't necessarily apply to prospects and non-established players. But that's a tangent to a tangent.

[Sammy Sofa]

Bunkum.

[seanimal]

Well you've lost me. I'll just go with Bill James number instead.

 

That's fine, but the Bill James number was derived in the 1980s. It's hard to get an accurate look at prime right now, because right now is always changing. I happen to believe that there are a couple of factors at work right now (the weeding out of PEDs, the increased emphasis on defense) that are shoving it a little earlier than usual.

 

I mean, the real answer is that a baseball player's value comes from an odd mix of disparate skills that all have different age curves, and every player possesses those in different mixes. And really, none of it matters because as I mentioned earlier, age curves for established MLB players suffer from huge survivor's bias issues and don't necessarily apply to prospects and non-established players. But that's a tangent to a tangent.

 

i'm all for challenging the orthodoxy, but if you're going to try to slay the beast, you better bring it. i mean, with something more then a hubristic maelstrom of keystrokes

 

survivor's bias? hilarious. all you're actually doing is polluting the sample population with irrelevancy. the age curve of a [expletive] prospect doesn't matter, it has nothing to do with anything. if i was trying to figure out the ideal age range to be a kickass president of the united states, i wouldn't include secretaries of state in my sample. likewise, if i'm trying to find the average peak performance age range for a major league baseball player, i wouldn't include non-major league baseball players in my sample. the information wouldn't provide me a meaningful answer.

 

furthermore, you're right that your contention that "disparate skills all have different age curves" doesn't matter, but like most other things, you're wrong in your reasoning. it doesn't matter because it's a useless conceptual framework. let's take this multi-faceted thing we call defense. defensive performance is informed by physical ability (speed, strength, agility), learned physical skill (throwing accuracy, ball handling, footwork, etc.) and, for lack of a better term, IQ (situational awareness, mental acuity, adaptable decision-making, essentially a mix of capacity and learned mental abilities). the latter probably has a positive correlation with increasing age, though, it doesn't have to. learned physical skill can withstand immediate declines in physical ability and even conceivably negate the effect of marginal reductions in physicality. physical ability will peak at a certain age and begin to decline at an increasing rate over time. physical ability will vary amongst different individuals because that's life, and thus the age curve will be steeper for some, shallower for others. either way, it's the most impacted by time.

 

so what's my point? other than you're full of [expletive], it's that you're trying to inject this notion of chaos into a relatively knowable and measurable reality. at the end of the day, we can take any variety of performance measures and compare them with age and the end result is our performance age curve. if our sample is meaningful, then our answer is meaningful.

 

lastly, to argue that reduced use of PED's and an emphasis defensive performance (presumably at the expense offensive performance) has shifted the performance peak younger is kylejrm. my apologies to the uninitiated, but "kylejrm" is shorthand for "intellectually dishonest at best". ped's are a technology, and not a monolithic one at that. the reign of designer PED's is now, and they're better than ever. you know what also is a technology? astroturf. there used to be a lot of it around in the 70's and 80's, and it sped physical declines. training regimens are a technology. and they were essentially nonexistent prior to the late 80's/early 90's. now they're regular practice, and assuredly allow players to maximize their physical peak and marginalize declines. technology is constantly improving our ability to push these limits. and regardless of any perceived emphasis on the value of defense and its impact on this discussion, the DH still exists. in fact, we just added another one for this season. so yeah, there's that.

[Hairyducked Idiot]

That is a crazy amount of hostility for the suggestion that peaks might be a year earlier than orthodoxy.

 

And the point that it's irrelevant because he's not an established MLB player is dead on, whether you like it or not.

[Sammy Sofa]

a hubristic maelstrom of keystrokes

 

Outstanding.

 

Can we beam sean's post out to every site Kyle has infected?

[Hairyducked Idiot]

Here's a good set of articles on the subject:

 

http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/how-do-baseball-players-age-part-1/

http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/how-do-baseball-players-age-part-2/

 

 

24-27 is an overreach. I'll settle for 25-29.

[Geech]

I don't think the post was hostile because you tried to make an argument about aging curves, I think there was hostility because you assumed your arguments were true, with basically no evidence, in the service of your larger point about a player's value.

 

If you had started a completely separate topic about player aging curves, and raised questions about them in a matter that was unrelated to the value of Dominic Brown, I think it's fair to say that you would not have provoked such a response.

[davell]

So is Domonic Brown poo or not?

[seanimal]

That is a crazy amount of hostility for the suggestion that peaks might be a year earlier than orthodoxy.

 

they're not, and you have no evidence that they are. it's one thing to argue that peaks may have been inflated in the mid-2000's and have regressed slightly since then. but you're not arguing that. you're arguing that the physical peak window for a major league baseball player has mysteriously shrunk since the 80's, when speed, cocaine, and unprotected sex were the cutting edge of performance enhancement.

 

And the point that it's irrelevant because he's not an established MLB player is dead on, whether you like it or not.

 

no it's not. every established major league player was once an non-established major league player. it's absolutely relevant to consider information regarding performance level by age when considering the viability of a potential major league player

[Hairyducked Idiot]

no it's not. every established major league player was once an non-established major league player. it's absolutely relevant to consider information regarding performance level by age when considering the viability of a potential major league player

 

A lot of players who never became established major league players were also non-established major league players. You can't assume that Brown is in the former group at this point.

[Hairyducked Idiot]

So is Domonic Brown poo or not?

 

 

Marlin says we're not interested in him.

[davell]

So is Domonic Brown poo or not?

 

 

Marlin says we're not interested in him.

Their system is crap, if we can't get Biddle from them(very unlikely) then they've got nothing else I'd be interested in.

[seanimal]

Here's a good set of articles on the subject:

 

http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/how-do-baseball-players-age-part-1/

http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/how-do-baseball-players-age-part-2/

 

 

24-27 is an overreach. I'll settle for 25-29.

 

so, not this:

 

25 is already in the middle of prime

 

and since you're introducing evidence into this discussion, i think it's important to distinguish between "peak" and "prime". the former is a point, the latter is a range.

 

for instance, if we're stating that prime begins at age 24, than it would make the most sense (to me) to say that prime then ends at the age at which performance falls below the level where it began. peaks may be moving older or they may be stagnant, depending on your means of calculation. but primes have clearly been expanding deeper into player's careers than when bill james originally published abstract. so, you know, the exact opposite of what you're arguing