davearm2
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Everything posted by davearm2
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I've got Castro and Marshall as solidly above average. Garza and Dempster are above average starters, but Garza is not an above average "ace" nor is Dempster an above average #2. Wells, average at best. So, either 0 or 2 above average starters depending on semantics. Soto has a ton of volatility. Given the terrible seasons he's had I can't go higher than average overall. Barney, average thanks to his defense. Soriano, average. Ramirez and Zambrano I expect to be gone. Marmol is debateable. When he's on, absolutely. Samardzija, meh. If you're hanging your hat on him as a key guy, then my point is proven.
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OK, awful is exaggerating it, but we have substantial money tied up in mediocre to OK players and have a good amount of guys who are overpaid and don't have bright prospects of getting better. The level of denial regarding the Cubs' current major league roster is really quite amazing to me. They are above average at maybe 2 or 3 spots. The mediocrity runs deep. The upside potential is modest, at best. Theo or whomever has his work cut out for him, and those expecting a contender next year are going to be disappointed IMO.
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Actually, they do need to be in the top 10 teams in terms of spending, ideally the top 5. It makes it much, much easier to deal with the mistakes and catastrophes that can and will happen. They don't have the farm system in place that can bolster a sub-$100 million payroll and will not for quite some time. They need to maintain a higher payroll while they work to achieve the latter instead of just wallowing in the doldrums as a team that can maybe compete if the division sucks and they can hover around .500. I think we all realize that the transition we're discussing here is going to be phased in over several years. The payroll is not going below $100M immediately, nor is the farm system going to be fixed overnight. It shouldn't be phased into reality ever. Not for the Cubs. They don't have to go cheap, even relatively speaking. They can have both. I don't think we'll see the Cubs fall out of the top 5 payrolls in the NL, nor am I proposing that they should. And I'm fine with being in that range. Frankly what the Yankees and Red Sox or anyone else in the AL want to spend doesn't concern me.
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But even if this idealized situation where the farm system produces a bunch of important consistently productive players comes to fruition, you'd need to then spend lots of money to keep that team together. Unless you really want to handcuff them into having to produce replacements all the time, too...and not being able to spend around injuries. Spending more helps. A lot. Agreed, and that's a good problem to have. Fortunately the Cubs have a virtually flawless record of retaining their key young players (Sosa, Wood, Ramirez, Lee, etc) when they reach their free agent years. We're surely not at the point right now where the payroll has to be maintained at its current level or else key guys are going to get away, though.
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Actually, they do need to be in the top 10 teams in terms of spending, ideally the top 5. It makes it much, much easier to deal with the mistakes and catastrophes that can and will happen. They don't have the farm system in place that can bolster a sub-$100 million payroll and will not for quite some time. They need to maintain a higher payroll while they work to achieve the latter instead of just wallowing in the doldrums as a team that can maybe compete if the division sucks and they can hover around .500. I think we all realize that the transition we're discussing here is going to be phased in over several years. The payroll is not going below $100M immediately, nor is the farm system going to be fixed overnight.
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I'll give you one guess what the Twins payroll was this season And they missed the postseason. Huh. I guess spending more wasn't the solution. So "Spending is inversely proportionate to winning" was your point then huh? No, my point was spending is not the thing that's proportionate to winning. Being smart and well run and having superior drafting and development is the thing that's proportionate to winning. And this is what Epstein has excelled at. He surely has not excelled at the spending part.
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I'll give you one guess what the Twins payroll was this season And they missed the postseason. Huh. I guess spending more wasn't the solution.
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Yes, I am telling you that one of the main reasons they won was because of the big FA money they spent. Again, it's not an either/or proposition for them nor is it for the Cubs, so stop pretending like it is. I'm not pretending anything of the sort. I'm responding to all the misplaced outrage that seems to believe the Cubs need to spend more than everyone else to be competitive. They don't. I am as excited about Epstein as the next guy, but if we're being totally honest, his track record in free agency is pretty alarming. As you yourself admitted, he doesn't get the credit for guys that really did make a difference (Pedro, Manny, Damon, Schilling, etc). He gets credit for the guys that have bombed.
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The Red Sox got more WAR from farm products than any of the playoff teams, including Tampa Bay. I don't think you can assume any one executive will copy an organizaton's success, but I see no reason not to pursue Epstein for that reason. I just think it's dumb to bring in a guy who owes a large part of his success to being able to spend money and then cut him off well below his typical minimum budget for nearly a decade now (during which he's won 2 WS). The Red Sox haven't had a payroll below $100 million since 2001 and haven't had one below $120 million since 2004. If such stipulations were actually the case I'd actually prefer someone who has more experience with an organization that is constrained by budgets. That said, I agree that this type of speculation is mostly B.S.. The thing is, he doesn't owe a large part of his success to being able to spend money. He owes a large part of his success to drafting and developing better than everyone else. You can't with a straight face sit here and tell me that the main reason the Red Sox have won is because of the huge free agent money they've thrown around. The truth is, the return they've gotten on those players is pathetic, and they've won more despite them, than because of them.
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They're taken from Cots. If they're not spot on, they're as good as any other source's. The point surely doesn't change if you tweak the numbers.
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Then pursue someone other than Epstein. The Red Sox formula for success and creating teams that are continually competitive this past decade was a combination of big spending and smart Moneyball-esque team building and farm development. The Cubs farms system is nowhere near what the Rays' and Twins' are and what the Red Sox' has been (and making it better should obviously be a huge goal, but not at the expense of the Cubs spending like they're a much, much smaller market team than they actual are). The Red Sox' success has been driven almost entirely by their smart Moneyball-esque team building and farm development. More often than not their big spending has been a massive failure -- Lackey, Dice-K, JD Drew, Lugo, etc. It's clear (to me anyway) that Ricketts covets Epstein for the former skill, and not for his history of spending in free agency.
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why post the exceptions and not the rules? thanks, i'd rather compete every year. The rule that seems to matter most is spending wisely yields results. Lots of teams spend a lot but have little to show for it (Cubs Dodgers Mets etc). Your premise that having a huge payroll is a prerequisite to being competitive is fundamentally flawed.
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There's a strong argument that the Yankees would be smarter to spend $3M on a DH and pump an extra $7M into the draft, versus spending $10M on a DH. Same principle here.
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That said, the idea that Ricketts has shared his intentions for the future payroll with any journalist is just laughable.
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The notion that the Cubs can't compete with a $100M payroll is crap. 2008: $118,345,833 2007: $ 99,670,332 2004: $ 90,560,000 2003: $ 79,868,333 Teams like the Rays and Twins prove the point even more dramatically. As Ricketts has emphasized from the get-go, the key is to dominate at the draft and player development phases, and have a GM that is going to convert those major-league payroll dollars into wins most efficiently.
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Yankees traded Soriano for ARod. Phillies traded Cliff Lee for Halladay (essentially). Regardless, your attempt to validate not trading Castro for Votto using salaries and wins was a complete failure. Your figures support the exact opposite conclusion.
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I'm pretty sure folks like Billy Beane and Theo Epstein would rather have 14 wins for $26M than 7 wins for $5M. What with marginal wins valued at ~$5M and all. 14 * $5M/win - $26M = $44M of value 7 * $5M/win - $5M = $30M of value
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Odds of bad team beating good team in a series?
davearm2 replied to soccer10k's topic in General Baseball Talk
This is spot on. First determine the odds to win a single game using log5 or some other method, then extrapolate to a series. A team with a 55% probability of winning one game has a 59.3% probability of winning a 5-game series. 60%: 68.3% 65%: 76.5% 70%: 83.7% 75%: 89.6% 80%: 94.2% Apply the same analysis to a 7-game series and you get... 55%: 60.8% 60%: 71.0% 65%: 80.0% 70%: 87.4% 75%: 92.9% 80%: 96.7% -
That's fantastic. If that's what he really wants and he's truly that concerned about any "real" restrictions (and I use that VERY loosely since this is America we're talking about) about owning a [expletive] of guns then he's probably just going to stay in Texas because the only other major market that would be anywhere comparable would be DC (since he'd almost certainly be living in Virginia and not DC itself). If guns are that important to him that they so severely limit his options as to where he'll sign when he has the opportunity to make a huge market splash, well, that's his call. I just don't understand it. It's not like he'd be moving to some gun-free police state. It's all just along a relatively short scale of being able to own a [expletive] huge pile of guns. And I don't understand what it is you don't understand. Sounds like the guy has some different priorities than you. Why is that confusing?
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It's very easy to understand, actually. The guy's going to have way more money than he will ever need regardless, so he may as well go wherever he will be happiest with the lifestyle. You've heard of the hometown discount, right? Well maybe now we have a gun-town discount.
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Yeah. Or if you're a pessimist, it could be a reason why they won't grant it. But I agree. I think Kenney is going to be out/minimized. Which I don't care about either way, except if it increases the chances of Theo coming. Regardless of what title they give him, I can't imagine Epstein would have any interest in doing Kenney's job.
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So your theory is that Epstein has no interest in coming to the Cubs, but yet it didn't occur to him to tell someone and put an end to this circus.
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You mean The Fanboy Owner Cub fans can only pray that Ricketts is the same sort of Fanboy Owner as, say, Mark Cuban or Jerry Jones.
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How amusing that fans of many teams are going to spend countless hours and bandwidth discussing how their team needs to sign Wilson, all the while being completely oblivious to the fact that their local gun laws, of all things, rule them out.
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"The field that’s closest to the dugout and that’s where Lance plays" was mildly amusing on its surface. The rest of it was amusing in a "we're laughing at you, not with you" sort of way. Coming off sounding smart by ripping Moneyball is an uphill climb. LaRussa fell well short of the summit.