davearm2

I phrased it poorly. It's probably not the Cubs paying United's appearance fee, but likely SUM. When SUM contracts a Euro team to go on a tour, they agree to give the touring club a cut of the gate as well as other rights, etc. So the Cubs would just likely be renting out the field. They wouldn't likely see much of the gate. Not much of the merch either, and probably not concessions. So what's the incentive? The financial ins and outs of how this would work, and who would get what/how much, is purely speculative. None of us knows how the gate would be split, let alone things like merchandise and concessions. Presumably there'd be broadcast revenue as well. You asked what's the incentive. I'd ask what's the downside. The Cubs get some unknown amount of cash, plus some exposure. Where's the problem?

This. Why are folks down on Ricketts for trying to bring more money into the organization? And how is this somehow bad from a baseball perspective? Who the heck cares how they "brand" Wrigley Field, so long as they're putting the best team possible on the field. More $$$ in the bank = better baseball team. If you personally don't care to see soccer in Wrigley, then don't go.

I dunno looking at the photos from the Northwestern-Illinois game, it seems to me that the fitment issues would be greatly mitigated if you had the option to make the field 110 yards long rather than 120. Obviously the issue they had for football was the length; there was a ton of room for additional width in LF and CF. Shortening the length by 10 yards would open things up quite a bit IMO.

Wow MLB contracts are back to insane again this year.

Well one post makes a good argument that the player left money on the table, and the next makes a good argument that the team overextended itself. Sounds like it's probably a pretty fair deal for all.

well, if this isnt the most racist post of 2011 You are correct. It isn't. Murderer isn't a race.

Honestly a better comparsion would be Fukudome to Grienke, not Soriano... I'm not comparing Soriano to Greinke. I'm using an extreme example (which Soriano is) to illustrate a point.

Getting hung up on these numbers misses the bigger point. The point is, there was $13M available to spend. Spending it all on Greinke was just one option (and arguably the best option). But you still need to consider what could have been done with that money, and net it out. It's easy to argue that this was the best way the Brewers could have spent that $13M. I wouldn't debate that. All I'm saying is you're overstating the impact if you choose to ignore the opportunity cost element. I think you are backtracking a little. You are now stating that you wouldn't debate that the $13 million to Greinke is the best way to use that money. As well as saying that they have to look at all of the other ways that the Brewers could have used that money to determine if this was the best use of funds. I am sure they did that before making the trade. You didn't take the money coming off of the books into consideration. Soriano is an albatross of a contract that in no way should be used for comparisons to Greinke. Greinke is only for 2 years and about 2/3 the price of Soriano. People have already been complaining about his contract for a few years and will still be complaining about it a few years after Greinke's contract is up. I highly doubt that any free agents or players on a comparable level could have be had for 2/13. Not backtracking at all. I'm just pointing out that the degree to which the Brewers improved themselves has been overstated. The only reason why Soriano is relevant is because he shines a bright light on why this is true.

That's not the logic at all. This discussion originated with the question of how much better the Brewers are after this trade. Someone said they're better by the amount of Greinke's WAR. That's incorrect.

Getting hung up on these numbers misses the bigger point. The point is, there was $13M available to spend. Spending it all on Greinke was just one option (and arguably the best option). But you still need to consider what could have been done with that money, and net it out. It's easy to argue that this was the best way the Brewers could have spent that $13M. I wouldn't debate that. All I'm saying is you're overstating the impact if you choose to ignore the opportunity cost element.

Some of you people need ask yourself this. Why do we all complain about Alfonso Soriano? Is it because he doesn't provide positive WAR? Nope that's not it. He does. It's because he's overpaid, right? The implication, of course, is that Soriano's money could've been spent more productively. So Soriano's actual WAR needs to be offset by the WAR's other players could've provided but that the Cubs now can't afford. Same calculus applies to all players, Greinke included.

Of course salaries matter, that's not the issue. The issue is that Greinke's salary doesn't turn him from a 4 win player to a 2 win player, which is essentially what Dave is trying to claim. Greinke is still a 4-win player by himself.

Opportunity cost is not some esoteric concept. It's not controversial, nor is it in of itself at the center of this debate. The problem here is your inability to coherently apply the concept to baseball or to comprehend the meaning of my argument. There is no question that spending 13 million dollars on Greinke means the Brewers have less money available than they would otherwise. They could have spent that money on another player, as you suggest, used it for player development, or used it to renovate their offices. However, none of those things impact the value of Greinke's contribution to the team. The talent level of a given team exists independent of the team's payroll. A given 25 players have the exact same talent regardless of whether they are paid 100 million or 60 million dollars. It is true that more payroll flexibility gives the team the ability to hire better players, but that isn't what we are talking about. We are estimating the change in talent level of the Brewers, represented by expected wins next season, from the Greinke trade. The only things that matter in this equation are the abilities of the players in question -- i.e., Greinke, the pitcher he is displacing, the shortstops they swapped, and the other traded players. Of course payroll is important to the Brewers, and of course there are limits to what they can spend. However, that does not make it logical to discount Greinke's on-field value to the team by his payroll, a factor which does not impact his performance for the team. If you're trying to make the argument that Greinke's payroll is a significant downside to the trade, then you are doing it the wrong way. If you are trying to understand how opportunity cost works within the framework of baseball, then you are not quite there. I'm not sure how I can make this any clearer to you. We are looking at the big picture of how the Brewers will perform with and without Greinke on the roster. Sure Greinke personally provides the Brewers 4 wins (or whatever number you choose). He also precludes them from re-signing or acquiring other players whose salaries would sum to Greinke's $13M (approximately). These players would also have provided wins. To have a comprehensive analysis of this move's impact, you need to net out the foregone wins of the other players the Brewers could have had instead, but whom Greinke renders unaffordable. It's that simple. Look in the end it's a good move for the Brewers. But its WAR impact is being overstated by anyone ignoring the opportunity cost component.

Your argument still makes absolutely no sense. At no point is the goal of estimating changes in the team talent level anything close to keeping payroll the same. Yes, it is possible that replacing Dewitt with Uggla will require the team to downgrade elsewhere, however there is absolutely no reason that this must happen. Because there is no logical reason that a downgrade must occur, you do not subtract wins until a move actually happens. It's that simple. Opportunity cost has nothing to do with this equation, unless it results in an actual move, because opportunity cost in and of itself has no tangible effect on the team talent level. You even acknowledge that I am correct with possibility "a", except for some reason you tried to further obfuscate the issue by bringing in GM competence, which also has no relevant place in this equation. You have no leg to stand on here; you are wrong. Actually I'm not the one that's wrong, but whatever. Look dollars are a finite resource, so spending them one place necessarily means they cannot be spent someplace else. That's the definition of an opportunity cost. From wikipedia: "A person who has $15 can either buy a CD or a shirt. If he buys the shirt the opportunity cost is the CD and if he buys the CD the opportunity cost is the shirt." To put it into the immediate baseball context, just replace $15 with $13M, "CD" with "Zach Grienke", and "shirt" with "Adam Dunn". Hence the opportunity cost of paying Grienke is forgoing the production you could have had from Dunn (or some other player or players that would generate positive WAR) instead. Ask anyone that knows anything about basic economics and they'll tell you I'm 100% right.

I'm a little late to the party, but I wanted to comment on this. Subtracting wins according to the value of the contract is nonsensical. The whole point of estimating changes in wins is to get a sense of how much, in real terms, the baseball team improved. The dollar cost of the contract itself has nothing to do with that. Consider the following scenario: A team replaces a 1.5 win player by signing a 4 win player for 15 million dollars per year. For the simplicity of the analysis, we'll assume they don't make any other moves. This means the talent level of the team has improved by 2.5 wins. However, if we follow your method and subtract three wins due to the cost of the contract, the results suggest that the team is actually half a win worse than the year before. This is clearly not correct. In real baseball terms, this would be like replacing Blake Dewitt with Dan Uggla and somehow having a worse team. It makes no sense. In the case of Greinke, the improvement to the Brewers is equal to the difference between Greinke and the displaced starter minus the loss from replacing the shortstop. That's it, and it's probably closer to three or four wins than two. It's not nonsensical, it's correct. In your example of replacing DeWitt with Uggla -- well duh, on the surface that move in isolation improves the team. But it also either a) jacks up payroll, or b) means you have to replace an Uggla-caliber player with a DeWitt-caliber player someplace else to keep the payroll the same. If it's a), then sure, even an incompetent GM should be able to deliver additional wins if given significant additional dollars to spend. If it's b), then my point remains. You said, "the dollar cost of the contract itself has nothing to do with that." This is 100% wrong, so long as the same-sized contract could've yielded the same number of wins (or more) if given to another player instead. To argue against the opportunity cost component of all this simply illustrates a fundamental misunderstanding of Econ 101.

Sure, if you're keeping payroll roughly constant then 2-3 wins is probably the right ballpark, and probably a little high actually. Just as a simple exercise: Add Pujols ($25M) Subtract Aramis Ramirez ($14M) Add a replacement 3B for $1M Subtract Ryan Dempster ($13M) Add a replacement SP for $1M What's the impact of those moves taken together? The money's even -- $27M out and $27M in. You think the Cubs would improve by a lot more than 2-3 wins in this scenario? I don't. It's certainly possible if they make the right moves. What if Dempster gets replaced by Archer, who ends up being better? What if we replace Aramis with a cheap, young player who ends up being productive and plays through the entire season? There's simply too many variables to say "Oh, the money spent is even so the win improvement can only be marginal." It's not how much money you spend, it's how you spend the money. Well to bring this back on topic, the point remains that if you spend $13M on Greinke, then that's $13M less you have to allocate elsewhere. Having that much less to spend necessarily offsets the wins Greinke provides.

Sure, if you're keeping payroll roughly constant then 2-3 wins is probably the right ballpark, and probably a little high actually. Just as a simple exercise: Add Pujols ($25M) Subtract Aramis Ramirez ($14M) Add a replacement 3B for $1M Subtract Ryan Dempster ($13M) Add a replacement SP for $1M What's the impact of those moves taken together? The money's even -- $27M out and $27M in. You think the Cubs would improve by a lot more than 2-3 wins in this scenario? I don't. Do you really think, in that highly unlikely situation, the Cubs would replace Dempster and Ramirez with $1M replacements, though? The whole point of the exercise is to keep the money even.

Sure, if you're keeping payroll roughly constant then 2-3 wins is probably the right ballpark, and probably a little high actually. Just as a simple exercise: Add Pujols ($25M) Subtract Aramis Ramirez ($14M) Add a replacement 3B for $1M Subtract Ryan Dempster ($13M) Add a replacement SP for $1M What's the impact of those moves taken together? The money's even -- $27M out and $27M in. You think the Cubs would improve by a lot more than 2-3 wins in this scenario? I don't.

It is going to be much more than a couple of wins, most likely 5+ wins and plausibly 10+, the range of outcomes is pretty large. The quote you were responding to was focused on the Grienke trade specifically. As outlined, you start with an estimate of Greinke's WAR, subtract a little for the switch to Betancourt at SS, and subtract a little more for the opportunity cost of Greinke's $13M salary. 5+ wins is on the WAY high side for this move alone. 10+ is just silly. There isn't a 10 win player in baseball (much less a pitcher), even before the downward adjustments. Pegging it at a 2 win improvement is very reasonable. Add a couple more for the Marcum move, but even then I personally don't see it vaulting the Brewers into the playoffs. It vaults them into the .500 range. This is a team that won 77 games last year. Going from Chris Narveson to Zach Greinke has to get you more than 2 wins. Try reading my post again. Put whatever win number you want on the move from Narveson or whomever to Greinke. Then start subtracting. Escobar is nothing special but Betancourt is worse. Subtract. And IIRC the math is something like $5M = 1 win on the FA market, so paying Greinke $13M has an opportunity cost of over 2.5 wins. On a per-year basis we're talking the Dunn, Victor Martinez, Konerko class of players. Subtract. When the dust settles, 2 wins sounds in the right neighborhood.

It is going to be much more than a couple of wins, most likely 5+ wins and plausibly 10+, the range of outcomes is pretty large. The quote you were responding to was focused on the Grienke trade specifically. As outlined, you start with an estimate of Greinke's WAR, subtract a little for the switch to Betancourt at SS, and subtract a little more for the opportunity cost of Greinke's $13M salary. 5+ wins is on the WAY high side for this move alone. 10+ is just silly. There isn't a 10 win player in baseball (much less a pitcher), even before the downward adjustments. Pegging it at a 2 win improvement is very reasonable. Add a couple more for the Marcum move, but even then I personally don't see it vaulting the Brewers into the playoffs. It vaults them into the .500 range. This is a team that won 77 games last year.

For a supposedly significant trade, this seems like it's really not going to have a huge impact. Greinke will be good, especially moving to the NL, but he probably won't ever regain his 2009 form. He'll be a 2/3 type starter for the Brewers. The impact he'll have will be offset by the Betancourt piece (as mentioned), plus the opportunity cost presented by his $13M salary. And the prospects the Brewers gave up seem good but not great. Probably none will develop into impact major leaguers. I suspect the Brewers improved by a couple wins this year and next, but IMO it won't be enough to put them in the playoffs.

There's no telling what might've happened to Harvey had he gone to college. He very well could've been exposed there, instead of in the minors. That would have cost him millions.

You'd have to be an "idiot" to consider using the "ideal two hitter" in the leadoff role? Really? One and two hitters have very similar job descriptions and are more or less interchangeable.

WTF kind of auction has a max bid?

Cano? Teixeira? Both? Z and Soto are both really good at baseball. Z makes a little too much for what he provides, and Soto is one of the most valuable assets in the game. To be fair, Montero is arguably also one of the most valuable assets in the game. If Montero pans out, he'll be Soto. Soto +3 additional cost-controlled years.