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Letting Ellsbury and Drew go...Is it worth it for the picks?
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Post by gregblossersbelly on Aug 16, 2013 10:35:05 GMT -5
I doubt if Lester would even return your call if you don't pick up his option. He's getting more than Edwin Jackson who got 4/52m.
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Post by bighead on Aug 16, 2013 12:24:59 GMT -5
All these "Bradley is not ready" guys were either taking a nap towards the end of Spring Training when people were demanding that he be in the line up openning day or they have changed their tunes. Of course being ready and replacing Ellsbury's production are two completely different things. All of this is moot though because the only way the Sox resign Ellsbury is if they extend themselves beyond what they feel comfortable giving him in terms of years and AAV. This is a bad contract waiting to happen and I hope the Sox let some other team deal with that. Are you saying Bradley WAS ready on opening day? I think most of us were saying that spring training stats don't matter (they dont) and he shouldn't have started the year on the big league club (he shouldn't have). No, I was very vocal against it. In fact I think that his development was probably hindered by the move and the subsequent yo-yoing between the Sox and AAA. The were a lot of people on this board arguing for the move though.
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Post by jmei on Aug 16, 2013 12:51:20 GMT -5
Shoulda sprung for a longer post-bar trip, eh Hatfield?
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Aug 16, 2013 12:55:24 GMT -5
Which goes to show that A) this variable can change with a quickness (-0.016 in 8 days) when your sample size is this small, and B) his last 8 days resemble his HR/Contact rates of 2012. Bottom line, I'm going to need the rest of the year to be convinced that Jacoby's power stroke resembles what we saw in 2011, and basically I'm skeptical. I personally think the last line in your analysis simply represents one small power surge (6 HR?) in a relatively small sample. Obviously 8 straight games without a HR is meaningless. And yes, we don't know what his true HR rate now is. It's the .056 from 2011 less the fact that pitchers now ought to start respecting his power, and it's hard to estimate how much the lack of respect inflated his old home run rate. But you can watch him and see that he's the same hitter as he was in 2011. And the key point is that what he's doing now has only the tiniest of chances of being the same thing as his .009 rate that he had for nearly a season and a half. Note that I'm projecting a conservative 6.0 WAR for him next year. If I thought he could maintain a HR rate above .050, that figure would be closer to the 9 he put up in 2011. The key point is that, no, this isn't some fluke power surge, caused by getting an unusual amount of cripple pitches, where he might return to having no power at all (even while staying healthy). As I said, the odds of that being the case are 700+ to 1 against -- multiplied by the odds of him happening to look like a different hitter, and that somehow being deceptive and meaningless.
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Post by hammerhead on Aug 16, 2013 13:11:01 GMT -5
Thank you Chris ! I have been trying to get that out for weeks possibly months now and have posted similar responses only to hear "Owens/Webster/etc. is gonna be better than a #2 or #3 how dare you disparage me by saying they have ceilings of 3's and 4's"
The board is general has been so full of baseless definitive statements ie. "get rid of Drew!!!111!!!" , "Iglesias is the next Ozzie Smith!!!111!1!" "Salty Sucks!11!!!" "Napoli is a corpse of a dead hooker !!!111!!!!!" and overreacting.
People are getting too hung up in rotational rankings numbers and the difference between "ceiling and best possible scenario". Pitchers become different things at different times in their careers, and a lot of them flame out or blow out their arms. saying the team has 4 or 5 high upside arms is probably the best way to look at it. That upside could be in the rotation, in the pen or as a trade piece. Thats a good thing to have, a lot of organizations have maybe 1 or 2 of those kinds of guys.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 16, 2013 13:32:08 GMT -5
The sample size in this case is 121 contacts and that is a statistically significant sample. What you really want to know is how is the probability of a player with a true talent level of .009 HR/C putting up a HR/C of .05 over 121 contacts. I sort of went over the concept of true talent level in the Napoli earlier this year but I didn't think it wasn't well understood. The link below should be a pretty good overview. www.fangraphs.com/library/offense/woba/Given the information I compute a p value of .0150 IOW you would expect a player with a true talent level of .009 HR/C to have a .05 HR/C over 121 contacts 1.50% of the time. Hence it's quite likely that something has changed in Ellsbury's true talent level and that he won't have a HR/C of .009 going forward. EDIT to add to this over the last 8 games Ellsbury has hit 0 homers over 30 contacts. You would expect a player with a true talent level of .5 HR/C to have such a streak around 8.23% of the time.
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Post by jmei on Aug 16, 2013 13:59:31 GMT -5
I appreciate the use of more statistically rigorous analysis, but I think the conclusions are less certain. You're right that the disparity was unlikely to be random chance, but given the many, many variables involved, it's hard to say where his true talent level resides.
The narrative you're espousing (the same one Boras will use) is appealing and has more than a kernel of truth. It still requires more extrapolation than I'm comfortable with, however. Even if I brush aside much of Ellsbury's injury history as freak accidents, the fact remains that that leaves us a relatively small sample of performance to project him with. The subsequent wide error bands in his projection give me pause-- I am very hesitant to commit nine figures to a player whose true talent level is still very much in the air.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 16, 2013 14:21:38 GMT -5
Is it?
We have a month in a half of games left until he hits free agency. He's had over 3,000 major league plate appearances and nearly 6,000 innings in the field during which he's been involved in nearly 1400 plays. That seems like a pretty significant sample to me.
I don't think there is any question as to Ellsbury's true talent level when he is on the field. The evidence is also clear that unless you assume that his past injury history is predictive, he's worth a nine figure contract pretty easily. Since the injuries were traumatic and not chronic I think that's a safe assumption.
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Post by chavopepe2 on Aug 16, 2013 14:44:14 GMT -5
Is it? We have a month in a half of games left until he hits free agency. He's had over 3,000 major league plate appearances and nearly 6,000 innings in the field during which he's been involved in nearly 1400 plays. That seems like a pretty significant sample to me. I don't think there is any question as to Ellsbury's true talent level when he is on the field. The evidence is also clear that unless you assume that his past injury history is predictive, he's worth a nine figure contract pretty easily. Since the injuries were traumatic and not chronic I think that's a safe assumption. The issue is that there have been such huge swings in his performance, that it is easy to buy into the idea that he is more 2011 Ellsbury than 2012 Ellsbury. I actually agree with your point. He has played in almost 700 games with over 3100 plate appearances. Over that time he has averaged 4.84 fWAR per 150 games played. He'll be 30 in less than a month. I think that is pretty much the player he is. I personally think you'll start seeing some regression from those numbers - thus my projection of 4.5 fWAR next year. I think it is safe to say Ellsbury will be worth the contract early on, but I could see the last couple years of a 5 year deal being a little dicey. Overall though, I think a 5 year/$100M deal would be a good investment. If he is a 4.5 fWAR player next year and loses .5 fWAR per year, he'll still be worth $18-$20M in year four (when you account for inflation) - and would be worth almost exactly $100M over 5 years. Eric is clearly more optimistic on Ellsbury, and that is totally reasonable given extreme swings in his performance over his career. I personally feel more comfortable using his entire body of work rather than believing his peak performance is somehow more representative of his future ability.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 16, 2013 15:28:34 GMT -5
Like you said we are essentially in agreement. However I would note that Ellsbury is already at 4.6 FWAR in the middle of August and he's clearly having a better second half than first half and there are likely logical reasons for that.
In my opinion Eric has presented a logical argument as to why there is potential upside from that projection and why your projection might be low. I agree that you shouldn't pay for that possible upside, but if you could buy it for free, you'd do it in a heartbeat.
I agree I would do 5/100 easily and have Bradley play LF and RF.
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Post by jmei on Aug 16, 2013 15:33:11 GMT -5
I'm just unsatisfied aggregating or averaging such disparate levels of performance and using that to spit out a projection. Even if we essentially put 2010 and 2012 aside, Ellsbury has seen three distinct periods of offensive performance, with his power being the attribute which varied the most (I'm mostly going to ignore the vast UZR spreads to simplify the process). He had a .114 ISO in 2008-09, which jumped to .230 in 2011, and is now at .130 this season. His minor league ISOs were on the low end of that spectrum. Scouting reports are mixed, with some lauding his BP prowess and others noting that he only has HR power when he pulls the ball. The fact that his seasonal performance levels have varied so widely and injuries have removed such a big chunk of his recent performance makes projecting him really hard, despite the large number of raw PAs he's accumulated across his career.
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Post by thelavarnwayguy on Aug 16, 2013 15:48:11 GMT -5
One thing I like about the Yanks, ok maybe the only thing, is that they seem to put a premium on signing the top quality guys. For example Sabathia cost a lot but he was also premium goods. Kuroda was premium goods. To me Texiera was also but maybe that is trending down now. The point being that if you are going to spend in the FA market, one needs to factor in the likelihood that the person being signed will actually meet projections after getting the big bucks.
I think Ellsbury is that sort of guy. I don't see him slacking off, getting fat...etc. I see him producing. If anything, after all is said and done, I think the guy is still underated. It wasn't his fault he got body slammed twice.
To a lesser extent I think Drew is that kind of guy also. We will miss them, and particularly Ellsbury even though I'm probably not going over $100 mil to sign him even at 6 years. We do get a pick if he leaves and long term deals are terrible quite often. Take the definite value if the price gets out of range.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 16, 2013 15:55:08 GMT -5
Okay then let's take his PAs over his past two full seasons 2011 and now 2013. That's still over 1200 PAs. During this time, his BB%, K%, and BABIP have essentially been identical. As far as these metrics go, I think it's fair to say that is who he is. What's different this year is his power which as the analysis demonstrates may have changed in the second half.
Yet as Chavopepe2 demonstrated even if you want to dismiss the notion that he will hit more homers in future seasons as his projection does, he's still worth $100M. You see what we are really arguing is if Ellsbury is worth $20M a season or $30M a season. I say pay him $20M a season and take the upside for free.
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Post by honkbal on Aug 16, 2013 16:08:06 GMT -5
One thing I like about the Yanks, ok maybe the only thing, is that they seem to put a premium on signing the top quality guys. For example Sabathia cost a lot but he was also premium goods. Kuroda was premium goods. To me Texiera was also but maybe that is trending down now. The point being that if you are going to spend in the FA market, one needs to factor in the likelihood that the person being signed will actually meet projections after getting the big bucks. C.C. has a 4.66 ERA this year with a pretty clear drop-off in stuff backing that up and is signed for 3 more years. Texiera's contract has been just short of a disaster so far and there are, again, still 3 more years left. A-Rod. No comment. Kuroda has been great, but has gotten two one year, relatively low-rate deals and is a better example of the benefits of bargain shopping for veterans than a case of paying up the big bucks for "premium goods".
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Post by thelavarnwayguy on Aug 16, 2013 16:27:53 GMT -5
Sabathia was originally signed by the Yanks in 2009 and then signed an extention last year. His original deal was a decent example of a good FA deal. Probably too long a term though. Texiera's deal has been a surprise to most people I would think as he was a consitent stud for a long time before signing.
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Post by jmei on Aug 16, 2013 16:27:56 GMT -5
Paul Swydan pegs the Cubs, Reds, Mets, As, and Mariners as teams who should be interested in Ellsbury this offseason.
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Post by thelavarnwayguy on Aug 16, 2013 16:29:00 GMT -5
For the record, I'm all for the Kuroda type deals. Can't understand why there was not more competition for him when he left LA,
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Aug 16, 2013 16:38:45 GMT -5
The issue is that there have been such huge swings in his performance, that it is easy to buy into the idea that he is more 2011 Ellsbury than 2012 Ellsbury. I actually agree with your point. He has played in almost 700 games with over 3100 plate appearances. Over that time he has averaged 4.84 fWAR per 150 games played. He'll be 30 in less than a month. I think that is pretty much the player he is. I personally think you'll start seeing some regression from those numbers - thus my projection of 4.5 fWAR next year. I think it is safe to say Ellsbury will be worth the contract early on, but I could see the last couple years of a 5 year deal being a little dicey. Overall though, I think a 5 year/$100M deal would be a good investment. If he is a 4.5 fWAR player next year and loses .5 fWAR per year, he'll still be worth $18-$20M in year four (when you account for inflation) - and would be worth almost exactly $100M over 5 years. Eric is clearly more optimistic on Ellsbury, and that is totally reasonable given extreme swings in his performance over his career. I personally feel more comfortable using his entire body of work rather than believing his peak performance is somehow more representative of his future ability. The problem with deciding that Ellsbury is a 4.8 WAR player is that it's really hard to find that guy. Oh, he was (per 150 games, averaging b and f) 4.9 as a 2007 callup and then 4.0 as a rookie. Since then, 2.4, < 0, 8.3, 2.6, and 6.1. It's been a long time since you could point to one stretch of time where he was a 4.8 guy, without their being an obvious difference, within that stretch, between a guy much worse and one significantly better. So I choose to not just emphasize but to expect (if healthy) the better guy. This may be a philosophical difference, and I think it's arguable that there's no firm right or wrong. I'll go so far as to say that what I'm doing here is not science but art. But I'm been doing it for years, and with very good results. (I don't often talk about my track record or even bother defending myself against people who can only remember that I loved the Lugo signing, for different reasons, so indulge me this rundown as an example of how the methodology can work.) Bill Mueller just after we signed him: I removed the first incredibly awful six weeks of his previous season (he had missed ST completely, rehabbing from surgery) and found that the remaining numbers matched his previous great year exactly. So he was not, after all, coming off an off year. I thought he'd be great at Fenway and called him a poor man's Wade Boggs, and combining that with the rosier projection, I was sky-high on him. David Ortiz in mid-2003: I looked at his Minnesota career and found that he'd blown red-hot and ice-cold, and that all of the cold spells (except his last one) either immediately preceded or followed a DL stint. Conclusion: the great hitter we were seeing was for real, and had always been there in Minnesota when he was healthy. Johnny Damon going into 2004: I removed his awful second half of 2002 and first half of 2003, because of his divorce, and found that the remaining numbers matched what he did in KC. So I predicted a return to his KC form for 2004. (The counter-argument, that he had suffered a weird decline in his peak years that just happened to split the way it did, made no sense to me.) Bronson Arroyo going into 2004: everyone else on SoSH insisted on looking at his whole ml career and I attempted to show that the numbers from 2002 and '03 were simply incompatible with the earlier guy, and I insisted that he was, worst case, a killer ROOGY, and more likely a solid back-of-rotation starter. (And I'm pretty sure that I began to make this argument the year before, with the caveat that he needed to demonstrate that his apparent breakthrough was for real.) Carlos Pena before 2006: we briefly needed a 1B before the Beckett / Lowell trade (Youk was going to go back to 3B), and in a long analysis for the Sox I identified his true talent level as potentially much higher than what he had shown, provided he could shorten the length of his long and amazingly distinct slumps. Based on count breakdowns, I identified what I thought he was trying to do wrong to end them (concentrating on not striking out, which took him out of his game completely). I'm pretty sure they picked him up in '06 based on that recommendation, and it broke my heart that we couldn't find a spot for him on the roster next year. Jed Lowrie before 2007: I looked at his 2006 game logs, identified the period in the middle of the season where he played like crap because of an ankle injury, excised it, and concluded he still should be a top 10 prospect (or close to it). And, IIRC, told Mike Andrews that, when we were on a panel together at a SABR meeting that winter! In every one of these cases, there were statistically significant splits between the time periods in question. I think that assessing what a guy's true talent level is, and whether he has a chance to reach it, is the soul of superior projection. Sometimes a guy is just streaky: Brandon Moss and Josh Reddick are guys that you want to average over large chunks of their career, rather than cherry-picking the good parts. The key is having a firm idea as to why you should be excising the chunk of performance that was subpar.
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Post by jmei on Aug 16, 2013 16:39:27 GMT -5
You see what we are really arguing is if Ellsbury is worth $20M a season or $30M a season. I say pay him $20M a season and take the upside for free. Fair point-- we've just been haggling over the price so far. I suppose my greater concerns are as follows: -Hesitance to commit to long, large-AAV contracts in general -Particular hesitance to do so for a player whose primary contributions are defense and baserunning (assuming his power is more 2013 than 2011) -Belief in JBJ as a capable replacement; belief that FA dollars can be better spent in areas with fewer in-house replacements (1B, C, LF/RF) -Having multiple excellent defensive outfielders represents diminishing marginal returns, especially due to Fenway's unique dimensions -Fear that the price for Ellsbury will end up even higher than any of us has predicted to date, especially if he has a good rest of the season and playoffs Sidenote: I've seen the "knock 0.5 fWAR per year" method used to project hitters a lot, but have never been really convinced that that's the right way to do things. Anyone have a link handy that could convince me?
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Post by soxfan4life on Aug 16, 2013 17:24:39 GMT -5
Here we are 4 games up in the AL East. A cohesive team which seems to be on target to make the playoffs and with a little luck getting a strong Buchholz back, capable of making a run at the WS title. So what do we do next winter, no matter what the outcome this year? 1) Assuming that Drew and Ellsbury warrant QO at the end of the year, do we try to keep this team together for another run by signing these guys? At least with Ellsbury we can probably expect a performance drop with JBJ (I would think ). Do we want to go for the short term goal of winning next year by keeping the core together and bringing these guys back? 2) Under the same assumption, do we let Drew and Ellsbury go for the 2 compensatory picks, positioning us for the future and possibly deal with the short term dip in performance? Use the money saved for other specific options. Conventional wisdom would probably say take the picks but we are in the middle of a championship run. It's not an easy decision. I'll give my analysis in a future post.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Aug 17, 2013 0:02:06 GMT -5
Ellsbury is on a pace for 8.9 wSB, easily the best figure for a guy 28-30 in the last 20 years (Tony Womack leads with 8.5). But it's possible to come up with speed comps -- guys who had comparable wRC+, wSB, and Spd (Bill James speed score). (You can't look at guys like Womack who weren't good hitters, since the bat has to keep the player in the game.) Ellsbury: 112, 8.9?, 8.3. But July / August wRC+ is more like 121. Chuck Knoblauch '97: 112, 8.2, 8.4 Kenny Lofton '96: 107, 7.1, 7.5 Brian Roberts '07: 115, 6.3, 6.8 Jimmy Rollins '08: 104, 7.7, 7.8 Knoblauch was 28, was traded to the Yankees, developed Steve Sax disease, and had his career collapse completely. His bat was arguably already on the decline, and actually bounced back a bit the next two years. Except for what we wish might happen if the Yankees sign Ellsbury, not a comp. Lofton: same age, same position. He was traded to the Braves, became a free agent a year later, and signed back with the Indians. He was 5.3 bWAR / 150 the previous two year, 4.6 fWAR. Over the next five years he averaged 4.9 bWAR / 150 and 4.5 fWAR. He was an elite defensive CF for three more years, then was average for two. He remained a significant SB threat for just two years. Roberts: Same age, but not nearly the player. 3.8 bWAR / 150 his last two seasons, 3.9 the next two, the he got hurt and has barely played since. Rollins: Same age, and a precipitous decline in value right at this point, although bWAR and fWAR disagree a bit as to why. His SB runs decline markedly in both metrics, while only bWAR (using DRS) has a collapse in his fielding. He suffered a bad calf strain (missing 56 games) early in 2010, but that doesn't explain his '09 off year. As you might expect given how unique a talent Ellsbury is, this isn't all that useful. The best comp, Lofton, is terrific, while the second best, Rollins, is a cautionary tale. Overall, I think the message is that we can expect some extra decline in value versus a guy whose game is less dependent on speed, which is not really a surprise. Nevertheless, I suspect the partisans will choose Lofton versus Rollins as their favorite comp, lining up pretty much as expected.
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Post by soxcentral on Aug 17, 2013 9:12:41 GMT -5
-Belief in JBJ as a capable replacement; belief that FA dollars can be better spent in areas with fewer in-house replacements (1B, C, LF/RF) There is an extremely informative and entertaining debate going on here, but to the point of the original question in this thread I think it all boils down to this for both Ellsbury and Drew. If you feel JBJ and Bogaerts are ready to play next year you move on from both veterans and allocate the ~$25 mil/year savings upgrading other positions, with the idea that building a complete team gives you the best chance to win a championship.
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Post by onbase on Aug 17, 2013 9:35:48 GMT -5
Is it reasonable to say (not sure what to look up to confirm or squash the idea) that lead off hitting is not for everybody, and that Ellsbury is pretty darn good at it?
How much is that worth?
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Post by soxcentral on Aug 17, 2013 10:24:01 GMT -5
With Ellsbury you are also going to pay more for the fact that he plays a premium defensive position, not just being a leadoff hitter. In a perfect world I'd rather use the money on Shin-Soo Choo who I think would be a great fit (don't see why he couldn't replace Jacoby's current production as leadoff) and plays a corner OF position, likely saving a bit on years and $$ compared to Ellsbury.
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Post by wcsoxfan on Aug 17, 2013 12:39:42 GMT -5
With Ellsbury you are also going to pay more for the fact that he plays a premium defensive position, not just being a leadoff hitter. In a perfect world I'd rather use the money on Shin-Soo Choo who I think would be a great fit (don't see why he couldn't replace Jacoby's current production as leadoff) and plays a corner OF position, likely saving a bit on years and $$ compared to Ellsbury. I'm indifferent with a switch from Ellsbury to Choo - but how do we know that Choo is going to be paid less? Premium positions tend to pay better but so do HRs, where Choo has an advantage. Also, don't forget that Choo is a huge step down from Ellsbury when it comes to base-running. If the Red Sox simply waited both of them out and took whoever was willing to take the lower deal - it could work out well for them; depending on the competition for their services.
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