Is Moneyball Dead?
How to think about the Mets offseason
Catch me up in 30 seconds…
Happy Birthday, Doc Gooden!
Masahiro Tanaka could be a fit with the Mets, per the New York Post.
Trevor Bauer discussed Steve Cohen’s “brilliant start” on his YouTube page (video provided at end of newsletter).
ON THIS DATE IN 1961: Combining the colors of the departed Dodgers and Giants, the Mets unveil the franchise’s logo which was chosen from a design contest that received over 500 entries. Sports cartoonist Ray Gatto came up with the iconic skyline that serves as the backdrop to the Mets logo.
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Mets interest in Jake Odorizzi
From Buster Olney on Sunday:
“In 2020, Odorizzi started just four games, spending a lot of time on the injured list, first with a sore back, then returning after being hit in the chest in August. But Hembo referred to Odorizzi as a "sleeping giant" among the free agents, because of his pitch profile -- a good fastball, a cutter, a slider, a splitter -- and compared his 2019 season to that of Zack Wheeler, who signed a five-year, $118 million deal with the Philadelphia Phillies last winter. A lot of the velocity-range metrics tied to Odorizzi's pitches compare pretty closely to those of Shane Bieber, so it really isn't a surprise that the New York Mets, San Francisco Giants and Toronto Blue Jays, as well as the Twins, have expressed early-market interest in Odorizzi.”
Marcus Stroman look away: Coming off a career season in 2019, Odorizzi decided to bet on himself and his familiarity with Minnesota to accept his qualifying offer and wait until 2020 to become a free agent. In a crowded pitching market with draft pick compensation attached to his name, he thought he would fair better in securing a multi-year deal this offseason.
Obviously, he couldn’t have predicted a global pandemic would turn the country upside down. Injuries are always something to worry about, but the 30-year-old had made at least 28 starts in his previous six campaigns, before reaching the mound only 4 times this past season.
Odorizzi represents a warning sign for the few who accept qualifying offers at a time when they can secure long-term deals, even if the value of those deals aren’t quite what they might have dreamed of before they became free agents.
Should the Mets take a flyer on Odorizzi? The right-hander is such an interesting case, I want to spend longer writing about him, so more to come soon. But as a preview, he could represent a buy-low opportunity, and not in the way Mets fans are used to thinking when they hear “buy low” associated with their favorite team.
Is Moneyball Dead?
There’s a scene in the remake of The Thomas Crown Affair when the movie’s namesake, a billionaire businessman played by Pierce Brosnan, is putting on a show for the insurance shark played by Rene Russo. He is racing on a sailboat that must cost more than a suburban home, and upon turning against the high wind, the boat finds its’ death zone, capsizing magnificently into the water. As the camera focuses on Russo, who is watching from afar through binoculars, her smile achieves the director’s goal in showing that money is not part of the calculus for Brosnan. He lives for the thrill.
Whether Steve Cohen, who reportedly spent $100,000 to hang out with Guy Fieri for the day, treats his baseball team like Brosnan did that sailboat is yet to be determined. Mets fans have seen plenty of expensive things turtle in the water. What they haven’t experienced is the financial wherewithal to not give a shit.
When Sandy Alderson first arrived to New York following the 2010 season, the Wilpons were reeling from the Bernie Madoff scandal. Suddenly, Moneyball became the team’s salvation. While not explicitly embraced by the organization, with Billy Beane’s predecessor (Alderson) and associates (Paul DePodesta and J.P. Ricciardi) in key decision-making roles, the direction was clear: build a winner while slashing payroll.
The idea championed by Beane and made famous by Michael Lewis’ book and subsequent movie adaptation was that teams operating on a tight budget could gain a competitive advantage by focusing on market inefficiencies that big spenders didn’t think they needed to worry about.
While the Yankees and Red Sox tried to spend their way to a championship, teams like the Athletics relied on quants. Just hire a math nerd with a computer and let them find you the players who everyone else thinks are terrible, when they are actually quite good.
But with teams across baseball, from Los Angeles to Tampa Bay, embracing analytics, finding hidden value has become more difficult. For the most part, everyone is working off the same data and with the same understanding that traditional statistics don’t always reveal the best players.
As much as people still quibble over WAR, it is a common statistic now. It is the Facebook of sabermetrics: once your parents start using it, you know it is time to move on to a new platform.
There are two factors contributing to the death of moneyball:
As we just discussed, the gap between teams who use analytics versus those who trust the gut of a 74-year-old scout that looks like Clint Eastwood is no longer as wide. In fact, we have entered a post analytics vs scouting environment where the teams who rely on both are the clear winners.
Nobody believes the owners when they cry poor. If your favorite baseball team is trading away you favorite player to save a few dimes, it’s not because the owner can’t afford to keep him, it’s because they don’t want to pay the money to keep him. The Wilpons got screwed by the Madoffs. We get that. But they could have spent more money on their baseball team. They just decided not to.
I am far from the first to write about these concepts, and will not be the last. You can find a much more nuanced argument about the second point in a recent Baseball Prospectus article:
“The idea of large and small markets, that some teams can afford the best players and others can’t, the philosophy that underpinned the seminal cliche of modern baseball, Moneyball, is now a myth. Your favorite team could improve its chances of winning. It won’t, because it doesn’t believe it’s worth it. Franchises are no longer forced to rely on winning to create profit. The era of baseball as pure competition is over.”
So if there’s really no such thing as small and large market teams, where does that leave us?
Pretty much in the same place as we were before, but with a different kind of trade-off analysis. Nothing is preventing owners from spending more money and they all use some form of analytics, but that doesn’t mean every team will execute their strategy the same way. Relativity will always exist. Bounding cases will form, either through CBA mandate or natural selection.
In other words, Steve Cohen likes to spend money, but we can reasonably assume there will be some cap on how much he spends. Are the Mets really going to balloon their payroll over $300 million while most of the league is spending half of that, or even less?
As we transition into this new era of Mets baseball where every offseason decision will be viewed from the top of the Empire State Building instead of the ground floor of Lot-Less, it’s important to consider a framework for evaluating player acquisitions.
If Moneyball is dead, do we just hope the Mets sign everyone? If they overpay for an outfielder - pour some out for Jason Bay - who cares?! Under Cohen, they can just go out and sign somebody else, right?
Well, yes. But there are still opportunity costs associated with adding a new player to the roster. A team who wants to build a perennial contender still needs a strategy.
What are the non-Moneyball opportunity costs associated with signing a player?
Playing time: There are only eight positional players on the field at one time, along with a pitcher, maybe a DH, and some extra arms and bats waiting in the bullpen and dugout. Every player you add to the roster takes playing time away from somebody else.
Future trade value: While you might not care how much a player is making, another team probably will. Ideally, you don’t have a bunch of players on your roster who can’t be traded for value down the road.
Development: Does a player on a large salary prevent a younger player from finding a spot in the lineup?
Specialty. How does a new signing fit on the roster? Is there a particular skillset that the team desperately needs and only this player can provide? Does that increase the value of one player over another with a stronger overall game?
Let’s use an example to articulate these points. Back to Jake Odorizzi. If the Mets decided to sign the veteran right-hander to a three-year contract, they would be securing a potential number 2-3 starter for his age 31-33 seasons. Whatever the annual salary would turn out to be in such a contract, the question is whether the Mets believe Odorizzi will be good enough to reserve up to 180 innings in the rotation over the next three years. And if they decided to move in another direction, or want to improve their roster elsewhere by using him as a trade chip, would they be able to turn him into something valuable? Would his salary make it prohibitive to do so? Does his spot in the rotation keep a young arm from gaining an opportunity and blossoming into a productive starter? Does he offer something unique in the rotation - a different look from the rest of the starters - that is extra valuable to the Mets?
These are the type of questions the Mets must consider while deciding how much cash to pull from Mr. Cohen’s open wallet. After spending years wading in the water, this organization doesn’t need to make a big splash, as much as it needs a skipper who knows how to use the power from its sails to reach the Promised Land.
Thanks for reading! Look out for the next newsletter on Wednesday!
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