The Slot System is Broken and Will Change Soon

Major League Baseball's slot system is broken and will change soon.

Bendy!

I predict Lucas Giolito will sign with the Nationals. I predict he will sign for well over his slot value, which is supposed to be about $2.1m. I won't be surprised if he signs for $4m, and I don't think the Nats will care that they lost their pick next season.

The Most Inetesting things I can say about Harper, Moore, and Trout

These three need no introduction to anyone who might read this blog. I'll cut right to the chase with the most interesting thing I can say about each one, in alphabetical order.

Harper is hitting left-handers far better than right-handers. .250/.339/.460 to .357/.426/.667. The batted ball profiles are pretty similar, but his BABIP against lefties is huge (.433). Against lefties, he's struck out 21.3% of the time, but against righties only 15.7% of the time. The samples here are obviously very small.  Here are the two things I would take away from these facts: Harper will probably not hit lefties so well in the future and he will probably improve a lot against righties.

Matt Moore can't get lefties out. The situation is so shocking, I have to link it: he can't get lefties out. His FIP against left handed hitters is 6.28. His K/BB against lefties is 1.13. That's not owing to some huge walk total either: he's striking just 13.6% of LHB out. He had the same problem last year. He's thrown his change up, which has a 20% whiff rate, to left handed batters just 12 times in his entire career. I'm not a pitching coach, but I see an adjustment worth experimenting with here.

Among players with at least 150 PA, Mike Trout has seen the third highest percentage of fastballs at 68.3%. Juan Pierre has seen more junk. When you look at the league leaders in fastballs seen, two words come to mind: old and weak. Mike Trout is neither. We shall therefore infer that Mike Trout will see fewer fastballs in the future. While it might not work, it is perhaps time to give Trout the Harper treatment. Harper, incidentally, is at the opposite end of the list: he has seen the 3rd smallest percentage of fastballs.

Tom Wilhelmsen Tucson Toros Card

I don't have anything to add to the Tom Wilhelmsen story. He and I lived in Tucson during an overlapping period, but we never met. I did once go to see the Tucson Toros at Hi Corbet field. It's a good baseball experience, and I wonder why I didn't go more (a good bet is that I hate both the sun and the heat and Hi Corbet is in Tucson while baseball is played in the Summer.)

Anyway, The Kaiser is my favorite current Mariner*, owing to a wonderful narrative, great 2012 performance, and a perfect inability to disappoint. If the guy suddenly loses his command and just throws god-knows-where at 95, it's a miracle he ever made it to the majors and a sad that he didn't succeed more, but I don't feel invested in his success. If Dustin Ackley flops, I see the opportunity cost of drafting him (for example, Mike Trout, at twenty-five.) Opportunity costs associated with Wilhelmsen were basically zero and always will be.

Here's what I have to add about Tom Wilhelmsen. Being in Tucson in 2009 meant being in the right place and time for a few things:

(see the back after the jump...)

I'm partly just posting this so I will have a link later when I spend some time on arguments presented in A/V formats for my critical thinking class this semester, but it stands out to me as a shockingly well reasoned piece of A/V work. I tend to think of MLB Network and MLB.com as self-promotion networks with very little interest in truth or reason. But this piece on Bryce Harper is surprising smart:

http://mlb.mlb.com/video/play.jsp?content_id=20095071&topic_id=8877508&c_id=mlb

Thoughts on Things

One answer is "because $40m is a lot of money." Another answer is, "Well, for an extra $5m per year, I'd leave."

The Angels signed Albert Pujols and C.J. Wilson. This sucks for the Mariners because the Angels just invested a lot of money in the team. Even if you think that Pujols's or Wilson's contract will be an albatross in four years, the Angels are still investing in their talent, while the M's aren't. No matter how inefficient they are, if the Angels are buying more talent than we are, they have an edge.

Dave Cameron points out that this is no argument for just throwing money at the problem. Money that's inefficiently spent is money wasted, after all. However, I'm pretty strongly of the opinion that the M's need to increase payroll. Even if they do so inefficiently, paying $30m for 4 wins (about 66% efficient) improves the team by 4 wins. Right now, I would favor doing that by signing some league average guys to 2 year deals rather than signing a big free agent. (Fielder is like 275 pounds, right?) Can we at least be a .500 team while not contending?

Davey Johnson, the Nats manager who was skipper to 19 year-old Dwight Gooden years ago, is the world's worst manager of expectations. Every chance he gets, he has been running his mouth about heading north with Bryce Harper this spring. It's a terrible idea, because it will basically make him a free agent one year earlier. That's just stupid when you could control that year by sending him to AAA for a month. But Johnson is setting fans up for some disappointment.

When Harper reaches the big leagues will depend on the Nats needs this season, his development, and controlling service. With big moves from the Marlins this off-season, the NL East looks to be very competitive this year. That will probably push the Nationals to call up Harper sooner rather than later, if they think he can contribute. Can he? It's hard to say for sure, but I think Harper can play as well as Griffey did at the same age (OPS+ 108), which makes him a contributor in a lineup that needs a lefty.

I think I love the Rays contract to Matt Moore. He's started just on major league game, and the Rays have inked him to a $14m contract. If Moore is only a 2 WAR pitcher, on average, through that period, he would easily make more than that in arbitration. There's some risk for the Rays, but it's only about $3m a year.

The details of the new CBA are now available to the public. You should read them here. Some of the details, usually specific numbers are yet to be disclosed.

This little girl has nothing to do with what I'm writing, but it was the most interesting result when I googled "MLBPA" images.

The widespread reaction I saw in the blogosphere was pretty negative, and a common refrain was that it hurt small market teams. This stemmed from assessments of revisions to the rules for the first year players draft and international signings. However, I think that that reaction may be hasty.

The CBA affects three groups of people directly: MLB clubs, MLBPA members, and would-be MLBPA members. Because the first two are the ones that strike the agreement, it will be no surprise that the latter group are the ones who see most of the harm.

Draft spending will now be carefully regulated and teams going over their draft budget, as determined by MLB, will be stiffly penalized. As far as I can tell, the penalties are so stiff that no team will go past 5% of its unpenalized budget.

Here's how it works: each team will be given a draft pool which will be the sum of the value of the picks that the team has, as MLB determines the value of those picks. For example, the 1st overall pick might be assessed as $5M, the 31st pick as $1M, and the 61st as $400k. If your team has just those picks, it gets a pool of $6.4M to spend on signing bonuses. Total spending over this limit is subject to a tax (the tax money is sent to non-overspenders.) This system applies only in the first ten rounds. In round 11 and later, any money given to a single player beyond $100k is applied against the pool. Sloting isn't "hard", but teams who pay overslot to one player must trim payments elsewhere or suffer a large tax.

The obvious effect of this is that MLB has capped draft spending. The intent is probably to make the draft a matter of talent rather than signability while reducing the cost of signing new players. Since draftees have lost most of their negotiating leverage to demand large bonuses, most will have to settle for a price very near what their slot is assessed at or not sign at all.

Signability concerns haven't gone away. Athletes considering strong college offers, especially those drafted in rounds where slot value is smaller, may look unsignable. Likewise, some players may decide to play another year of college baseball rather than take a $150k bonus to sign with an MLB team. Teams will no longer be able to afford to pay lots of money to these players to get them to sign. However, signability looks like a reduced concern for MLB clubs.

I suspect that the net effect of this will be that most players sign for an amount that is very near to the value of their draft slot. I'm sure it's a lot of fun for players, agents, and clubs to haggle over this, but the fact is that most draftees opportunity costs for signing are very low, and they will simply accept the amount of money that MLB effectively dicates via the draft pool.

Draftees can argue for more, but most won't get much. If a club's pool is $10m, they can go $500k over without losing a draft pick, and that $500k costs the team $875k. Otherwise, the team has to leave another draftee unsigned, or signed at a lower rate, to afford a higher bonus demand. I don't see this happening often if slot values are calculated well.

Of course, I could be wrong about that. What sorts of strategies emerge with this new regulation remains to be seen. One possibility is that signablitity become a new tactic for draftees. Here's a scenario: a club wants extra money to throw at draftees, so it makes a strong pre-draft arrangement with a draftee to take him in the 6th round and pay him x dollars for it. x will be well below the player's slot value, but well above the value of the slot where the player would expect to be drafted. The surplus (slot value minus x) can then be applied to other signees' bonuses. Some of this is sure to happen, and some clubs will probably punt a couple of late round picks, taking guys they are willing not to sign to use that slot money for a better talent. How much this will happen remains to be seen.

Will the new draft pool system hurt small market teams? Those who've thought that it will seem to think that small market teams benefit from being able to throw money at talented players with large signing demands. A representative scenario that benefits a small market team involves a talented player with a large signing demand falling from the first to the second round where a small market team can sign with a handsome bonus. The bonus demand causes him to fall, which makes him available to the small market team that can't afford free agents. This scenario certain benefits the small market team. However, it's hardly representative of what happens with guys who have high signing demands, and therefore, not really an argument against the CBA. While high demand, high talent players fall a small market teams, they also fall to the Red Sox. It's hasty, to say the least, to suppose that high demand players typically reward teams with less money.

The reality of the draft is that the other 29 teams are picking about 29 times out of 30 and this severely limits the ability to use money to acquire talent. If anything, I would think that the ability of a draftee to make signing demands hurt small market teams who need to be able to meet them with limited funds, while the Yankees, Red Sox, Phillies, and other large market teams can meet those demands with comparably greater resources.

If I am right that most players will sign near their slot value, it won't hurt small market team's ability to get good talent in the draft. If anything, the system should mean that the best talents go to the highest picks and guys falling due to signability will be reduced a lot. Hence, insofar as small market teams are bad and get good draft picks, they should benefit in terms of getting talent and not having to pay for it.

Harder to assess is how the additional available funds will affect them. Assuming the draft pool reduces the amount of baseball operations money sent to the draft, freed resources will probably go to free agents. This is certain to create some inflation in the free agent market. Hence, teams will need to pay more for free agents, but will also pay less for young talent. Will that harm or help small market teams? My guess is that, regardless of whether it's good or bad, the overall effect is pretty small.

Quick Thoughts

Quick baseball thoughts...

A Trip to the AFL

I made pilgrimage to the Arizona Fall League. It was an amazing experience. Aside from an announcer, the whole time was free of the noises and distractions that, for me, detract from the ballpark experience. Plus, I was right next to a scout and got to pick his brain on various baseball topics. He was a really nice guy who just liked to talk baseball, so he would basically tell me anything. Except whether Bryce Harper is as big an asshole as people say. To that, he said "I don't know, and I won't comment."

Speaking of Harper

I didn't get to see him play. He had the day off. I have a picture of him standing next to Mike Trout, talking during pregame warm ups.

On the continued subject of Harper, dude is killing the AFL right now. Despite that, Alex Hassan and Tyson Gillies continue to get lots of starts and Harper gets occasional days off to accommodate them. Hassan is an evil Duke graduate who is 23 years old and sucks at hitting AFL pitchers. Gillies, aslo 23, is a former Mariner who went to Philly in the "We didn't give up shit for Cliff Lee" deal. Harper is 19 and his AFL slugging percentage (.613) is greater than the sum of theirs.

The M's Off-season

Dave Cameron posted an off-season plan that includes getting Joey Votto from the Reds. I'm not saying it can't be done, but I think Dave hasn't put together the package that brings him back. Has any financial solvent, somewhat contending team ever traded away an MVP caliber player on a team friendly contract during the off-season? (the proposal, in case you're not going to read it, is Pineda, League, Figgins with M's eating $16m in salary, Halman, and Triunfel for Votto and a catching prospect.)

I tend to like Dave, even if he's prickly. But the trade doesn't pass the "why am I so willing to part with this for that" test. His argument that the trade makes sense--see a comment about a third of the way down the page, at 11:27am--is that the Reds save about $16m in payroll while losing about 4 WAR, which translates to a 1 WAR loss, since a $16m is about 3 WAR. He thinks the Reds can justify this on the value of Pineda's 2014-16 performance, which they would control. Then, the added prospects, Chone Figgins salary dump, and some other stuff are supposed to make this pretty seriously enticing. But my gut reaction is that I don't care much about the rest of the trade chips, and Pineda's 2014-16 are a long way away in a high variance player.

From the proposal, one would think that the M's won 79 games last season while the Reds won just 67, not the other way around. Let me just give that a whirl: it suggests that the M's should trade an established MLB talent for young prospects, and that the Reds should be people that would be willing hear offers. Felix and League. What would you want for Felix and League? Alonso and Mesoraco? Honestly, that's too much. But you could have one of the two and some other not-ready prospects. I would prefer Mesoraco because the organization has no catching prospects.

Anyway, free agents I'd like to see the M's pursue include Grady Sizemore, Josh Willingham, and Chris Capuano. Sizemore is obvious. Per plate appearance, he was the best center fielder besides Jones and Beltran over the last decade. Willingham is injury prone, but a very good hitter when healthy. He should be reasonably priced, since his real role is DH. Which is where I want the M's to put him. He's also right handed, and the M's need a quality RHB to face left handed pitching next season. He's played in pitchers parks and succeed, so Safeco won't hurt him too much. Not sure what the salary demands would be, but I think he works for us okay. Capuano seems pretty obvious to me. He's a lefty. He gets a lot of swinging strikes. He has decent control. He's a little fly ball prone, but 42% isn't horrible, and half his games would be in Safeco. He studied economics at Duke, which pretty much guarantees he's a selfish dick, but I just want to use him for his arm.

MLB leaves money on the Table

Major League Baseball has been the most forward thinking of all major sports regarding internet distribution of it's product. While MLB.TV is imperfect, most especially because of blackout restrictions, but also because the overall quality suffers some in comparison with cable, the simple availability of streaming baseball on the internet far surpasses anything available to football fans, for example.

Right now is a good time to mention that MLB.TV only covers live games during the regular season. You need to send MLB another small payment for the playoff games. (edit: a friend points out that Postseason.TV is not a full broadcast of the game, but a somewhat more limited beast that provides several camera angles and audio.) And unless you live outside the US and Canada, there's a special hitch here: MLB sold the rights to stream the World Series and the ALCS over the internet--and they sold those rights to someone with no intention of making them available outside of a television broadcast. (At least so far as I know. I would think that MLB would advertise it some other outlet were streaming the playoffs, because increasing attention to those outlets only serves to increase the price MLB can charge for those rights next year. I'll proceed on the assumption that ESPN3 isn't going to give me the World Series.)

This playoff blackout seems pretty dumb to me. MLB benefits from maximizing exposure, but blackout restrictions reduce exposure. Moreover, it looks like MLB is just leaving money on the table. Almost none of the people who would buy streaming playoffs are also people with cable subsciptions, since there's no need to pay for the internet service if you're already buy a service that will deliver the content. And none of the people who would buy the content are likely to buy a cable subscriptions just to see the playoffs; these people know what they're missing in not having cable, and have decided that it isn't worth $75 a month. All this means that there are potential paying customers who aren't being offered what they want, and whose money will go to something other than baseball.

I don't get it. I get why cable companies are willing to pay a premium for internet distribution rights they won't even exercise: it's a way of protecting their monopoly on entertainment distribution. Cable companies know that the internet is a serious threat. Up until recently, Americans had little choice but to pay a large sum of money for cable subscriptions that largely consisted of false value-added--most cable subscribers use only a fraction of their available channels. A handful of channels--ESPN, CNN, a half dozen or so others, and clear reception of major networks--are what people pay for. However, I'm willing to bet that the per-subscriber value that ESPN and company receive from cable companies isn't what ESPN could charge to individuals for an internet only subscription. How many Americans would pay $12 a month to watch ESPN over the internet? Does Cox Cable cable pay ABC-Disney (owners of ESPN) $12 per subscriber to deliver ESPN to homes? (Okay, granted, cable companies pay their own operating costs and ESPN would have to pay the costs of internet distribution themselves, but I'm still wagering that ESPN could make a lot of money here...) Here's the point: TV companies are protecting a monopoly by buying internet rights they don't use, and you can see why they do it.

But MLB doesn't have an obvious incentive to cooperate, unless cable companies are really shelling out not to sell MLB over the internet. The reason they don't have the incentive is the exposure issue. Just as cable companies are sensitive to a long-term don't-let-the-internet-take-your-subscribers strategy, so MLB must be senstive to a long-term maximize-exposure-to-baseball strategy. This is something they seem to understand, and sell, in MLB.TV, but I wish they would follow it to its logical conclusion, and sell me the world series this year. I don't have cable, and won't pay $150 to get it just for 4-7 baseball games. Looks like I will be following the world series on a score ticker this year. Hey, it's free! (But only because it's not enough product that you can sell it.)

M's at the Deadline

The Mariners are no longer contenders, and I'm glad we at least got that sorted out before trying to tie up a rental bat.

Anyway, here's what the Mariners have that they might trade before the deadline, in order of who I think will provide the greatest return.

Felix Hernandez. Signed through 2014, owed $58M; 10 WAR since 2010. The Mariners could ask for the sky and get it if they actually traded Felix, but it is extremely unlikely to happen.

Doug Fister. Through 2015, arbitration begins in 2013, 5.7 WAR since 2010. Fister is actually a good pitcher, and he's improved in the last year. His xFIP from 2010 to now is 3.99. A lot of his value has to do with years beyond 2011, which will be cheap, and Fister is a fine number four or okay number 3 starter. Jack Zduriencik has said that he's open to offers for Fister and Vargas, though a trade of either seems unlikely.

Jason Vargas. Two years of arbitration remaining, 4.2 WAR since 2010. In my mind, Vargas is better than Fister. In reality, Fister is better than Vargas. But when you get right down to it, there's not a lot of difference between these two. A lot of their value is located in post-2011 cheapness, and neither is the sort of guy you look forward to giving the ball in game four of your seven game series. Whether a team would want Fister or Vargas might be tied to handedness.

Eric Bedard. 2012 Free Agent. 1.4 WAR in 2011 (did not pitch in 2010.) He's hurt right now, but not in a throwing part. Given a choice of Mariners pitchers to put in your playoff rotation, you'd rather have Beddard than either of the above two, but the M's basically have to trade him because he's a free agent in 2012. This means the M's take what they can get for him.

Adam Kennedy. 2012 Free Agent. He's the only bat on the list. He can play every position in the infield except SS and he's a league average hitter. He and Bedard are almost certain to be playing for a contender sometime soon.

Brandon League. One year of arbitration remaining, 1.3 WAR since 2010. He's a reliever, but people get stupid about their pens in a playoff race.

Honestly, I don't expect to get too excited about what the Mariners get in trade for the guys they trade. For Vargas or Fister, you could get a decent prospect, but the chance that said prospect out-produces the pitcher you sent away are actually small; you're not going to get a high ceiling guy for one of them, so why bother? Bedard is better than Jarrod Washburn was, but the injury risks probably make him about the same value. (Wash got us Mauricio Robles and Luke French.) League buys even less than Bedard and it creates a hole in the pen if we trade him, so trading him creates problems in 2012.

Speaking of 2012, does anyone feel hopeful about the M's that year? I don't, but we're a whole offseason away.

Sample Samples, Evolving Narratives

We all know better than to overreact to small samples, and we all overreact to small samples anyway. It's human nature, and we're only human.

The narrative on Justin Smoak is a nice illustration. The former Cape Code League MVP was the most widely owned minor league hitter in fantasy baseball on April 1 of last year, which illustrates how huge expectations were. He arrived with Texas, showed good plate discipline but not much power, and when he arrived in Seattle, he was thought a blue chip prospect, if not quite the prospect Jesus Montero was. Smoak was horrible with Seattle in his first month or so there, and returned to AAA until late September. His work in September was dead sexy, but it was only a couple of weeks. To start the season, M's fans opinions ranged from hopeless to cautiously optimistic. Fans Projections at Fangraphs gave him a .352 wOBA, but you couldn't find a sensible Mariners fan willing to endorse that expectation in print.

I doubt you can find a Mariners fan that doesn't think Smoak is the most exciting thing on the team right now, with the possible exception of Michael Pineda. Just yesterday, Dave Cameron said that Justin Smoak makes the M's line up "not atrocious." That sounds like faint praise, but it's pretty telling that a guy who was inches from bust is now a difference making bat. How quickly the pendulum of our expectations swings.

What should our expectations be? When you're not day dreaming in Seattle, or being an impatient fantasy baseball manager, or just being realistic but recognizing your cognitive limits to be realistic precisely, what number should you stick on Smoak now?

In walks some good Sabermetrics. This article by Pizza Cutter tells us what we need to know to shape our expectations. There's a handy equation, if you know your correlation coefficient and the number of observations you've made, that tells you how much to regress your observations to the mean; it is r = x / (x + c). X is the number of observations, r is the coefficient, and c is constant. Pizza cutter gives us the values of x for r = .7 for most of the numbers you like to know.

A little math gets us to c = 86 for BB%. This means that if you take 86 of your pre-season expected PA and weight that against your observations this season, you get your properly regressed rest-of-season expectation, i.e., a true-talent level. Or, (86 * BB% + observed BB)/(86 + observed PA) = true talent BB%.

.372

That's the wOBA you should pin on Smoak right now. Or, if you were the typical fan, that's your new number. When you're being rational. I figured that number out by deriving c for BB%, K%, 1B%, 2B%,* and HR%, and then crunching his wOBA from there.