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Of all the things there are to worry about with this team, Fowler should be nowhere near the top of the list, IMO. Yet he keeps coming up as a perceived problem.
I would like to see a list of worries larger than Fowler telling FO where he should play, being way over-priced versus production in a spot that could be filled with a younger and less expensive player that would put up the same numbers or better. And speaking of that he’ll be blocking, for years, a spot where the organization has great prospects over and above the MLB-ready ones we have now. I worry.
He was signed to fill the lead-off spot for years, that’s already a no-go, plus all the leadership he provides walks in last to the clubhouse and beats everyone out the door… first. That tells me his leadership isn’t really up to snuff. His defense is nowhere and his bat is marginal, at best, but he’ll probably advise the FO where he wants to bat in the order. I worry.
Face it, the FO signed an albatross that has little trade value due to the overpay. The money we’re spending on DF could be used more wisely elsewhere. He’s getting an all-star salary, we’re getting far less than AS production. The main worry is that this will get worse as the contract goes on….. and on. I worry.
You’d have to drop acid to see this as a pretty picture. Perhaps some are.
14NyquisT
I would like to see a list of worries larger than Fowler telling FO where he should play,
Mozeliak’s quotes:
Jedd Gyorko will be given every opportunity at third base. Can move players around to keep all fresh. When asked about moving positions, Dexter Fowler told him he prefers right field. Marcell Ozuna is “most compatible” with left. Randal Grichuk plays all three.
How is that Fowler telling the front office where he should play. I see a very specific word —> PREFERS
14NyquisT
And speaking of that he’ll be blocking, for years, a spot where the organization has great prospects over and above the MLB-ready ones we have now. I worry.
Who are these great prospects that are blocked? Harrison Bader and Tyler O’Neill aren’t the type of prospects that you can pencil into the lineup in 2018. They will be brought along like Grichuk and Piscotty before them. The others provide a lot of depth (Mercado, Garcia, Arozarena) but they all need full years at AAA to really establish themselves as prospects. I like our outfield depth, but they are far from being the next Oscar Taveras.
I’ve only said it several times already, but I suppose I need to repeat a very simple proof that WAR value is exponential and not linear.
Go put 27 2-WAR players into a 9 player lineup.
Then go put 9 6-WAR players into the same lineup.
Fowler is not worth his contract or even close. The value for contracts is with superstars and the six years of team control.
As a connection to this thread, hosmer is mediocre and moustakas doesnt qualify.
Paying millions for mediocrity (or worse) only makes your team mediocre (or worse).
Pads…. so we’ll have 5 OF prospects fully ready for ’19 (your words). Where do they play?
Also: Ozuna’s arm makes him a better RF than LF. Players will take the extra base on Fowler’s wing.
brianp, have you considered taking your case to Fangraphs? They have some pretty good analytic minds, but perhaps you can educate them on the errors of their ways – or at least open a dialogue so you can understand what they did and why.
For those of us who may not be as into how the sausage is made, is a practical recommendation to cite bWAR instead of fWAR?
Honestly I mostly just use the generic WAR on contract discussions because it gets my points across.
I hate dealing with the politics of how the numbers are made. Simple works for me.
I quoted fangraphs here because pads likes them. Which WAR you use is mostly irrelevant because they will be relatively close.
The $$ value that fangraphs uses is basically the linear value they get for WAR times the number of WAR the player earns… so like 8.5 million or whatever the number is this year times 2.7 in fowlers case.
It is a blatantly false number as I illustrated very simply.
As for why I dont write fangraphs and/or try to make a name for myself, I dont have the time in my life to do the masters level math involved or write the 100 page paper explaining the system involved in finding a players true value. Also, each year the math will be different so above a certain level (say… 7.5-8 WAR) the numbers get so ridiculous that all you really need to say is “he is worth more than half of individial teams’ payrolls”.
I mean really… So much of it comes down to personal style and valuations (it can’t be all math… Choices are always made and we are human, not robots).
I refuse to deal with the politics and frankly don’t give a damn. Although if you want to get me a job for the cardinals with your contacts probably wouldn’t fight all that hard 🙂
I’m good with “it is exponential” and the quick math I can do in my head. For now anyway it is definitely better than what is out there in the public domain.
To better explain my attitude… I won a world strategy gaming title twenty years ago. I know I’m right and I’ve beaten some really smart people over the years in different realms because I see stuff like this.
*shrugs*
Brianpnoonan…for clarity’s sake, are you saying a guy like Trout is worth $100 million plus a year if a guy like Fowler is worth $16 million a year…or are you saying Trout is really worth $100+M and Fowler is worth more like a rookie contract?
I guess what I’m saying is, does your system advocate greater overall payroll to accommodate these megastars’ value or are you proposing that value as a proportion of the current pie should be divided in a very different way than it currently is?
Um telling Fangraphs they are wrong isn’t a fact BrainP, it is your opinion and my guess is their baseball minds prob have a little more knowledge on the subject!
Yes, trout is worth that. He would never get it for the same reason lebron never would. You cant make a full team that way. But what is he worth? His 10-WAR years he was probably “worth” roughly half of the total salary structure in baseball (which is why I say above a certain point the numbers get stupid… And in some ways that matters and in others it doesnt). And his teammates were roughly that much of a negative. He is a perfect example of someone who you see why exponents matter. Put a good team around him and it explodes because he is just that good.
trout as a value he is one of the better ones in the league even at 30 million per year.
Lol… Can of worms… Like I said… Personal style and opinions play a part.
Effectively, for position players or starting pitchers, if you can’t semi-consistently go into the 5-7 WAR range, a free agent will never be worth the money. Exponential value means all the value is at the high end.
If you are paying all the money to mediocre players you are losing value every time.
Relievers are a whole different ball of wax. A 1.5 WAR reliever can be incredibly valuable. So are hitters that say… Crush lefties. Personal styles on how you put together a roster matter.
My “system” pretty much just has a series of rules on “don’t do this”… The rest is situational.
For example… We’ve got an absurd amount of average to slightly above average pitching talent. How you leverage that over the next three years is a matter of your style. Jocketty would have dealt them all away already.
Not cool. The current management has been letting them stagnate… also not cool.Meh… I need to drive to work now 🙂 should have time today but well… Lol
Pray tell, what is this “generic WAR” of which you speak and where can it be referenced?
The interpretation from what I read, is that it does not exist.
Generic WAR… My word for the total WAR value whatever site you are on uses. I could get more specific and anal about my terminology but I really don’t care.
Like I said it doesn’t matter to an extent which one you use… Because of someone is a 5 WAR player on one site he likely is close to that on another.
The math on how they make WAR Values is such a political and nutty thing… You could just average out the WAR values on the sites you prefer and it would be a decent amalgamation and every bit as valid as one site’s mathematical opinion.
Oh and onyx… When I can disprove their math THAT easily? They’re wrong. It isn’t an opinion.
Sorry if I was unclear with my question. Which website here on the internet provides player values for this “total WAR” or “generic WAR” that you reference?
I used fangraphs earlier. I use baseball reference all the time. It doesnt matter in so many ways.
All of the individual sites use their own mathematical formula to calculate it. It is one big mathematical opinion.
Like I said, average them all out.
I just use whichever one on the site I am on currently. I used the term generic to say “it doesnt matter”.
But why would you ever cite Fangraphs, given you are so strongly against their formula?
Or if does not matter, as you say, then why go through all the explanation as to why you believe the formula is wrong?
If it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter.
I find this discussion very confusing.
Pads brought up fangraphs saying fowler was worth 20+ million.
I said their math was faulty as it is based off a linear WAR value model.
Each WAR for their model is worth 8.5 million or whatever the number is this year. So 8.5*2.7 (Fowlers value under their model) is the value they assign him.
I could care less about how they are doing the WAR math. What I care about is how they value him. The math they use is outright wrong.
I illustrated that by pointing out trying to put 27 2- WAR players into a 9 person lineup. Then try it with 9 WAR players.
WAR value is exponential not linear.
I joined the discussion earlier, when Fowler and Heyward were being compared. The differences between the two WAR formulas came to light then.
The gap between Fowler’s 2.7 fWAR and Heyward’s 0.9 fWAR last season looks significant to me. However, in your view, they are both so mediocre that they are comparable.
bWAR for Fowler was 1.6 and Heyward was 2.3. I assume bWAR puts a greater weight on defense, which is why the two are flipped in that comparison.
I am struggling with how numbers calculated to a single decimal point precision are rounded to the point these differences are considered insignificant.
Put another way, if 2.7 and 0.9 are really comparable, the entire WAR measurement would seem to be pretty much worthless – and that had not been my impression to date.
Here is why WAR generally doesn’t matter.
Do they publish the size of the error term? No they do not. I have seen it stated that is as high as +/- 2 WAR. Which means for 90+% of the players it tells you nothing other than they are average.
When you plug 30+ variables into a linear regression model, you typically have a meaningless model. There is so much heteroskedasticity and multicolinearity that you can’t even begin to reduce the error term.
So, in that sense, Brianpnoonan is right – you only truly know when somebody is significantly better than another person, and quite frankly, we don’t need WAR to tell us that.
I’ve mentioned this before on the old site, but there was a Big 3 consulting firm that presented at a conference and proclaimed their model could explain something like 97% of the variation of the stock market. They had so many variables in there nobody knew what was going on. They got LAUGHED out of the conference. Take WAR to any Econometrics or Statistics professor worth a grain of salt and they will get a big chuckle out of it.
But for purposes of these discussion boards, yes, it is easier just to go with the flow than talk about the size of the error term and try to get people to talk about how stupid it is to make a “ballpark adjustment factor” on top of aggregated data.
So, in your opinion, C2016 and brianpnoonan, did Heyward have a better 2017 than Fowler? What measures did you use to answer this?
Without bWAR to elevate Heyward’s defensive value, both fWAR and the offensive comparison seems to be clearly in Fowler’s favor. Same in 2016. (I posted their OPS and OPS+ earlier in this thread.)
I am not trying to be difficult but I have no interest in crawling through formulas. Though I have the capability to do that, I just don’t care. I am simply trying to determine if WAR (as defined by others) is of value in comparing players on an annual basis.
I am getting the impression the answer is “no”, but if that is the case, I do not understand why the same people telling me this are quoting single-season WAR values in these discussions. Can’t have it both ways.
Fowler did. Which I said.
They’re both gigantic holes in the balance sheet though. Having one be less of a waste of money than the other isn’t an accomplishment.
Noonan, I am confused about a couple of things you have mentioned.
1. You stated that it is better to have 9 6.0 WAR players than 27 2.0 WAR players. Isn’t the only way to accumulate WAR by playing? If so, then you could only get 9 2.0 WAR players on the field at a time. Obviously, having 9 6.0 WAR players is better than 9 2.0 WAR players.
2. You have also alluded to having more high WAR players would result in a better team. Since you referenced Trout, I looked up the Angels to compare to the Cardinals. Using Baseball Reference WAR, in the last 2 years, the Angels could have arguably outperformed the Cardinals in WAR based on the individuals’ WAR, but they finished with worse records in both years. I know I probably need to compare more teams but it is not starting off too well.
1. Thats the point I am making. You cant place 27 2-WAR players into a lineup. Thus, a 6 WAR player is not worth three times what a 2 WAR player is worth. He is worth SIGNIFICANTLY more. Not only does he produce 3 times as many more wins, he is also harder to acquire in the extreme.
2. Players don’t exist in a vacuum. Team war is cumulative amongst the players. Individual WAR is for contracts. The balance and interaction between those two is how you build a roster.
When you are negotiating contracts, you are comparing to individuals, not teams. This is also why I say at the higher end, the numbers become stupid (and to a certain extent irrelevant). Does it really matter if a contract is 50 or 100 million outperformed by whichever metric you use? Not really. The guy had a good year and individual games are not won by this type of math. The math on how good a player was in comparison to average at that point doesn’t really matter.
What you want is a lot of guys that are bargains compared to their contract. VALUE. Guys that move the needle for your team.
Superstars. And young players who are above average.
If you waste free agent money (specifically on long term deals) on slightly above average players when you have this thing called a farm system, guess what kind of team you get?
Slightly above average. Which equates to not winning divisions or world series.
This is why I am so vehement that you NEVER sign players like fowler or moustakas or hosmer to a long term deal. There is no value there. They are not good enough and don’t have the talent to outperform their contract.
But your point is wasted on the Cardinals because they won’t sign any WAR superstart. They won’t give the money or the years. You can advocate signing Machado to a 4 year 200M contract but it won’t happen at least with the Cards. You can probably get him for 300M for 10 years but they Cards won’t do that either. So are left with the bad contracts for mediocre war players and/or under control above avg war players when they have them.
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