A Guide To The Off-Season
As the off-season begins to warm up, we thought it would be helpful to provide you with a handy schedule of important dates to circle, and how they affect the timing of how the winter will play out.
November 9-11: GM Meetings
These are going on right now, which is why there are more rumors than usual going on. These are more procedural than substantive, as the GMs will also talk about instantly replay and other non-roster issues. You probably won’t see Roy Halladay traded tomorrow, for instance, but a few teams may leave Chicago with an understanding that they can make a run at him if they want to.
November 10-18: Various Awards Announced
You may care about these. I don’t.
November 18-19: Owners Meetings
Good ideas will be put forth and then tabled until future years. Nothing will happen, but you’ll have to read stories about that nothing that’s not happening.
November 20: Free Agency Begins
The exclusive negotiating window for teams to retain their own players ends, and players who have filed for free agency become eligible to sign with the Yankees.
November 20: 40-man Rosters Finalized
Teams must also finalize their 40 man rosters by this date in order to keep eligible prospects from being snatched up in the Rule 5 draft.
December 1: Arbitration Offer Deadline
It is the last day for teams to offer arbitration to their free agents. Any player who signs before this date is an automatic offer, granting the former team compensation for signing. As such, you won’t see too many contracts made official until after this date.
December 7-10: Winter Meetings
The annual gathering of front offices, media members, and job seekers for what usually turns out to be 72 hours of rumors and one hour of excitement. Expect Scott Boras to hold a bunch of ridiculous press conferences. Also, the Rule 5 draft takes place.
December 12: Contract Tender Deadline
For players eligible for arbitration (but not free agency), this is the last date to tender an offer and retain their contractual rights for 2010. Players who may receive an arbitration award greater than their value (I’m looking at you, Garrett Atkins) will be non-tendered and made free agents. This secondary pool of potentially available players may also serve to keep teams on the sideline in free agency, as the supply increases after several weeks.
January 5-15: Salary Aribtration Filing.
This is where Felix Hernandez will ask for the deed to the state of Washington in exchange for his services in 2010. The Mariners will counter by offering free dinner at the Space Needle. Arguing will ensue.
Dave is the Managing Editor of FanGraphs.
“November 20: Free Agency Begins
The exclusive negotiating window for teams to retain their own players ends, and players who have filed for free agency become eligible to sign with the Yankees.”
good stuff
Finally . . . things to write in my day-planner. I knew it would come in handy eventually.
I don’t think the Mariners are quite that cheap. They’ll counter with the Palouse.
I’d rather have the dinner.
The Palouse is where your dinner comes from, so technically…
Do you honestly think Felix would go anywhere east of Issaquah???
“January 5-15: Salary Arbitration Filing.
This is where Felix Hernandez will ask for the deed to the state of Washington in exchange for his services in 2010. The Mariners will counter by offering free dinner at the Space Needle. Arguing will ensue.”
I approve of this description.
I love that line as well
When did it not become cool to care about who wins the AL MVP or the Cy Young award? Even the quant jocks should be interested in who voters believe is the best at a particular aspect of the game.
Because they don’t use the statistical alphabet soup that must necessarily dictate who are the best players in the league.
I may not put a whole lot of meaning on the awards, but I do think it’s very interesting and look forward to them. Baseball has a long and storied history of giving out awards to the ‘less deserving’, it’s just as important to the history of the game as the horrible umpiring is. Shall be we replace umps with robots and voters with win shares? Baseball would be a lot less exciting, albeit also less frustrating.
That’s Davespeak for he’s so much smarter than all the voters.
You don’t really have to think you’re smarter than someone to think that you use better methods to measure player value.
what’s a “quant jock”?
I’m assuming that’s short for Quantitative. I’m also assuming that “quant jock” means “person who is smart enough to not use stats that were prevalent in the 1960’s”.
I don’t mind the general sentiment of thinking that these voting systems are outdated and in need of change, but this permeating condescension that the cool kids in the lunchroom should only use quant analysis to decide anything and everything to do with this venerable sport gets old fast.
And then the best defensive player in MLB in 2009 doesn’t win one of the 3 GG at his position/league.
That’s when you realize that the voters don’t care enough to put in the effort to be knowledgable and are basing their votes off reputations.
That’s when you realize that they don’t matter.
The Fielding Bible awards are interesting because people use various methods to measure ability, care about the results, and then vote. Some positions are close calls, some aren’t, but there is transparency and the decisions are defensable.
Dave-
Good article. Loved the bit about Felix and the deeds to Seattle.
Let’s pretend for a second that we (You, me, and the stat-head community) really don’t care about the BBWAA awards. Would you really have written such a detailed article about why they get them wrong? Would it really have generated as much feedback as it did?
Let’s revise that statement. We refuse to respect those awards until they accept the validity of valuation metrics like WAR, and start properly crediting defense and positional difficulty, as opposed to hitting in a lineup with a lot of run production opportunities. We want to care about those awards, and we continue to hold out hope that they’ll evolve.
Or maybe you just genuinely don’t care. Maybe…
I thought the whole point of the “Why do we care?” article was that it was pointless to go crazy about the way awards were handed out. That he valued different things than most of the voters, thought his values were better, but would let the mainstream media come around in its own time.
We might actually be better off without mainstream sportswriters using WAR for a while. If it was easy to use those numbers intelligently there would be no reason to read most of the posts on here. Just click “leaderboards”, sort by WAR, and you know everything about baseball.
I think we just received an early testing point for Dave’s I do not care assertion. Adam Jones gets a gold glove while Gutierrez does not.
And I didn’t care.
Really, I didn’t even flinch. I just don’t really care about the opinions of the uninformed. And, sadly, that’s exactly what gold glove voters are.
“Just click “leaderboards”, sort by WAR, and you know everything about baseball.”
Not necessarily. Dave chose Mauer over Zobrist for best AL player, despite Zobrist’s higher WAR. Of course he’s accounting for the lack of Catcher defense in the formula. But still, you have to use your brain a little.
Also, for ROY voting, I think future expectations should factor into the decision. I’d like to see the award read as something of a launching pad for future MVP’s and Cy Young winners. Not completely, as the performance during the actual rookie year should be the most important factor, but I think some future value should be weighted in the equation.
Lastly, “Why do we care?” was a great article, but think about it- we DO care. We try to rationalize why the awards are bogus, and at the moment they are, but we are constantly trying to bring our take on what constitutes “value” to the mainstream. One day I think they’ll be a shift in how the writers vote, and it will have come from us caring a whole lot and doing everything we can to make them fix their ways.
I think Dave hit the nail on the head there. I do not really care when these awards are given out the way they are but I do find it kind of sad.
*there’ll* be a shift…
whoops, lol.
Also, yes, I almost threw up when I saw Gutierrez denied a GG. I cringed when I saw Andrus denied one, but since everyone loves Jeter so much, it’s understandable that when he FINALLY posts a positive UZR, they wanna go gaga over it.
@ LOGAN:
you misread al dimond’s quote. “Just click “leaderboards”, sort by WAR, and you know everything about baseball” was meant to have a sardonic tone to make a point. al meant that if WAR were an easy stat to understand and that anyone could use it because it trumped all other reason or stats, then there would be no reason to consider all factors.
the point being, sports writers mishandle, misdiagnose or ignore the information at their disposal now, so why complicate the idiocy further by adding another stat to be misappropriated?
“January 5-15: Salary Aribtration Filing.
This is where Felix Hernandez will ask for the deed to the state of Washington in exchange for his services in 2010. The Mariners will counter by offering free dinner at the Space Needle. Arguing will ensue. ”
Tee-hee. I didn’t notice the byline on the article, and when I read that line, I thought “Dave. It’s got to be Dave Cameron.”, and, well, I was right.
Very funny, Dave.
And, yeah. The gold gloves just don’t do it for me. MVP and Cy Young I do care about – I think those awards have meaning and they are voted on in interesting ways.
The Gold Gloves are not taken very seriously by their own voters. Look at how little discussion there is. So… Why should I take them seriously? I just ignore them.