FG on Fox: When Everyone Goes For It
The White Sox are going for it. With the additions of Jeff Samardzija and David Robertson — in addition to prior signings Adam LaRoche and Zach Duke — the Pale Hose have signaled to the rest of the American League Central that they’re not content to rebuild anymore. They might have only won 73 games a year ago, but with Chris Sale and Jose Abreu in the prime of their careers, the White Sox don’t want to sit around and dream about the future anymore. They want to win while their stars are still stars, so they’ve decided to make a run at the postseason next year.
There’s only one small problem; almost everyone everyone else in the American League has apparently made the same decision. No one is rebuilding anymore, especially not in the American League. Okay, that’s a slight exaggeration; the Astros and Twins still seem to realize that they’re probably not going to the World Series next year. They’re spending money in free agency, but they’re not sacrificing significant parts of their futures in order to make short-term upgrades. The 13 other AL teams? They have no problems trading the future to upgrade their 2015 chances.
And this race for the now is creating unprecedented parody across the league. Take a look at the current WAR forecasts — via the Steamer projections found on FanGraphs — for the 15 teams in the American League.
Dave is the Managing Editor of FanGraphs.
“And this race for the now is creating unprecedented parody across the league.”
Just waiting for a whole batch of posts from “Ruben Amaro Jr.” 😉
BANKNOTES INDUSTRIES
“creating unprecedented parody across the league”
*since about November, when Cistulli callously pulled NotGraphs away from us
My college newspaper made this exact error. In a headline, and several times throughout an article about satire in Big Ten football.
Who will watch the watchmen? Who will edit the editors?
Last paragraph before the link, “parody” should be “parity” unless you’re making some kind of meta commentary on the league.
I think it’s a Freudian slip.
It may have been a typo, but it is perfect as-written. The extra wild card team combined with the Royals’ WS run now has (almost) everybody “going for it.”
We might not see any full-scale “fire sales” for a while. At least until fire sales become the trendy new market anomoly.
If Dayton Moore can do it, why can’t we?
Because he was luckier than you will ever be.
Dave – is there any indication that every team is “going for it” simply because the talent pool is better? Anecdotally speaking, it seems like there are more good baseball players than ever before. For instance,every team seems to have at least a couple of bullpen guys that throw in the mid-upper 90s.
My thought is that a better talent pool may narrow the gap between the 1st and 10th team in each league, causing more teams to believe they can make incremental gains and be a contender.
I don’t understand this logic. Unless the talent is more evenly distributed than in the past, it doesn’t matter whether it is anecdotally better or not.
Maybe I should have made it more clear that I’m thinking about the quantity of good players. Because only 25 players can be on a at one time, if there are more good players at a given time, they will inherently be more evenly distributed.
“Inherently”. Not the case.It obviously depends on the distribution of players. More talent just shifts replacement hire than before.
With limited roster spots, if the variation in talent becomes smaller and the total talent pool grows, its pretty hard to see how more parity isn’t an inherent effect. Some teams could stash away more replacement level to average players in AAA (like the huge farm systems of several teams did earlier in baseball history), but an effective free market fights against that.
It would be interesting to see the variance in player WAR by year to see if there is any truth to this.
Not sure what “better” means in this context.
I grant that it certainly seems like modern oceanic schools fishing. They all got science in topo maps and matin, info and historical feeding trends and internal analyses, and technology in fish sonar and deep sea trawlers with ginormous engines letting out and then hauling in vasty numbers of water dwellers without any effort to discriminate among species. It’s not, or not so much, the POOL being better; it’s the bigger CATCH.
Anyway I don’t buy that this is motivated by some “better talent pool”. The amount and quality of info franchises have available to them (should they choose) tells them there’s tantalizingly little difference between an individual superstar and what a team might cobble together from this or that. Instead, I think it’s motivated by the fact that this year’s World Series was played between the first WC in of one league and the second WC of the other, and even then the other won. The idea that almost every team is capable of at least gaining a WC position then going on to troll the play-offs, that’s gotta be irresistible for owners just this side of being 6 feet under and organizations who need to impress their fan bases they’re serious about winning.
And to that, add into the mix of teams seeking glory the one franchise that doesn’t even need to win, just to keep the ivy looking green and the dimples in their lovable loser cheeks rouged, no wonder the forces have conspired to level the field.
I think it could be argued that in addition to the Twins and Astros, Oakland and Tampa Bay are also not “pushing their chips into the middle of the table” and “going for it”. Oakland has shed more of their top talent than they have replaced, at least to all appearances, and as far as I can see, Tamp Bay did not do a darn thing this week.
But even granting this, that’s still eleven teams acting as though they all have a great shot at one of the five playoff spots. And that’s really, really good for baseball.
Speaking of, we need new analogies for “going for it”. I think I’ve read some variation of “pushing chips into the middle” in about 6,800 articles in the last 72 hours. Open call – marshal those journalism and English lit degrees – they’re not just for framing anymore! We need a new phrase to denote “trying to contend”!
“Shooting their load” or “throwing caution to the wind”
Those two actions are not mutually exclusive.
Just don’t shoot your load into the wind. Jim Croce cautioned against that I think.
These things, and more, are what happens when The Pale Hose goes for it.
So I’m struggling to find the usefulness of WAR projection then. Is everyone but the White Sox, Twins, & and Astros potentially a 90 win team?
Don’t use WAR to project record, jsut use it as a measurement of projected “true talent.” For projected records, use their 2015 BaseRuns projections.
Remember, there are still a number of people unsigned that once they do sign, will push some teams higher. Also, so teams may yet still decide to punt, and sell off some players. At this point in the offseason, it seems like the team WAR distribution is almost always going to be more even than by opening day.
There’s also unexpected injuries and just plain random variance that is going to cause some teams to underperform. And, as a result of that, some teams may choose to punt at the trade deadline, making their second-half performance even worse. Shit happens, and that’s the difference between projections and actual record.
How about the NL? How many teams seem to be “going for it?”
I’d say maybe the Braves, Phillies, Reds, Rockies, and Dbacks are not. It’s a fine line, though, and in some cases (e.g. Rockies) it’s always difficult to understand what they’re doing.
I would add that it’s tough to tell what the Padres are doing also.
Is “goes for it” the right phrase for this environment? From your article, it seems everyone’s “just trying to hang around” more likely.
Although, the White Sox are making move to “go for just hanging around,” it would appear.
In any case, it’s a pretty interesting market in baseball right now, and this piece couples nicely with what you wrote earlier on the new trade market and the value of “average.”
wait, the A’s are going for it?
They’re saying they are, and they’re saying the moves they’ve made prove it. Which suggests they’re not done making moves, and/or their internal projection systems are at odds with the public ones. Or they’re putting a brave face on things (aka
lyingmarketing the 2015 team to their advertisers and fanbase).How disappointing. Almost all the teams are trying to win.
It’s kind of amazing, isn’t it? And yet even more amazing that in the recent past we’ve tolerated teams (Marlins, I’m looking at you) that clearly weren’t.