Is the End Near for Stars-and-Scrubs?

There are competing theories on how, assuming an imperfect supply both of resources and assets, to best build a team. For instance, construct a roster with stars and scrubs or pursue a more balanced approach? Chicago White Sox general manager Rich Hahn — and, I believe, most general managers — are entrenched in the balanced-approach camp.

Hahn has generally been praised this offseason as he’s embarked on a rebuild project, and deservedly so. He added the game’s No. 2 overall prospect according to Baseball America and MLB.com, in Yoan Moncada and three potential impact arms in Lucas Giolito, Michael Kopech and Reynaldo Lopez in trades that sent Chris Sale to the Red Sox and Adam Eaton to the Nationals.

In making those deals, Hahn traded two players on team-friendly deals, in their primes, who accounted for nearly 40% of the team’s total WAR production last season. Hahn hopes that, in return, the trades yield the core of a team that enjoys a greater breadth of talent. Said Hahn recently to MLB.com:

“The last few years we’ve had a very top-heavy roster and the reason we haven’t won had nothing to do with the quality players at the top end of that roster,” Hahn said. “When the time comes that we are in a position to contend again, we are going to be approaching that with ideally a much deeper, more thoroughly balanced roster than what we had. It had to do with what was going on with not just one through 25, but one through 35 or 40. So now as we approach this, we have to build that organizational quality depth, not just insurance policies, but real high-caliber depth.”

The end is perhaps not quite yet here for the stars-and-scubs approach. The Angels have Mike Trout and everybody else and hope to contend with that arrangement. The Marlins have Giancarlo Stanton and Christian Yelich but one of the game’s thinnest farm systems.

The White Sox could have elected to pursue a stars-and-scrubs approach in 2017. The top-end talent on their roster last season could hold its own with any in the game. Sale, Eaton and Jose Quintana — for whom it seems to be more a question of when rather than if he’s traded — accounted for 16 wins last season. They compared favorably or were demonstrably superior to the top-three WAR producers among all six 90-plus-win teams in the majors last season. Those six teams also happened to double as the winners of all six MLB divisions.

But more and more teams seem to prefer spreading risk. The White Sox are opting for a more balanced approach, what Hahn describes as trying to reach a “critical mass” of players. Rather than count on a small group of players to remain healthy and offer elite production, opting for a breadth of talent — even with a lesser top-end roster — spreads risk and allows a team greater flexibility in the face of a variety of potential scenarios.

Most of us are probably better off investing in an index fund rather than betting on a small number of stocks. While the Eaton-Sale-Quintana troika was great, it also accounted for 50.6% of Chicago’s WAR last season. The top-three WAR contributors from last season’s six division winners, meanwhile, ranged from 30.9% (Cubs) to 43.3% (Rangers). Four of the six teams, received less than 40% of their production from their top three players.

The White Sox simply didn’t have the depth around their core of stars, didn’t believe they could augment the core well enough to compete. They entered the offseason with one of the weaker farm systems in the game.

The White Sox rebuild isn’t aimed just at improving their farm system, it’s not just about moving assets like Sale and Eaton at peak value — players who might not be as productive or even under contract during the club’s next postseason run. The rebuilding philosophy is also geared toward creating a more talented but less top-heavy roster, as Hahn noted.

Every team must create such depth through their farm system, prudent trades and free-agent signings but having assets like Eaton and Sale to flip at peak value gave the White Sox the luxury not only of hunting for impact talent but of potentially improving their depth of talent.

Perhaps a different front office and ownership group would have kept Sale and Eaton and tried to build around them through free agency, perhaps another group would have tried to find more valuable scrubs to add to the former White Sox stars. And there was undervalued talent available this offseason in corner bats and low-velocity arms. Joe Blanton and Jorge de la Rosa remain available.

But it seems, more and more often, that teams are abandoning the stars-and-scrubs approach in favor of depth and versatility. Teams are preferring to spread risk rather than concentrate it.