The Opening Bell
Rian Watt will now be contributing regularly to FanGraphs. This represents his opening salvo for the site.
I read last week that 100% of the S&P 500’s gains over the last quarter-century have come between 4:00 pm and 9:30 am, Eastern Standard Time. These are the hours during which the market is closed. For the last 25 years, in other words, you would likely have been better off buying at close and selling at open every day than bothering one bit about trading stocks outside those times.
This fact astonished me.
It also caused me to wonder who the heck would learn such a thing and draw from it the conclusion, as the New York Times did, that a sensible thing to do in response would be to sell at open and buy at close every day, and trade no further. This is partially because I have a natural skepticism of any market advice that involves participating in the market in the first place.
But it is also because it seems to me that, if you’re going to play the stock market, you might as well play during the day time, when everyone else is playing, too. The other way might make you money more surely and in larger quantities, but it’s also tremendously boring and does little to liven up the interval between when you’re born and when you die. So why bother at all?
I’ve been writing about baseball for three years now, at The Athletic, at Baseball Prospectus, at FiveThirtyEight, at VICE — and, as of today, at FanGraphs. That isn’t a very long time, really, but it’s long enough to make you think you’ve understood whether you’re part of the problem or not. Until this offseason, I didn’t think that I was part of the problem. I now think that I am.
In the three years I’ve been doing this, I’ve written plenty of articles that have praised teams for taking the long view — for trading two wins now for 10 later; for properly understanding their place on the win curve; for locking up young players on the cheap; for getting a good bargain on dollars per win. I’ve written plenty of articles that have praised teams for being very clever.
Too clever by half. It’s possible that some of the slowness of this offseason to date has come from a small handful of teams simply being unwilling to spend and using the powerful legacy of honest-to-God rebuilds in Houston and Chicago to cover for plain and simple grift. But more of it, I think, has come from a sort of mass intellectual narrowing that has captured, to one extent or another, even the 20 or so teams that are, actually, trying to win.
The dominant orthodoxy rests on three tenets I’ve slowly come to view as noxious:
- That a win in the future is worth some large share of a win in the present;
- That acquiring a good deal is better (or at least more defensible) than acquiring a good player; and
- That baseball is a game primarily for and by the general managers, and not for the fans or for the players.
Look, I get it. I’ve thought those thoughts. I’m the guy who reads process stories for fun. (I write them, too.) I’m the guy whose copy of Moneyball fell apart from use, who got an Econ degree and wrote for Nate Silver. I’m the guy who’s been reading this site for years, and I value cleverness and smarts and marginalism, too.
But folks, we only have so long to live. The closing bell isn’t that many hours away. You’ve already come to understand that, like me, you’ve somehow been condemned to spend some substantial portion of your life caring about this stupid game with the dirt and the bat and the ball with 108 tight stitches of bright red thread gleaming against immaculate white leather.
Wouldn’t you rather watch Aaron Judge hit the everloving shit out of that glittering ball than watch his balding boss, back in the luxury suite, push some paper around? Don’t you do enough paperwork already? Isn’t it time to ditch the marginal and chase the absolute? It sounds, frankly, a lot more fun than the game we have now.
Even the best teams — the teams that are both good and trying to win — suffered from an overabundance of cleverness that led them to believe that somehow $125 million or thereabouts was a good price for Yu Darvish, but $175 million guaranteed was extreme to the extent that it pushed them to the brink of spring baseball without putting his name on a dotted line.
That’s insanity. Pretty much every MLB team could have signed Darvish for $175 million, been better in an instant, and still kept peanut prices exactly where they were. But none of them did it, perhaps in part because one graphed line met another somewhere around age 35 and they together suggested that a combination of Alex Cobb and half a backup catcher might return more value per dollar spent.
But wouldn’t you rather have watched Darvish pitch for your team in 2018 than whoever it is you have as fifth starter now? Sure, he’ll be worse in a few years than he is today. After that he’ll be dead. But maybe in the middle of all of that overpay he’d have won some ballgames for you and yours and give you just a few moments of transcendence along the way. Why do you watch this game?
I don’t know what the game wants that answer to be. As it is, this offseason has left fans considering for entertainment — instead of baseball played on a field under sunshine and on green grass — some half-acknowledged vaudeville of 10-dimensional chess played out in imaginary futures, where each year brings with it a new cast of contenders. The prospect of a 30-team competition for a title in the children’s game has all but vanished — and with it, I think, a great deal of the fun.
You may be reading this and thinking, “Well, yes. But so what?” (You might also think I’m an idiot, but I hope not.) The “so what” is this: I’ve spent too much of the last three years valorizing losing in order to win and praising teams for making marginal improvements when wholesale advances were appropriate. Some of it has been good writing, but too much of it has been far too incautious.
As I start this new chapter at FanGraphs, I’d like to change that — to reexamine the way I write about teams and what they do, and the frames I use to judge them. I’m honored and delighted to join this wonderful community of writers and readers (I was one of you for a very long time), and I am confident that spending time with you will make me a better thinker and analyst. Perhaps it’ll even provide some moments of interest for you, too…
For now, here we are, just a few short weeks away from beginning again. Life is too often lived balanced on the edge of a knife, in moments far too precarious to allow us the time to gather our footing and swing for the fences. But baseball doesn’t have to be played that way. Enough. The opening bell is about to ring. Wouldn’t you rather all 30 teams be out there going for broke?
Rian Watt is a contributor to FanGraphs based in Seattle. His work has appeared at Vice, Baseball Prospectus, The Athletic, FiveThirtyEight, and some other places too. By day, he works with communities around the world to end homelessness.
Welcome to the site. Good that fangraphs got one back from the athletic:).
Thanks to you and all of the rest of you below for the very kind welcome! I’m glad to be here.
This is the article I’ll have in mind when I let my membership lapse.
I don’t mean that as an attack on the author, who I commend for engaging with readers below. Nor as a disparagement of his approach to baseball – there are an infinite number of ways to enjoy the sport, and I’m glad he has found one that works for him – but it’s just not for me.
More specifically, it strikes me as undifferentiated from the overwhelming majority of sports content I can find online, and that’s not what I have come to FanGraphs for.
“Who cares where you are on the win curve?” and “Chicks dig the long ball!” are obviously perfectly valid perspectives – but they are ubiquitous. An angle that I can get from ESPN, or Yahoo Sports, or a seemingly infinite breadth of sites across the internet. Heck, I could go back and read old Mike Lupica and Dan Shaughnessy articles (or new ones, if they are still alive and writing about baseball).
I personally love baseball both on the field AND off the field; I enjoy thinking about a franchise over the long term – including things like the allocation of finite resources, player value versus player cost, etc. And from a less wonky angle, as a fan I DON’T want my team to “just go for it” every year. I appreciate that moving from 77 wins to 81 wins doesn’t increase my enjoyment of the game if it comes at the cost of a move from 84 to 89 wins next year.
For a long time, FanGraphs has been a great place to read about the sport from that analytical angle. That is clearly changing. I had been thinking that some of the recent articles were just frustrated, overwrought responses to a slow off-season. But this is different; this is an explicit choice to hire a writer whose first article, to me, turns away from what I have enjoyed most about the site.
I don’t mean for this to sound petty, and from the comments and votes below, it appears I may be in the minority. That’s good; I hope the people who work here find success and the remaining readers find enjoyment. In the same way I don’t begrudge a franchise owner who runs his/her team to maximize long-term success, I don’t begrudge Appelman if this is what he has to do to maximize ad revenue. Online content publishing is a brutally tough business, and maybe the previous content has proven too nichey and a more boilerplate approach is the answer financially. But I’ll just make one tiny vote with my wallet and look to dedicate my support elsewhere.
The internet is a hydra, and in the same way that FanGraphs’ audience may have initially sprung from what Baseball Prospectus became in the first few years post Nate Silver, I am hopeful this post-Cameron FanGraphs may ultimately open an outlet elsewhere for analytically-inclined authors to flourish.
Until then – So long, and thanks for all the fWAR.
I definitely agree with DBA455, as a fan of a team that has routinely “gone for broke” by trading every prospect for better major league talent (My Seattle Mariners!). I’d rather get GM (or maybe ownership) who have a long term vision for the team.
PS Except it makes no logical sense for the M’s to have traded away all their minor league talent and then not sign a SP this season.
What?
It’s his opening piece and no where does he say to ignore analytics. You’re done supporting the site because in his opening piece he talks about baseball finding a balance between viewing players as long term investments as well as short term returns?
Reactionary much? This is his welcome post. Don’t worry FG, I’ll become a member in place of this drama queen.
Me too.
Welcome, Rian. I definitely identify with many of your expressed sentiments. Looking forward to more.
Rian, love the fresh voice and take. David hired the right man for the job. Looking forward to future articles.
It’s not a fresh voice or take- it’s the same theme Nathaniel, Travis, Craig, and now Meg and Rian are all focusing on- spending more FA money.
Jeff is the only fangraphs writer I see who isn’t following this Boras talking points PR campaign- as he just pointed out in his last chat that the tanking narrative is just agent spin and that this offseason will look normal as far as spend in hindsight- just delayed.
What new take did Rian present here? That 30 teams should all be going for broke on FA spending because he likes Aaron Judge HRs? Where is the analysis- or does that sort of ‘paper pushing’ make him a bad guy?
How is it that this personal enlightenment just happens to fit the 3-times-a-week Travis/Craig ‘all teams must spend more in FA’ campaign?
Serious suggestion. If you can write better than the staff of FanGraphs, throw your hat in. It’s obvious they have had some turnover, and if you think you can add something send a resume with examples of your work and perhaps you will get the opportunity. It’s got to be better than being on the outside and frustrated by the content you are reading.
I’m frustrated by the content I’m reading (maybe less so than Thom) and also have about fifteen better things to do with my time than writing regularly about baseball. I’m glad someone’s doing it, but I’ll also be glad when baseball games start happening again and Fangraphs starts talking about something other than retconning the union, the CBA, the minor leagues, ad nauseum.
I’d be curious to know whether Rian thinks the current crop of How The Union Could Be More Effective articles are also “part of the problem,” because it seems like the same logic applies.
Please go away.
When you accuse writers of pushing a narrative or a Boras PR campaign, you’re attacking their integrity. It’s rude and uncalled for.
It’s February? Calm down. FG has some of the best analytical content out there. Delete your account
I dunno man. I mean you’re entitled to your opinion and all. That’s great. Of course there are often complaints about FG articles that seem to commoditize the players at their expense, and how the SABR revolution is helping front offices to drive down labor costs.
So yeah. Both ways.
What would REALLY be awesome would be to comment on the content of the article itself. Agree or disagree, both are fine. But to lay off the imagined politicization of the editorial staff and how you are triggered by it.
Good grief.
I was going to ask Rian if he had a comments section alias any of us might recognize. I will now surmise he wasn’t Johnny Dickshot!
Can confirm.
I can’t say ‘AMEN!’ loud enough to everything here. Looking forward to everything you write this year!!
Welcome Rian. I agree with your take on the current off-season. Too many teams are taking the off-season off.
Looking forward to creativity and new voices. And, yes, I’d much rather see Judge destroy a baseball, or Trout do something absurd, then just focus on whether $21 Million AAV is too little or 6 years too much. Good luck.
The obvious point being that it is very easy to both (1) enjoy Aaron Judge destroying baseballs, and (2) not want the team I root for to sign JD Martinez at 7yr/$200MM (or whatever Boras’ preferred price is) because I think that will ultimately result in my team losing more games than it would have had it spent that money differently. Heck, it is easy enough for me to enjoy JD Martinez destroying baseballs (he’s a great hitter!) while also not wanting the team I root for to sign him at his preferred price.
The attempt to set up some sort of dichotomy otherwise is lazy.
Certainly it’s not a dichotomy. I raised the comparison to emphasize where, on a scale with lots of gray, my priorities lie.
I do think you and I probably differ a little in the weight we assign to this clause of your comment:
“will ultimately result”
That’s the nut of it, I think. I used to value ten wins in the future for my team about the same as two wins now. But I’m starting to feel the net result of a lot of teams feeling that way (and fans accepting it) has been that only a few teams are competing in any given year, thus making the sport as a whole less enjoyable to follow and engage with.
Hope that makes sense, and looking forward to continuing to engage with you.
Is there an empirical basis for your feeling? Did you feel the same thing last year?
As has been said in other threads, rather than beg all of these questions, it would be preferable (to me, at least) to see fangraphs try to objectively/empirically answer them. Otherwise the content is subjective narrative, little different from what Heymann or Olney provide. For example, within your comment to which this one responds, one might question:
– Whether it’s actually true that there has been some recent sea change (or any change, for that matter) in how many teams “feel that way” – is there any material difference in how many teams are “trying to compete” today versus years past? Is there anything about the current distribution of projected wins or team player costs that is materially different from past years that might support such a hypothesis?
– Is it actually true that more fans are accepting of it? If so, how many more? Is it even a bad thing for baseball (overall) if they are? Is baseball more or less enjoyable, overall, if fans are more accepting of teams trading current wins for future wins? Indeed, fangraphs is in a good position to gather relevant evidence on these questions through the types of surveys that Jeff S. likes to use – What do CWS fans think – whose team has the worst/lowest 2018 projection? Or Phillies/Braves fans, whose teams are (hopefully) exiting from multi-year rebuilds? Cubs/Astros fans, whose teams have been torn down and then won the WS? Mariners fans – whose team consistently tries to compete but still doesn’t make the playoffs? Tigers fans – whose prior team owner was known for running his team into the red to compete, who sometimes bought Boras’ direct-to-owner sales pitches, whose team reached the WS, but now can’t compete even if it did spend profligately on FAs?
Of course, trying to answer these sorts of questions objectively can be difficult and time-consuming. It’s certainly quicker/easier to assume answers and editorialize.
To your first question: Yes. See this paragraph in this FiveThirtyEight post from today:
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/yu-darvish-makes-the-cubs-a-top-tier-team-again/?ex_cid=story-twitter
“The benefit could be even greater in a season like the one 2018 is shaping up to be. We gathered preseason win forecasts for each season since 2005, tracking how often teams were projected to finish with a given number of victories. From 2005 to 2017, an average of 17.4 of MLB’s 30 teams were predicted to win between 80 and 94 games each season, with 0.7 teams projected to post a better record and 11.9 projected to do worse. This season, however, only 12 teams are in that 80-to-94-win bucket, versus 4 teams above and 14 below. Baseball’s class of decent-but-not-great teams seems to have given way to clubs that are either going all-in or punting on the season entirely. In a season like this, that middle ground — where the Cubs were tracking to be — would be the worst place to find yourself.”
I think the second question is more interesting, and not nearly as definitively answered, but the simple fact that the answer to (1) is what it is suggests the answer: Yes. When the Marlins tore down their team, twice, they were rightly excoriated for it. When the Cubs began their rebuild, the same thing happened. I can’t imagine too many teams would be pursuing this strategy if they didn’t believe their fans would, at one level or another, accept it.
Relatedly, I also think teams are increasingly less concerned with fan opinion because fan-based revenue is making up a declining share of their total pot.
https://www.foxsports.com/mlb/story/mlb-tv-revenue-santa-claus-keeps-coming-to-town-120216
Appreciate the response.
For the first, not sure where the Vegas “over/unders” are that are referenced at the footnote, but it looks like the hypothesis is that there are two fewer teams than average this year that project for > 80 wins (which is hypothesized to be a proxy to identify teams who are not competing). Looking at just Pecota though, Colorado is apparently not trying to compete (because they project for 78 wins) – but that doesn’t really make a lot of sense given their FA spending this offseason. Will be interesting to see what if anything changes after the rest of the FAs are signed. (Though the worst projected teams have never driven FA market prices no matter the era, so the connection between this hypothesis and the slow FA market has always been dubious).
For the second question, as you say, perhaps then that is evidence that fans “accepting it” actually makes baseball overall more enjoyable to follow and engage with.
Perhaps our conclusion, then, is that I’m in the minority opinion 🙂 I think it’s less fun. But YMMV!
Rian- your not taking some ‘fun” minority opinion.
You are taking the exact same Boras/CAA talking points narrative that the bosses at fangraphs have clearly prioritized this year- with Travis, Craig, Nathaniel, now Meg and yourself all writing the same zero-data, zero-analysis, factually incorrect propaganda.
Your ‘fresh take’ is lowest common denominator nonsense- who cares bout numbers when Judge can hit the hell out of a ball!?
@Rain
But your lazy citations to ESPN-content-partner 538 is simply wrong.
Fangraphs projects 16 clubs, in 2018, to finish with 80 wins or better.
Further, the arbitrary cutoff of 80 wins is no serious method to assess distribution.
How bad it is when fangraphs authors can’t even get simply questions right- the distribution of projected wins has not changed. Lazy citations to poor outside work, using poor methodology, is a new normal for the Travis/Rain/Craig type approach.
Saw your buddy Joel on Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee the other day. Dude was hilarious!! Also, well said. I don’t think there’s some top-down Boras plan here, but I do think we’re getting a lot of lowest common denominator takes these days. It’s not collusion. These guys are just poor investments over and over and over again, and the young players are voiceless and cheap. MLB union greed and short-sighted selfishness have caused this problem. It’s not on GMs to keep bailing them out but overpaying vets in comparison to the pennies young players make these days thanks to the vets’ complicity in screwing them.
I think the issue, more than even the Olney/Heyman feels-focused nature of the piece, is the writer’s desire for several words where few would do.
Parity is roughly at an all time. If you used data to draw conclusions about competition levels, you’d know that nearly half the league has a reasonable shot at the playoffs every year, which is top-tier for pro sport.
The projected win distribution is normal- only by refusing to incorporate data and historical facts in your analysis can you continue to push the ‘too much tanking’ meme that Jeff has already dismissed as nonsense.
“you’d know that nearly half the league has a reasonable shot at the playoffs every year, which is top-tier for pro sport.”
In many other leagues more than half the teams actually make the playoffs.
I’m with Dickshot. Your first article was a dud.
And its cringey coming from a Cubs fan alongside being a “move-along-nothing-to-see-here” for fans of small market teams given its utter implausibility.
As a matter of fact, I’ll just preemptively post a “screw you” to all large-market-tanker fans who feel the urge to coax all MLB teams to get their act together and do whatever it takes to win-now 2 years after their team wins a World Series by building a roster which—for years—did the opposite. Anyone who’s tone-deaf enough to do so probably shouldn’t write at this site, imo.
Looks like I’m super late to the party. But a counterpoint is pretty easily visualized with a graph tweeted out by Szymborski
I hope you become concise w more time in the lines.
And the fake ‘Siddhartha by the river’ enlightenment, along with the anti-progressive fake populism, is also pukey to the extreme.
Awful start Rian. You didn’t come to jesus on this issue- fangraphs has made a decision to push this ‘every team should go for broke in FA’ mantra and you’ve come up with some pretty tone deaf “Aaron Judge hits the shit out of a baseball” hoo-rah nonsense to sell the same talking points this site is now devoted to.
What is Dave doing? Simply pivoting broad for ESPN now that the big writers have moved on?
So an opposing viewpoint to yours is fake news. Got it.
Awful start? Who hurt you? Even if you don’t agree calling this article “awful” is v dramatic
There is no dichotomy. Fangraphs obviously can’t crush a baseball, but it can have articles about how baseballs are crushed, or why a crusher was lousy last year and has discovered his stroke. And it can talk about the business of baseball, and prospect potential, and the relative value of signings and trades. I can enjoy baseball at several levels, and I’d like to see Fangraphs fill one of those. As for rooting for your team to not sign JDM. I’m in total agreement with you–I don’t want mine to either. But I don’t mind an analysis of his value.
Wonderful opening piece. Welcome to the site!
I am somewhat confused. Is Mr. Watt advocating overpaying free agents so their fan base can be somewhat placated by their projected performances?
The reality is that websites like FanGraphs have given more ammunition to general managers as they finally appear to be more rational in their player valuations.
I continue to believe that if players were willing to take 3-4 year contracts, the money would go up per annum, and teams would not be as reluctant to sign them. But Pujols, Hamilton, Davis etc are now a cautionary tale to teams, and I believe their fan base understands that.
Hi there! I agree with you that the general trend is toward fewer years and more money per year, and I think that trend generally makes sense for all involved (players, fans, teams).
I am certainly not advocating overpaying free agents to placate fans. I am advocating that teams field the best team possible in the present, given available resources (which I believe are often more substantial than those that are typically spent) and not worrying quite so much about the future.
This makes sense if all teams have similar 3- or 5-year win forecasts AND free agents are a good investment. If you want to change that to “OR,” then I wonder why Fangraphs writers don’t bang on free agent players to accept shorter-term contracts instead of constantly criticizing owners, particularly of bad teams, for not signing these guys to long-term contracts that have proven again and again to be bad investments. These bad investments cripple teams’ long-term competitiveness which seems opposite to what you’re trying to achieve by encouraging teams to sign ’em all!
It’s been said by other readers over and over, but Fangraphs’ writers should take a longer view than one slow off-season where unattractive players haven’t yet received enormous offers to declare that the game is broken. Free agency is broken and teams appear to finally have recognized it. The onus is on players to adjust.
There’s really only two, imo, Occam’s razor explanations to the non-existent FA market.
1) Collusion
2) A perfect storm of enough teams not competing, the usual, big spending teams doing everything they can to stay below the Luxury Tax, and two or three teams addressing their needs through trades rather than FA.
At this point I lean to point #1. And thus there’s nothing the player can do to adjust.
It’s absolutely #2, which y’all will see next year once the Dodgers and Yankees have reset their luxury tax penalty.
Really, this shouldn’t be all that tough to perceive. Sorry y’all aren’t as prescient as I am.
The only prescient thing is that the Harpers and Macados will get paid. But how much? Vs. their value.
Or how many of next years tier below them will still be waiting when Spring Training starts?
Is it collusion that teams don’t want to give Boras’ 3-win FA’s 7 year, $140M contracts or just good sense? Even the Yankees are emphasizing an elite minor league system over Jacoby Ellsbury-type signings now. The Yankees are flush with major-league and minor-league talent. Their recent shift away from the FA market is working!
FA’s generally add to a team’s major-league talent in the short-run, but you have to pay them big over the long-run so they eat up your payroll capacity. By definition, they have no surplus value so they aren’t trade-able for prospects when a team realizes that they are still short of the playoffs. Teams who don’t project themselves at 84-ish wins or better avoid the FA market except for relievers. That’s rational.
So then why shouldn’t we see articles entitled, “Why JD Martinez should accept a 4-year, $80M contract now” to match the “Why the Rockies, Twins, etc. should hand out mega-contracts” articles?
But JD Martinez is probably worth more than $80m over the next four years.
Maybe the 7 year contract for the 31 year old hitter is dead, and that might not be a bad thing for the game. But a five year deal for Martinez shouldn’t be too hard to get done; and maybe he’ll sign for six at slightly less annually (like Darvish and Cain).
As for the Yankees… I’m not willing to go there because they did trade for Stanton’s contract. So while not a free agent signing, it effectively works like one. Of course, the ripple effect has been they’ve stayed out of free agency because of it (presumably).
He’s worth what someone will play. Just like the rest of us.
International cap plus draft pool cap plus CBA slow-build salary structure plus free money revenue sharing plus lux tax. Not collusion. Not rocket surgery.
“I am advocating that teams field the best team possible in the present, given available resources ”
This is not true. You and Meg have simply joined the Craig/Travis/Nathaniel PR campaign to support Boras/CAA talking points.
If you truly supported ‘all clubs being the best that they can be,’ then you’d want clubs to have flexibility, you’d want to never see Albert Pujols dragging down Mike Trout’s career, you’d want to see clubs have assets on their books and on the field so that they can improve as they advance through the year’s competition.
Instead, you are complaining that the Tigers aren’t paying $12m/WAR for 30 year old Boras clients – just like nearly every non-Jeff, non-Carson writer on this site lately.
The fake spin you put on the boring narrative is off putting- as if you are being quirky or unique or have come to this realization on your own, rather that just being the latest follower on this very tired meme blasted at full volume on ESPN/fangraphs/538. Booooo.
And, under market conditions, the realistic way to do that is to outbid other teams for players’ past performance which suggests you understand very little about roster construction.
In a minor aside, your favorite team—just a few short years ago—held Kris Bryant down for service time concerns. They missed winning their division by 3 games that year. What if—in your world—the Cubs put their best roster on the field all year and scraped out a few more wins with Bryant in the bigs all year and one of those overturned was 4/5/15 loss against the eventual division winners the Cardinals? Could Arrieta have pitched better down the stretch against the Mets, thrown two games in that series and given the Cubs a chance to win a WS a year earlier?
Why are we accepting the language of “placating” fans, as though the big guys with money are Gods and their burden is to deal with us idiots who merely make them rich? I don’t advocate placating fans. I am advocating given a shit about marketing, especially when you’re selling a fun entertainment not a thing people are forced to sit through.
So . . . Exactly what was just said: buy more free agents. Don’t worry about the future costs of draft picks and pool money and blocking cheap young assets.
Rian,
Your candor on changing a viewpoint is refreshing.
However, the small market owners and those in large markets who do not want to spend big, like Oakland and Arizona, can band together and try and force a more competitive landscape in MLB.
Yet, they do not speak or act out against the current system.
The players’ union is doing a disservice to the vast majority of its membership and minor-leaguers in signing off on the current system.
Yet, when Brandon Moss points this out, he is castigated by hosts and former players alike on MLB Radio and in other places.
I wish you well, and I would love to see a NFL-style, parity on-field, business partners off-field arrangement, but so many within the game want no part of it.
Welcome aboard, Rian. That’s a damn fine opening salvo. I look forward to reading your provocative articles and I hope you host a weekly chat, as I dearly miss the banter between Dave/Eno and the Fangraphs nation.
Dave ‘bantered’ with Fangraph nation?? As much as I enjoyed his chats, Dave bantered with nobody. Addressed exactly what he wanted to address for not one second beyond his obligatory hour, and ignored any room Elephants that inconvenienced his particular argument.
I’ve never thought about it that way, but it makes so much sense that the market lives by night (night being after hours, which start really in the late-afternoon).
The fundamental driver of stock prices are earnings, and essentially no company releases their quarterly earnings during market hours. This gives investors more time to read/analyze the information than releasing it just an hour before trading ends for the day.
To your point, and honing back to a market-related idea, I wonder if you could group teams into asset allocation/investor types.
For instance, the Yankees (of old at least) would likely be an aggressive investor. One who owns an overwhelmingly majority of stocks vs less risky assets, and the stock selection they own would be high upside valuations. In a way, the Yankees would hold high P/E stocks perhaps? Meaning that they would be willing to pay a premium price/higher valuation for more reward. If they make a big splash (buying a high growth potential small cap stock) and it misses, they are generally okay. Their portfolio is large and their horizon is long. They can weather storms better than most teams.
A conservative investor might be like the Pirates (similar to what Kiley McDaniel wrote about their forced valuation of players). Where Pittsburgh would be a value investor, seeking a high margin of safety and low valuation multiples. They aren’t likely to make a big, high valuation splash, but instead reasonable risk-adjusted returns.
Not to mention, world markets have been open for hours by 9am. And news.
This article is one of the more persistently captivating and syntactically delightful I’ve read at FanGraphs. I might give Rian a 70 for content and a 75 for linguistic prowess. He’s probably one of the more experienced applicants to have entered the purge, having written for justifiably popular sites like Baseball Prospectus and FiveThirtyEight. However, we the readers are unmoved by the genuinely sound logic behind Dave’s decision.
We know, as we have known for years, that this decision was made as a small wave in a veritable tsunami of related events. The Appelman hiring conspiracy, whereby the allegedly honorable David Appelman has consistently chosen writers with names that offset the relative monotony of his own name, David Appelman.
As I’ve said, Rian Watt seems like an excellent hire. Rian Watt has written an excellent article, perhaps a 75 grade article. Yet, Rian Watt has an 80 grade name. Rian Watt. Crisp, efficient, a uniquely spelled forename, an electrifying combination of surname and forename exemplified by the fact that the SI unit for electrical power (Watt) is Rian’s namesake. This inconceivable perfection of nomenclature would be rare in day-to-day life, but not for us, the readers of FanGraphs.
Paul Swydan. Alex Stumpf. Eno Sarris (bless his soul). This elegance needs no explanation. Kiley (Mc)Daniel almost has two first names. Chris Mitchell actually has two first names. Eric Longenhagen and Travis Sawchik have phenomenal last names. Meg Rowley is a very tough-sounding name, like Bas Rutten or Mr. T. Then there’s Carson Cistulli. Laurila. Jeff Sullivan and Jeff Zimmerman have pedestrian names, but they are both Jeff, which is a necessary thing to have in any self-respecting sea of names. Via elimination, anyone not mentioned is David Appelman’s son-in-law.
We live in a time of deep-seated corruption at the highest level. David Appelman has hired baseball writers solely to mask a lifelong insecurity stemming from a somewhat boring name. Remember that. Also remember that with this corruption comes joy.
Swydan. Sawchik. Longenhagen. Cistulli.
And now, Rian Watt. Welcome.
As intriguing as this theory is, I find it hard to give Rian Watt an 80 grade name when this site exists to cover the exploits of Covelli “Coco” Crisp, Sicnarf Loopstok, Owen Sharts, Dazmon Jaroid Cameron, Lars Nootbaar, and Farid Yu Darvishsefat.
Agreed. Rian Watt seems to me to be a solid 55-60. A plus name who will start for a team for 10+ years but he will likely never be a perennial MVP candidate.
FYI this might be my favorite comment of all-time. thank you!
Craaaaab people. Craaaaaab people.
I see why you like his sentences. You also employ several words to deliver few thoughts.
Sorry, but it seems like FG is making a concerted effort to get away from the kinds of articles that made the site popular.
Yup, pivoting toward broad, dumbed-down, ‘wow Aaron Judge can sure hit the hell out of a baseball- every team should go for broke!’ type cheerleading.
ESPN content prerogatives likely the culprit.
I mean, you clearly are not enjoying the product, wouldn’t you accomplish more by not reading than by replying to ever comment with the same sort of negative comments?
Hey dude we get it.
Kudos, n_scheffel – in about 25 words you conveyed quite precisely what I was trying to say in about 500 meandering words elsewhere in this chain. I can’t upvote this comment enough.
My life has always been lived at the margins, and I am approaching the right hand margin rapidly. I hope to read many of your clever and well written articles here for many years before my account is closed.
Hi, Ryan, welcome!
This was a very fun read and I look forward to your work in the future.
I see you’re interacting in the comments, I’m not sure that’s going to continue, but while it does, I wonder if you support something like a salary floor, or other “anti-tanking” measures? I can’t imagine the owners really ever allow it, but it does exist in other leagues, and I’m not sure there’ll ever be a way to prevent teams from bottoming out without legislating it.
I’m not sure how I personally feel about it, as I’ve watched my Braves “rebuilding” process, I have enjoyed it… to an extent. I certainly wouldn’t have minded it they tried a little harder to put a winning, or at least more interesting, product on the field.
I don’t personally think a salary floor would achieve much of an effect (what level could it reasonably be at)? But I’ll hopefully take some time on this site to think through what steps might reasonably achieve some shared positive outcomes.
Thanks, Rian.
I look forward to it!
So you wish that the Braves had kept Shelby Miller, resigned Heyward to a big deal, and brought in more Martin Prado and Markakis types? More Colon/Dickey deals? Less chances for Incarte et al to step forward?
That’s nonsense. There haven’t really been any big FA successes in recent years, and the few top item Scherzer types were never going to consider Atlanta.
No, none of that, and I never said any such thing.
But wasting roster spots on the Nick Markakises, RA Dickeys, Erick Aybars, and Matt Kemps of the world was both pointless (not helping them win) and boring (offering no upside as future contributors to a contending team). If they weren’t committed to putting a winning product on the field, they should’ve at least given those roster spots to high upside, interesting players. Like the Brewers and Padres have (mostly) done.
“More Colon/Dickey deals?”
My hypothesis is that the Colon / Dickey deals were intended, at least in part, as a way to try to “buy” prospects. Sign free agent starting pitchers to short-term deals with the thought that one or more of them can at least be traded in-season to contenders in need of back of the rotation innings-eaters, and perhaps return even a bit more value if they exceed expectations.
If you bring up the win floor across the league and change the narrative to compete now instead of the future, wouldn’t you need 20-30 FAs a year that are comparable to your Aaron Judge reference for fans to adore?
Yes the top 1-2 pitchers and hitters in each class can excite a fan base in the short term. But even Judge has games where he gets then golden sombrero.
Advertising the sport as one of theatrics and homers galore is going to piss off the casual fans, because that isn’t reality on a nightly basis with the exception of the Trouts and Harpers.
You’d end up with the Pirates perpetually buying Lucas Duda’s of the world and zero hope of the franchise winning more than 90 games and having a WS chance. Even if he gives me “a few moments of transcendence along the way” I don’t think its enough.
I’ll rely on the annual end-of-the-bench guy getting a miracle walkoff in August for my theatrics. In the meantime I want my team to make smart decisions.
Exactly- huge FA deals help ruin Mike Trout. Look at how the dumb mentality that led to the Pujols FA deal has possibly ruined the career of the what might be a top 5 player of all time.
It’s not as if these authors actually believe the nonsense they are writing at this point- it’s clearly a FG decision to pivot away from nerdy data-driven analysis and towards “Judge sure hits the hell out of a ball” style content. For some reason, they are all in on selling Boras/CAA anti-Clark talking points this summer, presumably for the same reason that ESPN is working so hard to do the same (with content partner 538 doing likewise).
Wait, did I miss something? How is Mike Trout’s career ruined? Yes, the Angels have hamstrung themselves financially by making huge investments in aging FAs, but its not like Trout has been playing on consistently terrible teams in a small market. Also, Trout voluntarily signed an extension, so I guess he doesn’t think the Angels are ruining his career.
“It’s not as if these authors actually believe the nonsense they are writing at this point”
Do you understand how insulting this is, both to the writers and to readers like me who enjoy their work? Who the hell are you to be so judgmental?
It’s clear that FGs has made a decision to pivot towards broad content and talking points – even one’s contrary to the data.
That’s why we have Craig Edwards projecting JD Martinez for 6/159m value, and why 4+ FG authors are counter-factually pretending that parity has dropped- despite the data, as dave szymborski has shown, proving the opposite.
Rian, above, states that he no longer believes “That a win in the future is worth some large share of a win in the present.” I do not believe his writing. Except only those facing terminal situations, I do not believe that anyone who follows baseball doesn’t consider that, for the average team, a win next year is at least worth .6 or so of a win this year. I find the whole ‘live in the now’ romanticism of this sell too labored and unrealistic for anyone to actually believe.
Similarly, Rian above ridiculous the idea that clubs could consider Darvish at $175m too extreme. Again, I don’t believe he actually believes what he is writing. Rather it seems clear that FG has deliberately chosen the exact pivot away from analysis and towards broad, ‘live in the now’ and ;chicks-love-the-long ball’ mantras that Rian is presenting as the foundation of his perspective.
It is completely fair to comment that an author’s work seems poor and disingenuous- particularly if it is part of a major pivot from a media outlet. Jeff Sullivan himself said that the tanking narrative was agent spin sold to journalists, and that the 2018 offseason would see a normal spend despite delays. Rian appears to be passing along this agent spin and laboring to invent a personal enlightenment narrative to this salesmanship.
Rian, so glad to have you. This is a thoughtful and very well put together article. I fully agree with your frustration with these three tenets which are gaining so much influence in our game. It seems that many teams get caught in these cycles of punting wins now to gain a few in the future, and then when these risks don’t pay off, they punt again, and end up never giving their fans a product to root for. I agree that teams should bring in exciting players, because I think that brings in excited fans. And I think it’s very important that baseball begin to swing back towards being a game for players and fans, where general managers and owners are simply facilitators and competitors in that system.
Thanks for the article, and I’m wondering, what sorts of articles do you intend to write on a regular basis? What topics in baseball make you tick?
It’s a great question! I like profiles of players and other people in the game (I’m going to try to go out to the ballpark quite a bit this year) and nitty-gritty tic-tocs of how the game works on a day to day level … which person handles what in the clubhouse, front office, etc. But those pieces take time to research and write, so there’ll be some standard analysis pieces of the type FG already does so well, too!
As curious as I am to read more about your great hunt for the cosmologically constant discount rate to use in a net present value analysis of future WAR, these other two interests are even more intriguing. Welcome and good luck!
ugg, sounds like more human-interest articles and PR nonsense, with a de-emphasis on ‘standard analysis.’
Thanks for the answer! That honestly sounds great! Any chance to see behind the scenes at ballparks and to make the game more accessible/approachable is appreciated. But I’ll also enjoy seeing a perspective like yours tackling some of the standard analysis pieces.
I was thinking just this about Darvish actually.
As a Twins fan, I am more disappointed we didn’t get Darvish than I am happy they didn’t give him a bad contract. At the end of the day, talent is of limited availability, and “I’m not going beyond my price point for Darvish” doesn’t get your team anywhere unless there’s another player behind him in line that you can use that money on, which more often than not there isn’t. So your choice is between having Darvish or having a giant metaphorical pile of money in the bank – one of these things will not help win games in 2018. There’s baseball value to just having the player (and to your opponents’ not having him), and for an organization with as much future financial flexibility as reportedly the Twins have (zero $ committed in 2019?), and that’s in a competitive window, isn’t it actually more logical to overpay if overpaying is what it takes to get him?
The Twins won the battle (not giving Darvish more than they thought he was worth) but now they’re stuck fighting the war (actually being a good team) w/ probably the most iffy rotation amongst all competitors. Not being in that situation has value too, beyond just the WAR/$ value Darvish commands.
Same logic applies to Washington and Arrieta – you’re built to compete you have the resources and a need, just do what it takes to get the damn player. Great, Boston, you stuck to your guns on Martinez and now you’re going to be trotting Moreland out there every day, thank god you saved that money though. Be smart, obviously, but it seems ludicrous, contextually, that not spending the extra $10 million which might’ve moved the needle on Darvish is more important than capitalizing on a team that can compete.
I agree with the question when it is framed this way much more than how Rian did it. It’s part of the reason why I thought that the Dodgers should have been much more aggressive pursuing Giancarlo Stanton. The point is to accumulate good players and win, and if you’re ready to compete for a championship now you have to go for it.
The caveat is that spending your money efficiently should help you get towards winning. I strongly believe that it’s important to spend money efficiently, and yes, you should maximize your future winning too. But spending your money efficiently only works if eventually you spend your money. Will the Twins now try and scoop up some good players on a sweet pillow deal before dipping in next year, or will they just pocket the money and go away?
(That said, I also think that a few owners will okay higher payrolls when there is a chance to go better on the win curve. Many teams do have fluctuating payrolls based on circumstances)
So yes, let’s hold the owners to a standard for winning and trying to do something that isn’t too embarrassing, but I think the bigger picture is to hold owners to a standard for *winning* and not making smart moves or spending money for the sake of spending money.
There is almost zero track record for a small market team to acquire the best FA at his position- regardless the bid. It’s very likely that Minny was never going to get Darvish.
The real question is ‘should Minnesota go for broke for Lance Lynn,’ etc. That is what Rian and Travis/Craig et al are advocating- for the next Jose Berrios to have a harder time finding his feet for the Twins because he is competing with $15m AAV 1.5-WAR SPs that management feels compelled to play so to justify a bad spend.
Washington and Boston don’t need overpriced names that casual fans are familiar with, they need cost effective added wins.
“for the next Jose Berrios to have a harder time finding his feet for the Twins because he is competing with $15m AAV 1.5-WAR SPs that management feels compelled to play so to justify a bad spend.”
Well, if your argument is predicated on management falling victim to the sunk cost fallacy, maybe the response is that they should get smart about that decision?
It’s just about a broader view than “player is worth X WAR, offer Y dollars”. The notion that Minnesota had no chance to get Darvish is actually exactly what I’m talking about. They probably needed to offer him a premium just to be seriously considered, but my argument is that sometimes you happily pay that premium if you’ve got the combination of flexibility and need.
It’s different if you’ve got ownership who is setting a payroll limitation and you have to be frugal, but we’re talking about a team with zero (zero!) future commitments. They will literally be challenged to run a 2019 and 2020 payroll that’s even in the neighborhood of their 2018 one, plus in 2019 the big spenders are going to be back in the market and it’s going to be even harder to compete for players. So why not pay a premium if it’s either that or not spend at all?
It’s never “pay a premium for a name FA or spend nothing at all.”
Darvish would add 3 wins, they should be willing to pay up to the amount set by their other options to add 3 wins- of which they have many, especially on the trade market.
Don’t call us Minny. No one except outsiders say that.
You’re just creating a straw-man argument to rail against. You’re shoving words in Rian’s mouth based off of a single line in his introductory piece, a piece that wasn’t meant to be anything more than his hello to the FanGraphs world. If you don’t like what he had to say, fine, just stop clicking on his articles and stop this stupid tirade against things he didn’t even claim.
I’m not putting words in his mouth
Rian: “Wouldn’t you rather all 30 teams be out there going for broke?”
He is advocating for all teams to go for broke on FA spend.
This ‘all 30 teams’ includes small market clubs like Minnesota who have no track record of being able to attract Darvish-like top end FAs. So that means that Rian is advocating that teams like Minnesota ‘go for broke’ with the FAs who will come. That likely puts them in the mix for Lance Lynn etc., especially since Rian is advocating all 30 teams to go for broke, in which case Minnesota and smaller market clubs have almost no chance at top FAs.
Dude should probably know his audience a bit. Any Hello to Fangraphs readers powered by opinion and feelings should probably be reconsidered through the lens of claim and support.
Well said.
I have nothing more to contribute than just saying, Welcome!
“Why do you watch this game?” Actually, Rian, that has an empirical answer. Y’see, there’s this thing called the ‘Win Curve’, which is actually a proven finding rather than a hypothesis. When MY! team improves from winning 42% of its games to winning 46% of its games, a few more of us will spend a few more dollars on said team. But that really is all. When MY! team improves from winning 52% of its games to 56%, many more of us will spend many more dollars on said team. So yes, any GM not in danger of being quickly fired by his owner will aim to generate a dependable/projectable 56% team, rather than spending to chase that 46%, or even 48% or 50%, this coming season. Sure hope MY! team’s GM behaves that way.
But, Richie, I’m not saying that this isn’t a smart move from a GM’s perspective. I’m saying that I think it’s not fun to watch. You’ve helpfully explained that you watch the game to check up on which GMs are acting the smartest. I’m saying I watch the game to see the players hit the ball and other ones throw it, and each team do their darndest to win that game and others. To each their own, I guess.
(Thank you for letting me know about win curves — this is new information to me.)
But don’t you see that your response shows you are just doing the same thing you are accusing him of doing – watching the game to see which GM’s are the smartest? All you’re doing is putting a negative gloss on the GM’s actions, rather than praising him.
The players on the field, whether on a losing team or a winning team, are all trying their darnedest hit the ball and win that game and others, regardless of whether their team’s GM is good or bad.
That’s a fair point and I should have been more clear: I’m interested in as many teams as possible being competitive, such that as many games in a given season as possible have postseason implications.
Okay. Doesn’t seem like 1 or 2 fewer competitive teams than average makes much of any difference, especially when part of the reason for that is that baseball has some really great teams right now (Astros, Dodgers, et al). There have surely been 1 or 2 fewer competitive teams than average in the recent past (since it’s an average) and I have no idea what years those were and those years had no effect on me as a baseball fan.
But YMMV!
Rian knows that teams need to manage resources intelligently to be competitive.
He is saying that he wants all teams to go for broke right now by spending huge in FA- and screw the future for those clubs and franchises who Pujols themselves.
He doesn’t really want that of course- no one would trade 10 years of boring baseball going forward for 1 year of having their club win 78 games instead of 68. It’s just a Boras/CAA/ESPN meme that fangraphs is now spinning.
This is so disingenuous.
Win curves is not a new concept to Rian. Everyone who follows baseball is aware that fan engagement/enjoyment goes up as teams approach .500 and then gets higher as teams do better than that.
Further, it’s dishonest to pretend that this conversation is about ‘whether the Padres would be more interesting with Judge than not.’ Sure, every team would be more interesting with the best players in the game- but those can’t be acquired by FA.
Typical big money FA spends do the opposite.
Is LAA more or less fun to watch with Pujols?
But you’re missing the fan implication of the Win Curve, Rian. It exists because that’s how fans have voted with their attendance, media consumption and paraphernalia buys. You want the Padres/Reds/etc. to go for it this year? Fine, and who cares? Same with what I want. A Team’s fans want a pennant contender far more than a .500 contender, and any GM who doesn’t manage with that in mind is doing his job wrong.
This is a “smart” website more so than a “fun to watch” website unless I’ve been misreading for a long time, Rian. ESPN might be more to your taste.
It WAS a “smart” website. Until it decided to join Boras/MLBPA clique.
You know who was fun to watch last year? The Padres. No shit. Just liked the way they played. Only well after the season would I discover they parlayed a 59 win pythag into 71 real wins. That’s fun. I love baseball and enjoyed watching these players hit and throw and run, regardless of whether they were big money free agents or young CBA suppressed cats trying to a scratch out a career.
Did Fangraphs just hire the ghost of Mike Ilitch?
Yes.
More likely it’s content partner ESPN asked for Dave Appleman to pivot towards a broader, dumber appeal- thus the Travis/Craig and now Meg/Rian imitation of Buster Olney.
Came down to post just that. Isn’t this just the Tigers’ philosophy for the past 10 years?
Does anyone else remember the good ole days when fangraphs wasn’t a leftist bunch continually pushing their agenda for the union thugs and lemmings? Between this post (which was not read) and the one earlier by something called meg, I’ve added two more bloggers to my ignore list. This recent turn by fangraphs is pathetic, and this pair of sjw’s has enjoyed my one last click on their garbage.
Fangraphs used to be so great, now it’s totally unpopular and no one reads all its fake news. They even admit half their stuff is fantasy. Such a financial disaster that writers would rather join the Padres, sad!
I sincerely regret to have only one upvote to give to your comment, Sir.
Is this an ironic caracatuer?
The ‘every team should go for broke’ PR campaign is not progressive, it’s anti-progressive. Fangraphs partners with both ESPN and Fox, it’s become quite corporate but not partisan.
The new writers are very poor though.
Fangraphs excelled at Tango, Cameron, Blengino, Jeff type analysis, or Carson style out-of-the-box clever finds and writing style: this recent pivot is likely the end of fangraphs’ ascent. None of these lowest-common-denominator hot takes are going to get anyone into a FO.
While I do not agree with the cliched crackpot parts (leftists, SJW’s etc etc) of Bob Davidson’s post I can’t help but share the opinion that FG seems to be pivoting away from what made it so unique and enjoyable (EG: analysis so good it can literally land you a job in a MLB Front office) and more towards an ESPN style opinion spraying machine.
I hope I’m wrong.
At some point you run out of writers that can graduate to MLB staffs and you’re left with whatever else; that said the true heart and soul of fangraphs is/was the comments sections of Dave Cameron’s articles, especially the Mike Jacobs Trade. Most often the writing was terrible/overly jargon heavy but the analysis was interesting; now we’ll have passable writing and redundant analysis instead.
Whenever Thom Servo gets banned or bored I think the comments sections will return to being entertaining and the articles will continue to be mostly skippable as always. If you want good writing then read Posnanski, if you want good analysis then buy an MLB team.
Something can be obnoxious, hilariously overwrought and, well, accurate. I will miss Cameron in this regard. He kept Fangraphs from being as hard-left as most every other Sabre site.
I’m sure you’ll be missed!
“Something called Meg”? That’s easily the most offensive thing I’ve ever read in the comments here. Wow.
I guess you missed it last week when someone compared players being drafted to slaves at auction.
I did. 🙁
The Indians front office should read this article. Adding Yonder Alonso while three key players leave is not a credible attempt at building a championship team.
Pretty awful stuff.
It’s clear that fangraphs has made a conscious decision to dumb down it’s appeal for ESPN/Fox and other content partners.
No, you have not previously been “part of the problem” by advocating smart management- but I agree with you that you are now, as you simply regurgitate Buster Olney/CAA nonsense.
Why do you/Travis/Craig/Meg and whomever is leading this boring meme t fangraphs think that spending on FAs makes the game more exciting? Not all clubs can win, nor does a 5th place team being 17 games back more exciting than 21 games back. Infact, were SD to load up on Arrieta, Moustakas, and Hosmer- they’d be far less entertaining both this year and for the next 8 years. Aging FA veterans that project less than 3 WAR are relatively low ceiling, and they take up opportunity for new talent to emerge.
Stuff like this is so poor-
“Wouldn’t you rather watch Aaron Judge hit the everloving shit out of that glittering ball than watch his balding boss, back in the luxury suite, push some paper around? Don’t you do enough paperwork already?”
No one watches front office execs push papers. And the lowest-common denominator appeal ‘Judge hit the everloving shit out of that ball’ is an embarrassing example of what this pivot towards broader appeal entails- no data, no analysis, just ‘chicks love the longball’ type marketing.
The author isn’t confused about whether people watch front office execs push papers- the point isn’t just spectacle, its also fun to have an organization that makes smart decisions and can compete. It’s boring to watch mediocre teams bury their present and future with overpriced FAs- especially when it doesn’t give them a significant boost to playoff odds.
As for your question, “Wouldn’t you rather all 30 teams be out there going for broke?”
No of course not, please stop carrying water for Boras/CAA shills and please stop ruining fangraphs with this zero-data/zero analysis PR campaign. Very poor turn for the site.
I think there is a very sound argument to be made that the excessive call for rationality and numbers-driven decision making, really is bad for the sport, and not just in the vague sense of those quotes you pulled from this article.
If baseball is reduced to teams observing their location on the win curve relative to everyone else, and buying/selling accordingly, you really are basically going to get a yearly tournament between a handful of super teams, with at most a wild card or two in doubt. God forbid MLB becomes like the NBA where you can basically pencil in the conference finals before the year starts, this is why almost no one cares about the NBA regular season, not even the players themselves.
Intellectually, we should expect that teams behave rationally, but for the sake of unpredictability (read: entertainment value) hope that some teams don’t. I’d prefer the list of teams whose games I couldn’t be bothered to tune in to, because it’s May and they’re already out of it and won’t even call up their prospects for two or three more months, as short as possible.
As long as there are more playoff spots than super teams (and there always will be), then your parade of horribles won’t come to pass, especially given the nature of baseball and the fact that any playoff team (super team or not) can beat any other playoff team in a 5 or 7 game series.
Moreover, there is nothing to fear from “excessive rationality and numbers-driven decision-making” – all that will result, assuming teams are competing, is a redistribution of the pie between players.
And we will be able to test whether teams are properly incentivized to compete by looking at total player costs paid for by teams. And there needs to be more data than one slow off-season for a collection of flawed FAs to suggest that teams aren’t properly incentivized to compete.
MLB won’t be like the NBA because MLB playoff teams require teams to have 16-17 good players plus deep farm systems, not just 6-8 as in the NBA. Also, rationality means super-teams will be cyclical. Dodgers, Astros, Yankees, Cubs, Red Sox, and Indians today. White Sox, Phillies, Braves, Padres, Yankees and Dodgers (yes, they never go away) tomorrow.
I think the league’s better for not having Dave Stewart and RAJ as GM’s in it. The Rockies still do weird things, for those who are into that.
I hate to say it because I love this site, but I have to agree (though maybe not with lumping Sawchick in that group). This isn’t to say it’s a bad article, it’s just not what FG used to do so wonderfully.
Add in Kiley’s first article that was another lame rehash of “scoutheads vs statheads” when he came back, and it’s clear where the content of this site is trending.
I’m sure it’s good for business, but it’s a shame for those who fell in love with this site for its intelligent articles. There are already 100 sites we can visit to read about cute anecdotes about the glory of the game, and it’s too bad FG is becoming another one of them.
Can’t believe they gave this guy the gig when Thom Servo is available.
welcome to Fangraphs, hope you’ll have some interesting 5th starter suggestions and interesting theories. I know we’ll be eager to hear some of your ideas.
I’m not surprised you wrote for Vice Sports because this is exactly the type of poorly supported opinion piece they speciailze in. All it was missing was some arbitrary accusations of racism.
I cant speak for anyone else but I come to FG for thoughtful, interesting analysis that you can not really find anywhere else. not stuff like this:
Seriously, WTF is this? How is this on fangraphs of all places???
Immediately my least favorite Fangraphs contributor. What the heck is this drivel? I guess folks who don’t root for the Cubs, Dodgers, Yankees and ESPN should delete their accounts.
I wholeheartedly agree. This piece is wonderfully written and yet completely devoid of rationality. It belongs on a hipster sports website, not an analytical one.
Welcome, Rian!
I look forward to reading what you have to write. I suspect that I’ll disagree with a fair number of your arguments in the comments, but that’s also interesting. (There’s zero snark intended in that statement. I think it’s generally interesting to engage with different points of view in these comments.)
Day one fangraphs membership subscriber. As much as I love the work Sullivan, sawchick, Dan, and a few others do, I dropped my subscription a few days ago and I don’t feel bad.
Author of this post didn’t make one coherent argument for paying players more money. He only said fans like to watch long home runs. Thank you captain obvious. You know what fans hate? Having disastrous long term contracts on the books that force us to watch Jayson Heyward roll over to second every three innings. You ignore budget concerns and the fact that the players agreed to the CBT.
Just what we need another communist around these parts. I honestly read fangraphs for articles about baseball and the economics of the game. I don’t read to be told the social justice implications of not giving millionaires 100s of millions of dollars.
Just dropped mine as well. 🙁
Rian, if this is “The Opening Bell” it looks like you got in the ring with some brawlers….
They may punch themselves out…..or not.
There is kind of an interesting question buried in the ridiculous claims of communism and social justice warriors. That being, is fangraphs model of providing high level baseball analysis sustainable?
It used to be that if you were a sabermetrician/Analytics guy/stats geek or whatever label you want to apply your only real outlet was “internet baseball writer”. And that really led to the rise of places like Fangraphs and its contemporaries
Now though, forget about it. If Tom Tango or Dave Cameron were to start out today they would be scooped up by some larger organization or a MLB team or, in the case of real life Tom Tango, MLB itself, before they ever wrote a word for a place like Fangraphs.
Genius analytical minds are a finite resource. And in 2018 those people have a much bigger, more lucrative career path than they did when FG was starting out. It seems only inevitable that at some point FG would run out of those people (or run low on them) and have to switch things up a bit.
Are we seeing that switch occur? I dont know. But, as I said, it seems inevitable.
I believe it is partly that ESPN has decided to offshore-but-link-in a chunk of its content towards content-partner blogs.
They have the Undefeated for minority in sport focus, W for women in sport focus, 538 for analytics and politics, and have fangraphs for baseball. The exception is football, where they nabbed Barnwell to do blog style in-depth analysis from football outsiders for football, but I’m not sure if they got Aaron Schatz into a content agreement.
Larger bodies have greater pull, so ESPN has a bigger impact on fangraphs than fangraphs has on ESPN- which is probably driving a profitable pivot towards more typical sport content.
If Jeff goes, I’m going to burn it all down.
Teams have been interested in analytical thinkers for quite a while now, as others writers have gone back and forth over the years. I don’t think front offices have changed so much as the publishing industry has, whether print or online. The New York Times is speculating about dropping its print editions, while the online ad revenue that once looked so promising is drying up at an astonishing rate. FanGraphs tried to pivot by offering subscriptions, but maybe we just didn’t buy enough of them to sustain this business model. Eno Sarris didn’t leave to work for a major league team, and neither did Paul Swydan.
I think that part of the reason for the brawling was that he stepped in with a piece that was virtually identical to some things that have been written here lately that got a poor reception. I was (and probably others were) primed to not like this piece, mostly because there have been a slew of pieces here lately that had (excuse the bluntness) really bad or misleading analysis. There’s been a bunch of pieces misusing Matt Swartz’s work, the obviously spurious “New Year’s Day Effect”, a chart on homegrown pitching…it’s irritating to see the same things used incorrectly over and over again.
I’d prefer to wait to see what Rian actually writes before telling him he’s wrong because he may not make those mistakes. I do think a lot of the posters here are taking out their frustrations on him, for things he didn’t actually do. But I understand their frustration, because what Rian outlined here is not something I particularly think the site needs more of.
It probably also doesnt help that he introduced himself by ripping the very essence of what Fangraphs is and accusing it of ruining baseball.
That is a bit like going into a scientific forum and telling everyone that they should all just believe in magic because its, like, way more fun.
I’m honestly not familiar with his work at all so I will give him a fair shake but its a less than stellar opening.
It’s like FG has decided their historical audience isn’t who they’re writing for anymore with this garbage.
That passage of the post is belitting to longtime FG enthusiasts at best and offensive at worst. Pretty much amounts to a dumbed-down “stop caring about how teams spend money and just watch guys hit homers” analysis. Arrogantly telling fans why and how to watch baseball is embarrassing for this site.
Welcome to Fangraphs. Rian, you ignorant slut. Do you prefer fans to be barefoot and pregnant over understanding aging curves, budgets and value?
I’m kidding, gave my age and more. Analytics are Scott Boras’ worst enemy. As fans we want our owners to want to win. We want our GMs to be smart, value driven and to have a pair when they need to stand up to a wayward owner. On this site I’ve seen that from fans across the spectrum.
Yeah, Bud was a pud, Donald Fehr was brilliant, the MLBPA pooped the bed in the recent go around. The pendulum swings. I appreciate and look forward to your insights. Just remember not all franchises are the same, hence all GMs and fans are different. Also the MLB path forward involves revenue redistribution- a difficult thing in a regionally funded experience where one family of four pays $226 for the same experience another family pays $556.
As for why I watch my baseball, my first answer is that I like the team that I support (Cardinals) and enjoy seeing them succeed. Fangraphs, of course, is not devoted to any one team, and reading the content here goes well beyond just looking at articles focused on my team.
What I’ll say, however, is that I do enjoy the “cleverness” of trying to figure out whether a team is making a “good” or “bad” decision. In part that’s because of also having a background that includes majoring in economics years ago and therefore feeling at ease with a quantitative framework for analyzing baseball transaction. A lot of it, however, is what I’d describe as nothing more than intellectual and aesthetic appreciation for seeing a front office make smart and creative decisions within the context of the constraints it might have (quality of current players, payroll commitments, a realistic payroll budget, quality of minor league prospects).
And, for what it’s worth, I don’t see “sign a boatload of top free agents by offering them all better terms than other teams” as all that interesting on an intellectual level. The structure of current baseball tries to push against that idea, between the CBT tax (especially the new surtaxes) as well as the pay differential between team control players and free agents. Even if some hypothetical owner decided to go all out on spending, however – say a Yankees owner deciding to operate like Mike Ilitch in his later years, but with Yankees-level revenue – I think it would be pretty boring: just keep signing two or three of the best two free agents every year to big contracts.
By the same token, I have to say that I also don’t find “tear it all down and rebuild from the ground up” to be a very interesting answer for every projected 75-win team to pursue. In some cases it does make sense, because there’s not another realistic path from Point A to being a playoff-caliber team, but I do think it’s more interesting to try to find a more creative path.
So, I find “efficiency” most interesting in the context of a team trying to be sustainably good – meaning in the playoffs far more often than not, and expected to be better than .500 every year – without simply spending more money than other teams all the time. Going back to my own fandom, it’s clearly the broad strategy of how Cardinals try to operate, and they’ve been generally successful at it prior to a couple recent down years (which were still teams with records over .500).
So that’s broadly why I don’t mind the “cleverness” of not signing Darvish for 7 / $175 million. My take is that making those sorts of moves with any frequency pushes teams in one of two directions: a team either needs to spend like the Yankees or Dodgers to stay competitive, or it’s aiming for a competitive window with the idea of “why care about Years 5-7, we’re just going to have to blow it up and rebuild by then anyway.”
Well said DaveT.
I will preface this by saying, I spent earlier today, reminiscing on my home blog about what Jake Arrieta meant to these Cub fans.
I’m old enough to remember the Gibson/Jenkins battles, so that too.
I started getting into the blogosphere around when Theo took over and found a blogger that put the rebuild in perspective. Could the Cubs afford the same ol’ same oh? Sure, but when Vitters and Jackson are the top prospects, it was rephreshing to hear “there’s a better way, but it won’t be easy”. It cost a ton of money to build the infrastructure to compete with a “small market” team like the Cardinals (sorry, couldn’t help myself). Obviously, not a White Sox fan, but I applaud them for trying to climb out of their own hole that poor management and ownership saddled them with, also. In the Central, Pitts. ownership pissed away 3 WC’s because they wouldn’t spend the $ they had to get over the hump (I believe, in their case, they have smart mgmt).
Theo cautioned teams recently, it’ a lot harder to do then it looks. A LOT has to go right. Jake Arrietta is a perfect example, the Cubs got him off the scrap heap, at 28 years old and Strop thrown in, for Scott Feldman. A Cy Young and a WS later, Yu falls into their laps.
Winning consistently is hard, as the Cardinal organization knows. It takes commitment from top to bottom. And luck. And $ well spent.
Every year, to the fan, is sacred.
Firstly, nice to see you here Rian. The late great John Arguello used to link to you so much, I had to double check to see if you were a former Denizen contributor.
Can’t wait for your first chat!
I suggest getting some beer recommendations from Eno for before, during and after.
Welcome to the 2018 version of Fangraghs commenters. I mean really, how many comments (long ones at that), does it take to belabor your point/displeasure. Get over yourselves.
Welcome Rian! Looking forward to reading your work. It’s interesting to think about future joy vs present, and I agree as we get older we should learn not to delay what we want, even if it may cost us a little later. But these baseball concepts were first used by the poor teams, and those teams still need them. Yes as an A’s fan I wish I could just enjoy a Judge homer, but we need to trade current win for future wins. We’re all at the mercy of billionaires, so until they think we should play for today, we need advanced analysis. Bottoming out for a poor team doesn’t look like the few years of tanking the Astros or Cubs had, it looks like 20 years without the playoffs like with the Pirates. A’s, Reds, Rays, they all need this kind of analysis. The problem may be other teams taking from the brain trusts of these teams and running their giant payrolls the same way
I wonder if the recent changes to the wild card have actually had the reverse effect and are influencing teams’ decision making processes in unexpected ways.
I too would love to see the majority of teams “go for broke” and try to win, but the only thing really worth going broke for is the division. At this moment, outside of the AL East, none of the divisions project to be all that competitive, and so if you’re an 85 win team like the Twins, how much sense does it really make to push your chips into the middle for 2018 when the most realistic payoff is a do or die wildcard game?
valorize /?væl??ra?z/ verb
1.(transitive) to fix and maintain an artificial price for (a commodity) by governmental action
C’mon, admit it, you had to look it up too!
AJ Preller has more insight on this conundrum than any person alive. Ask him.
Frequent reader, infrequent with comments.
Welcome Rian, this and the Mike Montgomery articles are excellent, wish you the best!
Welcome to the site. I liked your prose.
And I think you’re confusing flowery language for content and/or effective syntax, but you’re not alone in that.
One has to wonder if all of the turnover at FG is deeper than the best talent being “plucked away.” While this type of article has its place, and maybe that place is now FG, I’m not sure it is the hard hitting, unique analysis I have come to love and expect from the exceptional writers on this site.
I’m really looking forward to reading more of your work Rian. Keep this trend going.
I’m a very infrequent commenter around here, and so I know my lurker opinion counts as such, but this extremely abrupt move from emphasizing analysis to fact-lite narrative building has me wondering if FG is melting before my eyes. Melting into the kind of kind of goop you can find at a hundred other sites that prioritize feelings and vague ideas of justice or labor over those oh so lovely charts and graphs.
It sucks, because FG has always beautifully maintained an apolitical approach that is like oxygen in today’s world of everything-is-politic. With this shift toward narrative makers who, though several have not put it particularly well here, come from the ranks of Vice and such, it seems unlikely that FG will remain apolitical for long. And if we’re going to get more Owners are Killing the Sport platitudes, I’d hope we would get people with an economics or statistics background to build the argument, and not just more navel gazing from liberal arts majors (I say that as a liberal arts major whose entirety of statistic knowledge has been, more or less, fostered by FG’s existence. It’s partly tongue in cheek).
This isn’t to take away from Mr. Watt’s capacity as a writer. Frankly, I think his prose is an upgrade over some of the others that already fill his narrative-first role, and so he’s a fine enough writer. But this is not a comforting first impression for a long time FG reader and enthusiast.
Somewhere in that dump truck load of applications, I’m sure there were some whiz kids that could offer fresh analytic angles. Perhaps FG just doesn’t have the market cornered like it once did, but there are still plenty of bright minds out there who would give their left nut, or ovary, to exercise their take on the classic FG model, that of the analysis. That FG’s stable has, seemingly overnight, transformed from refreshing overthinkers to people who aren’t making their mushy, emotional arguments well, is a dizzying development. And it’s happening so fast and so comprehensively that it’s hard not to think of it as FG ripping the band-aid off and quickly moving into the same boring realm that plenty of other sports sites already inhabit.
If I was a complete conspiracy monger, I’d guess that FG knows that switching to this mold of writer is going to be a lot more cost effective for them in the long run, because generalist writers are a whole lot easier to find than the Camerons of the world. If anyone knows how to take advantage of a market, it’s surely FG.
and we folks who’ve hung around as lurkers or otherwise will find another outlet if the trend continues.
Good post. Narrative-based navel gazing is an apt description.
It’s of course hard to write articles communicating specialized knowledge in economics, antitrust/labor law, and statistics (in addition to baseball knowledge) and the people who have such knowledge aren’t very likely to devote their time to a baseball website. It’s probably just too much to ask from fangraphs, and with that, I will stop asking for it. I do think it’s a bit ironic that fangraphs of all places is actively moving away from “sabermetric” (objective, empirical-based) thinking in favor of pieces like this.
Hell, I don’t doubt that fangraphs is likely to get more clicks with superficial think pieces than the kinds of articles that I would rather read. It’s a good cue for me to keep my clicking to pieces about Bud Norris.
Now is the winter of our discontent…..the good news is only 2 days until pitchers and catchers report- real baseball returns! All is good– even Boras can’t stop the calendar. Good luck, Rian- and welcome. Look forward to your contributions and discussion.
Another MLBPA mouthpiece.
I’m late to the party! I see you’ve made some people unhappy, but consider this my fondest thanks for making me think. Welcome to Fangraphs!
Btw there certainly has been a change of tone at fangraphs. For years Fg supported the efficient front offices and criticised old school front offices who gave out underwater contracts or traded away prospects too early. Brewers were celebrated for adding to a 75 win team while the 2015 Padres and dbacks were killed for that .
However I can also understand the writers. It was cool to write about how smart the rays are and how stupid Dave Stewart was but if there are like 25 rays front offices and this leads to wage depression the downside of analytics show: rationalisation and cost saving and this starts to become a problem.
For writers really the best time was around 2005-2012 or so when there was a mix of sabermetric and traditional front offices.
I love sabermetrics but if every trade becomes basically equal expected surplus value (which doesn’t mean actual equal surplus value in the end of course because there is variance) it gets a little boring.
Same applies to win curves they are great but it also means that at least 50% of the league (assuming a 6-7 game variance to projections)and their fans know trying to compete is futile.
“Wouldn’t you rather all 30 teams be out there going for broke?”
Direct answer to this question for me is “no”.
Fantasy sports (which lets face it, drives 90+% of the readership here) is a resource allocation game. The typical Fangraphs reader, if such a person exists, is a hardcore fantasy baseball aficionado. We think the Gold Glove award history is stupid. We understand what the future likely holds for a batter with a .450 BABIP at the end of April. We can predict the regression for a pitcher with a 2% HR/FB at the end of May.
We may well have a favorite team that we live and die with (though many of us do not). But even if we do, we understand that it’s not in our team’s best interests to go for broke every year. Understand, we want parades at some point. We dream of the day our team wins a title, which on average will happen twice in our adult life. But we know all too well that pushing too hard in a season that isn’t meant to be will just deplete resources that might have been better used in a later season.
I want my GM to go all-in when the baseball gods have been kind, and it’s the trade deadline, and this is one of the rare years where we look like one of the top 2 teams in baseball. At that point, I want, or even demand, that they mortgage the future to get that little extra push. But every year? No. A thousand times no.
I don’t mind sitting in the stands watching a team rebuild. A bad day at the ballpark is still better than most any day doing most anything else. There are always stories to follow, of young kids perfecting their best pitch, of rookies developing more patience at the plate, of grizzled veterans finding ways to eke out just a couple more years at the end of a long career, winning with experience rather than tools. The Fangraphs reader in me can simultaneously enjoy the Norman Rockwell moments at the park and scream at the coaching staff for not positioning the outfield defense to counter the tendencies of the guy at the plate.
If baseball’s only attraction for you is highlight reels and superteams, I honestly think you’re following the wrong sport.
Welcome Rian! Looking forward to the reads.
As an Angels fan who’s been watching Pujol’s shell of his former self take the field everyday I think the short term joy of your team “going for broke” normally doesn’t equate to the displeasure of having to live with your team’s bad decisions.
Its the team’s job to keep the longterm interest of the club in mind because the average fan won’t. Life is short, but the win curve is shorter. That being said some 80 win teams need to nut-up and sign some free agents already.
1: your prose is great
2: I think there is room for this side of the argument at fangraphs, and, in fact, I enjoyed being reminded of it. I think well articulated dissenting views should be welcome.
BUT, I will say that I hope that the majority of fangraphs writers do not turn over to this view, because we can find it many other places on the internet, and it will not be easy to find long-view analysis that gives us the purely objective view that fangraphs has become a hub for.
Cheers, and Good luck
Welcome, Rian. I find your comments very refreshing, especially in a year when too many teams seem to be suffering from a surfeit of caution. This is a game. It’s supposed to be entertaining. Next, let’s see if we can get people off the idea that “a walk is as good as a hit.” I know all about OBP and its relationship to run-scoring. But, not matter how you slice it, walks are boring and hits are fun. As a fan, I want to see more hits and fewer walks. Does that make me a troglodyte? So be it.
Baseball is entertainment. Imagine going to a Spielberg movie and paying top dollar to see non stars who who should be in B movies, Spielberg tells you its necessary so they can afford to develop new stars who wont make as much as established stars in future movies . He says this as he boards his private jet surrounded by expensive escorts to his personal island in the tropics on a snowy day in NY, following a meeting with the mayor to get an exemption from property tax for his new movie production studio.
I am going to echo some sentiments that have been articulated well by some, not so well by others, in expressing some disappointment with this piece.
It’s not that I don’t see any merit in asking the existential question “Has (data/analytics/Moneyball/dollar efficiency chasing) caused some unintended negative consequences for the game of baseball?”, it’s just that this narrative / point of view isn’t unique, and can be found ubiquitously, being echoed in very similar fashion by almost every other sports media outlet out there. If I want to read articles making varying intensities of accusations of collusion against MLB front offices & owners, I’ll read SBNation – there are seemingly multiple articles a day there hammering this narrative.
Maybe I’m being too hard on Rian here, and he’ll offer quality analysis-minded pieces in the future, and I suppose I should give him a chance to do so. But, if what we’re going to get is more reduction of the use of smart analysis and prudent long-term team planning to this: “It’s possible that some of the slowness of this offseason to date has come from a small handful of teams simply being unwilling to spend and using the powerful legacy of honest-to-God rebuilds in Houston and Chicago to cover for plain and simple grift”, then I won’t be reading too much more of Mr. Watt’s writing, and that’ll reflect on FanGraphs as a whole.