Valuing Relievers: Correction or Bubble?
Yesterday, the Cubs acquired the final couple of months of Aroldis Chapman’s contract, adding the flamethrowing lefty to their bullpen for the stretch drive, but paying a high cost to win the bidding; shortstop Gleyber Torres is considered a top #25-#50 prospect in baseball, the kind of asset that is worth something like $40 million right now, and they had to throw in some sweeteners on top of that, including a big league pitcher was was worth +2 WAR just last year. Overall, the package of talent the Yankees received was probably worth around $50 million; that’s a staggering price for a rental.
In fact, I think it’s probably correct to say that the Cubs paid more for two months of Chapman than the Red Sox did for 2.5 years of Drew Pomeranz. And while this deal might prove to be an outlier in terms of deadline prices — the Cubs are somewhat uniquely positioned to overpay for relief help, given the strength of the rest of their roster, and how difficult it would have been for them to upgrade at another position — it also looks like a continuation of rising prices for relief pitchers.
Last winter, the Red Sox gave up a significant prospect package to acquire Craig Kimbrel from the Padres, and the Astros put together a five player combination for Ken Giles that the Phillies simply couldn’t turn down. Even the mid-tier relievers benefited, with seemingly every bullpen pitcher with a pulse landing a multi-year contract, and three year deals becoming standard for arms coming off strong seasons. With the game trending more towards shorter outings from starting pitchers and the Royals showing you can win a World Series with lousy starting pitching, teams have begun to alter their calculations on what relievers were worth.
But is this increasing emphasis on specialists an acknowledgment of the growing importance of bullpens, or simply an overreaction to the Royals winning the 2015 World Series on the backs of Wade Davis, Kelvin Herrera, and Ryan Madson?
On the one hand, the case against paying a price for a guy like Chapman is pretty easy. For example, you can do it with this one handy chart.
Even without Chapman, the Cubs were expected to win the NL Central 94 times out of 100; a seven game lead with 64 games to go is a pretty significant advantage, and the Cubs are likely an even better team than their current .602 winning percentage suggests; their BaseRuns expected winning percentage is .652, easily the best in baseball. They were a juggernaut even without Chapman, and acquiring him doesn’t really move the needle on their playoff odds that much. So, realistically, the Cubs gave up something like $50 million in assets for the right to deploy Chapman as a monster relief ace in the postseason.
And this really seems to be where the big disconnect in valuation between teams and the public lies. When we talk about the relative insignificance of a single reliever in comparison to a starting pitcher or a position player, we’re mostly talking about the quantity of innings they can throw in the regular season. But that all changes in the postseason.
I wrote about this a couple of years ago, but the percentage of innings a reliever can throw in October is dramatically different than the percentage of innings they can throw in the regular season. In that post, I noted that a typical reliever will throw about five percent of a team’s innings during the year, but that the most aggressive use of relievers pushed them towards 10% during the postseason. If we look back at last year’s Royals run, a similar pattern holds.
During the regular season, Kansas City pitchers threw 1,452 innings. Of that total, 70 innings (4.8%) were thrown by Kelvin Herrera, 67 innings (4.6%) were thrown by Wade Davis, 63 innings (4.3%) were thrown by Ryan Madson, and 51 innings (3.5%) were thrown by Luke Hochevar. Those four relievers combined to throw 17.2% of the Royals innings from April through September.
In the postseason, those percentages spiked up to 9.2% for Herrera, 7.2% for both Davis and Hochevar, and 5.6% for Madson; those four combined to throw 29.2% of the team’s postseason innings. Extrapolated to a regular season innings total, that’s the equivalent of getting about 425 innings from that quartet during the regular season. And because you can deploy your best relievers in situations where preventing runs has the largest impact on the outcome of the game, you’re looking at roughly a 1.5x leverage multiplier on the value of those innings; with leverage included, those four combined to throw the regular-season equivalent of about 640 innings during the Royals run to the World Series.
Put simply, when the calendar flips to October, the idea that relievers don’t pitch enough to be highly valuable just isn’t true. They still don’t throw as many innings as starting pitchers, but because of leverage, a team’s best few relievers are arguably just as important in October as all the non-ace starters.
So our valuation models — the ones based on regular season workloads, anyway — fall short in capturing a reliever’s impact in the postseason. And that helps explain why teams have been paying significantly more for relief pitcher WAR than they have been for any other position for a long time now. While the uptick in prices paid is more recent, MLB teams have long disagreed with the public view of reliever valuation.
And as Jeff Sullivan showed last year, having an elite reliever probably helps more in the regular season than we’ve been crediting them for, as well. It’s not like relief aces are only valuable in October; they also help you get there. That probably wasn’t a huge factor for the Cubs in the Chapman trade, but it was definitely a factor for the Red Sox and Astros in their offseason trades for Kimbrel and Giles, respectively. And it will likely be a factor for other buyers at this deadline, ones looking to upgrade their bullpens to help get to October.
So there’s plenty of evidence that suggests that relievers have been undervalued, so a price correction was probably in order. But this kind of price correction? Just because the public has been undervaluing relievers doesn’t justify any and all price increases, after all; there is a point at which a market can overcorrect. Do the Kimbrel, Giles, and this Chapman trade suggest that teams are perhaps pushing the needle too far in the other direction?
It isn’t an easy question to answer. For one, we might not have a lot of credibility on the subject, given that we’ve likely been undervaluing relievers for a long time.
By our current valuation methods, the game’s elite relievers are worth about +2 WAR in the regular season, but as Sullivan showed, teams with those kinds of elite relief performances generally win about 1.7 games more than we’d expect, so you could argue that perhaps these guys are worth closer to +4 WAR, if the team’s clutch performance was solely due to having a great reliever. Except there’s a difference between acquiring a guy who has been great in the past and guaranteeing elite performance.
As August noted this morning, relievers acquired at a premium haven’t always continued to pitch like elite relievers. Craig Kimbrel, for instance, has a -0.1 WPA for the Red Sox this year, as he’s had a few uncharacteristic meltdowns that have cost Boston some close games. Ken Giles is at -0.3 WPA, as he’s struggled with the long ball, and as such, is now the Astros seventh inning guy. David Robertson, who cost the White Sox $46 million and a first round pick to sign as a free agent before last season, has a +1.2 WPA over 1.5 seasons worth of work as the White Sox closer.
These guys were pretty safe bets as far as relievers go, but the acquiring teams haven’t gotten the kinds of performances they were expecting, at least in terms of securing leads. Because reliever performance is concentrated in such a small number of innings, predicting their performance can be really difficult, and so the valuation question has to also include the uncertainty of the future performance.
There’s uncertainty with the future performance of every player, of course, but relievers are more fickle than most. When the Red Sox traded for Drew Pomeranz, all the talk was about how risky an acquisition he was, but he’s probably no more volatile than any relief pitcher, and again, he cost less than Chapman despite coming with a couple of extra years of arbitration-controllable seasons. But then again, Pomeranz is probably less valuable to Boston in the postseason than Chapman could be to the Cubs.
Right now, Pomeranz slots in as the Red Sox third or fourth starter. If they end up in the Wild Card game, he probably doesn’t pitch. If they get to the five game ALDS, he probably makes one start, throwing somewhere between four to six innings. If they get to the seven game ALCS or World Series, he’ll either make one or two starts, depending on if they slot him or Rick Porcello in as the third or fourth starter. If he ends up as the #4, he very well might only throw 10 or 15 innings during a Red Sox World Series run, or not that many more than Chapman could be expected to throw for the Cubs if they reached the Fall Classic. And Chapman’s innings will be more important.
So, yeah, for 2016, it’s probably rational for Chapman to be valued higher than Pomeranz. But then there’s the issue of future value, and Pomeranz crushes Chapman there. Even if the Red Sox don’t plan on keeping him themselves, he could be spun off for value this winter, recouping some of the acquisition cost. Even if you think Pomeranz will lose value once teams have better options to acquire starting pitchers, it’s hard to imagine he loses enough value — barring injury, of course — to not bring back a prospect worth $20 million or so; with two cheap-ish arbitration years remaining, that would be the equivalent of the acquiring team giving him a value similar to the contract J.A. Happ signed for over the winter, for reference.
If the Red Sox spun him off for a $20 million prospect in a few months, then their acquisition cost for Pomeranz’s stretch run value would be in that $20 million range, or less than half of what the Cubs paid to have Chapman for the final few months of the season. And it’s not like the consensus was that the Red Sox got a bargain in Pomeranz. But relative to the Chapman acquisition cost, he looks like a steal.
Where does this leave us on the question of reliever valuation? Is the Chapman deal just the latest sign that the market is now correctly valuing high-end bullpen arms, or did the Cubs simply overpay because they could and felt like they had to?
Right now, I’m leaning towards the latter. The Cubs had a very specific need for an elite left-handed reliever, and the Yankees happened to control the two players who really would solve that issue for them in a season where they had a chance to win their first World Series title in 108 years. Standing pat wasn’t really an option, and so they decided they’d rather borrow from their future at a high interest rate than regret not pushing in harder on what might be their best chance to bring a championship to Chicago.
I don’t think most other teams have similar issues, though. The Giants, Indians, and Nationals have other ways of upgrading their rosters besides adding a reliever, and they don’t necessarily have to add a left-handed reliever. They can cast a wider net than the Cubs could, and weigh the pros and cons of multiple paths to upgrade their roster before the deadline.
So I think the Chapman price is going to prove to be an outlier, an overpay from a team with enough incentives to convince them to justify it this time. But I don’t think the Cubs liked paying that price for Chapman, and I doubt they’re happy about having to give up Torres and three other players for a rental.
I think relievers are worth more than we’ve given them credit for over the years, but if teams start looking at that price as the new market value of relievers, I think it would be a mistake. Relievers are valuable, especially in the postseason. But ~$50 million for a half season of a reliever? I can’t get there. The Cubs overpaid because they could and they lacked options, but teams with alternatives would be wise to spend their prospect capital other places if sellers with relievers on the market try to establish the Chapman trade as the new fair market value for bullpen upgrades.
Dave is the Managing Editor of FanGraphs.
including a big league pitcher was was worth +2 WAR just last year.
You wrote “was” two times.
HOW DARE YOU OFFER A SIMPLE CORRECTION WITHOUT BEING SNIDE OR CONDESCENDING! DOWNVOTE!
–8 people (as of 1:26 PM CST)
Whole thread seems to be a festival of unexplained downvoting. Of course this place gets weirdly tetchy sometimes but I have to say I prefer the kind that’s expressed in words, however crazy, to the totally drive-by kind.
Where downvotes are to be interpreted in all caps, then the reaction may appear tetchy; however, a comment that only brings attention to a typo might be discouraged for failing to contribute to the conversation initiated by the post’s author (who does not look dissimilar to Drew Pomeranz, right? I think that each time I see the latter’s headshot among Probable Pitchers…).
I think it just sucks that it was was the first comment. If he or she said this further down it’s probably unnoticed. Speaking for myself, I look at the first several comments to see if anyone engaged the author in interesting debate and drew a response. And as soon as I see Damaso and his ilk I shut the laptop and run.
I go with bubble, as well. I don’t see why a team doesn’t just give up less for a #3/4 starter and use him out of pen instead
I would go with bubble. Except people have been saying it’s a bubble since closers first starting getting huge FA deals. Is it just a really long lasting bubble?
…because relieving is different from starting?
You are technically correct (the best kind of correct!) but that really mostly applies the other direction.
Most relievers began as starters, suggesting it’s something that can readily get learned.
I mean, we see starters pitching from the pen all the time in the playoffs. I dunno why you think the two are different.
Put another way, the pool of players who can start is a subset of the pool of players who can relieve.
Unfortunately, baseball players are human beings, not just assortments of traits that can be expressed in numerical form.
Players can say “fuck you, I’m a starter,” and not every conversion to relief is successful.
Dennis Eckersley would like a word with you.
There’s also the small, but non-zero, benefit of not having to face Chapman in the postseason, since if he hadn’t gone to the Cubs he might have gone to an NL team the Cubs will face in the DS or LS, or an AL team they might face in the WS.
Is the difference between the Cubs with Chapman and without Chapman larger the closer we get to October?
Of course it’s never good to count chickens before they hatch, but I wonder if perhaps Aroldis Chapman’s “impact” becomes more apparent if you compare the odds of Cubs-With-Chapman-In-World-Series vs Cubs-Without-Chapman-In-World-Series.
Dan Szymborski said in his chat the other day that his calculation is that Chapman adds about 1% to the Cubs’ probability of winning the World Series this year.
Even if you want to argue that his calculation doesn’t fully take into account reliever leverage and post-season usage – I don’t know the answer to that either way – I don’t see how that 1% change moves up to more than something like 1.5% to 2%.
Dave- do you think control matters less with relievers? You’d expect a Kimbrell/Miller/Betances to be worth more than Chapman – but i wonder if teams strongly discount control given the volatility of RPs — add that to the notion that maybe the cubs wont be in the playoffs next season and that makes paying for a Chapman a little more palatable?
Interesting point, but I don’t think so, no. The idea that a team would prefer to trade for a couple of months of an expiring contract relief pitcher to avoid being on the hook for him the following season when the rest of the team may not be competitive because the acquiring cost is lower may be valid.
On the other hand, though, teams are probably content to move assets later and recoup value if they aren’t in the playoff hunt at some later point. The tigers made a big trade to acquire David Price (not a RP, but illustrative nonetheless) in 2014 at the deadline. He played with them in that year’s playoffs before Detroit was bounced by the O’s. A year later, when they were sitting on a valuable asset that was expiring and looking at an unlikely playoff picture and a lousy farm system, they traded him away and got a few MLB-ready prospects in the process (arguably coming out ahead than what they paid for him a year earlier).
Now it’s possible that the difference in market valuation isn’t linear with years of control remaining, so maybe it is preferable to deal for an expiring contract pitcher than for one who is under contract for a few years.
As for the volatility, that works even more in small samples. You don’t deal for 2 months of Chapman without recognizing that he’s far more likely to be volatile in those 2 months than he is over the course of the entirety of the 2017 season.
Great read Dave. I’m glad of the increasing awareness of the limitations of modern metrics in elite reliever valuations.
I’ve always thought that some of the value we “miss” in an elite bullpen arm is the ability for a team to help control sequencing (for lack of a better term). I know LI and WPA attempt to account for this, but I think they miss on the bigger picture as far as total value to a team goes. As an extreme example, I imagine a scenario in which a manager had at his disposal a batter who could only make 10 or so plate appearances in a given season, but the player was guaranteed to hit a home run each trip to the plate. Since the manager gets to pick which situations he sends the batter to the plate, I’d assume the player’s impact on the team’s win total would be far greater than his counting stats would suggest.
I think it’s true that we struggle to properly value relievers, but managers picking their spots to maximize a reliever’s (or specifically, a closer’s) value is constrained somewhat by being beholden to the save statistic. The value of a good reliever would be even better illustrated if the best ones were deployed in the highest leverage spots.
(Of course, Joe Maddon is a forward-thinking type that would seem more likely to bring in the “best” reliever for the tightest spot, so there’s always hope…)
Interesting thought, and I know that you stated that your scenario is an extreme example.
The thing is, though, that even a really good closer such as Chapman is so far from a player who is guaranteed to hit a HR in his 10 PA’s. Chapman has about a 2.0 FIP both this year and for his career. I believe that reliever replacement level FIP is a bit over 4.0. (I couldn’t find that for 2016 directly on Fangraphs but interpolated looking at reliever WAR by team.) That’s meaningful, but it’s still around two runs over 9 innings, even if those are high leverage innings.
It ties in with points that Dan Szymborkski made on Twitter the other day about how a lot of fans overestimate the difference between a good (or even mediocre) bullpen and a great bullpen. You can look at various stats but the main point is that even teams with average-ish quality relievers win the vast majority of games that they’re leading in late innings.
If anybody wants proof that just having an elite bullpen isn’t enough, just look at the team that traded Chapman. Yanks had Betances, Miller & Chapman and they’re not close to the playoffs. Yeah, the Royals had a great bullpen, but everybody glossed over how fantastic their position players were last year. If you have a weak rotation, then it makes sense to have a strong supporting bullpen to balance that out. But then you need a strong position player group, or you’re just going to keep the game close when you lose, or hold on to the few lead your position players give you.
There is some value to having multiple high end relievers in the playoffs, but those should be the guys you add last, to support your team, and not the other way around.
Perhaps it’s the other way around, though? It may be that the rest of the Yankee’s roster was so amazingly weak, that clinging to .500 would not have been possible without the pen that they have.
Well, yeah, because if the bullpen sucked, they’d have little going for them and would obviously do worse, just like if the position players or starters were better, they’d be in a playoff race. The point is that you can’t win with a bullpen alone, whereas the narrative was “Relievers are leading Royals to success”, so everybody bought high on relievers.
Luckily that’s not really an issue with the Cubs – one of the best lineups in baseball and a top-5 starting rotation.
But there’s definitely an argument that the Yankees have received significantly more wins from their relievers than their WAR would support.
I don’t contend your point, but it is worth noting that the Yankees and Royals have better winning percentages this year than the rosters would promise, and the relievers have contributed to making these teams .500 or better. In the larger scheme, the additional wins are meaningless without a postseason. From a fan’s perspective watching everyday, those bullpens have compensated for below league average performances from position players, and the Yankees and Royals have been good to root for, if one wishes to be happy more often than not.
I think that’s cherry-picking.
The top 5 teams by reliever WAR this year are, in order, the Astros, Yankees, Dodgers, Orioles, and Nationals. The Royals are #8, by the way.
Here are the actual number of wins +/- for those teams versus Pythagorean record and Baseruns, respectively:
Astros (6.1 reliever WAR): -2 and 0
Yankees (5.8): +4 and +5
Dodgers (4.0): -1 and -2
Orioles (3.7): +5 and +5
Nationals (3.7): -3 and -4
The average for the 5 is +0.6 vs. Pythagorean and +0.8 vs. Baseruns. And, as we can see by the list, there’s quite a bit of variance by individual team.
I don’t know that bullpen WAR is the best way to analyze this. Out of those 5, I’d only say only the Yankees, O’s (and maybe the Astros) fit the profile of multiple reliever aces. Blanton and Howell, or Kelley and Treinen don’t scream shutdown innings to me. Even the Astros have had some issues late in games. They may have depth but we are talking, specifically about the benefit of having dominant relievers.
I am definitely biased in my argument. Betances, Miller, and Chapman have been among the year’s highlights for me, and I am not necessarily a Yankees fan.
Also, I am not convinced that the difference between expected wins and actual wins using accumulated runs scored and runs allowed is a precise way of measuring the effect of relief pitching, although the five best teams by reliever WAR account for four playoff teams and the Yankees and two of those teams, the Yankees and Orioles, have certainly outperformed expectations.
Isn’t enough for what? To be a WS contender with NYY’s rotation and lineup? No. To be a ~.500 team despite their rotation and lineup? Quite possibly.
I’m not sure I have heard anyone contend that having an elite bullpen is “enough” if you mean to say there’s a running narrative that a team can be good if it has an elite bullpen but garbage everywhere else. I’m not sure I disagree with your conclusion, but I think it’s flimsy reasoning. It’s like saying that the Angels are proof that having the best player in the game on your team isn’t enough. Isn’t this a thing everyone knows?
I think reality is as simple as “having less than a handful of good players isn’t enough”.
Two thoughts:
(1) It is interesting that the other side of the equation (valuing prospects at $50m) wasn’t discussed at all. Are we that confident in the presumptive value of prospects — especially ones not close to the majors — that it isn’t even a question?
(2) Interesting to think about this in the context of the Sale/leverage piece yesterday. Were the Cubs bidding against anyone, or was it just that the NYY could plausibly take the position that “this milk is for sale and this is what it costs and if you don’t want it, fine, we’ll keep it and throw it away at the end of the year.
I hope every trade this year is couched in milk analogies.
There’s a lot of work already done on prospect valuation. It’s not perfect because of the unpredictable nature of a prospect (how can you predict the next Jose Bautista?), but it is a logical framework from which to discuss things.
This is a good starting point – http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/updating-prospect-valuations/
You make a very good point about the value of the prospects in the deal.
Even if we accept that the projections for future WAR and future price/WAR are fairly accurate, there’s still the question of discount rate to arrive at present value. It does seem possible that a lot of organizations – not necessarily all, but many of them – discount future WAR of prospects several years from the majors (like Torres) by more than we assume.
I’ll throw out the idea that one rationale for a higher discount rate by many teams is lack of GM job security, which can be thought of as a “principal – agent” problem. If a GM is worried about job security, then he may well heavily discount the potential for WAR several years out vs. a high-minors prospect who can start to show production in the near-term. Mathematically, his discount rate for prospects may not be linear – getting some prospects who can make it MLB within the relative near-term and show promise (i.e., show some WAR at the MLB level in the next year or so) has personal value for job security.
The sort of GM that I’ve described obviously isn’t every selling team, because some have committed to medium-term rebuilds while providing GM’s with good job security. I think it’s worth at least considering, though, trading for low-minors, high variance prospects has some special issues in a world of insecure GM’s.
And I suppose these issues aren’t all just principal-agent problems of insecure GM’s with the need to show progress at the MLB level in the near-term. Showing that progress also has monetary value for teams that aren’t near-term contenders. Even if a team isn’t going to be good in 2017-18, getting some promising young players onto the MLB team has marketing and ticket sales benefits that a team doesn’t get from having high upside prospects in AA.
Dave, do you think this might be a side effect of the qualifying offer system? A one year $15.8 million deal is reasonable for most position players and starting pitchers, but not many relievers have come even close to making that as an annual average value. Teams might be more motivated to make a top shelf reliever available because the trade market is the only way to recoup any kind of value before they leave in free agency, whereas a hitter or starter you might be more reticent to trade. And if top quality starting pitchers or bats aren’t on the market, contenders are going to compete for the best relievers to try and improve their roster, driving up the trade market price.
One thing here is that Chapman really isn’t a “lefthanded reliever” for the Cubs, not in terms of usage anyway. He’ll be asked to get the final 3+ outs in close games regardless of those batters’ handedness. If come World Series time Ortiz comes up in a key 7th-or-earlier inning situation, no they won’t be rushing Chapman in to try to get him.
Yeah I can’t believe he said that, unless he knows something we don’t.
I was going to comment on this as well, but it seems you already have.
The idea that the cubs need a good LHRP is true, but I’m not sure that this acquisition actually does anything to fill that need. If he’s used as a closer, like it has been noted, then all he does is push Strop and Rondon into 7th and 8th inning duty, which has value, but they’re both RH, so it doesn’t fill the LHRP need at all.
Do you mean he’s not a LOOGY? Because he definitely is a lefthanded reliever, and that usage scenario is one I think is pretty much acceptable for someone labeled as such.
Alang and Joser made the two comments I came here to ask myself. In particular I agree with Joser that the Cubs have kept Chapman away from any potential playoff rival. I’d say that actually has a significant value of some sort but it is hard to quantify from a layman’s point of view.
I think one important point to make is that you are basing your whole point on the assumption that the 50 million valuation for the package the Yankees got is correct. All of these prospect valuations seem inflated to me.
What are even the odds of a top 25-50 prospect of panning out? What’s the failure rate of top 10 prospects? You even see #1 prospects failing all the time. I’m not saying prospects have no value, but you are trying to quantify a bird in the hand vs two in the bush.
This seems more apparent to me in the Sale for Urias deal. One’s a proven ace, the other is a potential ace. I don’t know where to look for projections out of this year, but I rather have the more expensive, cost controlled guaranteed ace, than the longer cost controlled and cheaper potential ace.
It’s based on a study that looked at players and their ranks and divided it between position players and hitters. Then it looked at the avg war that those player produced over their controllable years.
And there’s a link prominently placed right there in the article . . .
Yeah, if the Dodgers want Sale, they’re throwing Seager, or they’re waiting till 2018.
Even forget about relievers specifically — if there’s any predictable aspect to the difference between postseason performance and regular-season performance, “we” aren’t valuing it correctly, or at all. We know Billy Beane’s shit doesn’t work in the playoffs, but the axiom derived from that — that no one elses’s shit does, or can, because playoff performance’s deviation from regular-season performance is 100% random variation — really ought to be up for discussion on its own. If you think there is any predictable aspect to it at all, then that’s obviously just not something that’s included in $/WAR-type valuation.
About 10 years back Nate Silver thought that he’d identified a “secret sauce” of certain team characteristics correlated with greater post-season success, which were a power pitching staff (high K rate), a good closer, and good defense. He and Baseball Prospectus eventually retired that idea, though, because it didn’t stand the test of time in subsequent years.
See http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/do-mlb-preseason-projections-matter-in-the-playoffs/ , and here’s the money quote from Neil Paine:
“The only thing practically every study of the postseason has in common is that a team’s overall regular-season performance, and little else, matters when predicting its playoff fortunes.”
Huh? Anderson Espinoza is universally considered to be a significantly better prospect than Gleyber Torres, McKinney is questionable to even become a viable fourth outfielder at the major league level, Crawford probably never becomes anything, and Warren has been well below replacement level this season. It was a great get for three months of Chapman, but it’s definitely less than the Red Sox paid for Pomeranz. Put differently, if the Yankees could flip this haul for Anderson Espinoza, they would.
“Anderson Espinoza is universally considered to be a significantly better prospect than Gleyber Torres”
Gleyber Torres: BA #41, MLB #28, BP #41
average rank: #37
Anderson Espinoza: BA #19, MLB #39, BP #73
average rank: #44
I wasn’t aware of the MLB or BP ranks. My mistake, what I said was obviously wrong. Of the people I have talked to about prospects, Espinoza is held in higher regard than Torres.
For what it’s worth, I appreciate that when presented with contrary evidence, you just gave a simple “Whoops! My bad!” So many are allergic to those words; we would so often rather double down on a bad argument and expend countless words and energy defending the indefensible.
(See: 99% of message board arguers, and 100% of politicians.)
Thanks. When you run your mouth as much as I do, getting some things wrong is unavoidable. 😉 That being said, I really should have checked around at sites like MLB.com and BP before posting what I did. Since Torres appears to be held in similar or even higher regard by those sources, Dave’s argument that Chapman went for more is plausible.
Not to pile on, but, well, here we go. The article Dave links to in the first paragraph values hitting prospects more highly than pitching prospects. For example, BA’s misreading update has Espinoza 15 and Torres 27. Pitchers in that tier are valued almost exactly as highly as hitters in the other one.
That’s because people who talk about prospects on the Internet love 18 year olds who throw 98 like they’re playing catch, but whose arm might explode at any time, more than they do preternatural “baseball player” prospects like Torres, who lack any single sexy tool but offer a very appealing total package.
There’s nothing wrong with that perspective, but it’s silly to think that teams share it.
Correction by contending teams.
Most of the teams giving up big time returns for relievers are sure fire postseason contenders. Teams are realizing, as noted in the article, that relievers can give you a major advantage in the postseason that they can’t provide in the regular season. Teams that are trying to get to the post-season have long been willing to give up prospects to acquire starters and position players to get them to the postseason. Now teams are starting pay similar prices for relievers to get them through the postseason.
The postseason is far shorter than regular season but the overall impact on the franchise cannot be understated. A decade from now fans remember the team that won the WS not the great team that lost in division series because their bullpen melted down.
Elite relievers CAN give you a major advantage in the postseason, but they can just as easily be rendered irrelevant if the high leverage situations don’t materialize.
Obviously.
An impact starter CAN give you a major advantage, but they can just as easily be rendered irrelevant if your offense does nor score any runs.
Every trade is about altering probabilities not securing guaranties.
You guarantee that starter starts the game (minus injury) because that’s what starters do. You do not guarantee a reliever, especially a closer, if that’s truly what chapman will be, gets into a game.
There is a guarantee that the starter will affect the game for how ever many innings he is pitching. There is no guarantee that a closer sees a save situation.
The relative certainty of a player’s utility should play into trade valuation, should it not? A starting pitcher is all but guaranteed to significantly impact a game in which he starts (barring injury or what have you), but reliever utility is far more situational. Even in your scenario, the starting pitcher isn’t irrelevant because if you traded for an elite one, there’s a better chance that he kept it 0-0 or at least close enough to exit the game still in striking distance. An elite reliever is truly irrelevant if his team is down by five runs after three innings.
While they may not get a chance to pitch with the lead they c an still help your team stay close. Also, Having more studs in the bullpen means you can have a quick hook with a starter who doesn’t have it. This is even more true in the postseason where you can pitch them almost every game thanks to the built in off days. Off the top of my head I can remember the Royals did this in the ’14 Wild card game. Shields didn’t look great so they pulled him fairly early. Having Davis, Holland, and Herrera makes burning one of them early hurt less. I’m not sure if they actually played it this way (I think they brought Ventira in but I can’t remember for certain) but I imagine Yost knew he only needed to eat a few innings before he could call in his big guns.
If a manager is willing to forgo the roles and pitch them whenever they run into a high leverage situation then you may reap even more of an advantage from them. Of course, this is wishful thinking lol
Dave I would just like to say that I appreciate your insight and like reading your work.
While the Cubs do have the resources to make the necessary jump into the bubble of over valuation, they went the wrong way. Consistent performance from the top bullpen is far less of a guarantee than most as pointed out. With prospects having a roughly 40% bust rate and Schwarber just having surgery, trading him for Miller would have been the right play.
I’m not sure I agree with the presupposition that innings total is the primary reason we’ve long valued starters more than relievers in this context. In the regular season, that’s certainly the case, and I might argue that elite relievers have been undervalued in the regular season more than they’ve been undervalued in the postseason. Over a 162 game sample, it’s essentially a given that a team will face its share of high leverage situations in which an elite reliever gets his opportunities to amass WPA, and that’s where they’ve been undervalued.
To my mind, however, the reason to place a premium on starting pitching in the rental market–particularly for a team adding FOR October rather than to REACH October–is in the guarantee of utility. It’s true that under the right circumstances an elite reliever can be invaluable, but that makes their value necessarily more circumstantial than maybe any other asset in the game. When the Blue Jays acquired David Price last year, they did so knowing with certainty (well, barring injury or the like, of course) that he would start postseason games for them and that there’s no player on the field with more influence on a single game than the starting pitcher. His utility was all but guaranteed.
Conversely, the Cubs have no such guarantee that Chapman will have the opportunity to do what they’ve acquired him to do. Even the most elite reliever in baseball can be rendered irrelevant by circumstance for stretches of games at a time. The Cubs need only look as far back as last postseason to see an example of where a stud reliever wouldn’t have made a significant impact. Arrieta’s complete game gem in the Wild Card game sidelined the bullpen completely, the NLDS was a relatively comfortable affair lacking the type of high leverage situations that call for elite relievers, and then there was the NLCS, in which Daniel Murphy effectively relegated the entire Cubs bullpen to mop-up duty.
If I’m giving up a package like the Cubs just paid for Chapman, I want that guaranteed utility. Granted, they could end up in several close playoff games filled with high leverage situations and this acquisition could work out perfectly for them, but Torres+ is a high price to pay for an asset that’s so at the mercy of circumstance in a sample as short as the postseason.
This is a very good point. But you could also argue there’s utility to the situational nature of relief pitching, precisely because the ace reliever is an asset that you get to choose when to deploy, right? The bullpen is the one major way a roster can enable a manager to put a thumb on the scales at the right moment, which is why fans always complain so much about managers’ bullpen utilization.
The $50 million valuation may be right in terms of “absolute” value” but “wrong” in terms of “relative” value.
Yankees had 3 excellent relievers and losing one doesn’t really cost them anything.
Cubs already have 2 shortstops who are BETTER than Torres probably ever will be and are only 2-3 years older, not much separation in age so Torres was blocked at that position.
So, giving up your third best shortstop for the BEST reliever in MLB to shore up the weakest team link seems like a pretty good bargain.
Just as you can’t play 3 SS at the same time, in a year or two, they can have Schwarber, Soler and Eloy Jimenez all vying for LF.
Cubs can have AS players at 3B (Bryant), SS (Russell), 1B (Rizzo), catcher (Contreras), LF (the 3 above mentioned) for years to come. As one pundit wrote, “The Cubs have too many good players, the poor bastards.”
Now, if only Jason Heyward can become an “average” hitter instead of just sucking……
All these guys could pan out, and all be great together, at the same time; but I would still warrant caution in anointing Contreras, Russell, or Schwarber/Soler as perennial all-stars. It is quite the embarrassment of riches, but sometimes guys don’t develop quite as fast or as much as hoped. (Hence the Cubs making “win now” moves while the iron is hot. The future looks bright, but less certain.)
Great read Dave…from the piece: “Except there’s a difference between acquiring a guy who has been great in the past and guaranteeing elite performance.”
This is true, but this is no different from acquiring a starter or position player. That “paying up for past performance” is not at all exclusive to closers/relievers.
Cubs may as well have just done Schwarber for Miller/Chapman
Don’t forget, Pomeranz has significant recent bullpen experience, I’d expect him to be used in relief at various points in the postseason
The Chapman trade had a couple pertinent extenuating circumstances that raised the price.
The Cubs could win the next 10 NL Central titles, 100 games every year, and if they don’t win the Series, they will be viewed as the same old cursed Cubs — a failure for Epstein/Hoyer.
Additionally, no Epstein/Hoyer team has won 100 games in the regular season, so it’s entirely realistic to think that Epstein/Hoyer view this team as the best team they’ve assembled and could assembled. And within that context they just added the most dominant leftie reliever in MLB history to fill the one void on their team with the best option among current MLB players.
I think teams, both buyers and sellers have come to realize that prospects are lottery tickets, especially those that are ranked well before they are close to MLB ready and have not had success in AA ball or higher. There is a higher value attached to prospects who are close to MLB ready and have excelled at AA or AAA. So sellers demand more than just 1 young prospect, and buyers are willing since they understand the uncertainty in the projections for these guys
Then one needs to look at the organization. A buyer may be comfortable parting with prospects who are deemed surplus due to multiple players in that organization at a similar position and blocked at the MLB level. This requires a certain amount of luck in finding a trade partner. The buyer has to be looking for what they are selling, and/or be able to afford their salary, plus he needs to have the surplus prospects that the seller finds desirable. There is not always a matchup.
Warren was an interesting addition to the deal. He had poor numbers after a decent 2 months. I suspect the Cubs willingness to part with him was because he is making 1.7 million and due to make 2.5 million next year, and they want to free up some money for Chapmans extension /signing. Also, with the 2 recent additions to the Cubs pen, and their rotation in good shape, he was surplus.
Warren also allows the Yankees to sell the idea that trading Chapman was not all about the future, but helping the team in 2016 as well. Chapman will be missed, but he was a bit of a luxury. How often did the Yankees pull a SP’er who was cruising at 80 pitches just to make room for the 3 headed monster to get into the game. Quite a few times. Their manager just couldn’t help himself
Overall I think that this post makes good points, but I have to question Dave saying that “standing pat wasn’t really an option” for the Cubs.
My first question is, “why not?” They’re a very good team, and it’s not like the bullpen lacked for several good to very good relievers to use in high leverage situations (Rondon, Strop, and Edwards) with some seemingly useful reinforcements already added (Montgomery and Nathan). If the focus is the postseason, also add a starter moving to the bullpen (presumably Hammel) into the mix.
My second issue with that statement is that “standing pat” vs. “trading a lot for a Chapman rental” is a false dilemma. Yes, what the Cubs traded for Chapman was apparently the market price for a light-outs reliever. It’s fair to wonder, however, about the marginal benefit and cost of Chapman vs. other options who obviously aren’t as good as Chapman but would still upgrade middle relief depth.
The Cubs are a responsible (long term thinking; cost effective) front office, but it’s time to be a little irresponsible if they are going to win a championship. Considering their roster is rich with young talent, I think this type of irresponsible is understandable. I wonder if they wanted Miller more than Chapman…I would.
I understand the Vogelbach for Montgomery was like trading a poor-man’s Schwarber for a really poor-man’s Miller…really, really, really poor man…actually, I just read that on a Cub’s blog; but they probably had some long discussions regarding whether or not to trade Schwarber as the main piece of that deal to return Chapman AND Miller.
I stand by the first Chapman trade being a serious underpay and the second one being a serious overpay.