Which Teams Most Need the Next Win?
Not every team approaches the offseason looking to get better in the same way. That much is obvious: budget alone can dictate much of a club’s activity on the free-agent market. A little bit less obvious, though, is how the present quality of a team’s roster can affect the players they pursue. Teams that reside on a certain part of the win curve, for example, need that next win more than teams on other parts. That can inform a team’s decisions in the offseason.
Max Gruber revisited the win curve yesterday by accounting for the uncertainty inherent in projections, and this was what he found for the marginal value of a win with respect to a club’s projected win total.
As you can see, the curve is steepest from around 77 to 84 projected wins. That’s because the odds of reaching the postseason jump at 85 and 86 wins. The Twins (85) and Rockies (87) know all about that from last year.
So which teams need that extra win the most? Let’s highlight the clubs that are currently projected in that range. Look at the teams in red.
Most of the teams located in the middle of this chart are the type you’d expect to attempt to improve their squads with short-term success in mind. The Angels are trying to make the most of their time with Mike Trout; Seattle has a similar arrangement with Nelson Cruz and Robinson Cano; and the Rockies and Twins want to capitalize on recent success and improve.
A couple teams here currently find themselves debating their futures. The Pirates held on to Andrew McCutchen for so long they might as well just keep playing for now. Paul Swydan just took a look at the decision the Rays face right now. Texas has money to spend, but they were also bad last year. Maybe this graph makes sense of the Blue Jays’ decision to hold on to Josh Donaldson for another season.
But you might also see a couple definitively rebuilding squads lumped in. Miami is selling, they say. And the A’s? They’re a win away from being Wild Card contenders? Looks like it, once you add the error bars that traditionally sit around a team win projection.
And that means that the A’s care about this year, but in a specific way. In an email, Gruber wrote about the types of players that certain teams need to find:
A team that would project to win between 90 and 95 games hates risk. The added downside of winning a couple fewer games is very painful; the added upside of winning a couple more games isn’t that great.
On the other hand, risk is really beneficial to teams projected to win less than 85 games. The more uncertainty they have in their forecast, the better off they are.
So the A’s are out there looking for the riskiest players they can find. That’s no different than usual.
“That’s how we have to operate,” admitted Billy Beane to me at the 2015 Winter Meetings. He pointed out how they took a chance on Rich Hill — “a guy that was dominant for the last month of the season” — because they had to. “If you’re right, you look smart, and when you’re wrong, you know why. It’s because you jumped on a small sample size.”
That’s why I put Zack Cozart at the top of a free-agent list curated for the Athletics. As Dave Cameron pointed out, he had (overly?) good luck on his batted balls last season. As Jeff Zimmerman pointed out, Cozart is likely to regress when it comes to plate discipline, which makes him risky.
That’s also why Oakland will be on guys like Anthony Swarzak and Mike Minor, guys that have just recently turned their careers around and come with a fair amount of risk. Signing those guys has the potential to vault the Athletics into the Wild Card race. If it doesn’t work out, they’ll know why.
The Astros, Dodgers, and Indians, though? They just want a player with a high floor. Maybe a Jarrod Dyson or a Joe Smith type. You know, someone who’ll be useful even if he plays closer to his floor than his ceiling.
With a phone full of pictures of pitchers' fingers, strange beers, and his two toddler sons, Eno Sarris can be found at the ballpark or a brewery most days. Read him here, writing about the A's or Giants at The Athletic, or about beer at October. Follow him on Twitter @enosarris if you can handle the sandwiches and inanity.
Awesome! Love these looks into FO decision making.
With Rich Hill the downside for the A’s was exactly $6M, and I doubt anyone would have remembered a year later if Hill fizzled.
ARI, STL, and NYY, three teams on the left side of the win graph, are in the same division as rivals that are projected higher wins. Doesn’t that increase the imperative for those teams to catch-up? Or, in the case of ARI, does it actually dampen the need, since the odds of them catching the Dodgers are not good?
I think you’re right with ARI. They probably have the easiest off season of any team. JD Martinez is priced out of their budget and no matter what they’d do they’d never catch LA anyway. Get a real closer and use the trade deadline to add more bullpen pieces for the wildcard game.
I think it dampens the need since in order to get close to LAD, ARI would need to acquire many more wins, probably for a cost of several million more per win than the marginal value suggested in by the curve.
I don’t think projected second wildcard is a safe place to sit. They may not catch LA but I’d want a larger margin of error between my team and the teams on my heels.
I also wonder if it would be beneficial to have a league-specific win curves, since the odds of reaching the playoffs at a given win total would depend on the teams against which you are competing. Maybe that’s too much granularity for something with as high of uncertainties as projected number of wins, but I wonder if this is been considered or not.
The first thing that I noticed was “wow, St. Louis and Arizona could really use an upgrade.” They’re not in the same class as the top of their divisions and uncomfortably close to the teams below them.
(You could say the same for the next few teams on the list but they’re in red already)
I find it interesting that this is always looked at from the upside of the equation, but the other side of the coin is how much of a false savings it can be to cheap out on a player when you are on the sweet spot on the curve.
How much sense would it make for the Cubs to trade the more valuable between Russell & Baez, and sign Cozart as there’s no compensation? They could have a 3 man rotation similar to last year in Cozart/Happ/Baez or Russell. Would leave them with two outstanding fielders and a switch hitter to shake things up. The Cubs need to add some value, and with all the prospects they’ve traded, I’m hesitant to lose anymore draft picks.
In theory, this makes sense. In practice, if it’s a reasonable price tag to sign Cozart, there will not be a big enough market for Russell/Baez to bring back sufficient talent.
One could argue that the team that needed one more win the most last season was the Dodgers.
Doesn’t the curve show that the next win is most valuable at 90 wins, not 77-84?
We’re talking about the slope of the line. Look how much added value you get from a win if you go from 84 to 85 vs 90 to 91.
I accept the argument that the greatest incremental benefit is gained by teams projected at 77-84 wins.
However, Wilmerrr is right. Peak value of a win is around 88-90 wins by the chart. I interpret this to mean that these are the teams who would be most likely to pay a market rate for free agents.
You’re taking the derivative of the derivative. That bell-shaped curve is the marginal value per added win, already. The highest benefit per win is at the high point of the bell.
Look at it this way: the teams in the 95 – 100 range where the bell curve has negative slope, does that mean those teams are harmed by adding wins? Nah.
Arg. Of course. That explains both the y axis labels and why I couldn’t figure out the tail of the graph. So I guess teams closer to 90 should be highlighted, tho teams that could push into the tail end still want to make risky signings like Eric Thames and Rich Hill.
What does the marginal value here refer to?? If additional wins cost $10M on the free agent market but no team gets more than $7M in value from each win, something isn’t adding up.
The curve is a theoretical one based on older research. I wouldn’t worry as much about the numbers on the curve as its shape.
It is confusing to plot real numbers on the y-axis and then say ‘don’t worry about the numbers’ when one could simply re-scale to some dimensionless index of value to market.
Oak could slide up towards the top of that group with a couple smart moves. I already expect the pitching staff to perform better since the defense will be way better. As it stands with Chapman/Semien/Lowrie/Olson/UT Pinder on the IF, Davis only DHing, and Fowler/Joyce/Pinder/Powell plus at least one OF FA or trade in the OF the team has a avg or a little above DF instead of league worst.
They have a lot of paint to throw at the wall with starters:
Megden showed well to finish the season
Blackburn with no strikeouts to speak of was suprisingly solid
Montas has the big fastball and slider can slot into the pen as well
Manea runs up 10 start streaks each year where he’s great maybe this year he can extend his good runs
Cotton has really good stuff mid 90’s fastball and superb change, his control seemed off last season
Graveman will single handedly benefit the most from improved infield defense
Bassit was good before he got hurt
Hahn was really good outside of facing HOU
Triggs was really good until the last couple of starts before his DL stint
Gosset improved over the course of the season
They will have a good number of the teams top starting prospects in AA or AAA to start the year, with the potential for Puk or Kaprillian to make an impact mid season.
Its not the best looking at the starting five from the get go, but its a deep assortment of capable pitchers, with a decent amount of upside on several of them, enough where you can reasonably hope for five or six of them to exceed expectations, and they cost almost nothing combined. I think signing or trading for a number 2-4 pitcher wouldnt be a terrible idea.
My offseason plan since the team has 30-40mm it can spend to get to its recent payroll levels, and no commitments next season. I would target an OF in trade or FA. I’m thinking talk to MIA about all three starters, or target Dyson, Carlos Santana allowing Olson to play RF where he had decent DF numbers this year with his big arm, Carlos Gomez on a reasonable deal, maybe try and by low on the other CarGo for one year, or trade for someone else to give the team another starter as long as its someone reasonable where you dont give up much. Sign two of Minor, Marrow, Hunter for the bullpen. I would look at Fister and CC in FA to sign one of them to further shore up the rotation.
Of course the white elephant in the room would be to sign Ohtani giving him time in the OF and at DH. Signing Ohtani leads to a trade of Davis adding some prospects, and clearing 10mm+ in salary. If you sign Ohtani you get more aggressive at upgrading the rest of the roster around him. Other then the 300k max bonus and Colosseum, Oak stands as a good fit for Ohtani in many other areas.
Best offseason in Oak:
Sign Santana Olson to OF, or Cain/Dyson. Take whatever the best value is of the three, cost 8-18mm AAV.
Sign Morrow and Hunter, cost 12-16mm AAV.
Sign Fister, Cost 1yr 8-9MM
I would feel really good about these moves adding 28-44mm in payroll on 1-3 year terms for all of them, it should add somewhere in the neighborhood of 4-7WAR to the projections, and if the team isnt in it at the deadline all of these players would be good trade assets to further build out the farm. So you go the FA route to not deplete the farm, and have a decent chance at being competitive, or at least grabbing some talent at the deadline.