The blog at BattersBox.ca consistently provides better analysis of baseball moves and developments than the largest newspapers in an urban region with over 5 million people. Recently, one of their threads pointed me to an article on USS Mariner called "Letting Ichiro Leave For Nothing."
The author, Dave, has looked at 34 baseball players from 2000-2006 that were all all-star talents who were traded in the midst of a highly productive season, were free agents at the end of the year, were unlikely to re-sign with the club, and would be classified as Type A Free Agents (2 high draft choices as compensation picks if the player left via free agency). Then he looked at 21 more Type A free agents who were allowed to walk in return for those 2 draft picks.
Bottom line?
Many teams would be better off letting their all-stars walk, and taking the draft picks.
Over the last 7 years, the 41 prospects & players coming back for the 34 qualifying "rental players" traded before the deadline have yielded 2 all-stars, 6 solid players, and 33 flame outs or marginal players with very low value. That's about 1 in 20 odds for all stars, and 1 in 7 for solid players. If you get 3-4 players back for your all-star, do the math.
And the 42 draft picks from the 21 Type "A" free agents let go?
3 have been big successes, 4 have been good enough, 3 others are among the most valuable young players in the game today, we’ll have to wait a few years to figure out the fate of 4 more because it's too early, and 27 of the picks could be labeled as busts, even though a couple still have a shot to turn into major league role players down the road.
These draft picks have trade value in blue chips for all stars deals in a couple of years (vid. Detroit's trade for Cabrera & Willis this off-season), something that's harder to do with prospects in the high minor leagues because their value is much more certain by then.
Which leads to my question.
Why isn't this the kind of column turned out by our paid media folks, who never let an opportunity slip by to congratulate themselves on their supposedly higher standards?
Joe, I'm going to pretend your question isn't rhetorical and take a swing at it. I'm going to guess that this type of sophisticated (& numerical) analysis of performance wouldn't have great appeal to the majority of sports page readers, myself among them. It kind of takes the fun out of barbershop dissings of A-rod & co. I know that stats are a fun element of talking baseball but, jeez, leave the slide rules in class and go play in the fields a little bit. Writers want to be read. Owners want to sell papers. The answer is: capitalism.
Can you list 5 occasions in the last 12 months when a paid media folk congratulated him or herself on his or her higher standards (higher than what, by the way?) or the higher standards of his or her employer?
I can easily list 5 examples of warrantless self-congratulation. All I had to do was turn on C-SPAN in the last month to a panel discussion on the future of newspapers. Minor effort could have got me 5 even without that, but why work harder when all 5 are just handed to you on a platter?
I also suspect the average baseball fan has more interest in this than you think. As Dave performed it, the analysis is not at all sophisticated, or even that numerical. List qualifying players who did or didn't walk, list who the teams got for each, summarize who made it and who didn't. And note the standard set by the draft picks as one evaluates any trades made late in the season, or suggested trades.
It's called research. Barbershop dissings, I can get free without the paper. And if that's all the paper offers, and all the scores are available every morning on MyYahoo!... why do I need the sports section, again?
I'll chip in two:
TNR via this post and this one about how citizen journalism is "too risky".
Joe, a couple of specifics about that panel you watched....names, e.g., employers, what it was they said that seemed so self-congratulatory.
To your latest question, I'm not suggesting that you ought to read the sports page or be interested in barbershop talk, I'm suggesting that newspapers, as capitalist enterprises, are market driven. It's why movies suck, it's why I have 100 tv chanels on my cable and nothing to watch. Newspapers are more expensive to produce and circulate than, say, websites. I'd say there is a formula regarding information, art and entertainment delivery that explains how the size of the required audience necessary for an enterprise to break-even is inversely proportional to the quality of its product.
Oh, the eternal war between statheads and eyewitnesses! For what it is worth, I am, by far, the oldest member of a Mets fan site. When I first started posting there, I could not stand the younger guys quoting stats like OPS, ERA+, VORP, Runs Created, BAA and WHIP.
The more I looked at them and the more I felt comfortable with them the more I realized they were just different ways of looking at the same data and, it added to my enjoyment and perception of the game.
On the other hand, I think a few of the younger guys have been won over to my side that, when all is said and done, you have to play the games and a baseball Stadium is not a Skinner Box.