In Defense of: Ruben Amaro

One of the sites I frequently visit is Crashburn Alley.  It is a Phillies site that looks at the team from a sabermetric perspective. 

Most of the site's writers and readers are not fans of the Phillies' General Manager Ruben Amaro, and the way he has handled the team.  The dislike seems to come because the Phillies have taken a mostly non-sabermetric approach towards the construction of the team. 

They seem to hold Amaro responsible for the Phillies falling from a championship contender to a team that some people think will be lucky to finish in 4th place in the National League East in 2012.

The devil?

First off, it seems a bit premature to write off the Phillies.  They finished at .500 in a 2012 season that saw them suffer quite a few injuries.  It isn't a huge stretch to think of them as at least contenders for a playoff spot in 2013.

And considering the success that the team has had under Amaro, to declare him "a complete failure" is absurd.  While some of the success can be attributed to his predecessors Pat Gillick and Ed Wade, Amaro has done more than his fair share as well.

I am not going to claim that Amaro has been flawless.  He's made some moves which I have disagreed with, and that in hindsight, look like mistakes. 

But I will defend Amaro by saying this:

He took over the team immediately following the championship season of 2008.  He identified that the core of the team was capable of winning a championship.  (A sound assumption since they had just won the World Series)  He recognized that the core would only have a limited window, so he would have to do his best to maximize the team's chances of winning within that window.

Obviously, his efforts have fallen short, but it is hard to argue that in any given season from 2009-2011 he didn't make moves which would presumably increase the team's chances of winning the World Series that season.

The pessimism heading into 2013 is because the Phillies have an expensive roster of players who mostly appear to be on the downsides of their careers.  Worse, the minor league system doesn't appear to be flush with talent ready to replace them.

According to many readers and contributors at Crashburn Alley, this was all due to Amaro's missteps.

Some claim that the Phillies' underwhelming moves this offseason were due to the team not having enough money to spend on more expensive free agents.

I am amazed at how many people in the blogosphere seem to have inside knowledge regarding the Phillies moves.  For example, they seem to know for a fact that the reason the team didn't sign BJ Upton or any of the other expensive free agents was because their payroll was already too high.

For instance, most saberfans think that closer Jonathan Papelbon was overpaid in the 2012 offseason since according to sabermetric principles, a relief pitcher can't affect a team's fortunes all that much.

Overpaid?

I will counter with my best guess as to how Amaro approached the signing:

Amaro assumed that the Phillies rotation would match their sterling performance of 2011.  This would mean that the starters would regularly be providing seven or eight quality innings.

Perhaps it was foolish to assume that the starters would be as good as they were in 2011, but when you have as much money invested in starting pitching, that's the assumption you have to make.

Based on this assumption, it became extremely important for the team to have a solid option in the ninth inning, (to finish off all those strong starts) but not as important to have many other reliable relievers (because there wouldn't be too many relief innings to go around).

Therefore, Amaro paid top dollar to get the best, most reliable ninth inning option he could get, and tried to use cheaper options for the rest of the bullpen.

Did Amaro overpay for Papelbon?  It looks that way, since Papelbon did receive a much larger contract than any other free agent reliever, but perhaps that was because he was the best option available.

Some people have a naive belief that all a team has to do is offer a player a contract and that player will sign with them.  That's not how the free market works.  If another team was also pursuing Papelbon, maybe Amaro felt the only way to sign him was to "overpay."

Aside from the payroll, the other main criticism of Amaro is that he has ruined the Phillies future by trading many of the team's minor league prospects for veterans over the past few seasons.

Here's a comment from Crashburn Alley which implies that Amaro's trades were shortsighted:

There was absolutely no need to "win now" because a smart team with lots of assets, both financial and talent-wise, can sustain their success nearly indefinitely.

Trading players to put you over the top for some near-term goal is the act that actually creates the window you're talking about! Read this: http://www.thegoodphight.com/2011/7/27/2299271/the-window-isnt-closing-unless-you-want-it-to-close

This comment and the linked article make one very foolish assumption: That you can depend on prospects to develop into major league contributors.

Some people seem to think that success in baseball is a simple three step process:

1.  Call up minor league prospects
2. Have them play well in the majors
3. Win!

Unfortunately, it isn't quite that easy.

For a good example, look at the Oakland A's under Billy Beane.  The famed General Manager's teams experienced success in the early 2000s thanks to a core of star players like Jason Giambi, Barry Zito, and Tim Hudson.  All of these players were eventually deemed too expensive, so they were either traded away or allowed to leave as free agents.

In return, the A's received several highly touted prospects and were the beneficiaries of many high draft picks.  Yet, the team went five years without a winning record.

The main reason why?  Because the players they developed or called up turned out to be inferior to the players who left.

Prospects might be the biggest uncertainty in sports.  Even the most heralded prospects might not pan out in the big leagues. 

Just look at Nationals pitcher Stephen Strasburg.  He might be the most "sure thing" prospect ever, and yet he's already missed a season due to injury, with the team scared to death of him suffering another.

Even Stephen Strasburg wasn't guaranteed to be successful

If you're going to take risks, I'd rather take risks on established players.

In 2009, the Phillies had two top prospects in their system named Kyle Drabek and Travis d'Arnaud.  They were both traded away for Roy Halladay.  While Drabek and d'Arnaud may some day develop into major league stars, it wasn't too much of a stretch to say that Halladay gave the team a better shot to win the World Series over the next few seasons.

Considering the Phillies went 28 years between developing championship caliber cores, why are people so sure that they can easily develop another one?  Maybe some of the prospects he traded away might become stars one day.  But at the time, Amaro felt like the Phillies needed an extra piece to win the World Series.

I'll say that it takes a lot less time to rebuild a pool of minor league prospects than it does to build a core of major league talent capable of winning.

In 2008, the Phillies were rumored to want to make a trade for pitcher CC Sabathia.  But they simply didn't have enough valued prospects in their system to make it happen.  Yet over the next couple of seasons, they had some minor leaguers develop to the point where they could trade for Cliff Lee, Roy Halladay, and Roy Oswalt.

Some may counter that the postseason is a "crap shoot" and the Phillies shouldn't have made those moves since they only minimally improved the team's chances of winning a World Series.

As a fan, I much prefer the "All in" approach rather than the "Let's just give ourselves a chance and hope things break our way" mindset  Did the moves pay off?  Obviously not, since the Phillies have fallen short, but I can't say that management didn't make an effort to win.

Maybe the Phillies are truly finished as contenders.  If that is true, was there any way to avoid that fate? 

The Phillies conceivably could have let some of their now expensive players leave as free agents or traded some veterans for prospects. But considering the Phillies were championship contenders and were being supported by a rabid fan base who was selling out the stadium every night, was this truly an option?

There's a reason that teams don't regularly experience the kind of sustained success the Phillies have recently enjoyed.  Inevitably, the star players who fuel such success either become too old or too expensive.  Unless you have a truly great farm system that keeps providing the team with new top talent, the run will have to end at some point.

If the Phillies' championship window is truly closed, then instead of lambasting Amaro for his failure to magically sustain it, we should applaud him for doing his best to maximize the team's chances while the window was open.

WAR is not the Answer

It would be great if we had a universal statistic that took all of the players in baseball and gave us a fair way to compare them.

Arguments about baseball would practically cease.  There would be no reason for them, as this one magical statistic would settle everything.  It might usher in a new era of understanding that could eventually lead to world peace.

Unfortunately, I don't think such a statistic is possible.  But even if it was, WAR is certainly not it.

This is not the stat you are looking for.

A quick primer for the uneducated:

WAR stands for Wins Above Replacement.  It is supposed to measure how many wins a given player has contributed to a team compared to a theoretical replacement player.  For a more detailed explanation, please check the WAR section on Baseball-Reference.com.

I understand why people want WAR to work, and I will concede that the statistic does have some worth.  For instance, it rewards players who are versatile and help their team in many ways, as opposed to statistics like home runs, which only measure one particular skill.

But does it accurately determine a player's value to his team?  I don't think so.

Admittedly, most saberfans do not claim that WAR is the ultimate statistic, or that it is the best measure of a player's value.  They claim that it should only be used as a "conversation starter."

And yet, it seems like every time a saberfan debates a player's value, WAR is the first thing they point to.

Don't believe me?  Check out some of the things that were written during the 2012 AL MVP debate:

WAR backs up Trout's MVP candidacy

Stats Revolution doesn't have enough clout

Mike Trout is your AL MVP

It seems like every saber-minded writer was required to do two things when weighing in on the MVP debate:

1. Make it clear that WAR is not perfect and they are not basing their judgement solely on it.
2. Use Trout's WAR value as evidence that he deserved the MVP.

Some of these guys would make great politicians the way they endorse WAR while also refusing to fully commit to it.

On the other hand, I will take a firm stance: I don't like WAR.

I don't like it because I don't like the fundamental concept of a replacement player that the statistic is based on.

I tried to determine just what makes someone a "replacement player."  I've searched the web, and I've never been able to find an answer that isn't vague at best.  From what I can gather, a replacement player is a borderline major league player who can be easily obtained from the minor leagues.

But should a judgement be made based on a theoretical player?  If you're going to try to determine how many "wins" a player is providing over his replacement, then shouldn't you consider the actual player who would replace him?

For example, let's say that the Dodgers have Joe Shortstop playing the shortstop position. (Crazy coincidence, huh?)

Pictured: Joe Shortstop, or as some people call him, "Hanley Ramirez."

Joe puts up solid numbers both offensively and defensively.  According to the formula behind WAR, shortstops are more valuable than most of the other positions, because it is typically more difficult to find a good shortstop than a left fielder or first baseman.  Since he performs well at an important position, Joe has a high WAR.

Unfortunately, Joe suffers and injury and has to miss a few months of the season.  At first glance, it seems like the Dodgers are screwed because based on Joe's WAR, it will be very tough to replace him.

Thankfully for the Dodgers, they have their top prospect Billy Shortstop playing at AAA.  The Dodgers call up Billy, and he ends up playing about as well as Joe did.

According to WAR, Joe is more valuable simply because he plays shortstop.  But if you're going to reward him based on his position, don't you also have to deduct him some points because he doesn't actually provide much more value than his replacement?

Of course, there's no way to accurately determine just how well a given player's replacement would perform.  The best that could be done would be to project the production of all of a team's potential replacements, and make a calculation based on that.  But even that would be mostly guesswork, and nearly impossible to measure.

That impossibility is the main reason why WAR doesn't really work as a measure of true value.

As I said, I understand the motivation for coming up with a universal statistic.  But in this case, much like Marvin Gaye once said: WAR is not the answer.

The AL MVP Debate: Trout vs. Cabrera

We are in the midst of baseball's award season in which Major League Baseball recognizes the standout players from the preceding season. 

Yesterday, they announced the winners of the Cy Young Award.  This criteria for this award used to seem rather simple: Give it to the best pitcher in the league regardless of his team's position in the standings.  After all, a pitcher could only affect the games that he himself pitched, so why should he be penalized for poor performance by his teammates?

With the rise of sabermetrics, the situation has become more complicated.  A pitcher's win total used to go a long way towards determining the winner, but since the sabermetric devaluation of that statistic, wins have been less influential.  For an example, look at recent winners Felix Hernandez in 2010 (13 wins) and Tim Lincecum in 2009.  Ten years earlier, they probably don't win due to their relatively low win totals.

If the Cy Young Award has become difficult to decide, then the MVP award has become a complete quagmire.

This award has always given people some difficulty based on its name.  There are differing opinions as to what makes a player "valuable."  Some believe that the best player is automatically the most valuable and he should receive the award.  Others feel like the winner should come from a playoff team, or at the very least, a contender.  Because if a player couldn't get his team into contention, just how valuable could he be?

With that kind of inconsistency as the benchmark, it is no wonder that sabermetrics has only muddied the waters of the debate.

The 2012 American League MVP award has become a key battleground in the battle between traditionalists and sabermetrics advocates.  The traditionalists favor Tigers third baseman Miguel Cabrera while the saber fans favor Angels outfielder Mike Trout.

Miguel Cabrera is the MVP choice of most traditionalists

Both players are having excellent seasons, and chances are, no matter which one wins the award, nobody is going to look back a few years from now and wonder, "How did that guy win MVP?"  But one of them is going to win, and one of the groups is going to claim the decision as a grand victory for their philosophy. 

Here's a breakdown of the typical arguments for both camps:

Traditionalist: Cabrera won the Triple Crown!  That means he's the MVP.

Sabermetrics: The Triple Crown is an arbitrary grouping of three offensive statistics, two of which are vastly overrated.  Trout led the league in WAR which is a much better indication of his value.

Traditionalist: WAR?  WAR is just some trendy statistic that even you people can't agree on.

Sabermetrics: Whichever version you use, it's still the best statistic we have for measuring a player's overall value.  Shouldn't we look at all facets of a player's game rather than just three offensive categories?  Even if you think that Cabrera was the better offensive player, Trout was far superior on defense and on the base paths.

Do Trout's defense and baserunning give him an edge?

Traditionalist: Defense is overrated.  And I don't know how you even measure the effect that a player's baserunning has on a game.

Besides, Cabrera's team made the playoffs.  Trout's team did not.

Sabermetrics: Yes, but the Angels had a better record!  They were just unfortunate to have played in a stronger division.  Why are we giving Cabrera credit for things out of his control?

That's the whole basis for using WAR.  Eliminate all peripheral factors and judge the player's performance on its own merits.

Traditionalist: Except that's not how baseball works.  Baseball is a team game, and a player's value has to take into account how well he helped his team perform.  Just look at how well Cabrera performed down the stretch while his team was fighting for a playoff spot.  That was an MVP performance.  Meanwhile, Trout's numbers slipped a bit in the late going.

Sabermetrics: That is irrelevant.  Games in June count just as much as games in September.

Traditionalist: In theory that is true.  But the MVP is really just a measure of baseball history.  And baseball history goes beyond just statistics.  For example, Bobby Thomson hit 32 home runs in 1951, but only one of them is known by just about every baseball fan.

"The Shot Heard Round the World."

Take a home run that is hit in the 9th inning of a 10-2 game in April. Compare that to a home run hit in the 9th inning of a 4-3 game in September. Do you really feel that the same value should be placed on both?

Sabermetrics: Yes, because in the long run, those types of things tend to even out.  That's exactly why we need to use WAR.  It eliminates personal bias and emotion from the decision. 

Trout had the highest WAR.  That means he supplied the most value to his team.  Hence, he is the MVP.

Traditionalist: If you eliminate emotion from baseball, then you might as well just play the game on a computer.  Cabrera won the Triple Crown and led his team to a playoff spot with a strong stretch run.  That makes him the MVP.


If someone wants to look at Trout's WAR and decide that he is the hands down MVP, I understand.  Personally, (and this should come as no surprise based on the name of this blog) I think that you do need to factor in stretch run performance and even RBIs, since they measure success in a team setting.

Both men are worthy candidates, but I feel that Cabrera deserves the MVP.

ESPN's SweetSpot: Bonds is Right

In a recent SweetSpot column, David Schoenfield discusses the  Hall of Fame candidacy of Barry Bonds.  Schoenfield agrees with a statement made by Bonds that he deserves to be a Hall of Famer.

Hall of Famer?

Schoenfield says that if people are holding Bonds' PED use against him, then they should only consider his career up to 1998, and judge him based on that.

Isn't that kind of like saying when evaluating O.J. Simpson's life, we should only consider what he did up until the point when his ex-wife was murdered?  Up until that point, he sure seemed like a swell fellow, right?

Even if we ignore his post-1998 career, it may be a bit naive for us to assume that Bonds didn't use PEDs before 1998.  Steroids were reportedly prevalent in baseball throughout most of the 1990s, so why should we assume that Bonds only joined the party in 1998?

Schoenfield goes on to demonstrate just how dominant Bonds was prior to 1998.  Based on the evidence presented, it is clear that the ten years of Bonds' career between 1988 and 1997 is about as strong as any player has ever had.  If we only used that as our criteria, then I think just about everyone would agree that Bonds is indeed Hall-worthy.

Schoenfield should have just ended his argument there.  Unfortunately, he follows up by saying that Bonds' alleged cheating should have no impact on whether or not he gets in.  He says that people shouldn't play the "moral police" in determining who deserves to be in the Hall of Fame.

Really?  Hasn't baseball always done this?  Last time I checked, Pete Rose isn't in the Hall of Fame.  Should we just ignore the fact that he bet on baseball because he had a good career up to that point?

Apparently, Schoenfield doesn't hold cheating against a player because as he points out, several other Hall of Famers may have cheated in their careers.  I guess since everyone cheated, we can't hold it against anyone?  Even someone who may have ruined baseball's most cherished records because he cheated?

This is one instance where Schoenfield should have just stuck to the numbers.

In Defense of: RBIs

If there is one statistic that saber fans hate, it is the RBI.  To them, the RBI epitomizes the antiquated methods of baseball analysis that they hold in such disdain. 

Any time a writer or announcer touts a player's performance by mentioning his RBI total, you can rest assured that the sabermetric blogosphere will erupt in outrage over the media continuing to spread such ignorance.

The main criticism of RBIs is that they are too dependent on both the situation and the hitter's teammates.

For example, if a player singles with a runner on third base, he will most likely earn an RBI.  If he singles with the bases empty, he will not.  Since the hitter couldn't control whether or not a runner was on base, why should we give him more credit for the first hit?

Saber fans will tell you that instead of tracking RBIs, we should instead emphasize statistics that are more within a hitter's control such as on-base percentage or slugging percentage.  Even better, we can utilize advanced statistics that combine these elements such as wOBA or OPS.

The theory is that a player with a high on-base percentage or slugging percentage will contribute towards the scoring of runs.  The problem is, baseball is not played theoretically.  The hitter with a high OPS might have contributed to runs being scored, but there is no way of knowing if he actually did.

Consider that actions must be performed in a certain order for a run to score.  If a batter walks, and then the next batter hits a triple, a run scores.  While if a batter hits a triple, and the next batter walks, a run does not score.

Is it fair to give more credit to the hitter who tripled while a runner was already on base?  Given a different situation, the hitter who tripled with the bases empty might have caused a run to score. But baseball doesn't measure "might haves." Either a run scored or it did not.

I liken it to a bakery.  There are several important tasks that need to be performed in order to bake a cake: Add the ingerdients, stir the bowl, and put the mix in the oven.  While you may have done all of these steps, if they haven't been done in the proper sequence, you're not going to get a cake.

Sure, if you perform the steps enough times, you'll get some cakes. But isn't it also worthwhile to measure how many times a baker actually got a completed cake into the oven?

All that matters is how many cakes were baked

I understand that by favoring individual statistics over RBIs, sabermetrics is attempting to isolate a hitter's performance  But is that really the only measure we should take of a hitter?

A hitter doesn't perform in a vacuum.  Baseball is a team game, and teammates usually have to work together in order to score runs.  Therefore, there is some worth in measuring how well a player is contributing towards the scoring of runs within the context of a lineup.

You can tell me how many theoretical runs a hitter is creating which is very useful.  But I think it can also be useful to measure how many actual runs a hitter is generating as well.  Which is why the RBI does indeed have value as a statistic.

ESPN's Sweet Spot: Lincecum not unlucky, just pitching poorly

If I'm going to criticize ESPN.com's SweetSpot blog for their bad articles, I suppose it is only fair to give them praise when it is due.

In this article, David Schoenfield discusses Giants pitcher Tim Lincecum and the struggles he has had this year.

He mentions that normally, analysts might point to Lincecum's high BABIP and say his failures are mostly due to bad luck.  But Schoenfield actually takes the time to look a little deeper and see that perhaps there is a reason for Lincecum's poor season beyond just plain luck. 

Schoenfield illustrates that Lincecum's control has been much poorer than in seasons past, and as a result, he has been giving hitters better pitches to hit.  It stands to reason that if a pitcher gives a hitter better pitches to hit, then they're going to have more success.

Well done, Mr. Schoenfield.  It's nice to see you actually look beyond the numbers and put them into a real world context.  I wish all sabermetric analysts would do the same.

Defense is Overrated

One tenet of sabermetrics is that run prevention is as important as run creation.  This essentially means that preventing a run from scoring is as useful as creating a run offensively.

In principle, I agree with this. After all, the point of the game is to outscore your opponent, and it doesn't matter if the final score is 1-0 or 15-14. (And yes, I picked two infamous scores from Phillies history)

But when it comes down to it, I feel that a player's contributions towards creating runs are much more valuable than his contributions towards preventing runs.

Why?  It's a simple matter of opportunity.

By nature, every spot in the lineup is going to get at least three plate appearances a game.  And in most games, each spot in the batting order is going to come to the plate four or five times.  Which means that most regular players are going to get four or five opportunities to contribute on offense.

In contrast, there is no certainty as to how many opportunities a player will get on defense.  Theoretically, a player could go an entire season without having to make a defensive play.

So if a player is going to have much more of an opportunity to contribute on offense, shouldn't we be more concerned with his offensive performance rather than what he'll do with his potentially limited chances on defense?

If he goes 4-4, this error will be easily forgotten

I'd much rather take the good offensive player who is a little shaky on defense than the defensive whiz who can't hit.  I know he's going to get several opportunities to help the team on offense, while his chances to be a detriment on defense will likely be much less frequent.

On the other hand, a good defensive player who can't hit MIGHT make a play that helps save a run on defense, but chances are, he'll do more damage to the team's chances in his four or five times at bat.