9999

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Q.  This guy had 6.1 WAR last season, was a Fangraphs short-list MVP candidate.  What is SSI's reaction to Michael Bourn?

A.  Dr. D knows jack about the NL, so he flipped over to b-ref.com for a quick eyeball.  

OHHHH NOOOOooooooo ... another one of these soft-skills WAR mirages who contributes everywhere EXCEPT in the batter's box.  And:  he's a leadoff hitter who fans 150 times a year?!

Dr. D's stomach did a slow roll back from the left, to dead bottom, over to the right, and emptied itself over the rail.

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Q.  C'mon.  He's a defensive specialist who contributes at the plate.  He's not kitty litter.

A.  You've heard the term "so underrated that now he's overrated"?  These guys should be winning 10th-man-of-the-year awards, like Mark McLemore in 2001, and here they are getting LeBron James recognition.  It's "hey lookee what I found" syndrome run amok.

If Chone Figgins, Michael Bourn, Mark McLemore, Mike Cameron and the like were considered nice little ballplayers, who supported the stars on a pennantwinner, then that would be great.  It's when they're anointed MVP candidates that Dr. D mounts his steed and tilts at the saber windmill.

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Q.  He has posted 4+ WAR for four consecutive seasons now.  That's got to be his Established Level of Performance (ELP), right?

A.  It's a funny thing:  the editor of Fangraphs his ownself was the one who .... alllllllmmoooooost! ... had an epiphany here.

Apparently on a lark, he ran a search of all baseball players in the UZR era who met two (2) criteria:

1. Had 5+ WAR in a season, with
2. A 110 wRC+ (OPS+) or lower.

He came back with a sickening list of names.*  In other words, guys who can't hit, but who show up as WAR heroes, are not impact baseball players.

Fangraphs kept this on the downlow:  rather than launching a campaign to disseminate this fundamental insight into the way baseball works -- that WAR contributions outside the batter's box should be kept in proportion -- the conclusion was rephrased as an age-arc issue.

The fact is, all 30 GM's will pay less for a no-hit WAR hero than Fangraphs will.  

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Q.  How about the inversion of this insight?

A.  Take a player whose hitting is impact, but whose WAR looks suspect -- let us say, Billy Butler or Mike Napoli as a 1B/DH -- and, yep, there we go again.  All 30 GM's will pay you more for a pure bat than Fangraphs will.

The WAR amigos climb over the mountain summit and find the GM yogis sitting there smiling benignly, waiting for them.  There was never anything wrong with researching baseball.  The only problem came when we failed to respect the complexity of the problem, and accused GM's of IQ challenges when they paid for RBI.

Not to make too fine a point of it, what do you suppose would happen if Seattle's largest baseball blog trashed a Billy Butler trade, and one of the readers protested "Yeah, but WAR underrates RBI men like Butler"?

Fangraphs is my favorite national baseball site.  It's tremendous.  We're talking only about the need to respect alternative paradigms, in view of complex problems.  

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Q.  Lessons learned?

A.  If the M's can sign Bourn for about 50%, 60% of his WAR dollar value, fine.

And don't undersell Billy Butler.  The man's a cleanup hitter.

BABVA,

Dr D

*Troy Tulowitzki and Ryan Zimmerman were great hitters who, at age 22, weren't yet posting impact batting lines.

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Q.  Isn't Michael Bourn pretty much an Ichiro who plays CF?

A.  He is not, no.  

Ichiro racked up 6-7 runs per 27 outs for the decade of the 00's, this playing in Safeco Field.  Michael Bourn is a 4.5 RC/27 player.  

As leadoff hitters go, that's like three standard deviations.  Tons of leadoff hitters generate 4.5, 5.0 runs per game in National League, friendly-park conditions.  Only a few leadoff hitters in baseball history could have posted Ichiro's 6-7 runs created at Safeco.

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Q.  What is the value of his UZR and baserunning?

A.  After SSI and friends, notably KGaffney and Dr Grumpy, tried to consolidate this issue, Carston Cistulli did it very elegantly.  He pointed out that:

1.  The average contribution of a TOP TEN UZR player has been +15 runs.

2.  NOBODY CONSISTENTLY makes the top ten (except perhaps, um, Michael Bourn).

Bang:  Cistulli closes out the discussion.  If you think a defender is one of baseball's ten best, pay him for 15 runs.  You don't want to pay a Franklin Gutierrez for 30 runs a year.

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Applying the same logic to baserunning -- 1B to 3B, etc -- you can pay a player for 8, maybe 10 runs per season.

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Q.  Where does Bourn fit on this scale?

A.  It is 100% fair to call Michael Bourn the finest player in the major leagues in this department.  He is the one man you can pay for 20-25 runs per season, defense and baserunning.

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Q.  Leaving him where?

A.  Without elite speed, he's an average-dubious center fielder (no power, huge K's).  That's 1-2 WAR assuming you don't have an average center fielder.  Then his impact speed is a good 2 WAR.  You're fine to pay him for 3 WAR, and if you want to pay him for 4, that's your thing.  (Don't forget K's and the NL-AL transition, though.)

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Q.  Does SSI value leadoff hitting?

A.  It does indeed.  Leadoff hitters give you "hard" runs, manufactured runs against elite pitching, including in the playoffs.  Figure on a Garrett Jones to disappear against Jered Weaver in the playoffs.  Figure on a Michael Bourn to score you two runs in that game.

Also, leadoff hitters can take a starting pitcher out of a rocking chair.  You've got a average starter who's in a groove ... has retired 7 in a row, his tempo's perfect, and if all he had to do was face kids like Ackley and Smoak the rest of the way, you can mail it in.  But!  Get Michael Bourn up there, bunts his way on, the cat-and-mouse game starts at 1B, he swipes second... all of a sudden the game's no fun for Colby Lewis any more.

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Q.  What happens to Michael Saunders?

A.  That's just the thing about a Michael Bourn signing.  Saunders got you 3 WAR (pro-rated) in center last year.  We all like him in CF going forward.  What's the idea now?  A great defensive left fielder in Saunders?

Let's say you had Saunders LF, Bourn CF, Swisher RF.  You added a pretty decent leadoff man and a pretty decent #3 hitter, and you've got exciting defense in the outfield.

It doesn't blow your skirt up, but you can see the logic.  It's not what SSI is hoping for.  But it is a whale of a lot better than ... nothing.

BABVA,

Dr D

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=== Talking Points ===

1.  Jason Bay is, as Jeff Sullivan aptly put it, "another team's Chone Figgins."  His article is perfect, with a capital P.

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2.  Bay is the equivalent of a non-roster invitee, a Kevin Millwood type, you bring him in to see what's left in the tank ... and it is entirely possible that his recent struggles are tied to shoulder problems.  Especially in terms of his Power Index.

There's logic in asking, "Have his shoulders recovered?" and bringing him to camp to see if he pulls a Millwood.

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3.  Even if Bay felt really good in March, I can't for the life of me imagine how he could beat out Casper Wells for a job.  Why would you want Jason Bay's age-34 UP season over Casper Wells' 2013?

And there are other players besides Wells to consider within this talking point.  It is precisely this scenario, the one in which the gamble "pays off," that I don't get.  Supposing that the prayer were answered and Bay was a skosh better than Wells.  Didn't you trade Doug Fister for Casper Wells?

I'm getting a bad feeling here.  How about you.

Only guess here is that Zduriencik is doing Bay a favor, letting him showcase, so that he can avoid a Richie Sexson vanishing act.  But that isn't done in December, is it?

Well, the other guess is that Casper Wells is in demand out there in the trade market.  Which raises another question that Dr. D can't answer:  "Why would Wells be in demand?"

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4.  Bay's numbers against RHP's have been trending down since he was age 31.  This is entirely consistent with the idea that he's just old.  And has been.  For a long time.

Although:  in 2012, he was hurt all year.  In 2011, he finished September with a 960 OPS in that month.  And then he slugged .460 in March 2012, before getting hurt.  You could hope that the September 2011 - April 2012 was the real one, camoflaged by injury the other times.

Not saying it's my belief.  But that's one feasible view of Jason Bay.

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5.  SABRMatt (ghost) sez, "Which implies to me that Zduriencik has gone off his medication and is see colors and tasting music. Because He's going full hog for Michael Bourn and signing 34 year olds who just .165. YYYYYYeah...that'll work."

If you talked with Jay-Z, he would have an answer to this.  I can't speculate what it would be.

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Well, I think I want to go plunge knitting needles up to the hilt into my ears after watching this next video. This is what happens when you don't have a best friend to tell you your ideas are shit. Witness the horror, and majestic might, of this high school "cover" of Psy's "Open Gangnam Style."