Every year, the Yankees play for the playoffs, but they are an exception, for they have the necessary finances to hire mercenaries for their annual quest. Almost every other team is faced with the aforementioned choice. Teams often blow up their rosters through fire-sales or big trades in order to get rid of aging veterans and to acquire budding stars who they believe will lead them to a future playoff run: the caveat is that they are relegating themselves to several years of losing in order to get the future payoff. The question is, though, is this strategy of lose-now-win-later economically and statistically sound?
For most teams, winning 80 games and barely missing the playoffs is no better than losing 100 games and finishing in dead last. For one, the lower a team finishes, the higher draft pick they get, and why win more games that won't propel you into the playoffs?
Stars such as Jose Reyes (top) and Hanley Ramirez (bottom) were victims of the 2012 Marlins fire sale
Even if the gods of saber metrics were able to accurately predict each individual players future performance, which may perhaps be the perfect predictions of wOBA (weighted On-base average; the "catch all" sabermetrics statistic for offensive value to one's team, which takes into account that not all hits are created equally), win-loss records would still be uncertain. This is because the individual sequences of how these hits/walks/etc. occur would still be unknown, and therefore the amount of runs a team produces would fluctuate based on events that one would be unable to control. Furthermore, the situations in which these runs occur would also be unknown, and therefore wins would be impossible to predict. For example, in 2013 the Indians and the Tigers lead the league in wOBA at .341, but the Indians have scored 226 runs while the Tigers have scored 238. The Yankees, on the other hand, have a wOBA of .314, have scored only 195 runs, but have won 28 games, versus 26 for the Indians and 25 for the Tigers. The game of baseball is chaotic and inherently impossible to predict.
When you add up health problems, random events such as young players not reaching their potential, or veterans (ex. Jose Bautista) coming out of nowhere to be quality players, it is evident that forecasting the future is a losing game. Let's just say that this could result in a 10 win different, which is in all likelihood very conservative. This means that there are many teams who could finish between 70 and 90 wins, or the different between playoffs and not.
Now, some teams, such as the Astros and the Marlins, are almost guaranteed to lose more games than they win in 2013, so they have every reason to play for the future. But honest assessments for the rest of the league should be that there is honestly no way to predict how their records turn out.
So, my thinking is that teams should never punt the present for the future. First of all, the present is uncertain, and as teams such as the 2012 Orioles and A's have shown, teams that were deemed "bad" in the preseason may sneak into the playoffs, while teams like the Red Sox and the Angels in 2012 missed the playoffs despite having expectations to make them. Second of all, what makes teams so confident that they can predict future seasons if they can't even accurately predict the current one? Third, the MLB draft is not like the NBA lottery or even the NFL draft, where top prospects have an extremely strong chance of contributing right away. In the MLB, prospects take several years to develop in order to reach the pros, and even then, it is usually very difficult to predict whether they will be able to reach their full potential.
To all MLB teams: good luck predicting the future; my best advice? Don't do it
There is simply too much variation in baseball for teams to just call it quits one season in order to win the next. The opportunity cost of missing out on a potential playoff spot is not worth the uncertainty and risk of trying to win in the future. A team that could win between 60 and 90 games in a season, which covers most teams in the MLB, should instead try to hire productive veterans to get their season more towards the 90 win side of the curve instead of selling all their players and accepting a 60 win season.
Maybe the reason the Yankees are so good this year is because they refused to endure a "rebuilding year" and chose instead to give themselves a decent shot at the playoffs by hiring old men like Vernon Wells and Travis Hafner.
And you know what, maybe the Marlins should do the same.
Grandpas Vernon Wells and Travis Hafner are propelling the Yankees toward the playoffs
No comments:
Post a Comment