"During the 1994 baseball strike, which began on August 12, Winfield was traded to the Cleveland Indians at the trade deadline on July 31 for a "player to be named later." The 1994 season was cancelled two weeks later, so Winfield did not play for the Indians that year and no player was ever named in exchange. To settle the trade, Cleveland and Minnesota executives went to dinner, with the Indians picking up the tab. This makes Winfield the only player in major league history to be traded for a dinner."
"Catchers hold their value pretty well during their late 20s, comparable to other positions. The 30 to 33 range is very volatile... after age 34, things go downhill very quickly for catchers, a trend noticeable even in the very small sample sizes beyond age 35."
"To understand the romantic sweep and swaggering musical ambition that define Bruce Springsteen's first album of the Obama era, you have to go all the way back to an artifact of the Ford administration."
Welcome to the Obama years, America.
January 9, 2009
Small-market teams love salary caps. Or rather, they think they do. At least on paper, caps stop teams in New York, Boston, and Chicago from oligopolizing the free-agent market, and should therefore help level the economic playing field. And, to a certain extent, they do; a small-market team in a capped league is more likely to acquire or retain top-tier talent. But there's a catch. That same small-market team will need to win, and keep winning, just to stay financially viable. And sometimes, winning might not even be enough.
Let's say, in some far-off universe, MLB owners and players actually did agree on a salary cap. With it would come the normal provisions: a salary floor at around 75-85 percent of the cap, and a guaranteed percentage of total industry revenues for the players. Since the players have been taking in about 45 percent of revenues the past few years, we'll keep it at that figure (the other three major sports leagues, which are all capped, each pay out over 50 percent).
Using 2008 as an example, the thirty teams took in about $6 billion (not including MLB Advanced Media revenue), for an average of $200 million per team. Forty-five percent of that (the players' share) is $90 million, which we'll use as the midpoint between our floor and cap. If we want to make the floor 75 percent of the cap (a low-end figure, relative to the other leagues), we can use $77 million and $103 million, respectively.
With a $103 million cap, nine teams would have been affected last year, and a total of about $286 million would have had to be skimmed off the top. Since total salaries have to remain at existing levels, the bottom twenty-one teams would have had to take on this burden, which had previously been placed on the Yankees, Red Sox, et al. On the other end, fourteen teams would have been under the payroll floor, by a total of $251 million. Even discounting the Marlins' $22 million payroll, the other thirteen teams would have had to spend an average of $15 million more just to meet the minimum. Some of those teams might be able to afford it; most wouldn't.
Imagine being Frank Coonelly in this situation. Coonelly, the Pirates' team president, has publicly supported a cap. Had our fictional cap/floor arrangement been instituted last year, the Pirates would have needed to increase their Opening Day payroll by $28 million. Not only would the team have taken a big loss, but Neal Huntington's long-term strategy would have been sabotaged, since the team would have had to sign a number of veterans just to meet the minimum payroll.
Now fast forward to 2009. Let's say the Pirates' sales staff runs into major headwinds, with the team struggling and the economy sinking. The team's top line takes a hit, falling $10 million from 2008. The Mets and Yankees, meanwhile, open their new ballparks, and each team increases its local revenue by $50 million. If the twenty-seven other teams are flat, total industry revenues rise by $90 million (not including any appreciation in national media revenue). Forty-five percent of that, of course, goes to the players. So even as the Pirates' purchasing power decreases, the payroll floor actually rises.
In other words, without a more egalitarian distribution of income, the system crumbles.
Until recently, the NFL has been uniquely fit for this type of model, since most of its revenues have come from national television contracts. But now, with local revenues rising, small-market teams are feeling the pinch. This past May, the owners unanimously voted to opt out of their CBA, which was supposed to run through 2012. Some blamed the players' share of revenues. Others, including Dan Rooney of the Steelers, cited the need for more local revenue sharing.
But sharing local revenue has a major drawback: it is a tax, which inevitably lowers incentives and decreases output. If the NFL shared all (or even most) local intake, why would an individual team ever look to maximize revenues at its own cost (i.e. by hiring a sales staff, or cleaning its own stadium)?
The NHL, which also has a hard cap, does very little revenue sharing, partly thanks to an overly convoluted system. On a league-wide level, the results have been very positive; the NHL has had record revenues every year since its lockout, and Gary Bettman has been very positive about this season as well. But the NHL is a great example of why caps and capitalism don't mix: as the league grows, it ends up leaving teams behind. Small-market clubs like the Columbus Blue Jackets and the Nashville Predators are forced to spend almost two-thirds of their revenue on player payroll. And the Phoenix Coyotes, after years of hemorrhaging money, are on the verge of going bankrupt.
So what's the best solution? Certainly not the NBA's soft-cap system, which has too many problems to even count—imagine having to take on Luis Castillo or Carl Pavano every time you wanted to unload a high-priced veteran.
So instead of these models, what if there was an uncapped league, with limited local revenue sharing to support small-market teams, and a post-season system that naturally created tremendous parity? Does this sound familiar? It should. It's what MLB has had in place for over a decade, leading to record growth in both attendance and revenue.
The expanded postseason is key. More than any other sport, MLB's playoff system acts as an equalizer. Fair or not, in broad strokes, a team that wins 83 games in a bad division has as much chance of winning the World Series as the Yankees or the Red Sox. Seemingly, no matter how much those teams spend over the winter, that competitive advantage is neutralized come October.
So while the capped leagues all struggle to find the right balance between capitalism and socialism, baseball continues to prosper operating within a much more free-market system. Teams in big markets and small markets alike are making money, and everyone has a chance to win it all.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it. And right now, baseball is anything but broke.
(Note: All salary data taken from the Lahman Database.)
I think it’s probably fair to say that Adam Dunn, for all his obvious talents, can be a remarkably frustrating player to watch.
The sheer enjoyment one derives by observing players is much more important than winning games. Aaron Rowand is an MVP.
He is a dreadful left fielder, a designated hitter in outfielder’s clothes.
Adam Dunn's range factor is generally below league average.He’s slow, though it should be noted that he’s not a bad baserunner…according to the Bill James baserunner analysis he’s actually a very GOOD base runner.
Adam Dunn is so slow is that, despite being a very good baserunner who scores on hits, he isn't fast enough to be fun to watch.
He’s brutal going first to third, as you might expect, but he tends to score from second on singles and from first on doubles, he doesn’t run into many stupid outs, he doesn’t get caught stealing,
So what if he doesn't make outs and scores runs? His jogging isn't fun to watch. Believe me you, Adam Dunn is no Willy Taveras!
and he doesn’t ground into many double plays
He's also no Derrek Lee!
(though in his case that probably has little to do with his running and a lot to do with his fly ball tendencies and his many, many strikeouts.
If only Adam Dunn stopped hitting balls out of the infield (and out of the park) and slapped the shit out of grounders like Michael Bourne; imagine the possibilities.No one who has ever looked at Willie "underdog" Bloomquist's career numbers would ever doubt how bad he is at baseball.
Yes, in my mind, Adam Dunn and Willie Bloomquist are almost perfect opposites.
Adam Dunn is good at baseball and Willie Bloomquist is not. End of article.
And while they are not anything close to equal baseball players, I would also say that you would not want to build a whole team of Bloomquists or Dunns.
Actually, if you were to tell me I could build a major league roster of players who would all hit 40 home runs and walk 120 times a season, I'd cum in my pants.
According to the Baseball Musings Lineup Analysis — one of my favorite toys— a whole team of 2008 Adam Dunns would average 6.67 runs per game — so that’s 1,080 runs per season. A whole team of 2008 Willie Bloomquists, meanwhile, would average 4.177 runs per game — 677 runs per season. So using the Musinator, Dunn is 400 or so runs better offensively than Bloomquist. That sounds about right to me.
According to data from 2005-2008, teams that scored 5 runs in a game had winning percentage (in those games) upward of .613, while every run scored beyond the fifth seemed to increase the team's winning percentage by about .100. By contrast teams who scored 4 runs per game won approximately .465 of the time. Considering that Adam Dunn's career OPS+ is 30% above league average and Willie Bloomquists is 26% below league average, I'd say Baseball Musings Lineup Analysis did a good job here.
Of course, it’s downright frightening to imagine how two Adam Dunns would turn the double play.
They'd make up for the error by walking and then hitting a two run blast in the bottom of the inning.
By the way, this Lineup Analysis is sort of a fun way to compare players. Take the great NL MVP race of 2008. According to the Musinator, a team of 2008 Albert Pujols would score 1,488 runs for a season. A team of 2008 Ryan Howards would score 977 runs for a season.
In other words, Adam Dunn isn't as good of a player as Albert Pujols, but he's better than Ryan Howard. You see no objections by me here.
So, by this way of thinking, Pujols is 500-plus runs better. And he’s a much better defensive player, and a much better base runner, and … I’m really not sure why this was ever really an argument.
In actuality, the 2008 NL MVP wasn't much of an argument. Idiot sportswriters like you, however, tried to fuck it up with ancient, obsolete baseball intuition.
It’s also a fun way to look at the Hall of Fame Ballot. Here, using the players career numbers, is what a complete team made up of each player would score for a season:
Mark McGwire: 1,199 runs per season.
Rickey Henderson: 953 runs per season.
Jim Rice: 948 runs per season.
Tim Raines: 918 runs per season.
Don Mattingly: 916 runs per season.
Dale Murphy: 880 runs per season.
Dave Parker: 864 runs per season.
Andre Dawson: 837 runs per season.
Alan Trammell: 812 runs per season.
For a guy who is knocking on Adam Dunn, you just showed that his career numbers, thus far, would surpass those of Shoe-in hall of famer Rickey Henderson. Granted, Dunn is in his prime and has yet to regress on the back end of his career, but he's still a really fucking good player.
Of course, that’s just offense, and it doesn’t take into account much base running,
Considering that Bill James has already proven that Adam Dunn's baserunning is well above average, who cares?
Perhaps you could just visit www.baseballprospectus.com and look up these player's WARPs and we wouldn't be having this pointless arguement. It's not like researching sports to make an educated opinion is your job or anything...
I find all this to be a little bit more than an interesting side note — I think that, in many ways, Dunn and Bloomquist represent opposing philosophies about baseball.
The old good versus bad philosophy?
I think the Adam Dunn philosophy is built around what you can see, what is measurable, what is cold and hard and real.
Not to mention what is consistent and independent of luck.
With Dunn, you get a titanic power hitter who plays every day, hits long home runs (exactly 40 ever year — no more, no less), walks a lot, strikes out every three or four at bats, plays zero positions, doesn’t have much speed and doesn’t do those little things that show off his great love of the game. The Dunn Way is the Michael Corleone Way, strictly business.
Adam Dunn is a souless robot who hates baseball and would murder his own brother if given the opportunity.
The Willie Bloomquist philosophy, meanwhile, is built around passion, what is intangible, this sense that if you can get a bunch of guys who KNOW HOW to play the game, who LOVE the game, who HAVE BASEBALLS BEATING IN THEIR CHESTS,
First and foremost, this is not "the Willie Bloomquist way"; it is the David Eckstein way. David Eckstein patented "heart" in 2002 and renewed the copyright in 2006.
Secondly, as clearly evident by his career 74 OPS+, Willie Bloomquist doesn't not "know how to play the game" of baseball, no matter how much he "loves" it.
then you can do wonderful things (even if the players can’t hit worth a damn).
Actually, without getting on base or clubbing home runs, you can't do shit. No matter how fast you run.
With Bloomquist you have an astonishingly weak hitter who plays occasionally, cracked ONE EXTRA BASE HIT last year, doesn’t get on base, plays seven defensive positions,
A glaring endorsement for Willie Bloomquist's 2-year, $3 million deal.
can really run and gets his uniform so dirty that, according to his jarringly lengthy Wikipedia entry, he has over the years been called (mostly in jest/derision) Wee Willie, Ballgame, The Ignitor, Effin, WFB, The Spork, Princess Willie, Willie Boom-Boom and, by Angels announcer Rex Hudler, The Mighty Bloomquist.
I can't put my finger on why, but somehow, nicknames like Princess Willie the imposing punch of "Big Donkey."At the same time, there are plenty of people in the game and in the stands who believe that you win by doing the little things,
Little things that don't actually contribute to winning games consistently.
by playing defense and running out ground balls and playing the game with passion every day. They lean heavily Bloomquist. The Minnesota Twins, for instance, lean Bloomquist. The Twins run and catch the ball and they have not worried too much about power or on-base percentage. This, no doubt, frustrates the heck out of a lot of Dunn-leaning Twins fans.
Actually, the Twins were carried by a phenomenal starting/relief pitching core (Slowey, Baker, Blackburn, Liriano, Nathan, Reyes, Crain) that was carried by what little offense that Joe Mauer, Justin Morneau and Denard Span could mustard on their own (since the rest of the team was largely too concerned with doing all the "little things" that don't win games). Willie Bloomquist-like offense didn't win the Twins 88 games last year; great pitching did.
You know who also won more games than the Twins in 2008? Those awful Yankees and their Adam Dunn-philosophy to winning.
It’s an irritating feeling when you lean heavily one way and have a team that leans heavily the other way. But I think the more irritating feeling is when you do not know which way your team leans. And that, finally, leads us to the Kansas City Royals, recent purchasers of Willie Bloomquist himself.
The Royals under Dayton Moore have TALKED about leaning Dunn. That is, Dayton has made statements that would lead you to believe he cares a whole lot about on-base percentage and power numbers.
Mark Jacobs? Mark Teahen? Ross Gload? The Royals are not leaning towards The Dunn Method, no matter what claims management has that they are looking for "on-base players" for 2009.
That’s what he says. But everything he DOES leads you to believe he leans very, very Bloomquist.
Here are Dayton’s big-money signings and trades the last couple of years:
1. Jose Guillen ($12 million per): .323 on-base percentage.
2. Mike Jacobs ($3 million or so): .318 on-base percentage.
3. Coco Crisp ($5.75 million or so): .331 on-base percentage.
4. Willie Bloomquist ($1.55 million plus incentives): .324 on-base percentage.
5. Miguel Olivo ($2.7 million): .275 on-base percentage.
That’s actually quite remarkable. Look at that list again. You have five pickups totaling about $25 million per year — and you have to suspect that all five will be in next year’s lineup quite regularly. And not one guy — not ONE GUY — has even a league average on-base percentage for his career.
This is why, more or less, the Royals have sucked every year for the past 15 years. They are the Pittsburg Pirates of the AL.
Look at that list again. That’s the core of the Kansas City lineup — the leadoff hitter, the four-five hitters, the eight-nine hitters probably. And that’s a combined .314 on-base percentage.
And yet fuck Adam Dunn and his career .381 on-base percentage.
So why did Dayton sign these guys?
Good question.
1. Jose Guillen: Because he was the best right-handed “power” bat available, and he’s “a real competitor.”
2. Mike Jacobs: Because he’s got power, and “his work ethic is off the 3. Coco Crisp: Because he’s an excellent defensive center fielder, has speed and could blossom playing every day. Plus, he has “been a part of championship teams.”
4. Willie Bloomquist: Because he’s got some speed, he’s versatile and “He’s an on base guy(??), a speed-type player and a hustler.”
5. Miguel Olivo: Because he’s got a little pop in his bat and he can throw out baserunners.
The Royals believe in the Bloomquist Way.
The philosophy of losing.
And look, I am not saying that these moves will not work.
Good, because -- just like with the 2005 Nationals -- they probably won't.
They could work, I guess. There are many ways to win baseball games. Guillen could have one more good season left in him. Jacbos could pop 30 homers. Crisp could revert back to his Cleveland days and could win a Gold Glove in Kansas City’s big center field. Bloomquist could, um, … well, he could be used as a super utility player. Olivo could … well, anyway.
Yes, if every player on the team were to have to career highs in every statistical category, you could probably win some games.
The Royals also spent $4.25 million per year on Kyle Farnsworth and $1.9 million on Horacio Ramirez.
Spent or overspent?
Man, the Royals threw around a lot of money to a lot of players who did not have good years in 2008. Maybe it will work.
But probably not.
They do have a lot of guys in the clubhouse who love the game.
I personally would have taken that money and signed Adam Dunn and a couple of other guys who may not like baseball a whole lot but at least get on base and get batters out.
Hey, me too!
It's a different philosophy.
The philosophy of winning.
