Evidence that Walt's worth what we pay him, and then some....
« Sosa Traded | Main | From the Top »A piece in the New York Post two days ago gave Walt Jocketty some unexpected kudos:
One American League team attempted to tackle the difference between what players are paid and what they deserve. Executives from this team came to a consensus on what each player should earn, designing this exercise as a way to identify underpaid assets on other rosters.Posted by Len at February 1, 2005 01:18 PMBut their results were fascinating. The Cardinals, at $182 million, ended up with the largest payroll value, a reflection of having so many superb players and almost no useless ones.
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An executive who participated in this exercise, who asked his team not be revealed, conceded the fallibilities. Salaries were based exclusively on last year's performance and not on any kind of projections, and they used modern metrics such as Win Shares as a guide and very little actual scouting of ability. Still, what emerged is just how few established players earn their actual paychecks.
Interesting little blurb, although I'm a tad skeptical: if the Cards were first ($182M) and the Yankees ($162M) were second, where were the Red Sox, who - at least in terms of run differential - arguably underperformed last year in relation to regular season won-loss record?
Haven't had a chance to read the article, but I'm also pretty skeptical. I have no idea what point the article is trying to make when they say that the numbers come from having "so many superb players and almost no useless ones". Good players are more valuable? I'm shocked.
Since the numbers are based only on 2004, I'm not really sure what the analysis adds to just looking at W-L records correlated with actual payroll. Of course the teams that performed the best will have the "largest payroll value"--no new info there. Now, you could look at "payroll value - actual payroll", but even this number is not too useful since, again, those teams that performed well will probably score well using this metric (excepting the outlier Yankees of course).
The last paragraph you quoted is weird. The fallability comes from the limited scope of data used (2004 only), not from the use of Win Shares or whatever other stats they used.
I take back all of my criticism if this stuff is fleshed out in the full article which I am just too damned lazy to read.
Posted by: Jon K at February 1, 2005 05:54 PMWalt didnt' sign Jeromy Burnitz, like some people appear to be on the verge of doing.
I'm feeling better and better about this offseason.
Posted by: Levi at February 2, 2005 12:35 PMMaybe I'm stating the obvious here but I think the jist of that statement: "no useless ones," refers to the fact that last year all of teh top earners on the Cardinals performed very well. The biggest challenge to that theory is of course Morris and his $12.5M. But, he did win 15 games and a lot of teams paid a lot of guys a lot more money to win less games. AS for dead weight - you had Tino. That's really it.
The simplest thing to do is look around at every other team. A great deal of them were or are saddled with at least one magacontract albatross that the Cards have mercifully avoided: Darren Dreifort, Damian Easley, Jason Giambi, Bobby Higginson, Shawn Green, Denny Neagle (well, not anymore,) Mike Hampton, Kevin Brown, Sammy Sosa, Todd Hundley, etc.
The Cards coudl easily be in with this group if top dollar men like Rolen, Edmonds, Pujols, and Izzy weren't performing. What the article gets at, though, is that they ARE performing.
Posted by: flynn at February 3, 2005 10:20 AM