This Kettle is Black
November 13, 2009


It sounds weird, but I look forward to the offseason in baseball as much as I do the regular season.  I find the construction of teams incredibly interesting in part because everyone has theories of how teams should be built and more often than not, those theories are wrong.  For the last few years, the baseball hot stove on the internet has been dominated by stat-centric sites that 90% of the time say that that GMs and their front offices are morons for not doing exactly what their statistics say they should.  Eight years ago, they screamed that teams were failing to be good because GMs were ignoring on base.  Any team that didn't have on base as it's primary focus was going to lose 100 games and fall into an abyss never to be heard from again.  Reality had other ideas as none of the top 3 teams in either league in on base won the World Series.  The Diamondbacks won in 2001 with two dominating starting pitchers and an offense that did not strikeout a lot, the Angels won the following year with a dominating bullpen and an offense that successfully put the ball in play, and Marlins won in 2003 with an offense that rarely walked but ran like crazy on the basepaths and a young pitching staff that was solid top to bottom.  The same thing has happened to the theories that college players are the best ones to pick in the draft and that defense is the most important aspect of the game.  As a wise man once said about drafting in fantasy baseball, "value is where you find it".  In fantasy baseball as well as real baseball, there are no simple answers... unless of course, you're the Yankees.

Don't write me angry emails telling me about the economics of baseball and how the Yankees are built on evaluating talent.  I understand the economics of baseball just fine.  When the Yankees win with a smaller budget than at least ten other teams, then you can talk all you want to about talent evaluation.  Does anyone honestly think the Yankees would have won the World Series this year without their $51 million investment in CC Sabathia, AJ Burnett and Mark Teixeira?  That's more than the Marlins, Padres and Pirates spent on their entire teams.  They get into the playoffs every year because they can spend money like no other franchise.  Sure, they have drafted and developed some very good players, but unlike every other team in baseball, they can keep all the good ones they develop because they can outspend everyone else to keep them.   The combined salaries of Jeter, Posada, Rivera, Pettitte, Cano and Wang is more than eight teams spent on their entire payroll.  Moreover, they never have to trade any of their top prospect to get help immediately because they can take on any contract without any concern, which they proved with Bobby Abreu a couple years ago, taking a $16 million contract without giving up anything.  They don't need to trade; they only need to wait until the player becomes a free agent.  Then they can simply outspend everyone else, even if it means overpaying, as they have done with several of their players. 

It's true that the Yankees spend a greater percentage of their reported revenue on the team payroll than all but 3 teams, but percentage of revenue is largely meaningless in this discussion.  Players don't sign with a team because the team spends a certain percentage of their revenue on payroll; they sign because one team offers them more total money.  Period.  And no one pays more for player's salaries than the Yankees.  Some would say that because of this they don't get any bargains, but there comes a point in the price versus value equation where the price of the player doesn't matter.  The only thing that matters is getting a great player and the Yankees can afford to do this without restriction. 

It's true that spending money does not assure a team a playoff berth, but it is a huge influence on a team's ability to compete.  Small budget teams have made the playoffs and won the Series, but if you survey all the teams in the bottom third of spending and compare them to the teams in the top third, the teams at the bottom have an aggregate lower winning percentage.  Teams that have the money to spend can afford to make more mistakes (and thus more chances) because they can paper over them if they go awry.  Smaller budget teams have to be smarter in order to compete because they have fewer resources, which is very tough because big budget teams also hire smart people and they can afford to hire away the small market smart people. 

So Yankees fans, please stop pointing to anything else other than payroll and be thankful that your team resides in the largest market in America, which the Yankees had absolutely no significant influence in creating; they merely reaped the rewards.  Be satisfied with that and stop trying to sell the rest of the world on the idea that your team somehow outworks other teams or is smarter or had a tougher time to get there.

Here's another advantage the Yankees never have to worry about: whether to try to compete this year or build for the future.  The answer is that no team should ever think that way because losing teams, especially really bad ones, have a hard time drawing fans, which in turn hurts their ability to pay good players, either their own or the ones they would like to acquire in free agency.  Good free agents rarely want to sign with bad teams, meaning bad teams have to overpay to get them.  So "saving money" in a rebuilding year actually costs more money when the team has enough talent to be competitive. This is the reason the Pirates have been so bad every year for the last 15 years; they never figured out how to break that cycle of losing.

It's an issue that the Nationals face this year and one I think they have already made a bad choice.  I hope I am wrong, but signing Jim Riggleman to be the manager was not a good decision, either in the short term or the long term.

He might be a very good coach, and like Manny Acta, he would be helpful in that capacity.  But as the guy making the final decisions on the field, he's simply not equipped to do a satisfactory job.  Watching Riggleman is not a new thing for me.  As a former Padre fan, I got to watch him in San Diego and then I followed him pretty closely when he was with the Cubs because I was a fan of Kerry Wood, and then again last year as the interim skipper of the Nats.  Here's why it was a bad choice.

First, he has been lauded for his repsect for the game, in keeping the integrity of the pennant race last year.  Instead of playing his young players who actually will play a pivotal role in the fortunes of the 2010 Nats, he instead preferred to play his veterans.  The thinking was that had he played the younger players, that it would have given an unfair advantage to the potential playoff teams that were facing the Nats at the end of the year.  The problem with that theory was that those same veterans had pretty capably demontrated over the first 140 games of the season that they were a sub-.380 winning percentage team, making them one of the worst in history.  How can playing the youngsters, who arguably had much more talent, be any worse?  In fact, they couldn't be, as the Nats went 5-13 in September against teams vying for a playoff spot.   That's a .277 winning percentage.  If anything, Riggleman's veteran Nats rolled over for the playoff teams. 

Some would argue that he did give kids like Ian Desmond plenty of playing time.  Yes, and no.  Desmond was promoted on the 8th, didn't play until the 10th and even then he was used primarily as a second baseman until Cristian Guzman's shoulder becamse too sore for him to play regularly.  That didn't happen until the 20th.  So Desmond didn't see regular action at his natural position until about 13 games left in the season.  The greatest irony is that the Nats at some point during this period decided that Guzman was going to be moving to second base for the 2010 season.  Riggleman played outfielder Justin Maxwell only sparingly despite desperately needing a competent center fielder, instead giving utility man Willie Harris most of the at bats.  Maxwell will at least be a platoon player and semi-regular in 2010 (with comparisons to that of a young Mike Cameron) yet somehow it was more important to get Willie Harris, he of the career .683 OPS and average or subpar defense everywhere except left field, regular at bats?  Is Riggleman really the guy the Nationals want deciding which players to play in 2010? 

The other problem with this decision, other than it pretty much assures that the Nationals will be digging out from a deeper hole at this time next year because it is very hard to convince people that your team is going to be good after three consecutive 100-loss seasons, (yes, that is my prediction) is that the Nationals had other choices for manager, good ones that could have paid dividends immediately.  Bobby Valentine interviewed for the job.  Say what you will about his successes and failures, but the guy is at least entertaining.  And if he's as good a manager as he showed with the late 1990's Mets or in Japan, then the Nats would be in better shape.  Two other choices which I think would have been excellent are Tim Foli, a former player who managed the Triple-A team for the Nationals to a .528 winning percentage despite Marco Estrade being their best pitcher, and Trent Jewett, who managed the team's Single A club in Potomac to a .577 winning percentage.  Neither team was blessed with a wealth of top talent, yet managed to contend all year long.  The Nats will likely be one of the youngest teams in the majors next year so having a manager who knows how to handle young players would seem like a good thing.

So let's look at Riggleman's history with young players since there's a good chance that half of the Nat's starting will be 26 or younger.  In San Diego, the only player under 26 he inherited was Gary Sheffield, who was traded away the following year in the infamous Tom Werner fire sale.  In 1993, he had Ricky Gutierrez, Phil Plantier and Derek Bell.  Of those three, only Bell got better with a second year of Riggleman.  He gained Brad Ausmus in 1994, who then posted his career best season the following year when Riggleman was no longer their manager.  In 1995, he was brought in to manage the Cubs, which had no players younger than 26.  The Cubs posted a 217-251 record over three seasons with an offense that included three-all-stars in Ryne Sandberg, Mark Grace and Sammy Sosa along with a solid supporting cast that included Luis Gonzalez and some of Brian McRae's best seasons.  Riggleman's fortunes changed in 1998 thanks to wunderkind Kerry Wood and the incredibly powerful bat of Sammy Sosa.   But after that magical 90-win season, they went back to being Jim Riggleman's Cubs with a record of 67-95.  So the conclusion we must draw is that he's not overly good at teaching young players to get better, nor is he particularly adept at making veteran teams better. 

Maybe pitchers get better?  Well, Kerry Wood's arm was famously used very hard in the 1998 season and he came away from that season with injuries that required surgery and has not been the same since.  Of the Padre hurlers he inherited, Andy Benes had some solid seasons but had already been starting for two full seasons.  His best season came after he left the Padres.  Joey Hamilton was highly regarded as a prospect but never amounted to much and Andy Ashby didn't become a solid starter until after Riggleman has gone to the Cubs.  With the Cubs, Steve Trachsel developed into a reliable starter but also had his two worst seasons under Riggleman; his best season came with the Mets.  Kevin Foster flamed out, Amaury Telemaco never developed, Geremi Gonzalez' arm practically fell off, and Kyle Farnsworth was tried as a starter.  All this under Riggleman.  So it doesn't look like he's been overly competent developing pitchers either.  Is it any wonder that Felix Hernandez finally had his first big year the season after Riggleman left Seattle?  And this is the guy the Nats front office wants to develop the most heralded college arm in history (Strasburg) and an excellent young pitcher coming back from arm surgery (Zimmermann)?  Call me crazy but given his track record, with the exception of Manny Acta I can't think of a worse candidate to lead the Nationals.  I fully expect that the Nationals will be looking for a new manager later this year.  I sincerely hope I'm wrong and that Riggleman has been cursed with bad luck, but with 10 years of data and experience watching, I kinda doubt it.