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Fangraphs: The Worst Transactions of the 2016 Offseason (O's #2)


Can_of_corn

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Lol, was just wondering this. Does any other team have so many whiny bros with decades-long grudges? What's the deal? We're a pretty harmless baseball organization.

Dan Szymborski is an Orioles fan and he really dislikes all the moves this offseason by the O's too.

I think the issue is that a lot of what is happening flies in the face of what makes sense from publicly-available stat models. And Dave Cameron's job is basically to be the mouthpiece for publicly-available stat models. Nothing that Cameron says is wrong; in the past 10 years, aging curves have accelerated and even early-30s players are washing out where they might have stuck it out as productive players 10-15 years ago. And the money is clearly high.

DD (and the O's) have basically spent their entire tenure giving players contracts that are at the high-end of their market value. The Davis deal is the most recent example, but also, Adam Jones was given what was considered a barely below-market deal when he re-signed, even though the O's had no obligation to sign him long term. The only rebuttal I can offer is that the Orioles teams have beaten their projections every year since Duquette has been in charge. So either his proprietary ranking/projection system is better than what's publicly available, or he's the luckiest GM on the face of the planet. Since he's had success in the past with the Sox, I'm leaning toward the former.

That doesn't stop me from being super worried about Davis' future production, though.

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Age in a starter isn't as important as other indicators, like a consistent decline in strikeout rate from almost 10 per nine innings down to a full two K/9 below league average.

I'm open to the idea of him signing a 4/25 kind of deal befitting his level of production. That would be acceptable.

Or they could use a reasonable valuation of the pick they have to sacrifice and expect a fair risk/return on giving it up.

Do you consider Fangraphs crowdsourcing to be a reasonable gauge of a player's value? They suggested 4/56 for both Gallardo and Fowler. If we get Gallardo for 3/35-ish and Fowler for 2/20 or 3/30, that would represent a pretty huge discount. Especially when you consider that the typical error case on Fangraphs crowdsourcing is that they underestimate.

4/25 seems really cheap when he's projected to be worth going to be worth more than 1-1.5 wins/year in the next 4 years, and a win currently is 8+ million and climbing fast. The 14th draft pick is worth something like 15 million, and the 28th pick is worth maybe 5 million.

Assuming 10% inflation and that he's worth 2 wins next year and declines by 0.5 wins every subsequent year, he will be worth 48.5 million over the next 4 years. Subtract 15 million for the draft pick and you're at 33.5 million over 4 years, which is quite a bit higher than your 4/25. If we sign Fowler at a discount as well, it helps quite a bit, since that signing only comes with a $5 million premium on a lost draft pick.

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Do you consider Fangraphs crowdsourcing to be a reasonable gauge of a player's value? They suggested 4/56 for both Gallardo and Fowler. If we get Gallardo for 3/35-ish and Fowler for 2/20 or 3/30, that would represent a pretty huge discount. Especially when you consider that the typical error case on Fangraphs crowdsourcing is that they underestimate.

4/25 seems really cheap when he's projected to be worth going to be worth more than 1-1.5 wins/year in the next 4 years, and a win currently is 8+ million and climbing fast. The 14th draft pick is worth something like 15 million, and the 28th pick is worth maybe 5 million.

Assuming 10% inflation and that he's worth 2 wins next year and declines by 0.5 wins every subsequent year, he will be worth 48.5 million over the next 4 years. Subtract 15 million for the draft pick and you're at 33.5 million over 4 years, which is quite a bit higher than your 4/25. If we sign Fowler at a discount as well, it helps quite a bit, since that signing only comes with a $5 million premium on a lost draft pick.

I think they're reasonable estimates of what people think free agents will get. Whether they deserve that or are worth acquiring for that cost instead of going with much lower cost options is another question. If you can get one win for $500k, which is fairly reasonable to assume they could, it's pretty insane to think the marginal value of one more win is a 4/55.5.

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Never. Unless you can convince me the reason behind it was that you had a valid reason to believe that he was the 1-in-100 or 1-in-500 players who peak at 35.

How many players peak at 33 rather than 29? Are players who have a career year jump at 33 more likely to have better performance from 34-37 than players whose career year comes at 29?

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He already has so I wouldn't be surprised if it continues.

At this point, Cruz is almost certain to outperform his contract. That doesn't mean the contract was a good one when it was signed, it just means that he beat the odds. I'm glad for him.

I will say that the spiraling prices for free agents make the Cruz contract look much better in retrospect, even putting aside his outlier performance.

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My point is that Cruz has shown that he will break the rules (Biogenesis) to gain an advantage. His last two years are certainly more suspicious when combined with that. He beat the odds. He might have increased his odds artificially.

Yes, that's certainly possible. So should we be more willing to hand out contracts to guys we think are likely to cheat?

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Yes, that's certainly possible. So should we be more willing to hand out contracts to guys we think are likely to cheat?

Arguably if we can sign players that are likely to cheat, without being implicated as a team, this is a win/win for the team; if they aren't caught, they beat the aging curves. If they are caught, we're off the hook for part of their salary because they were suspended.

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Maybe I'm naive, but I just don't see the Chris Davis/Ryan Howard similarities. Yes, they both strike out a lot and hit homers, but Davis is a far superior athlete to Ryan Howard. Howard would have NEVER played the outfield at any age in the Majors.

Davis seems like a guy who prides himself in staying in shape. I think he will age much better than RH.

Exactly. At no point in his career could Ryan Howard have even bent over for a ball in play at 3rd base. At no point could he have run down a ball in the corner in right field. Chris Davis is a far superior athlete, at least in terms of pure athleticism. He *should* age much more gracefully.

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