I really want to keep Villar (Update: Traded to Marlins for LHS Easton Lucas)

[Roll Tide]

In case anyone is interested the Rays also made a move

Quote

DFA'd Jesus Aguilar to save $3 million

But he was only a .1 WAR player.

[Can_of_corn]

2 minutes ago, Roll Tide said:

In case anyone is interested the Rays also made a move

But he was only a .1 WAR player.

But he was a 3 win player in 2018. (huge outlier)

[Philip]

8 minutes ago, Roll Tide said:

Honestly Philip ... And I know we don't agree! But name one player move that Elias has done since he's been here that a buffoon couldnt have done?

He did nothing but pick up some rule 5 guys, trade Cashner for scratch offs, couldn;t get a deal done at the deadline, no international signings of note, and now moving Villar for nothing via DFA.

Yeah I know ...its a process! But all I have seen is hiring of his buddies to cushy front office jobs and use our 1st rounder that was earned before he was hired to draft Rutschman (which anyone couldve done).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 I don’t disagree with anything you have said, but I will stress that at the beginning of construction, the first thing you do is scrape the lot clean and level it, and any fool can do that. Only then can you build.

Many of Dan’s moves were obviously Idiotic, whether they were his choice or forced on him by management. I can’t say I like this move, but I also can’t say but it’s wrong depending on the motivation( full disclosure: I was expecting it during the summer and then changed my mind to trying to trade him)It’s obvious that no team in baseball was willing to pay $10 million for him, so Elias is correct when he says, “he’s not worth it.“ So if he’s not worth it, What then?  And that is why we can’t completely say whether this is a good move or not because we don’t know “what then”

Regarding the other moves: I have no problem with the Cashner trade, the Karns and Straily signings( two good gambles that failed) it’s not Mike’s fault he can’t dump Davis. In general I think he is doing what he can. I want to win 70+ games. I think winning should ALWAYS be a priority. Winning more next year than last. I HATE that Mike is all,”wins...meh.” But I understand and I’d rather have that than trade Davies for Parra.

[atomic]

2 minutes ago, Philip said:

 I don’t disagree with anything you have said, but I will stress that at the beginning of construction, the first thing you do is scrape the lot clean and level it, and any fool can do that. Only then can you build.

Many of Dan’s moves were obviously Idiotic, whether they were his choice or forced on him by management. I can’t say I like this move, but I also can’t say but it’s wrong depending on the motivation( full disclosure: I was expecting it during the summer and then changed my mind to trying to trade him)It’s obvious that no team in baseball was willing to pay $10 million for him, so Elias is correct when he says, “he’s not worth it.“ So if he’s not worth it, What then?  And that is why we can’t completely say whether this is a good move or not because we don’t know “what then”

Regarding the other moves: I have no problem with the Cashner trade, the Karns and Straily signings( two good gambles that failed) it’s not Mike’s fault he can’t dump Davis. In general I think he is doing what he can. I want to win 70+ games. I think winning should ALWAYS be a priority. Winning more next year than last. I HATE that Mike is all,”wins...meh.” But I understand and I’d rather have that than trade Davies for Parra.

The Karns signing was awful.  There was zero reason to sign him to a major league contract. 

[Philip]

2 minutes ago, atomic said:

The Karns signing was awful.  There was zero reason to sign him to a major league contract. 

If I recall correctly it was an $800,000 sign. That’s about as low risk as you can get. I know he was injured, but he was a solid candidate to recover from the injury, and he didn’t, but there are a lot of worse things on Which to risk your money

[atomic]

5 minutes ago, Philip said:

If I recall correctly it was an $800,000 sign. That’s about as low risk as you can get. I know he was injured, but he was a solid candidate to recover from the injury, and he didn’t, but there are a lot of worse things on Which to risk your money

He wasn’t a solid chance to recover.  He hadn’t pitched in a couple of years.  The surgery he had most players don’t come back from.  You sign guys like that to minor league deals with an opt out.

[Ohfan67]

39 minutes ago, Frobby said:

Villar’s baserunning  mistakes were very overblown, and few and far between.    It’s pretty well documented that he was one of the top 5 baserunners in MLB this year, per BB-ref, Fangraphs and BP.    Yes, he did make occasion mistakes by being too aggressive, but on balance he gained many more runs than he lost, and that’s just a statistical fact.    

Defensively, he was below average, but honestly I’ve seen a lot worse.    And that’s all taken into account when calculating WAR.

Bottom line, he’s a good if somewhat frustrating player.    I wouldn’t have waived him, but I’m not running the team and I’m not privy to everything Elias knows about the reasons for the move.   
 

 

I personally found his base running miscues frustrating. Btw, I like Villar fine. But I think not paying him 10 million in his walk year when he was apparently untradable this past year incredibly reasonable. Unless he’s claimed, It seems nobody wanted to pay him that kind of money. 

[Frobby]

2 minutes ago, Ohfan67 said:

I personally found his base running miscues frustrating. Btw, I like Villar fine. But I think not paying him 10 million in his walk year when he was apparently untradable this past year incredibly reasonable. Unless he’s claimed, It seems nobody wanted to pay him that kind of money. 

It will be interesting to see how this plays out.    I never thought he’d actually get $10 mm in arbitration as MLBTR projected, but I’m sure $8.5 mm+ was in the cards.  I still harbor some hope that some team will flip us a minor prospect for him, but clearly it won’t be anyone we get excited about even if it happens.   If not, we’ll see what his FA market is.

[MurphDogg]

23 minutes ago, Ohfan67 said:

I personally found his base running miscues frustrating. Btw, I like Villar fine. But I think not paying him 10 million in his walk year when he was apparently untradable this past year incredibly reasonable. Unless he’s claimed, It seems nobody wanted to pay him that kind of money. 

He was the best baserunner in all of baseball statistically, per Fangraphs. Like Buck said, if your third base coach goes a whole year without getting thrown out it means he wasn't aggressive enough.

[NCRaven]

6 hours ago, Frobby said:

I don’t like this move, but the Davis thing has nothing to do with it.   We’ve got to pay him either way.   We don’t have to pay Villar.    

My point is that Davis is a useless player and the Orioles are keeping him because...money.  Villar is actually a useful player and they’re dumping him because...a lot less money.  Davis has nothing to do with Villar, I agree.  But I find it ridiculous that ownership / management forces fans to watch Davis hurt the team, but won’t spend pennies on the dollar to put an actual ML player on the field.  Losing 100 games should be enough.  They don’t have to lose 120.

[scOtt]

7 hours ago, interloper said:

This move does nothing to convince me that we are not absolutely on the right path. We are. Rebuilding is hard. 

 

[TonySoprano]

 

[REDMAN]

Really shots a hole in the value of WAR, doesn't it, a 4 WAR player asking for 10 million and getting cut. Brian Kenny is going to be disappointed on Monday with this news.

 

[Luke-OH]

33 minutes ago, REDMAN said:

Really shots a hole in the value of WAR, doesn't it, a 4 WAR player asking for 10 million and getting cut. Brian Kenny is going to be disappointed on Monday with this news.

 

No team is valuing him on his 2019 season alone. They are projecting 2020, so that means aging curves, regression from his career best season and his less successful seasons baked in. The one projection that's out for 2020 has him at 1.8 WAR.  Let's see if he's traded and what the return is before getting too convinced about what this says about the value of WAR. 

[Frobby]

30 minutes ago, REDMAN said:

Really shots a hole in the value of WAR, doesn't it, a 4 WAR player asking for 10 million and getting cut. Brian Kenny is going to be disappointed on Monday with this news.

 

Earlier in the thread, I quoted Dave Szymborski as saying the relationship between salary and WAR is no longer as linear as it used to be, and that teams aren’t paying $8 mm for that first WAR.   I infer that it gets more linear after that.     But I have some observations, not necessarily related to Villar, though some are:

1.   Teams do not value oWAR and dWAR equally.     Teams pay more for oWAR.     I think that’s because defensive measures are less reliable and less predictive of future results.    

2.   Teams don’t pay for past performance, they pay for estimated future performance.    If they believed Villar would be a four  WAR player in the future, he’d obviously have a significant trade market.

3.    What teams pay for WAR is position-dependent.    Show me a 2.5 WAR pitcher and a 2.5 WAR second baseman, and the pitcher will make more money every time.   Which tells you that teams don’t think WAR accurately measures what it purports to measure.    

I think it would be pretty easy to create a valuation model that takes these factors into account, though Lord knows I have no intention of doing it.