Monday, the Blue Jays announced that they’d signed both Eric Hinske and
Vernon Wells to five-year deals in the neighborhood of $15 million. The
deals take both players through their arbitration seasons, while not buying
out any years of free agency. More importantly, the deals tie each player to
the Jays through their probable peak; Hinske is under contract through age 29,
Wells through age 28.
My first reaction to the deals was positive. Hinske should be a good player
through the life of the deal, although he lacks the potential of, say, Eric
Chavez or Hank Blalock. Hinske’s defense improved enough during last
season to scotch the idea of moving him off of third base, which leaves just
his performance against left-handers (.202/.293/.339) as a major flaw in his
game. Wells has a higher upside and considerably more defensive value than
Hinske does, although his lousy OBP means that he hasn’t been as good a player
to date.
The media gets A-Rod’s injury right, aces that may not make it out for Opening Day, Grudzielanek’s injury reduces the Cubs’ 2B job to a dogfight between Hill, Martinez, and Bump Wills, and Will Carroll’s bizarre love for Wily Mo Pena lives on.
There are certain occupations where mentioning the elephant in the room that everyone knows about but no one acknowledges can be hazardous to your continued livelihood. You can’t find a single politician, for example, who thinks that Social Security is viable long term without significant benefit cuts or tax increases. And yet, because Joe Sheehan’s assessment of Americans is, by and large, too charitable–and because we’ve all embraced the tragedy of the commons with such zeal–no elected official in their right mind will come out in favor of cutting Social Security benefits or dramatically raising taxes.
So, instead of trying to solve the problem in advance, we’ll wait until there’s a crisis and do a half-assed job of fixing it down the road, when the problem’s particularly acute, and the group that will take it in the shorts when that happens will be the group that’s either demographically or electorally challenged. It’s the way we do things. We don’t often mention the elephant in the room, even though its presence is patently obvious.
Last Saturday, Oakland A’s owner Steve Schott flashed a spotlight on the elephant in the room.
The PECOTA system acknowledges that there is a wide range of variance intrinsic to any set of forecasts. What’s more, there’s no reason to expect that this variance will be unrelated to the team that a player toils for. On the contrary, there are myriad anecdotal examples of entire teams who routinely fall toward the top or the bottom of their forecast range. Under Dusty Baker, the Giants have consistently gotten more production than would reasonably be expected from a set of thirtysomethings. Under Leo Mazzone, the Braves have consistently turned waiver wire fodder into good or even great bullpen arms.
Indeed, it’s possible to conjure up an argument like that for just about every team, and some of the time, you won’t even be BSing. Translating player projections into team forecasts is an exercise that caters mostly to the left side of the brain; you’re sure to see some more creative solutions in the coming days as we publish the BP author forecasts, crazed opium dreams like the Cubs taking the pennant. I have myself deviated from the HAL 9000 version in quite a number of cases. Nevertheless, we’ve never had anything quite like PECOTA before, and it’s worth seeing what it has to say.