Author Archives: Ted Berg

A bad free-agent class?

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One popular mainstream media meme is that this year’s is a weak free agent class. But one popular independent media meme* is assuming that everything the mainstream media agrees upon is nonsense.

Anyway, in an effort to figure it out, I added up the 2009 Fangraphs.com WARs of the top 20 players on MLB Trade Rumors’ top-50 free agents list (who has time to do all 50?) and the 2008 WARs of the top 20 players on last year’s list.

I skipped Aroldis Chapman, since he has no Major League data yet, and so added the 21st player — Adam LaRoche — this year. Similarly, I skipped Mike Mussina, who retired, and Ben Sheets, who was injured, from last year’s set, adding Orlando Cabrera and Jamie Moyer.

For a variety of reasons, it’s an imperfect way of calculating the depth of a free-agent class. I only measured the top 20 guys in each year and I only used one year of data.

Anyway, last year’s top 20 free agents totaled 72.1 WAR, and this year’s totaled 65.1 WAR.

So yeah, last year’s class was stronger. Not by a ton, but probably by a significant margin.

Of course, last year’s class was a lot better at the top. It had three players — CC Sabathia, Mark Teixeira, and Manny Ramirez — with 6.0 or greater WARs, while the current class can boast only one: Chone Figgins. But last year’s list had five players with 2.0 or lesser WARs, while this year’s has only three.

That said, this year’s list has two players with WARs below 1.0: Vlad Guerrero and Jose Valverde. Last year’s didn’t have any.

Anyway, that’s all just an exercise. Tim Dierkes at MLB Trade Rumors doesn’t rank his free agents by the prior season’s WAR — nor should he — so mine is a flawed study. Obviously one season’s worth of WAR is not a perfect measure of a free-agent’s value.

But I wonder if this is really a one-year blip in the free-agent market or indicative of a larger trend. Recently, we’ve seen lots of teams — including small-market ones — locking up their best players to long-term extensions before they hit arbitration, as the Mets did with Jose Reyes and David Wright.

The Rays have options on Evan Longoria’s contract that could keep him under team control until 2016, so, even though he made the Majors at a young age, he might not hit free agency until he’s 31.

There are also cases like Johan Santana’s, wherein a player with a no-trade clause approaching free agency agrees to waive that right to sign an extension with a club that trades for him. The same thing could happen with Roy Halladay this offseason.

Those are very, very isolated examples, but if the trends continue, I have to imagine we’ll see fewer and fewer excellent players hit free agency in the midst of their primes, as Sabathia, Teixeira and Matt Holliday have.

The 2011 free-agent class could be stronger than this year’s, but there’s reason to believe many of the top players on this list will sign extensions with their current clubs before the 2010 season is out.

*- As Sam points out below, this is likely an inappropriate use of the term “meme.”

Paging Dr. Bassett

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Brian Bassett from TheJetsBlog.com called into the studio to talk about the Jets and their upcoming matchup with Cheater McMisunderstoodtherules, better known as Bill Belichick.

Art Attack: Shaq piles on the awesome

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Is there a more awesome human than Shaquille O’Neal?

For years I’ve maintained that everything Shaq does is art, and now he’s taking it up a notch:

Shaquille O’Neal is curating an art exhibit set to start on Feb. 19 at the FLAG Art space in Chelsea.

Needless to say, I will do everything in my power to attend the opening and report back here.

The subject of the exhibit is right in Shaq’s giant wheelhouse. It’s called “Size DOES Matter,” and will “explore the various ways that scale affects the perception of contemporary art.”

In other words: Big stuff.

Clearly, scale is an important aspect of my Awesomeist movement, and obviously Shaq recognizes that. And since Shaq is hand-selecting or commissioning every piece of art to be displayed, it’s bound to be the most comprehensive collection of Awesomeism yet assembled.

The list of artists includes Ron Mueck, a hyperrealist sculptor whose work I fell in love with when he had an exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum, back when I lived around the corner from it. His pieces are amazingly lifelike in every way except their ridiculous size, making them, in that sense, a lot like Shaquille O’Neal.

Jeff Koons is also on the list. Koons also sculpts some vaguely awesome work, but he ruins it when he opens his mouth and starts talking about the meaning. That contradicts one of the fundamentals of Awesomeism: That which is Awesome never needs an explanation.

Anatomy of a useless trade

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Paul Vargas at Section Five Twenty-Eight rounded up some free-agent first basemen the Mets should avoid a couple of weeks ago, and noted that Ross Gload was traded from the Rockies to the Mets as part of the monstrous Jeromy Burnitz trade in January of 2002, then sold back to the Rockies five days later.

This is particularly hilarious, because the Mets traded cash to the Rockies as part of the original deal, so basically it was the Major League equivalent of backsies. “You know what? Never mind on this Gload kid. We don’t have as much money in the bank as we thought we did; Mo Vaughn is eating us out of house and home.”

The whole saga must have been a rollercoaster ride for Gload, who grew up a Mets fan in the Hamptons and had only been picked up by the Rockies off waivers from the Cubs that September.

When you think of it, really, baseball’s whole system of roster management is pretty savage. I understand that it’s the system in place, and that I kind of make my living off of it, plus it’s probably something young players are prepared for. And the Major Leaguers are certainly well-compensated.

But man, could anything be worse than to have to pick up your whole life and move just because Steve Phillips says you have to?

Which brings me to the real point about the Burnitz deal. It was a pretty amazing example of the plain redirection of unspectacular players in bulk. Check it out:

The Mets traded Lenny Harris, Glendon Rusch, Todd Zeile, Benny Agbayani and cash and got back Burnitz, Lou Collier, Jeff D’Amico, Mark Sweeney, Craig House and five days of Ross Gload.

The Rockies traded five days of Gload, House and former Met Alex Ochoa and got back Zeile, Agbayani and cash.

The Brewers traded Burnitz, Collier, D’Amico and Sweeney and got back Harris, Rusch and Ochoa.

Burnitz was the only player involved who had been better than average in the preceding season and Zeile, Agbayani, Rusch and Ochoa were the only others who had been Major League regulars.

Collier, Sweeney and House were all gone from the Mets by Opening Day of that season. D’Amico did yeoman’s work in the back of the Mets’ rotation in 2002 and was gone before the next season. Burnitz struggled in 2002 then got off to a hot start in 2003 and was dealt for, among others, Victor Diaz.

Agbayani fell apart in his first year with the Rockies and was picked up off waivers by the Red Sox in August. Zeile played one unspectacular year as the Rockies’ third baseman then left to free agency after the season.

Harris did a nice job as the primary pinch-hitter for the 2002 Brewers, enough to earn him a free-agent contract with the Cubs the following season and keep him stumbling around the league for three more years. Ochoa got off to an uninspiring start with the Crew and was traded for Jorge Fabregas at the 2002 trade deadline.

Rusch, one of my favorites from his Mets days, essentially pitched like a much shorter and left-handed version of D’Amico in 2002, then completely tanked in 2003.

Rusch and Burnitz were the only players of the 11 involved in the deal that were still with their new club by the start of the 2003 season, and only Rusch finished out that year with his team. He left for free agency that offseason.

The teams combined to go 204-281 in 2002. Only the Rockies avoided last place in their division, finishing in fourth place with a 73-89 record.

Obviously there were reasons for the deal at the time. The Mets, for example, had just obtained Mo Vaughn and Roger Cedeno, so they didn’t need Zeile or Benny anymore, and Burnitz was another power bat to add to the lineup.

But man, how much time and effort must have gone into a deal that ultimately didn’t help any of the teams involved? Oh, the best-laid plans of Steve Phillips.

For what it’s worth, the Rockies would later obtain Sweeney, Burnitz and Rusch in 2003, 2004 and 2009, respectively. Rusch and Gload were the only players remaining in the Majors last season, and Agbayani retired from playing in Japan a few weeks ago.

Items of note

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My brain says that, as a fan of another Big East basketball team, I should actually be rooting for Syracuse in non-conference matchups with ranked opponents. After all, more respect for the conference should mean more NCAA berths. My heart says screw that, and that Syracuse should burn in hell.

With one Cy Young Award already on his shelf, Tim Lincecum can go about fashioning a bong out of his second.

Chicago’s year-long nightmare is over.

Talk about a sell-Lowe deal! Am I right?

First off, the poll there is hilarious: Would you trade for Derek Lowe? A) Absolutely, B) No way. There is no gray area, and terms of the deal are immaterial. It’s not “Would you trade Milton Bradley for Derek Lowe?” (yes) or “Would you trade a really good sandwich for Derek Lowe” (not unless the Braves ate a huge part of his contract along with my sandwich).

Also, it’s funny how the Derek Lowe vs. Ollie Perez free-agent debate from last season worked out. Lose-lose so far. At the Perpetual Post, Howard Megdal and Chris Pummer discussed which pitcher is a better bet moving forward. Howard won’t give up on Ollie until someone pries his baseball-reference sponsorship from his cold, dead hands.

For no reason at all, here’s some guy’s video for Ween’s The Mollusk:

From the Wikipedia: Old Faithful

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Sometimes you end up so deep into the Wikipedia web that you don’t even remember what started it. That’s what happened today.

From the Wikipedia: Old Faithful

Old Faithful is a geyser in Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming. It was named by explorer Nathan P. Langford because its eruptions happen so regularly, and because, presumably, it is quite old.

In a guide to Yellowstone Park written in 1883, Henry Winser wrote:

Old Faithful is sometimes degraded by being made a laundry. Garments placed in the crater during quiescence are ejected thoroughly washed when the eruption takes place. Gen. Sheridan’s men, in 1882, found that linen and cotton fabrics were uninjured by the action of the water, but woolen clothes were torn to shreds.

I don’t really see how that’s degrading the geyser. The geyser couldn’t care less if you threw some clothes down there. It’s just good use of a natural resource, that’s all.

I’ve been to Old Faithful and I was a bit disappointed. Not by the eruption — that part was cool — but by the geyser’s relative lack of faith.

When you get to Yellowstone, you’re all, oh man, I’ve got to get to Old Faithful in a half hour, she’s about to blow. And then there’s a buffalo on the road in your way, and at first you’re like, “Oh, hey, cool! Buffalo!”

But then in a couple of minutes you’re all, “hey, get out of the road you stupid buffalo, I got places to be.”

Because you think you need to get to Old Faithful right quick.

Not the case. You get to Old Faithful and they tell you the estimated time of eruption, and then say, essentially, “give or take 45 minutes.”

45 minutes! What is this? I came for Old Faithful, not Old Every So Often. I had been led to believe by too many science teachers to count that this thing went off every 90 minutes, like clockwork. But that’s not even close to the case.

Yellowstone Park is really cool, I should add, and there are plenty of sights to see that are way more awesome than Old Faithful. Like the big smoking puddle of yellow stuff, for example, because what is that stuff?

Did you know that Yellowstone Park is really just a giant volcano?

Actually, that understates the case. It’s often considered a supervolcano.

Supervolcanos = Awesome. Less awesome would be said supervolcano exploding. Really not awesome, actually. Like “maybe we all die” not awesome.

And it turns out, the Yellowstone Supervolcano generally erupts about once every 600,000 years, and it hasn’t erupted in about 640,000 years. So that’s a little bit frightening.

But luckily, based on what I know of Yellowstone Park’s sense of timing, it’s probably really 600,000 years plus or minus 300,000 years, so we could have up to 260,000 years left. And unless I somehow unlock the secret of immortality, I probably only need about 80, tops. My kids can deal with the whole thing with the ash blocking out the sun for years.

Some things about Bengie Molina

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You know what two words keep coming up around the Mets this offseason that really scare me?

Bengie Molina.

In his latest epic for MLB.com, Marty Noble, after firing off a few shots at out-of-touch bloggers, writes:

Bengie Molina and Rod Barajas are available and the Mets have their eyes on both. Barajas is younger and has more power. Molina has been a productive hitter with the Giants, but his thick body is 35.

OK, let’s define “productive hitter.”

In his three years with the Giants, Molina produced a 90 OPS+ over 1606 plate appearances. Over those same three years, the average National League catcher produced a 91 OPS+.

Does that make Molina a productive hitter? No. It makes him an average hitter for a catcher, which is kind of like being an average musician for a member of Nickelback.

Molina’s reasonable .742 OPS over that time is mostly fueled by his .440 slugging percentage. On one hand, it’s tempting to say that’s nice for a team that clearly lacked power in 2009. On the other hand, as Sam at Amazin’ Avenue pointed out today, a big part of the reason OPS is not a perfect stat is that it overvalues slugging in regards to on-base percentage.

And Molina’s OBP with the Giants was a miserable .302.

Not productive.

The good thing about how infrequently Molina reaches base, though, is that in the rare event he gets there, he’s an utter embarrassment. To the eye, he’s about the slowest player in the history of Major League Baseball. Statistically, he has regularly cost his team about 20 bases per season, according to BillJamesOnline.net.

Plus he’s 35, like Noble said, so he’s not getting any faster.

Defensively? Well, he moves about as well behind the plate as he does on the basepaths. Catcher defense is a tough thing to gauge statistically, but Driveline Mechanics recently put him right near the bottom of all Major Leaguers.

Here is one interesting tidbit about Bengie Molina: Five of the six players named Molina to ever play Major League Baseball have been catchers, and only three of them — The Cathing Molina Brothers — are related. The only non-catching Major League Molina was Gabe, a pitcher who wasn’t very good.

Joe Posnanski on Jeff Francoeur

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In the middle of a typically awesome blog post about the LVP (Least Valuable Player) award, Joe Posnanski discusses Jeff Francoeur’s candidacy:

I unfairly include him because:

1. He was so legendarily bad with the Atlanta Braves — .250/.282/.352 — that he was well on his way to winning the award before getting traded to the Mets.

2. He was so good with the Mets — .311/.338/.498 — that the Mets undoubtedly believe that he is back to being the guy who was on the cover of Sports Illustrated. They will now be inspired to spend considerable money and effort to keep him in New York. And, hey, they could be right. He could be the player he was in the second half … and from everything I know about Francoeur, I hope that is what happens. He seems to be a great guy.

However, I would be remiss if I did not point out: They also could be wrong — after all, over his last 2,500 at-bats Francoeur has an 89 OPS+ and the defensive numbers seem to indicate that he has regressed into a below average outfielder. Francoeur could be a Riddler-like trap, and the Mets could be just about ready to fall in.

What he said.

Not that they shouldn’t bring him back for next year. They’re going to and it’s fine. It’s the locking him up for the future thing that’s concerning.

Read the post, I think I cited more of it than blogger integrity permits. Actually, subscribe to his RSS and read everything he writes.

Strong men also cry

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Man, could a bigger deal have been made over reports that Rex Ryan cried after Sunday’s loss to the Jaguars?

Look: I’m all in with Tom Hanks and “there’s no crying in baseball.” Baseball is a measured game, and features a 162-game season, so it’s certainly best the players and coaches not get too emotionally caught up in any one event.

Football, though? I don’t know. It’s different.

Maybe it’s something about the adrenaline that comes from the sheer physicality of the sport, the fact that 11 men on the field are, at any given time, trying their best to hurt another 11 men on the field. Or maybe it has something to do with how many fewer games there are, which renders each contest much more important.

Either way, I know this: I’m not a crier, but I’m certain that the hardest I’ve cried in the last 20 years was after my final high-school football game. That was a massively different circumstance than the one that prompted Rex to blubber, but there’s something about the sport, I think, that facilitates tears.

Heck, I even found coaching football — at the JV level, no less — to be a wildly emotional experience. Players used to joke about my sideline behavior when we watched the game films; I often tore down the sideline with on pace with the play if we had a long gain, and even more often blew up in the faces of referees.

And I’m really not a demonstrative guy.

It wasn’t about putting on a show or drawing attention to myself in any way, I was just caught up in the game. The players dug it, I think, because clearly I cared.

Sounds like the Jets felt that way about Ryan’s outburst, at least.

“It’s an emotional game and that just showed his passion,” linebacker Calvin Pace said. “If I was in that situation, I would’ve cried, too, man.”

“You want to win for a coach like that,” [Damien] Woody said. “Whatever the perception is outside is irrelevant. It means nothing. We know how Rex feels about this team and what he was saying.”

Members of the media can call it a sign of weakness or whatever, but, well, whatever. Let a dude show emotion over something he cares about.

Honestly, could this city’s media shoot itself in the collective foot with any more frequency? Does everyone really want to make it so that athletes and coaches never say or do anything interesting, just to avoid the nonsense that inevitably follows?