How can a baseball team know that they have made the right decisions? How do they know that signing a certain free agent or making a trade or promoting a new player from the minors will work out? That was the question on which I left my last post, which involved thinking about the pros and cons of two the big names in baseball that the Jays were supposedly pursuing: Francisco Lindor and George Springer. I tried to indicate that there were down sides to securing either of those players (along with others in whom the Jays supposedly had interest such as Justin Turner and D.J. LeMahieu). None of these players are bad. In fact, they are all really good. But, they also all come with drawbacks for the Jays. Said differently, there are risks involved in acquiring players. It is not simply a matter of adding to one's team as if there were no down side. In fact, let me suggest that just about any player acquisition runs risks. So, how do you know if you made the right decision or not?
A lot of it depends on three things:
- What you are trying to do
- How you build your team
- The degree of risk you are willing to take
Let's look at each of these in turn because of each of them has an effect on the decisions teams make with regard to trades, minor league player development, changing the position players play, signing a player to a longer-term contract, or free agent signings.
Objectives:
On the one hand, this seems like a silly issue to address. Every team's goal is the same: to win. That is true, but only in the broader, long-term sense. Everyone would like to win *this year* but realistically that is not going to happen for at least some teams and, in my view, realistic teams tend to be well managed teams. There is a lot of "win now" rhetoric and it seems almost like treason to say "we are not going to win" but I have never understood the problem with an honest evaluation of one's talent. The longer-term goal remains in place but it is redefined. For most teams (excepting those with realistic chances of winning), the goal is actually this: we want to build a team that will have a realistic chance of winning. For instance, only the most pie-eyed dreamer could have argued that the Jays had a realistic chance at the World Series in 2019. Their record that year 67-95, not the worst in baseball but among the worst. So, realistically, their goal could not be to win because that was not possible. A team that bad will not even be close to making the playoffs.
So, what was their goal? Their goals were good: they had a slew of talented young players and their aim was to get them major league playing experience, moving them from the minors to majors. And, they did: Jansen, Bichette, Biggio, Thornton, Waguespack, Guerrero, Tellez, and Gouriel (who had already been playing in the majors) got extensive playing experience that year. They also needed to "audition" other potential players who were not slated to be regulars but who might be bench players (Drury, McKinney). And, overall, they did not do poorly. Bichette, Biggio, Guerrero and Guriel all demonstrated that they were major league calibre players and were capable of already playing the game at a high level. Biggio showed he was am amazing baserunner, good in the field, and had great bat control. I won't go through the rest because you get my drift. Even in instances where player struggled or had ups and downs, team management learnt things (for instance, that McKinney and Drury were likely not key bench players in the future). Despite, at times playing horrible ball, the Jays season was a success because their player development was a success. They could enter the next season (Covid's 2020) knowing that they had the basis of a good -- and potentially really good -- team.
This causes a shift in goals. Player development remains a key objective (more major league playing experience, for instance), but knowing that you have the basis of a good team allows you to set the next reasonable goal: making the playoffs. Hence, goals are unstable. They can shift from year to year. In 2018, the Jays key goal was trying to find ways to rebuild their farm system, gain some prospects, and let their minor league system bring new talent along while not embarrassing themselves on the field. They had a different goal in 2019 and different again in 2020.
Player and Team Development:
Knowing what your team's specific goals are for the year is important because it affects the way in which you make decisions about player development. Player development is fancy term used to describe the way in which teams go about developing talent and getting better. The person finally responsible for this might be the Team president, but it also involves scouts, minor league coaches, major league coaching staff, consults, analysts, and host of others. Major league baseball teams will have an entire coaching bureaucracy devoted to player development. Player development is the way you team gets better, competes, and ultimately wins (allowing that they win).
Different teams have different player development strategies. This is important because it affects the kinds of players you think will be good and who can play together to become a winning team. In recent years, Tampa Bay is one of the more interesting teams with regard to player development. They look for specific types of players who will fit in their system, which has fairly successful track record. The Tampa Bay system looks to compensate for its relative lack of resources (aka money) -- which means they cannot afford to sign high priced free agents or even offer their own players large contracts to stay with the team -- (compared to other major league teams) by very effective on-field management, defensive flexibility (but not across the lineup), analytics, unusual use of pitching staff, and making the most effective use of the talent that they have -- as opposed to looking for supposedly better baseball players. Tampa Bay makes a lot of in-game line up changes, moves players around in the order, uses a lot of pitchers and so needs bench players who can play a number of different positions (in fact, there might be little difference between the bench and the starting lineup in Tampa). They also need players who are not very expensive: younger players or players on whom other teams have given up.
This is a very different team development strategy than most other teams use (Maddon brought some but not all of this approach with him to the Cubs, Oakland makes use of some but not all of these strategies). And, it is part of a conscious and intentional approach to development that effects their entire system. Their players, for instance, are taught to be very at the selective at the plate from day one. Rays teams don't, as a rule, swing at bad pitches. Instead, they drive up pitch counts, forcing opposing managers deeper into their bullpens (that is, forcing other managers to use up their pitching staff).
Why recite these well known facts? Because it shows that building a team is something more than paying a lot of money for the best free agents on the market. Indeed, it is counter intuitive but if you sign players that don't fit with your team, you may be doing more harm than good no matter how good the player is. For instance, Francisco Lindor is a really good shortstop, but the Jays already have a really good young shortstop and they drafted a shortstop with their number one pick last year. The Jays may trade for Lindor but doing so, as I tried to point out in my previous post, might end up forcing players into new positions in a sort of domino effect that could defensively de-stabilize the team. Player and team development are about more than spending money and before you spend that money, you need to know how that player fits in your development scheme and will fit with the rest of your team and its approach to the game.
My concern with the Jays off season so far is that the names to which they are linked seem to suggest a change in the managerial and developmental direction of the team. For the last several years, the Jays have been focused -- rightly, in my view -- on finding good young players and developing them within their system while they look to bring in more potential prospects by trading away older players. The effect has been to make the Jays a younger team. The Jays seemed to have a long-term plan and good reason to believe that the long-term plan was working. That plan was organized around a specific goal that was not putting the best team on the field that was possible *this* year. It was organized, for right or wrong but I think right, around the idea of building a consistent contender. In my view, they are almost there but the names to which they are linked suggest a different approach seems to be emerging and, in my view, if implemented that could set the Jays back, rather than making them better.
Risk:
A lot of people talk about baseball teams spending money on higher priced players as a test of team owner's seriousness and willingness to spend money to win. This applies to some teams, particularly those teams with really deep pockets. This is important because teams with deep pockets (in short rich teams) can spend more money than poorer teams simply because they have more money. The more money you have, the less your risk in spending some of that money. For instance, imagine that you have 10$ and you need to buy (sign a free agent) new shortstop for the upcoming seasons. There is a really good shortstop but his salary demand is 10$. That is your entire budget and you might shy away from that not because you are cheap but because you might want to save some of that money in case a new pitcher comes on the market at the trade deadline or something like that. On the other hand, if you have 100$, then the 10$ layout for a shortstop is far less risky. You can buy that shortstop and still have money in the bank to get a new pitcher or trade for an outfielder or offer a longer-term contract to one of your star players.
You can see that reducing this issue to seriousness and willingness is simplifying the matter. This is important because this is actually the way in which Major League Baseball functions. Teams like the Yankees, Red Sox, Dodgers (and a few others) fall into the 100$ situation. Teams like the As and Rays fall into the 10$ situation. Now the As and Rays are still good, well managed teams who play exciting baseball and who are usually in playoff race year after year. What it means is that their resource have an effect on the risk they are willing to take and so affect how they build their team. The Yankees and Red Sox, as examples, can sign players to large contracts (say, a free agent or say one of their own players who has improved) and not worry too much about it. If they make a mistake, they will be out a lot of money but they have a lot more money to begin with. The result is actually rather odd: the Yankees don't have to be good judges of talent. They can sign players who have good reputations or who look good without worrying too too much about longer term cost issues. The Rays don't have this luxury. The Jays fall somewhere in between.
What are the risks that Jays are willing to take? Well, right now, we don't know since all we have is rumours. For the past several years, however, the Jays have been trying to limit risk by cutting payroll, freeing up roster spots for younger players (who by definition don't cost very much but who have a much bigger upside than veterans), signing low priced free agents, and trading them for younger prospects where possible. They then use the back end of the season, and the season thereafter, to try to sort through those prospects to figure out who might be useful and who might not be.
I would argue that this approach has worked. Knowing that they have good young talent in the tubes, the Jays have shed payroll, ditched older players, gotten rid of players who were -- it appears -- problems in clubhouse, and accumulated a bunch of new mid-range prospects while renewing their farm system through drafts. They have hoarded their prospects and, with one exception, not really put a lot on table in terms of free agents or trades.
Making Decisions:
How do you know these are the right decisions? Well, you don't for sure but you know that they weren't wrong and that is important. In 2017, the Jays were an old, expensive team, with a farm system that had been sent packing in trades to accumulate players to get them over the hump, as it were. Team management had, previously, talked about a five year window but it was evident that that window was closing. Their starting catcher was 34; their starting right fielder was 36; a 31 year old played 2B for them and they had a 34 year old in LF. Three of their top four starters were 33 or older. They finished 4th, with a record below .500 and had team payroll north of 100$ million.
I have heard sportscasters argue that that team was a success because it brought excitement back to Toronto with regard to baseball. That could be true. Toronto is a pretty good market, however, with fans that have long been devoted to their teams and can take advantage of a national market, but it could be true. Still ... was that the goal? If the goal was simply to play a more exciting brand of baseball that attracted fans, that is not at all a bad goal, but what I remember is that the goal was to win and, on that level the Jays did not succeed. They got close and I liked watching the games but ultimately, they were defeated.
So, the decision the Jays have to make with regard to the off season is not just about bringing in more talent. It is about the development of their team, their specific goals, and how those different aspirations and processes come together.
No comments:
Post a Comment