Actual Stats & Relievers’ Contracts

So I posted a link to a The Hardball Times story before about middle relievers.  That one was good, though certainly just full of the author’s guesses and conjecture.  Turns out that there was another (better, more fully researched) article (using “numbers” and “stats”) on THT, by Dave Studeman, detailing the relative value of long vs. short contracts for relief pitchers:

[L]et’s look at the Net Win Shares Value of relievers only, broken into groups of different contract lengths:

   Years  Contracts    Sum of Net WS Val     Average
     1         59           $3,683,410       $62,431
     2         22            -$758,941      -$34,497
     3         12         -$16,414,954   -$1,367,913
     4          2             $745,055      $372,528
     5          1          -$4,760,281   -$4,760,281
  Total        96         -$17,505,710     -$182,351

Keith Law is right. Relievers broke the general pattern last year; the most valuable relievers were those with one-year deals. In fact, were it not for the four-year deals (Billy Wagner and Justin Speier), there would have been a consistent downward trend in average Net Win Shares Value from short- to long-term contracts.

As bullpen usage has grown from year to year, bullpen success has become a more important contributor to team success. But bullpen success if fleeting and enigmatic. To make the point statistically, I looked at the runs allowed per nine innings for all pitchers who started at least 15 games in both 2006 and 2007 (96 in all), and found a correlation between the two of .38. Then I looked at the same stat for all pitchers who relieved in at least 30 games both years (113) and found a correlation of .20. Bullpen performance is going to vary a lot, even if the underlying skill of the pitcher doesn’t change.

So teams are in a trap. Because of evolving game strategies, they’ve become more dependent on something that is inherently inconsistent. When they fail, the tendency is to panic by signing relievers to relatively rich, long-term deals. As more money flows into the game, the situation intensifies. Teams without young arms pay more and more (in dollars and length) for more questionable talent.

Last year, Kenny Williams took a rational approach to his bullpen. He built around closer Bobby Jenks by signing up some power arms like Mike MacDougal and Matt Thornton to relatively inexpensive three-year contracts and brought some other viable candidates into camp (Andy Sisco, Nick Masset, etc.), hoping to catch lightning in a bottle. It didn’t pan out, and Williams is now showing signs of panic by signing relievers like Linebrink to four-year deals.

That’s too bad. GM’s who try to buy consistent bullpen excellence in the free agent market are setting themselves up for disappointment.

I think the most interesting piece about this article, and therefore The Loogy Lounge, is that relief pitchers do not follow any typical trends in baseball contracts.  The better players didn’t necessarily get the better (longer/richer) contracts.  But don’t worry, John Stevens and I are not your typical bloggers.  We’re better looking. And have real, full-time jobs.  We’ll figure this out before long…

Blowing Minds, Wads, Cash: THT on the Bullpen Salary Explosion

Geoff Young posts an article over at The Hardball Times, asking essentially the same question that we’ve being throwing around (here, here, here, and here) : “Why do teams keep overpaying generic middle relievers?“  He actually tries to understand it, where we’ve just been generally ridiculing it: 

Do the Phillies and White Sox believe that they have done a better job of identifying relievers at which to throw their money? Do they believe that Baltimore’s strategy was sound but that the outcome couldn’t have been predicted given the available information (i.e., the Orioles were unlucky)? Do they even know or care what the Orioles did?

Throw out that last possibility. If you’re not studying the forces that create the market, then you’re not studying the market. No way that’s happening, right? Not with the money at stake.

How about the “unlucky” theory? Somehow the idea that the outcome in Baltimore couldn’t have been predicted seems naive to me. People who are charged with evaluating such things should be able to recognize a priori that guys like Walker and Baez aren’t going to save anyone’s team. Then again, the Orioles evidently reached that very conclusion, so maybe I’m the one being naive.

Honestly, the belief that one’s own staff has done a better job of identifying talent strikes me as most reasonable. I’m not sure how anyone could reach the conclusion that Romero and Linebrink are appreciably better than Walker and Baez, but I can understand the logic. The thinking is that the flaw wasn’t in strategy but rather in execution. Even if that thinking is flawed, at least it’s somewhat defensible.

The History of the Loogy (THT)

For those interested in the “history” of the Loogy, I’d encourage you to check out the two part series from Steve Treder of the Hardball Times.  The Harball Times is my go-to site on a regular basis for all things statistical and fantastical.  Here’s a brief blurb from “The History of the LOOGY: Part One”:

There are differing intensities of LOOGYness, of course. But how about we come up with some broad criteria to capture the general idea. Let’s define a LOOGY season as any by a left-handed pitcher that meets the following conditions:

- At least 20 appearances
- Fewer than 1.20 innings per appearance
- Fewer than 20% Saves per appearance

It turns out that through 2004, there have been exactly 799 pitcher-seasons in major league history meeting these criteria.

The Primordial LOOGY Ooze

I’ll give you three guesses to name the first among these 799, and in what season. If you guess Tony Fossas, you’re way wrong. Jesse Orosco? Bzzzt. Steve Hamilton? I’m afraid you’re toast.

The first LOOGY season in major league history that meets our definition occurred in 1960. It was recorded by none other than Leo Kiely of the Kansas City A’s, managed by Bob Elliott, in his only year as a big league skipper. Granted, Kiely just squeaks in at the limit of the definition here, with exactly 20 appearances and 20 2/3 innings in the early months of that season. Kiely was rather effective in the role, in his soft-tossing control artist kind of way, but not enough to prevent the Athletics from letting him go in June, never to appear in the majors again. At least he went out in historic fashion.

And, yes, Leo Kiely was formerly a member of the Red Sox Caliphate (I don’t like the term Red Sox Nation, especially as the term was partially coined by the Worst Sportswriter in Baseball).

The History of the LOOGY: Part One (THT)
The History of the LOOGY: Part Two (THT)

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