The new, new Moneyball: Or my version of it... If my opinion mattered.

by TLong hates to swing on Jan 13, 2012 1:57 AM PST

Reading the recent fanpost about acquiring Juan Pierre I was taken back to a theory I have had for several years regarding a new direction teams, particularly financially strapped ones, could take and theoretically be more competive. It is radical, and to my my knowledge has never been attempted in totality. Drum roll please...

A lineup composed in near entirety of speedy players running wild, surrounded by contact hitters. Lets delve in to this concept a bit.

Im literally proposing a team that would ideally be composed of guys who get on base and just run. Green light to go everytime. We may get thrown out plenty of times, but how often would we have runners in scoring position? Bunts, squeezes, contact swings. Teams would have fits controlling this way of play.

First lets start with the reasoning of how this could work and why it is effective. Speedy players do a number ofthings that change the way games are played.

1. When on base, they are always in the pitchers head, and thus taking some of their focus off of the hitter.

2. A single can develop into a double or triple within the span of a couple pitches.

3. The pitcher is reduced many times to a slidestep reducing their velocity.

4. Singles hitters become much more effective when each runner is capable of stealing bases.

5. Pickoff throws, are akin to adding to pitchcounts.

6. Relief pitchers are often much less effective at holding baserunners.

7. Small ball in this scenario could cut teams to pieces

8. Speedy players are generally very good defensively

I used to play a little college ball, and Im sure anyone who has played any form of competitive baseball knows how unsettling a speedy baserunner can be to the other team. No pitcher would feel comfortable with a team composed in such a way...

No lets get into the composition... First off it require a total commitment to the process. Just start drafting this way. No other team in the game would be doing this... instead of looking for the next Bryce Harper or Prince Fielder... we would be looking for Coco Crisp (7th round) or michael bourn (4th round). Its clear as day speed players go way later than power hitters, obviously. We could have a drafts with no competition, theoretically of course.

And this concept continues into the majors. Chicks dig the long ball. And so do agents. And every team.. Homers get paid top dollar...Steals do not.. And contact hitters do not.

Now this is not scientific as arbitration and pre free agent salaries are in play.. And homeruns are not the sole statistic of truth, but here is a breakdown of last years top 10 sb leaders salaries going into this year vs. those of the homerun hitters.

SB: HR:

1. Bourn 4.4 million 1.Bautista 8 million

2.crisp 5.75 2. Granderson 8.25

3. Gardner 575,000 3. texeira 23.125

4. Ichiro 18.0 million 4. Kemp 7.1 million

5.Maybin 429,000 5.Prince 15.5 mil

6. Kemp 7.1 million 6 Albert 14.5

7.Bonifacio 425,000 7. Reynolds 5.33

8. Stubbs 450,000 8.Uggla 9.14

9. Reyes 11.0 mil 9.Stanton 416,000

10 ellsbury 2.4 10. Howard 20 mil

Total 50.5 million Total 111.361 million

Now what this tells us is a few things. Sb leaders are younger and therefor are more productive straight out of minors. Whereas these homerun hitters typically take a few years to be monsters. This benefits the small market team. As the parts will be more replaceable. And. generally the top shelf salary for this type of player is much lower... Even though the perfect player for this scheme is Ichiro, who does receive that top shelf price.

Next lets go and just for kicks take the highest sb totals per position (per ab) and subtracting the 5 tool players such as Kemp, and attempt to field a lineup.

C: Russell Martin 8 sb: we have to start somewhere 4.0 mil

1B: Jesus Guzman 9 SB in 247 ab's League minimum

ok now away from the weak positions... and in fairness those two positions would be best served through contact hitters such as Sean Casey type. Martin would suffice as well

2B: Jemile Weeks 22 in 406 ab's Minimum (kinsler and pedroia had more)

3B: Chone Figgins 11 in 288 ab's 9 million (in years past would have been perfect)

ss Bonifacio 44 SBs 425,000

OF Gardner 49

OF Bourn 61

Of Crisp 41

I would definitely come up with some better lineups for this scheme... But I can just see in my minds eye a team like this, given the directive to run wild could hurt teams and be effective on the cheap. Im in no way saying this team would beat the yankees in the ALCS... but would certainly be more effective than running an aged Giambi and Matsui out there, in my opinion.

Its getting late but i needed to get this off my chest and see what my brethren here have to say about this.

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Rec’d!

by OnlybuyBeaneJerseys on Jan 13, 2012 5:25 AM PST reply actions

actually I think guys dig the long ball even more

I actually like baseball when good pitching, defense, and speed are emphasized. Do I like home runs? of course! But if power is getting harder to find or affordable (even if Willingham wanted to sign and could have been…) hey, go for the rest of the game!

by OaklandSi on Jan 13, 2012 6:47 AM PST reply actions

I was always a big fan

of the Rickey A’s and the Vince Coleman Cardinals’ style of play.

by ChuckBudd on Jan 15, 2012 4:55 PM PST up reply actions

A couple of responses off the top of my head

1) From a value perspective, targeting really good athletes is expensive. Anybody who’s really athletic and gets on base a lot is likely to be in pretty high demand. Both “tools-oriented” and “results-oriented” GMs and scouts will rate them highly.

2) You could, of course, target really fast guys with marginal skills. But I don’t remember anyone thinking that a lineup of 9 Rajai Davises would win the World Series.

3) The way to demonstrate the value of speed, I think, is to look at the empirical record. Do teams that lead the league in SBs or triples (or, for that matter, sac bunts or, more recently, 1st-to-3rds) tend to lead the league in runs? Do they tend to outperform their runs scored projections? Do they tend to win division titles? Your list of effects of fast baserunners may be accurate — but the degree those factors actually affect baseball games is the real question. You have to have a pretty disruptive guy on base to make up for the fact that guy at the plate is Kurt Suzuki, not Mike Napoli.

4) Athelticism/speed tend to be useful defensively, but lots of fast players are crappy defensive players. Ron LeFlor and Vince Coleman and Lonnie Smith were all generally considered really bad LFs, for instance. And on the IF, footspeed doesn’t make much of a difference. Jemile Weeks is a much worse 2B than Mark Ellis, despite being a much, much better baserunner and athlete. And getting back to #1, the guys who are fast and very good defenders (like, for instance, Ichiro) are expensive.

I definitely agree with trying to buy undervalued assets — and THANK YOU for using “Moneyball” correctly. It’s not about OBP, it’s about buying valuable assets that others don’t want. The problem, I think, is that speed on its own isn’t really all that valuable (absent other skills like the ability to get on base a lot), and yet it’s such an obvious and dramatic skill that it’s still not undervalued.

"And Julio Franco is batting right-handed!" -- Wayne Hagin, A's radio play-by-play, mid-80s

by Nick on Jan 13, 2012 7:59 AM PST reply actions 2 recs

I remember reading somewhere

that team triples is actually negatively correlated with runs scored. I think it was mentioned as part of an explanation for why we can’t get linear weights just by calculating those correlations. Anyway, the explanation for this is that teams that hit lots of triples are made up of lots of speedy guys who don’t hit home runs… and those teams tend to not score very many runs.

Getting back to original post, I think it would all hinge on whether or not your players have a good OBP to go along with their stolen base skills. Like Nick says, a team of Rajai Davis isn’t going to do a lot of scoring.

by colin on Jan 13, 2012 8:22 AM PST up reply actions

Great response.

You may be able to get good speedy players in positions like the OF, but when it comes to C, 1B, 3B, most of the time you’d be sacrificing a lot of value to get a guy with those extra 5 or 10 SB.

Also, when it comes to acquiring these guys, you would likely either have to wait until they were established major leaguers (i.e. no one is overvaluing them in hopes that they will develop power and become a 5 tool guy), or go for guys with absolutely no power potential (say, Aaron Shipman, who we still drafted in the 3rd round).

I do have to say, it would be interesting watching a team that fully followed this idea, even if it’s just out of a sense of curiosity.

Get out the time-fracture wickets, Hobbes! We're gonna play Calvinball!

by UrgentMirth on Jan 13, 2012 9:41 AM PST up reply actions

I think if a team really wanted to put together this kind of lineup

the only shot they’d have at winning with it would be to play in an extreme, HR-suppressing stadium. MLB has minimum distance rules for new stadiums, but no maximums, so here’s the plan:

Build a stadium that goes 375-420-460-420-375, put an OF of speedsters who can all chase down 410-foot shots to the alleys that would be no-doubt HRs anywhere else, and who try to stretch any single that’s not hit directly to an OF into a double, and see how far they get. Spend the next few years acquiring young players who can succeed in that environment (which means no HR power necessary!), and you’re on your way. It’ll be like the Dead Ball era all over again!

"And Julio Franco is batting right-handed!" -- Wayne Hagin, A's radio play-by-play, mid-80s

by Nick on Jan 13, 2012 10:29 AM PST up reply actions

imagine all the inside the park HRs too

and the bloop singles because outfielders play too deep.

You have to include smiley faces - Poppy
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by micdog2001 on Jan 13, 2012 7:01 PM PST up reply actions

I Believe the Royals Tried This In The 70's (?)

Turning a load of fast guys (basically track stars) into baseball players. Not sure how well that worked out, though. The only issue is that you might be hard-pressed to find fast guys who are decent hitters in the infield. I definitely wouldn’t go for Figgins (outrageous price).

by Sean Fortuna on Jan 13, 2012 10:27 AM PST reply actions

The two guys like that who were on the Royals, IIRC

were Willie Wilson (who was a big high school football star in northern NJ) and Frank White (who I think was a local signing).

The Royals definitely had a very fast team, which they needed in a ballpark with a big OF (IIRC it was 330-380-410-380-330 before the reconfiguration) and ~~painted concrete~~ Astroturf. A hard-hit grounder past the 2B could easily roll all the way to the wall, so you needed fast OF’s (Wilson, Otis, and Cowens, I think it was) to keep the other team from hitting a slew of doubles and triples.

Of course, they did have a number of guys who had real power — Brett, obviously, plus Otis and Mcrae and even Willie Aikens and Cowens. But those guys also ran a lot (well, not Aikens — he was Molinaesque on the bases).

"And Julio Franco is batting right-handed!" -- Wayne Hagin, A's radio play-by-play, mid-80s

by Nick on Jan 13, 2012 10:34 AM PST up reply actions

I know fangraphs has tried to do a baserunning thing

But I don’t know much about it re: the value of 1st or 3rd or 1st to home. Seems like that extra base, even if not stealing, would be incredibly valuable.

Also what’s nice about speed is you get a lot of doubles/triples, which is why Jemile slugged .400.

Just have a lockdown starting pitching staff to go with it. Use your first round pick on an SP every year and then start going for the speed hitters.

In terms of 1B, a walk/contact hitter like 2010 Barton would be totally fine.

I do think this would be an incredibly fun team to watch.

by Billy Frijoles on Jan 13, 2012 10:49 AM PST reply actions

fangraphs baserunning metric

It does include taking the extra base (1st to 3rd on a single, 1st to home on a double). I think it also includes advancing on ground ball outs.

I would guess that it suffers from some of the same shortcoming as UZR… you are limited by the accuracy of batted ball data when determining how hard/easy it is to take that extra base.

by colin on Jan 13, 2012 11:30 AM PST up reply actions

WAR makes it easy to compare players whose skillsets vary

I would like to see if there’s a way to parse out $/WAR for pitching, hitting, fielding and baserunning. Like the OP, my hunch is that baserunning WAR is undervalued. If you can get wins 4 different ways, find the cheapest way to stack those wins (which likely could be some combo of fielding and baserunning). Unfortunately though as you point out fielding and baserunning are based on UZR or other imprecise figures, which are a hell of a lot more unreliable than wOBA. Still, I think it’s worthwhile to compare that.

Do you know of a way you can pull out every MLB players’ WAR “splits” along with their salaries into a CSV or spreadsheet type of file?

by Billy Frijoles on Jan 14, 2012 9:12 AM PST up reply actions

they break the WAR values out

into its components at fangraphs (select “Value” on any player’s page).

For example, take Pennington for 2011:

-4.2 runs batting
-2.2 runs baserunning
-5.2 runs fielding
+19.0 runs for replacement level
+6.5 runs for his position

That all adds up to +13.9 runs above replacement or 1.5 WAR (I guess they are using 9.25 runs per win?).

Unfortunately, I didn’t see any link on fangraphs for exporting that table. Ok, I just checked baseball-reference.com and they do let you export their Player Value table. In that table, they include baserunning runs and also break fielding down into errors, double plays, and range. Have fun!

by colin on Jan 16, 2012 9:40 AM PST up reply actions