25 Responses to Burrell? Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid

1. Dan
   November 10th, 2009 at 5:05 pm

   “but WAR doesn’t actually lead to real wins in the standings-”

   Are you retarded?

2. Jason
   November 10th, 2009 at 5:23 pm

   When you consider cost and defense along with offensive stats it’s fairly obvious Cameron is a better choice for the Mets.

3. Lou
   November 10th, 2009 at 6:03 pm

   I watch baseball. Have you seen Bay play LF? I am not that high on Cameron and I would also question the assertion that his skill set easier to maintain (having watched baseball I have seen defense fall off a cliff), but your inability to see the value of all encompassing metrics such as WAR is appalling. I realize that you can’t just “add em up” but at the same time the components of WAR are exactly what add up to wins. Runs and Run prevention. Considering the Mets play in Citified Run prevention should be paramount. The Mets do not need statues playing the corner OF spots.
   What is your problem with WAR? In other posts I have seen you complain that there is no “replacement” player, but I hope you are not that naive. It’s called a baseline. As long as two players have the same baseline it’s comparable.

4. Mike Silva
   November 10th, 2009 at 6:18 pm

   WAR is a secondary metric that is better used to assess the monetary investment. Since no one who comes to this site owns a team, I just don’ see why they are so obsessed with it. You know what number means most to me – 92. That’s the number of losses the Mets had last year. They need impact star power. There brand is suffering and Mike Cameron isn’t about to help it. It’s about winning, but also attracting customers (i.e. fans) to the seats. The Yankees actually do both. While they field all stars Mets fans sit around and rationalize secondary tier players. Do you think the Yankees rationalize a secondary player because of WAR? Of course not thats why they signed Burnett, Sabathia, Teixeira, etc.

   Some sites are more concerned with Alex Cora and the Mets paying him $2 million dollars. Yeah – you guys have your priorities straight. Just like the team, the modern Mets fans are now becoming second rate to the Yankees and their fans – congrats!

5. Dan
   November 10th, 2009 at 7:16 pm

   “Do you think the Yankees rationalize a secondary player because of WAR? Of course not thats why they signed Burnett, Sabathia, Teixeira, etc.”

   If you think the Yankees front office is unaware of this statistic, you are living in a fantasy world:

   Burnett – 3.1 WAR

   Teixieira – 5.1 WAR

   Sabathia – 6.0 WAR

   Jason Bay – 3.5 WAR

   Do you object to anything in particular about their relative values? If so, what is the basis?

6. Joey
   November 10th, 2009 at 7:22 pm

   “Do you think the Yankees rationalize a secondary player because of WAR? Of course not thats why they signed Burnett, Sabathia, Teixeira, etc.”

   What is this supposed to mean? If you’re arguing that the Mets should go for premium free agents, not mediocres, that’s fine. But that’s not what the article you were linking said at all. All it said was that Bay is not as good as his offensive numbers imply, because he plays poor defense, and the opposite is true about Mike Cameron. Do you disagree?

7. Joey
   November 10th, 2009 at 7:55 pm

   This has been posted to BBTF – smarter fans than me will now ridicule you.

8. Mike Silva
   November 10th, 2009 at 7:59 pm

   Yeah

   Teixeira is worth way more than just 5 wins – and Sabathia more than 6. how about that?

9. Joey
   November 10th, 2009 at 8:08 pm

   How do you figure?

10. Mike Silva
    November 10th, 2009 at 8:15 pm

    Joey that is exactly what I was implying – Yanks go for top shelf Mets, and now their fans, are satisfied with secondary tier fillers that they can rationalize with some advanced metric. Cameron is not the player Bay is I don’t care what advanced statistic say otherwise.

11. Mo
    November 10th, 2009 at 8:22 pm

    “Guys, hate to break this to you, but WAR doesn’t actually lead to real wins in the standings- you know that right? ”

    Hate to break it to you, but it does:

    http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/war-it-works

12. Joey
    November 10th, 2009 at 8:23 pm

    “Cameron is not the player Bay is I don’t care what advanced statistic say otherwise”

    It would be one thing to say “here’s why I disagree with what this statistic shows.” Instead, you’re just a raving imbecile.

13. Brennan
    November 10th, 2009 at 9:29 pm

    “Teixeira is worth way more than just 5 wins – and Sabathia more than 6. how about that?”

    Make sure you understand the goal of the statistic before you start knocking it, Mike. WAR is about MARGINAL wins, ie: MARGINAL wins a player gives you above the worst major leaguer you can find at the position.

    Teixeira is worth 5 wins more than a AAAA 1B (hypothetical, yes, but it’s a baseline and it’s the same for all 1B, so it’s consistent). Sabathia, 6 wins more than a AAAA SP.

    I don’t think you understand how must 5 and 6 marginal wins really matters…Though you don’t seem to understand much to begin with

14. jwb
    November 10th, 2009 at 10:07 pm

    “Teixeira is worth way more than just 5 wins – and Sabathia more than 6. how about that?”

    There’s another problem with this argument. The sum of the Yankees’ WAR and the replacement level baseline is 103.1, their actual win total was 103. If you say that Teixiera was worth way more than 5 WAR or that Sabathia was worth more than 6, then you have subtract those wins above replacement from someone else. Was Posada worth less than 4? Damon less than 3? Rivera less than 2?

15. Mike Silva
    November 10th, 2009 at 10:10 pm

    Think about the periphial impact that Sabathia has (i.e. saving the bullpen by going deep into games) also what about Teixeira defense, scoops, bad throws, the difference a competent first baseman has on an entire infield. You can’t measure a players total impact in win share. Also what is a typical replacement player? WAR was created, just like UZR, but one individual with his own bias. It’s useful, but not to the point where I would take more than a secondary credence in the #’s

16. Jack
    November 10th, 2009 at 11:44 pm

    “Think about the periphial impact that Sabathia has (i.e. saving the bullpen by going deep into games)”

    Innings pitched is a huge component in calculating WAR for pitchers.

    “Also what is a typical replacement player?”

    http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/replacement-level-article/

17. jwb
    November 10th, 2009 at 11:48 pm

    Juan Miranda, Chien-Ming Wang, Jose Molina, Xavier Nady, and Brian Bruney were all at or close to replacement level this year at the positions you and I have mentioned. Really, this should take a replacement level internet user no more than a minute or two to find on FanGraphs.

    None of them played all that much because they were injured or the Yankees had better options, but that’s kind of the point: The Yankees were a very good team because they didn’t give a lot of playing time to players who were not very good.

    Cameron is not a good fit for the Mets. Since much of his value is defensive and the Mets already have a good CF, that defensive value would be wasted. Unless you think that Beltran’s injuries will necessitate moving him to left. If you want to look at a team which did give significant playing time to replacement level players. . .

18. Mike Silva
    November 11th, 2009 at 6:39 am

    jwb

    Molina is the only guy that is “replacement level” talent. Miranda would start for a ton of teams, including the Mets, and be a very solid 1B. I think he could be another Adam LaRoche – is LaRoche replacement level? Nady is a guy that hit 30 homers a year earlier. If a 30 homer talent is replacement level than well, I don’t know.

    I have Vince Gennaro coming on tonight’s show. WAR is a great tool in assessing long term deals and money spent, but can’t be a driving force behind putting together a team. The value of a Halladay or Holliday is so far superior to this Mets club, on the verge of irrelevance, that they may need to overpay in order to make up for prior years mistakes.

19. jdon
    November 11th, 2009 at 7:05 am

    The mets have interest in burell and piniero. Great. Sign guys who are average just because they have good numbers against your team. By doing that you immediately reduce them to below-average.

20. Dan
    November 11th, 2009 at 8:31 am

    Mike,

    Roy Halladay was worth 7.3 WAR in 2009, while Holliday was worth 5.7.

    Don’t whine about a stat that does a pretty good job of measuring player contributions just because you’re too thick to see that Bay’s defense hurts his performance, while Cameron’s adds to his.

21. Mike Silva
    November 11th, 2009 at 8:39 am

    I don’t see how Cameron (who is not a LF and doesn’t want to play a corner) can make up for his bat with defense?

    Maybe other teams can justify that, but the Mets need a bad- badly. I just don’t see how the glove can make up for the difference in offense

22. Dan
    November 11th, 2009 at 9:25 am

    Yes you do. The idea is to score more runs than the other team. Players contribute to that goal by helping their team to score runs and by preventing the other team from scoring runs. I assume you saw how Daniel Murphy did out in LF this year?

    By the way, I happen to agree with you that Cameron’s not a very good answer for the Mets – not because there’s anything wrong with how WAR measures his performance on the 2009 Brewers or Bay’s on the 2009 Red Sox, but because he is old, has injury concerns, and his best position is occupied on the Mets. I also happen to agree with you that the team needs to bring in stars to regain credibility with the fans, and Bay is better than Cameron in that regard.

    But your statement that WAR doesn’t actually lead to real wins in the standings is nonsensical – it measures offensive and defensive contributions, and it measures them well. Offensive and defensive contributions lead to real wins in the standings.

23. Lou
    November 11th, 2009 at 1:48 pm

    Mike,

    First, I would like to thank you for joining us in the discussion here. It is appreciated as I feared you were going to pull a Mike Francesca and “hang up” on the debate. That said there are a couple of points I would like to make.

    First, I think you are over-rating Miranda. The general consensus is that AAA hitters that are DHs or below average first baseman with significant platoon splits are a dime a dozen. I am not in major league baseball, but the facts at hand lend this to be true as the Yankees went out of there way to acquire 2 first baseman last year, he is never ranked in the Yankees top 10 prospects, and he never seems to come up in trade talks. If he could start on other teams he would have been moved for a usable part by now. So I believe he is a replacement level player and assuming he manned 1st over Tex would mean a 5 game drop in the standings would make sense.

    I will also now defend the CC WAR of 6. In the starts that Mitre and Gaudin made for the Yankees in 2009 the team went 11-4 (73% winning percentage). In CCs starts the team went 22-12 (65% winning percentage). Its hard to argue based on how they were acquired and their performance that Mitre and Gaudin are not replacement level players, yet the team had a better winning percentage with them on the mound than they did with the ace. That’s because the offense wins a lot of games for the Yankees and it doesn’t matter who starts. You are right to note the values of CC his innings are huge as he keeps innings away from guys like Mitre, Bruney, etc.

    I also agree that the Yankees have figured out to go after stars. However, they have also seemed to figure out who is a “star”. No one is going to argue that Cameron is a better player than Holliday. Note: the Yankees have been linked to Holliday, the true star, not Bay. The Yanks have learned not to throw big money at the second tier. That’s Bay, an incomplete player with a high K rate.

    Now, I am a Yankee fan and a baseball fan. I would be OK if the the Yankees let Damon walk (if he was offered a mutli year deal elsewhere) and the Yanks gave Cameron a one year deal. He would be a stop gap until the next free agent class. LF is big in Yankee stadium so if the Yanks had to CFs in the OF it would be great for run prevention and wouldn’t tie the team into a declining player long term. The OF is huge in Citifield. The Mets can definitely use the run prevention. Now the yanks can easily slide Gardbrera to left and play Cameron in center, that’s not as easy for the Mets as Beltran isn’t moving. So maybe Cameron isn’t the option. In that OF Bay isn’t the answer either. How did Shef look out there this year? Do you think he cost the Mets a few in the OF?

    Now if you are also trying to be the Mets marketing department that’s a whole different thing. However, I would argue that Wright, Reyes, Beltran, Santana, and K Rod bring a lot of star power to the table. What the Mets need to do to attract fans is win games. That includes improving at a multitude of positions – 2 starters, 1B, LF, RF, C, 2B. If you are set with Castillo and Francouer at 2B and RF, you need to improve the other spots. If putting Bay in LF means putting Murphy at 1B, you are much better off getting Cameron in LF and getting another bat for 1B.

    Realistically, the injuries had camouflaged a lot of the Mets issues. Signing a flawed player to a long contract will not solve 2010 and will only further handicap the franchise down the road.

24. Rich
    November 12th, 2009 at 7:56 pm

    “This is the same guy that can’t play defense and is a horrible teammate.”

    Where on Earth did you hear Burrell is a horrible teammate? From Billy Wagner maybe? Last I checked, it’s Wagner who is an awful teammates. Every player on the Phillies last year loved him.

25. Mike Silva
    November 12th, 2009 at 8:01 pm

    Rich

    Spoke to someone with Tampa and got a less than good report on him. Billy Wagner was pretty vocal about Burrell being a lousy teammate, and they tried to dump him every year until free agency – it’s a well known fact that Burrell wasn’t the most loved guy in Philly, and now Tampa.

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