Wednesday, August 5, 2009

Getting Your Money's Worth: The Punchline

Now things start to shape up, and like a strip club in the daylight, it's way uglier than it seemed before. This is still made using best available payroll information and Wins Above Replacement Level.

The "A" Team (Players Acquired by the Royals under former GM / Team President Allard Baird)

Total Salary: 15.19 million (counting only players currently on the 25 man roster)

Total 2009 Value to Date: 44.3
Total 2009 Projected Value: 51.2
Total Return: 36.01

The "D" Students (Players Acquired by Dayton Moore):

Total Salary: 68.15
Total 2009 Value To Date: 33.2
Total 2009 Projected Value: 38.8
Total Return: -44.8

In non-Betancourt related material, this is the most damning piece of evidence I've seen. And it's worth noting that the prized shortstop in question isn't even included in this, due to negligible pay to date and an uncertain salary arrangement from the Mariners. But it does include a great year from Bannister. And Gil Meche's work. And Joakim Soria. There's just no hiding what a catastrophic failure Dayton Moore is at acquiring talent for the major league level.

This team has the 15th highest payroll in the league, and by value in investment should have the 25th best record. (Which is pretty darn close, actually. As per my Pythagorean post, they are slightly underperforming.)

If you take away Zack Grienke's contribution , this team is not just the worst in the league, but one of the worst of all time.

4 comments:

  1. I made some adjustments that were kinder to Mr. Moore regarding the amortization of salaries for players that he either paid a portion (TPJ, Luis Hernandez, Ryan Freel) or none (Betancourt) of their salaries to get a more fair number. It's still really ugly. JB should have some visual details soon.

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  2. I don't think you can compare Baird to DM by comparing these groups of players. A better comparisson IMO is comparing Bairds free agents signings or buyouts (which he had some awful ones as well) with DM Free agent signings or buyouts. It seems to me that what you have presented would be true on any team: that the players who have not reached FA yet will have a better value than players who have reached FA (it may not be true, but I probably am not going to do the required research). Obviously Most of the players 'acquired' by DM are players who have reached FA. Most of the players 'acquired' by Baird have not. Is that accurate?

    Also, I think that you should consider that Greinke has now been 'acquired' by DM based on his new contract. Otherwise you wouldn't be able to say that any player on the mlb roster has been 'acquired' by DM as they were all drafted by someone else. I understand that by acquired you just mean first brought over to the organization, but that just seems not quite right to me.

    I would think that the only way you to truly compare the value of Baird and DM's acquistions would take these number and compare them to DM's draft picks as they enter the mlb level.

    Also, I am not a DM supporter. It is sad that we even have to compare Baird and DM. I am hopeful he can get it worked out because I am afraid of what it means if he fails.

    Just my opinion, I enjoyed reading your blog. What do you think?

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  3. Fantastic comment, tomas. I especially like the Greinke point. I think you're focusing on the wrong part, though.

    The point wasn't to compare DM and AB at all, but rather to show how ineffective DM has been by showing how little of what he has done has been successful.

    The best contrast for that at this point is that the best players on the team, save Meche and Soria, are all Baird-era holdovers. That's not to say that he didn't make his fair share of mistakes.

    And by "his fair share" I mean, "more mistakes than anybody should be allowed to make before getting fired." Scarily, we're near that mark already with Dayton Moore.

    At what point do we call this what it is? We can project our draft picks as positive as possible and we're still left with a GM that simply cannot judge big league batters.

    That is scary and needs to change. Now--before it's too late and our next GM has to do a similar 3-4 year rebuild.

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  4. Great comments. If Jose Guillen were a cost controlled pre-arbitration player making 400,000 a year, he'd still be worth -13 million or so by the end of the year (Though it looks as if that current value number will hold steady through the end of the year as season ending surgery now looms). Outside of Coco Crisp (with his season ending injury), the rest of his signings and trades are players roughly at the same point in their careers (and salaries) as the Allard Baird end of arbitration guys. They just aren't nearly as good.

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