duan

my big fear is Alfonso Soriano. and that we give up Diaz, Someone & Someone. (Bannister & prob not milledge)

Nymr83 wrote: ="Johnny Dickshot"]That the Mets bend the rules for stars like beltran ought to be evident by the fact that a superior centerfielder was moved aside to accommodate him in a manner similar to superior slot hitters moved elsewhere to reserve No. 3 for his bat. I think it's very much a showcase/pride thing. you're right, and its pretty fuckin annoying that the mets used the "24+1" argument to avoid getting Alex Rodriguez but then give Beltran the 24+1 treatment. I really THINK that this is COMPLETELY explainable. There's a completely plausible theory which says it is much harder for a player to move BACK to a more defensively challenging position after playing significant time at a less challenging one. So if you have to make a 7 year commitment to Beltran you want to be sure you get him as a centre-fielder in 07/08/09. As for the 3 hole; last year Beltran clearly didn't have a great season, but in reality his competitors for the 3 hole would have been Cliff Floyd, Mike Piazza, Cameron & David Wright. We've looked at the way Willie used Wright, you can argue about the rights and wrongs of that, but I don't think it's unfair to suggest that he was never going to be in the number 3 slot ahead of Beltran last season. Floyd went from the 5 slot to clean up - a perfectly natural home for him. I don't think anyone could criticise them for that. Then you have Mike Cameron. Cameron's a good hitter, but don't forget he started the season on the dl, DID get over 50 plate appearances in the 3 slot and then was out for the last 6 weeks of the season. I think there's a huge difference this year, in that Wright, Delgado & Floyd are CLEARLY potential 3,4,5 hitters (with the order an issue due to handedness) and that having David Wright hit SIXTH with Reyes, Beltran, AN OTHER getting way more abs then him would just cost you runs. The big issue for me is the leadoff slot. If Reyes keeps his .300 ish obp we have a problem. Anyone have an aversion to thinking about Beltran for that?

for the record young Jose played rather splendidly for Arsenal the other night against those lazy tossers Real Madrid.

I'm REALLY not convinced that they'll have the cojones to bat Beltran in the two hole. I think they're going to have LoDuca in there even though it'd be a recipe for having a .310 obp out of the 1-2 slots. The big problem is that unless Reyes takes a step forward we're going to be wasting a bucketload of abs.

seriously would anyone have a problem bringing Piazza back but only playing from May 1st. I wouldn't.

I'd be a little deflated at seeing him in a skankee uniform. I tell you what I wouldn't have minded paying $2-3 mill for occasional catching, ph'ing and dh'ing. He'd be a heck of a weapon on the bench eh?

how you measure it's important as Seo's in a great pitchers park but my basic instinct is to go Benson, Heillman, Seo.

touch�

having had personal experience of "McAnthony Realty" I've every sympathy with the Wilpons.

and Mr Balfour has just signed for la cincinatti reds at a bargain $375k though I assume it's a major league contract.

does anyone think that playing on speed could be good? It'd certainly explain all the unnecessary jawing that lots of 'em do.

28 year old aussie who's had trouble staying healthy http://www.thebaseballcube.com/players/B/grant-balfour.shtml struck out over a man per innning in both majors and minors. Just needs to put together two injury free seasons to make himself a rich man.

if i was one of "mike piazza's people" I'd have her picture issued to everyone and a big indelible inked mark of "be very afraid"

the other thing I'm a little worried about is that with the Mets OUT of the market there's little impetus to drive the price of Molina & Hernandez up. Who's looking for a catcher among the 'big' spenders? None of the AL East money, none of the NL East money, not the Cards/Cubs in the NL Central, the ChiSox, Twins or Indians in the AL Central or the Dodgers (Navarro looks like a decent option) and Giants in the NL West, or the Mariners, A's or Angels (who'll take the younger Molina plus Josh Paul if Bengie doesn't hang around!) So who's gonna pay Ramon Hernandez $8 million for 3 years????

i also think VERY strongly that it makes lots of sense for people to go now "nobody else was really into him" because nobody wants to give the impression that they 'missed out' and therefore are 'in greater need' in a tight market. I like the Carlos Delgado trade, I wish it didn't involve Petit but I don't think Jacobs is going to be anything special at all.

I've talked about this a bit before - as someone who has a 'fairly substantial' interest in online media site I think the policy suggested here "reporting articles with just a few relevant excerpts reproduced and then links that could be followed for the full text is probably the best idea just to avoid inviting trouble." is both really responsible and would be encouraged by any media owner. It's funny - I've posted excerpts and snippets from BP.com here over the while (two decent chunks of articles yesterday which I should have linked properly that I didn't) but they were generally in a form that I feel may give people a 'taster' of stuff that would actually encourage them to subscribe. We're not aggressive about pursuing people who entirely cut & paste stuff but it is something that fundamentally disappoints and frustrates me.

hey haven't really been around the forum much - but if there's anyone who drops out OR an extra place becomes available I'd be delighted to join

em, there's a LOAD of stuff to worry about here ... For a start in ANYONE thinks Benson is overpaid all they have to do is look at the other contracts dished out last year and Esteban Loaiza this year already. Secondly Jorge Julio's been postively mediocre except for ONE year. ONE FREAKIN' YEAR. So you're giving up a decent 3/4 starter (not great, I'm not suggesting that for a minute) for a guy who's likely to be the 5/6th man in the pen? fookin' stoopid that'd be.

one thing though - it definitely spells the end of Frank Thomas' Chicago career. If I was an AL GM looking for a DH I'd be SO willing to take a chance on him for 3 mill upto 6 in incentives.

"By the way, I'm surprised no one has jumped on Delgado's willingness to switch uniforms as a sign of "being a corporate pushover" or whatever And its not the first time this has happened. Clemens went to Toronto and I think getting 21 from Delgado costed a couple of Rolexs. Clemens goes to NY and "fan favorite" Paul O'Neill was all "NO FUCKING WAY!" with parting with 21 So now, Carlos Delgado, probably a B-level star (i.e. not quite on the "Future HOFer" level) comes to a new team and just lets a bonafide bust in Kaz Matsui keep the uniform number? I'm shocked that no one picked up on that, which along with the "ending" of the protest, would lead a cynical "caustic fucktard" to view Delgado as the most passive Met this side of Kevin McReynolds! Steve" This is the most ridiculous nonsense I've ever heard.

explanation of jaws and more "The Class of 2005 The Hitters by Jay Jaffe Back in January, I examined the 2004 Hall of Fame ballot through the lens of Baseball Prospectus' Davenport Translated player cards. The idea was to establish a new set of sabermetric standards which could help us separate the Cooperstown wheat from the chaff, especially since Bill James' Hall of Fame Standards and Hall of Fame Monitor tools have reached their sell-by date. After all, the Hall has added 26 non-Negro League players since James last revised those tools in 1994's The Politics of Glory, and we've learned a lot since then. These new metrics enable us to identify candidates who are as good or better than the average Hall of Famer at their position. By promoting those players for election, we can avoid further diluting the quality of the Hall's membership. Clay Davenport's Translations make an ideal tool for this endeavor because they normalize all performance records in major-league history to the same scoring environment, adjusting for park effects, quality of competition and length of schedule. All pitchers, hitters and fielders are thus rated above or below one consistent replacement level, making cross-era comparisons a breeze. Though non-statistical considerations--awards, championships, postseason performance--shouldn't be left by the wayside in weighing a player's Hall of Fame case, they're not the focus here. Since election to the Hall of Fame requires a player to perform both at a very high level and for a long time, it's inappropriate to rely simply on career Wins Above Replacement (WARP, which for this exercise refers exclusively to the adjusted-for-all-time version. WARP3). For this process I also identified each player's peak value as determined by the player's WARP in his best five consecutive seasons (with allowances made for seasons lost to war or injury). That choice is an admittedly arbitrary one; I simply selected a peak vaue that was relatively easy to calculate and that, at five years, represented a minimum of half the career of a Hall of Famer. This oversimplification of career and peak into One Great Number isn't meant to obscure the components which go into that figure, nor should it be taken as the end-all rating system for these players. We're looking for patterns to help us determine whether a player belongs in the Hall or doesn't and roughly where he fits. Though this piece is founded on the sabermetric credentials of Hall of Fame candidates, I've also taken the trouble to wrangle together traditional stat lines for each one, including All-Star (AS), MVP and Gold Glove (GG) awards as well as the hoary but somewhat useful Jamesian Hall of Fame Standards (HOFS) and Hall of Fame Monitor (HOFM) scores. The career and peak WARP totals for each Hall of Famer and candidate on the ballot were tabulated and then averaged [(Career WARP + Peak WARP) / 2] to come up with a score which, because it's a better acronym than what came before, I've very self-consciously christened JAWS (JAffe WARP Score). I then calculated positional JAWS averages and compared each candidate's JAWS to those enshrined. It should be noted that I simply followed the Hall's own system of classifying a player by the position he appeared at the most. Thus, for example, Rod Carew is classified as a second baseman, and all of his numbers count towards establishing the standards at second, even though he spent the latter half of his career at first base. This is something of an inevitability within such a system, but the if the alternative is going nuts resolving the Paul Molitors and the Harmon Killebrews into fragmentary careers at numerous positions, we'll never get anywhere. By necessity I had to eliminate not only all Negro League-only electees, who have no major league stats, but also Satchel Paige and Monte Irvin, two great players whose presence in the Hall is largely based on their Negro League accomplishments. Other Negro Leaguers, such as Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella and Larry Doby have been included. While their career totals are somewhat compromised by not having crossed the color line until relatively later in their careers, their peak values--especially Robinson's--contribute positively to our understanding of the Hall's standards. Here are the positional averages, the standards, to which I'll refer throughout the piece. POS # BRAR BRAA FRAA WARP PEAK JAWS C 13 406 197 61 94.8 41.3 68.1 1B 18 717 465 2 98.2 43.1 70.7 2B 16 558 255 70 99.0 41.9 70.4 3B 10 594 322 48 100.2 42.2 71.2 SS 20 411 136 77 100.5 43.2 71.9 LF 18 730 462 -8 103.8 42.8 73.3 CF 17 694 445 14 108.8 46.5 77.6 RF 22 754 482 33 110.2 43.3 76.8 CI 28 673 414 18 98.9 42.8 70.8 MI 36 476 189 74 99.8 42.6 71.2 IF 64 562 287 49 99.4 42.7 71.1 OF 57 729 465 15 107.8 44.1 75.9 Middle 66 519 257 56 101.1 43.3 72.2 Corners 68 714 449 16 103.9 42.9 73.4 Hitters 134 618 354 36 102.5 43.1 72.8

the manny deal that DIDN'T happen round about the trade deadline - it's worth looking at here More often than not, the trade deadline winds up being anti-climactic. Between large contracts, seven-way wild-card races and a condensed time frame, it's awfully hard to find a deal involving superstar players that is suitable to all sides. The 2005 deadline, unfortunately, has been no exception; we pundits are stuck with the scraps of Geoff Blum and Kyle Farnsworth and a whole bunch of almosts and coulda-beens. Nevertheless, sometimes the coulda-beens are news unto themselves. Even though a deal was not consummated, it's remarkable that the Boston Red Sox, bathing in cash, coming off a championship and in the midst of a heated pennant race, were seriously contemplating trading Manny Ramirez, who remains one of the best hitters in baseball. What's also been surprising is the lack of editorial opinion on the deal. Under ordinary circumstances, a contending team considering trading one of its best hitters, a couple of its best prospects and a heap of cash would trigger a lot of questions about the sanity of that team's general manager. In this case, nobody has suggested that Theo Epstein has lost his mind, nor has there been much discussion about whether the deal would be a good one for the Sox. Much of that, I think, is because the would-be trade is awfully tough to analyze from a traditional, on-the-field perspective. The reason the Sox might have traded Ramirez would be to get out of the remaining years of his huge contract. There isn't much debate that Ramirez, even if he ages reasonably well, isn't going to be worth what the Sox will be paying him through 2008. But in order to analyze the deal, you have to have some notion of exactly how much Ramirez's remaining contract years are likely to cost the Red Sox. That's fairly tough to do, but we're going to give it a try. Ramirez is scheduled to make $23.2 million this year (a figure that includes the final prorated chunk of his signing bonus), $19 million in 2006, $18 million in 2007 and $20 million in 2008. His contract also includes team options for 2009 and 2010, but at such a steep price ($20 million per year) that it's safe to attribute no material economic value to them; they're not going to be picked up. What sort of return on investment are the Red Sox likely to get for their money? Let's walk through a quick, four-step process: Step 1: Determine the marginal cost of Ramirez's contract. This is straightforward. We take Ramirez's annual salary and subtract from it the major-league minimum salary of $317,000, the amount Red Sox are obligated to pay to whichever player fills Ramirez' roster slot. This produces a marginal cost of: 2005 $22.88 million 2006 $18.68 million 2007 $17.68 million 2008 $19.68 million Step 2: Estimate Ramirez's on-field productivity. This would ordinarily be very tricky to do, but fortunately we have PECOTA, which uses comparable players to estimate a ballplayer's performance several years into the future. PECOTA estimated, prior to this season, that Ramirez would be worth 7.8 wins above replacement (WARP) this year, 6.4 WARP in 2006, 5.1 WARP in 2007 and 4.1 WARP in 2008. Ramirez losing essentially half his value in the span of four years might seem like a fairly steep decline, but it has plenty of precedent. Ramirez's top comparable is Albert Belle, who hung up his spikes after his age-33 season. Also ranking high among his comps are Sammy Sosa and Dick Allen, who lost their skills plenty fast. Certainly, there are also some more favorable names on the list--guys like Frank Robinson and Tony Perez who aged well--but considering that there's some chance of a steep decline for Ramirez (possibly triggered by injury), and a near certainty of at least some decline, PECOTA's estimate seems reasonable. In fact, it may be too generous. Ramirez is on pace to finish at about 6.9 WARP this year, a fair bit worse than the preseason forecast, but for simplicity's sake, we'll go ahead and leave his PECOTA forecast as is. Step 3: Translate on-field productivity into cash. This is the trickiest part of the problem. We might have a pretty good idea of how many wins Ramirez is worth, but there hasn't been a lot of work done recently on just how much money a win is worth, in terms of increased ticket sales, media exposure, postseason sales and so forth. What's more, this number surely varies from team to team: a big-market team like the Mets that doesn't fill its stadium probably gets more cash benefit from an additional win than, say, the Padres do. But there is another approach to the problem, which is to determine how much teams are willing to pay for an additional win. In an analysis of last winter's free-agent market, I determined that the market price of an additional win is about $2.14 million dollars. We'll use that as our working estimate, which leads to a marginal revenue product (MRP) for Ramirez as follows: Year WARP MRP 2005 7.8 $16.69MM 2006 6.4 $13.70MM 2007 5.1 $10.91MM 2008 4.1 $8.77MM Step 4: Deduct output from cost to determine the marginal gain or loss associated with a contract. This is mostly just a simple subtraction problem, but we'll add a couple of additional wrinkles for the sake of completeness. First, both MRP and cost need to be prorated for 2005, since most of the season has been completed, and since most of Ramirez's contract has already been paid. We'll use one-third as our multiplier, since about two-thirds of the season has been played to date. Second, since a dollar today is worth more than the same dollar tomorrow, we need to discount future years of the contract to account for the time value of money. In order to do that, we'll apply a neutral discount rate of 5% per year. That gives us the following result: Manny Ramirez 2005(ROY)* 2006 2007 2008 Total Marginal Salary $7.63 $18.68 $17.68 $19.68 $63.67 WARP 2.6 6.4 5.1 4.1 18.2 Market Value $5.56 $13.70 $10.91 $8.77 $38.95 Net Value -$2.06 -$4.98 -$6.77 -$10.91 -$24.72 Discounted @ 5% -$2.06 -$4.75 -$6.14 -$9.42 -$22.37 * Rest of Year We estimate that the net present value (NPV) of Ramirez's remaining contract is negative $22.37 million dollars. Put another way, if Ramirez offered to let the team buy out the rest of his contract for $22.5 million, the Sox would benefit from taking him up on his offer. Thus, it's pretty easy to see why the Sox are almost obligated to listen to offers that could reduce the financial burden associated with Ramirez, even if some of these offers might marginally reduce their chances of repeating their World Series championship. Since a deal was never consummated, we can't know exactly what the Red Sox would have been willing to give up to get this $22.37 million liability off their books. But according to this Jayson Stark column, the Red Sox were at least reasonably close to agreeing to a deal in which they would have given up Ramirez, Hanley Ramirez, Jon Lester and $15 million in cash and received Aubrey Huff and Mike Cameron in return. Would this have been a good deal for the Sox? We can estimate the NPV for the other player contracts in the same way that we did for Ramirez. This is straightforward in the case of the veterans, who are locked into multi-year deals of their own, but more difficult for the prospects. Let's start with Aubrey Huff: Aubrey Huff 2005(ROY)* 2006 Total Marginal Salary $1.39 $7.18 $8.57 WARP 1.9 5.2 7.1 Market Value $4.14 $11.13 $15.27 Net Value $0.91 $3.95 $4.86 Discounted @ 5% $0.91 $3.76 $4.67 Huff is owed $4.5 million in 2005 and $7.5 million in 2006; after that, he can become a free agent. He hasn't quite lived up to his preseason PECOTA projection, which means that this estimate may be slightly too generous, but this still looks like a pretty cheap contract in the near-term. We estimate that the NPV associated with Huff's remaining contract is positive $4.67 million. Mike Cameron: Mike Cameron 2005(ROY)* 2006 2007 Total Marginal Salary $1.89 $7.68 $6.18 $15.75 WARP 1.8 3.4 3.1 8.3 Market Value $3.85 $7.28 $6.63 $17.76 Net Value $1.96 -$0.13 $0.15 $1.98 Discounted @ 5% $1.96 -$0.13 $0.14 $1.97 Cameron's contract includes a team option at $6.5 million in 2007; if the team does not exercise that option, he'll be owed a $500,000 buyout. PECOTA estimates that Cameron's market value in 2007 will be $6.63 million, making it worthwhile to exercise that option, so we've gone ahead and included that year of the contract. All told, his contract looks like a slight net positive for an acquirer. The economic value of a prospect comes in his first six years of major-league service, when he'll provide value to his team either essentially free of charge (before becoming arbitration-eligible) or at a material discount below market rates (arbitration years). To my knowledge, there hasn't been a study done of just what sort of discount a team can anticipate during a player's arbitration years, but it's clear that 1) arbitration awards or settlements tend to run at least somewhat below what a player would be paid in the free market, and 2) this discount tends to decrease--he makes a larger fraction of his market value--as the player's service time increases. My educated guesstimate is that we're looking at something like this for a typical player: MLB Year 1 $350,000 salary MLB Year 2 $500,000 salary MLB Year 3 40% of market salary MLB Year 4 60% of market salary MLB Year 5 70% of market salary MLB Year 6 80% of market salary Both Ramirez and Lester look like they're fairly close to major-league ready, especially for a team like the Devil Rays, so we'll assume that their first major-league seasons are in 2006, at which time their arbitration clocks start running. Each will be 22 next season, and assuming they stick in the majors, both would become free agents after their age-27 seasons in 2011. PECOTA's five-year forecasts give us estimates of each player's value through 2009. For Ramirez, those numbers are 2.5 wins (2006), 2.8 (2007), 2.6 (2008) and 3.0 (2009). He'll be at his age 26-27 peak in the two years that follow, so we'll make a reasonable extrapolation outward and assume 3.5 wins above replacement in 2010, and 4.0 in 2011. Note, by the way, that these WARP estimates are the weighted average, accounting for both favorable and unfavorable outcomes. If Hanley Ramirez becomes a regular major-league shortstop, he'll probably be worth somewhat more than 4.0 WARP in his age-27 season, but there are some unresolved questions about Ramirez' ability. He hasn't had a great year in Portland, and we have to hedge those favorable outcomes against the substantial chance that he isn't able to establish himself, and is worth very little to his club. Applying Ramirez's PECOTA forecast and the assumptions about his salary from above, we come up with the following estimate of his value: Hanley Ramirez 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 Total Marginal Salary $0.03 $0.18 $2.23 $3.85 $5.24 $6.85 $18.38 WARP 2.5 2.8 2.6 3.0 3.5 4.0 18.4 Market Value $5.35 $5.99 $5.56 $6.42 $7.49 $8.56 $39.38 Net Value $1.77 $1.94 $1.11 $0.86 $0.75 $0.57 $7.00 Discounted @ 5% $1.69 $1.76 $0.96 $0.70 $0.59 $0.43 $6.12 We figure the NPV of Hanley Ramirez's contract (more properly, the NPV of the right to sign him to cheap contracts) to be $6.12 million. Intuitively, that seems pretty reasonable for a B or B+ hitting prospect. Lester is the player involved in this conversation whose season has deviated most substantially from PECOTA's expectations. He's taken to Double-A very well. I'm going to go ahead and append an additional 0.5 wins/year to his forecast; I think PECOTA will do something similar when we run his new projection this winter. That said, any pitching prospect has substantial risk associated with him until he's demonstrated the ability to stay healthy for multiple major-league seasons, and pitchers don't experience the same predictable improvement in the age 23-26 range that offensive players do, so we shouldn't fudge upward too much. We'll estimate that Lester is worth 2.0 wins/year in 2010 and 2011, the years that aren't covered by his PECOTA forecast. Jon Lester 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 Total Marginal Salary $0.03 $0.18 $1.11 $2.05 $3.00 $3.42 $9.80 WARP 1.6 1.8 1.3 1.6 2.0 2.0 10.3 Market Value $3.42 $3.85 $2.78 $3.42 $4.28 $4.28 $22.04 Net Value $1.13 $1.22 $0.56 $0.46 $0.43 $0.29 $4.08 Discounted @ 5% $1.08 $1.11 $0.48 $0.38 $0.34 $0.21 $3.59 We arrive at a NPV of $3.59 million for Lester. We can evaluate the entire trade from the Red Sox's perspective by adding up the estimated NPVs of the players involved in the discussions, and subtracting out the reported $15 million ransom that the Red Sox would pay to the Mets: Manny Ramirez +$22.37MM Aubrey Huff +$ 4.67MM Mike Cameron +$ 1.97MM Hanley Ramirez -$ 6.12MM Jon Lester -$ 3.59MM Cash -$15.00MM --------------------------- Net Value +$ 4.29MM The Red Sox gain about $22 million from shedding Ramirez's contract, and an additional $7 million or so from picking up Huff and Cameron at reasonable prices. In order to accomplish this, they must part with about $10 million worth of prospects and $15 million in cash. All told, the Stark version of the deal looks like it would have been a slight net positive for Boston, to the tune of about $4 million. That said, $4 million is not a large margin of error in the modern baseball economy, and you can make some other, reasonable kinds of assumptions that push the deal to about break-even, or just below it. It's no wonder, in other words, that the Red Sox were pushed just about to the brink with the proposed transaction. Theo Epstein may have been getting some value here, but only a little bit, especially considering some intangible factors like a potential public backlash against trading a superstar, or the additional marginal value associated with wins for a team that is in the midst of a tight pennant race. Remove Lester from the equation, or add a decent prospect or two coming in return--the Red Sox were reportedly trying to do both of these things--and the case for the deal becomes much clearer. No matter how you slice it, the deal looks like a terrible one for the Mets. They'd reportedly have been giving up Lastings Milledge--probably worth between $7-$8 million under this methodology--in addition to getting a raw deal on the valuation of Ramirez's contract. Frankly, I find it refreshing to go through a process like this on a deal that the Red Sox seemed to regard as fairly close to break-even, and come to the conclusion that the trade would, in fact, have been just about break-even for the Red Sox's bottom line. The names and numbers involved in the reports you've seen about the almost-trade are not pulled out of thin air--the Red Sox almost certainly have gone through a process exactly like this, and that's why they were willing to offer exactly what they were. It might seem cut-throat or Machiavellian to evaluate a deal in this fashion, but that's the perspective that a championship-caliber front office needs to apply.

Edgy DC wrote: I think we're a long way off from sorting out and quantifying the career value of relief pitchers. I also think we have to go a ways towards differentiating the role value of earlier generations of relievers--- like Wilhelm and Face --- from the generation of Fingers, Gossage, and Sutter, and from their heirs in the eighties and nineties. It's as complex as sorting out the difference between pitchers of the pre-1900 pitchers who started most of their team's games from those who would follow and pitch in small rotations, from those again who would follow and pitch in larger rotations. Sure; I'm basically with you on that. HOWEVER there was a very interesting article on this in relation to the 2005 class Relievers Despite having jobs no more difficult than those of NFL placekickers, late-model one-inning closers are exalted by the media. But their fireman predecessors, who often pitched two or three frames at a clip, get little love from the Hall of Fame voters. That contradiction is a direct response to a usage pattern geared towards limiting the team's best reliever to situations where he can receive a statistical cookie, a save, rather than in tie games, when the outcome may be on the line but the save rule doesn't apply. Thus an 80-inning/40-save closer is held in higher esteem that a 110-inning/25-save stopper. We shouldn't be fooled by high save totals; it's the runs that matter, and due to the limited innings they throw, the Davenport numbers tell us that it's nearly impossible for the best late-model relievers to be more valuable than the best everyday players or starting pitchers. Annual WARP totals above 10.0 are common for elite players at their peaks, but the best closers top 8.0 only in a rare Mariano Rivera/Eric Gagne-caliber year. To address this problem while still finding room to reward the bullpen's best, last year I devised a solution to address the relievers on the Hall ballot based on the concept of leverage.Research by Tangotiger using play-by-play data and a Win Expectancy Matrix has shown that good relievers have a quantifiably greater effect on the outcome of a ballgame than starters. Because of their timing late in close games, the results of the plate appearances against them are magnified by some factor, which is called the Leverage Index. A starting pitcher will have a Leverage Index very near 1.0, but an ace reliever might have one approaching 2.0, meaning that the batters he faced were twice as important to the outcome of a ballgame. We don't have uniform play-by-play data to calculate Leverage Indexes for each reliever on the ballot and in the Hall, but we have more or less complete LIs for three of the ballot's top relievers, ranging from 1.6 to 1.9. In light of what we know and don't know about LIs, my suggestion was to examine the conclusions we came up with if we set a JAWS standard for relievers that's 70 percent that of starters--the equivalent of a 1.43 LI, by which we could theoretically multiply a player's contributions to produce a level of equivalence. We'll call this the Point Seven Solution. PRAA PRAR WARP PEAK JAWS Gossage 236 781 84.4 35.0 59.7 Smith 259 734 80.0 32.6 56.3 Montgomery 183 513 57.4 34.3 45.9 Sutter 175 521 57.0 32.1 44.6 AVG HOF P 205 964 95.1 43.6 69.4 RP 70% 144 675 66.6 30.5 48.5 Bruce Sutter holds a historic spot in the evolution of the reliever, and an even more important one in the evolution of pitching in general. Sutter came up with the Cubs in 1976, and by the next season he was lights out, pitching 107 innings with a 1.34 ERA and 129 strikeouts while posting 31 saves. Credit for his success was due largely to mastery of the split-fingered fastball, a pitch unfamiliar to big-league hitters. Sutter didn't invent the splitter, but was the first successful practitioner of it. The innovations around Sutter didn't stop there. Prompted by his ace reliever's tendency to wear down as the season went on, in 1979 Cubs manager Herman Franks decided to limit Sutter's usage mainly to close games when his team was ahead--in other words, save situations. Sutter tied the National League record with 37 and won the Cy Young, thanks to a 2.22 ERA/101-inning season. After five stellar seasons in Chicago, he was traded to the Cardinals, where he posted three strong years as well as his first subpar one. He was an instrumental piece of the 1982 World Champions, saving 36 games in another 100-inning season and notching a win and two saves in the World Series. In 1984 he set a career high of 122 2/3 innings and an NL record with 45 saves while posting a 1.54 ERA. Coincidentally or not, that was his last effective season. Lured by Ted Turner's cable riches, he left for the Braves via free agency after 1984. But in Atlanta his shoulder broke down, and he was never the same pitcher again. He pitched 152 innings of 4.55 ERA ball for Ted's $10 million, and was done at 35. The traditional case for Sutter is that in addition to being attached to two notable innovations, he was one of the few relievers to win a Cy Young, a six-time All-Star who threw a lot more innings than today's closers. Excluding the strike year of 1981, he averaged 104 frames a year from 1977-1984. But despite three years in the vicinity of 8.0 WARP, the Davenport numbers leave him below our Point Seven standard. That's surprising given his dominance of NL hitters, but it aptly illustrates the limited impact of even a 100-inning-a-year role and the difficulty of maintaining that level. Unless he's given extra credit for the pitch he didn't invent, Sutter's claim on the Hall of Fame isn't all that strong. No vote for him here. After breaking in as a Cincinnati Red, Jeff Montgomery spent 12 years as an institution in Kansas City, inheriting the closer role once held by the lamentably late and undeniably great Dan Quisenberry. In 1989, his second year as a Royal, Montgomery posted a microscopic 1.37 ERA in 92 innings. He was dominant over the 1989-93 span, averaging 89 innings a year with an ERA+ of 184 while striking out 8.0 batters per nine innings. As his fastball lost its zip, he became less effective, but still held the closer role for another six years, the last one marred due to a hip injury. Ultimately, his JAWS numbers are about the same as Sutter's but without the innovation. We'll be seeing a lot more of his 300-save ilk in a few years, so it's best not to marry the first one that comes along. Physically intimidating Lee Smith stepped into the large shoes vacated by Sutter in Chicago and did a very credible job in six years as their 100-inning per year closer. From 1983-1987, he finished in the top five in saves every season, leading the league once. Traded to Boston after 1987, he continued to post high-quality seasons, though his workload and save totals dipped a bit. Traded again to the Cardinals, he flourished, topping Sutter's NL save record and recording 160 saves in parts of four seasons--taking over the all-time lead in that category--before packing his bags again. Through five more stops, the innings began to take a toll on his body, and his managers limited his usage to about 50 frames a year, one inning at a time, to keep him effective. He spent his last two seasons in a setup role, with diminishing returns, finally hanging it up in 1998. From a traditional standpoint, Smith's case starts with his status as the all-time saves leader, his seven All-Star selections, and an amazing string of consistency which followed him to virtually every stop on his 18-year ride. Until his final 22-inning season, his ERA+ was always better than league-average--32 percent better for his career. On the down side, his teams never went farther than an LCS, and he got bombed in his brief postseason appearances, blowing two ballgames in best-of-fives. His Davenport numbers are above the Point Seven standard for relievers, particularly due to his career length, and he's well above the Hall average for PRAA without any adjustment for his low inning totals, an impressive feat. Even if we raised the relievers' standard to 80 percent, he'd still be above it. A vote under this system is quite reasonable. If we're talking about standard-setting relievers, Rich "Goose" Gossage carried the mantle for a decade, pitched in the majors for another decade, and ten years later is still held up as a yardstick for dominant relievers. From 1975-1985, excepting a year-long failed experiment as a starter, Gossage blew hitters in both leagues away, helped his teams to three pennants, made nine All-Star squads and kept his ERA well under 3.00 every single year. He came up with the White Sox, emerging as a force in 1975 when he threw 141.2 innings with a 1.84 ERA , 130 strikeouts and a league-leading 26 saves. After a 9-17, 3.94 ERA season as a starter, the Sox traded him to Pittsburgh, where he had an even better year with a 1.62 ERA. That prompted Yankee owner George Steinbrenner to throw big bucks at him--six years, $2.75 million--despite the fact Steinbrenner already employed the reigning Cy Young winner, Sparky Lyle. But with his 100-mph heat, Gossage usurped Lyle's role as the Yankee stopper. He was brilliant in his six pinstriped seasons, posting a 2.10 ERA (a 183 ERA+), saving 25 games per year, striking out about a batter per inning, and averaging 86 innings annually despite a Bronx Zoo-brawl injury in '79 and the strike in '81. Gossage left for San Diego via free agency after 1983, and the move paid dividends with an '84 World Series berth. He was the go-to man in the Padre pen until '87, but upon a trade to the Cubs after that season, began the familiar trudge of the past-prime reliever, not quite settling in a setup role, making five more stops (including a cameo with the Yanks) and spending 1990 in Japan. He topped 50 innings only once in that stretch, mostly due to injuries, but he held his own when he did pitch. Gossage's case as a Hall of Famer is a reasonable one on the traditional merits; that decade of dominance resonating in the public mind thanks in part to a lot of postseason exposure (19 games, 31.1 innings, 2.87 ERA). Based on the number of innings thrown and his better-than-average ERA, a solid case can be made for him as the second-best reliever ever behind Wilhelm. His Davenport numbers are just as strong. Gossage's two best years are an off-the-charts 10 WARP; by peak, career, and JAWS numbers he's better than many starters in the Hall, and his PRAA is above the Hall average. Furthermore, he compares favorably with the two enshrined "pure" relievers, Wilhelm and Fingers, with the highest peak among them by a healthy margin: PRAA PRAR WARP PEAK JAWS Wilhelm 259 900 92.6 29.5 61.1 Gossage 236 781 84.4 35.0 59.7 Fingers 137 688 75.1 31.1 53.1 Gossage would be above our standards bar even if we raised it to 85 percent. He's got the best case of any reliever on this ballot and deserves a plaque in Cooperstown. With Bert Blyleven, Lee Smith and Rich Gossage joining Wade Boggs, Ryne Sandberg, and Alan Trammell, the JAWS method has flagged six players on the 2005 Hall of Fame ballot as meeting the standards of the enshrined. Boggs is a lock to gain election this year, and Sandberg might surge over the top, but it's likely that the worthy pitchers will be shut out. We'll know in the first week of January whether the BBWAA voters can distinguish the Hall's contenders from its pretenders.

pitched for 12 seasons ; 4 of those with above average era. I think there's no doubt that he was a 100% exceptional reliever in 3/4 seasons but that he doesn't show the kind of longevity in his excellence that I'd like. His career value isn't that dissimilar to Armando Benitez'.

I should also point out that I wouldn't go with Sutter at all