The Livan Hernandez Cy Young Watch

[blue911]

El pito!!!

Heh, no, it's a little more tasteful than that.  The picture is offset a bit.

That would be the Evan Longoria light switch.

[Lintyfresh85]

http://flotn.blogspot.com/2010/10/livan-hernandez-and-cliff-lee-opposites.html

...think back to June 23, 2010. Stephen Strasburg was just coming off his first major league loss to the Kansas City Royals when a lively discussion broke out in the post game show between (Former) MASN color commentator Rob Dibble and MASN analyst Ray Knight. Their argument, was Stephen Strasburg throwing too many strikes for his own good?

[The Chief]

Ah yes, I remember the awkwardness.

[JCA-CrystalCity]

Fangraphs ran an article about old free agents and how they did this year.  At the start of the year, they speculated that older players were where the new value in baseball.  They identified a series of potential old players who would be valuable.  They did not look at pitchers.

That said, Livo, as a 3 (Fng) / 3.4 (B-R) WAR player earned $12 - $13.6 MM this year on a $900K contract.  See, it pays to be cheap!

[The Chief]

The problem I have with that is that that figure has no real meaning.  No club would ever pay Livan that kind of money even if he were consistently 3 ERA pitcher for the next 5 years.

[UMDNats]

http://flotn.blogspot.com/2010/10/livan-hernandez-and-cliff-lee-opposites.html

Ah yes, I remember the awkwardness.

[Sharp]

The problem I have with that is that that figure has no real meaning.  No club would ever pay Livan that kind of money even if he were consistently 3 ERA pitcher for the next 5 years.

Only because absolutely nobody believes he could consistently be a 3 ERA pitcher for the next five years.

[The Chief]

Only because absolutely nobody believes he could consistently be a 3 ERA pitcher for the next five years.

But that doesn't make my point any less valid.

I'm not disagreeing with FG that older pitchers can be bargains, I just don't see the use of the particular metric when it comes to evaluating their performance.  Real-world examples would serve just as well and make more sense.

[JCA-CrystalCity]

If you can come up with a better metric for dollarizing performance, present it.  the point with the article is that his performance level was comparable to that which went for $12MM last offseason.  A bargain for the performance.  Sure, there was a huge surprise element to it so no one was going to pay $12MM going into the season, but when you look at the FA contracts for guys like Lackey, Marquis, Wolf, and all the others, a projected win above replacement was going for about $4MM, and Livan actually delivered 3.

[The Chief]

I'm not saying there's a better metric, just saying I don't see the need for the use of an artificial metric at all when the point is "look at what a bargain this old guy was."  Just throw out some real names of guys with similar numbers this year and their salaries.  I'm betting that none of them were paid $13 million either.  I get the point of the metric, but considering the circumstances with the economy and baseball it seems that comparing real contracts would be more realistic.

[JCA-CrystalCity]

I get the point of the metric, but considering the circumstances with the economy and baseball it seems that comparing real contracts would be more realistic.

The $4MM / WAR is based on real contracts signed last offseason, if that is your point.  If your point is, was he a bargain in comparison to other old, back of the rotation starters, then I think the answer is yes, too, given how much better he performed than the typical $900K back of therotation starter.  Either way, we got a lot more than $900K performance.

[The Chief]

Call it personal preference but I just don't see the use in bringing in contrived statistics when there are perfectly valid real-world comparatives.  For example...  Jason Marquis!  You could easily argue that we got from Livan what we had HOPED to get from Marquis at 1/8 the cost.

Since you say the value stat is based on real contracts and WARs, do they do anything to balance it against unusually large/small contracts that would throw off the overall metric?  Are there any real examples of a 3 WAR player this season who made $13m this season?

[Sharp]

Call it personal preference but I just don't see the use in bringing in contrived statistics when there are perfectly valid real-world comparatives.  For example...  Jason Marquis!  You could easily argue that we got from Livan what we had HOPED to get from Marquis at 1/8 the cost.

Since you say the value stat is based on real contracts and WARs, do they do anything to balance it against unusually large/small contracts that would throw off the overall metric?  Are there any real examples of a 3 WAR player this season who made $13m this season?

1. Yes
2. Even if there weren't, how would that change the fact that that was what a win was valued at this year?  From what it sounds like you're just concerned about their using the average, not the median, but it's not like you complain about the idea in principle.

[The Chief]

I don't object to the idea at all, I just think that real-world examples "connect" more and should be used whenever possible.  Obviously I have some concerns about the way the figures are obtained, but that's not really my principle objection here.  I still don't know exactly how the various incarnations of WAR are calculated but I generally take it at face value for the purposes of keeping discussions moving.  But comparing wins added by a player vs another player without such a stat can be tricky, whereas if you bring money into it, comparing the value of one real player vs another is fairly straightforward even if you just eyeball the numbers.

[Sharp]

You also have to keep in mind that WAR is based on payment to free agents.  There are always going to be a lot of players worth significantly more than they're being paid due to the nature of the draft / arbitration / other things that prevent a player from going on the free market.

[JCA-CrystalCity]

Chief:  there is going to be a bit of a problem finding someone with exactly the same performance in 2010 as Livo who signed for precisely $12M last off season.  However, ESPN does have all the SP who signed as FAs last year.  I'll put the age, years, AAV, and 2010 WAR, although multi-year contracts should have a dsicount for player job security (normally about 10%) and assume a declining WAR over the length of the contract.  I'm using $5MM AAV as a cut, which I think captures most of the pitchers who were thought to be low risk rotation regulars:

Doug Davis, 35, 1 year, $5.25 MM, 0.0 WAR
J. Garland, 31, 1 year, $5.3 MM, 0.8 WAR
R. Harden, 28, 1 year, $7.5 MM, -0.7 WAR
J. Lackey, 31, 5 years, $16.5 MM AAV, 4.0 WAR
J. Marquis, 32, 2 years, $7.5 MM AAV, -0.3 WAR
Brett Myers, 30, 1 year, $5.1 MM, 4.0 WAR
V. Padilla, 33, 1 year, $5+ MM, 1.0 WAR
C. Pavano, 34, 1 year, $7 MM, 3.2 WAR
Brad Penny, 32, 1 year, $7.5 MM, 1.1 WAR
A. Pettitte, 38, 1 year, $11.25 MM, 2.3 WAR
J. Piniero, 32, 2 years, $8 MM AAV, 2.5 WAR
Ben Sheets, 32, 1 year $10 MM, 0.6 WAR
Randy wolf, , 3 years, $9.9 MM AAV, 0.7 WAR

I guess some are "bargains," like Brett Myers and Carl Pavano, while some are "busts," like the injured guys and Wolf.  Lackey, Padilla, Pineiro were around the $4 MM per WAR (no bargain or bust), while others were in the ballpark of that price.  Livo was more of a bargain than Pavano, and comparabel in age, but Pavano was still cheap relative to a lot of the other pitchers.  Myers had close to the same value but younger. Sheets and Harden were dice rolls with injury history, while Davis was hard luck.

Edit -

[The Chief]

Did you mean to make your entire post a link?

I didn't mean for there to be a connection between my question and the opinion about using real examples, was just curious if there actually was anyone whose circumstances fit the "standard."  And as for FG values of players, I had previously thought the formula was based in part on some ideal of what a win "should" be worth - I didn't know the entire thing was based solely on what people were actually paid.  I suppose that makes it simultaneously more and less useful in my eyes - more useful in general, less useful for the article about Livan.  After all, if you're just going to compare him to what other people made and did, why not use actual examples of other people?

In any case I'm just beating a dead horse now.  I just like to see real comparatives instead of hypothetical ones.  Personal preference, nothing more.

[JCA-CrystalCity]

Actually, it was kind of fun to put that list together to see the bargains and busts. 

[Lintyfresh85]

I'm shocked at how well Lackey did this year. With the way the Red Sox fans bad mouthed him, you'd think he was terrible.

[JCA-CrystalCity]

I'm shocked at how well Lackey did this year. With the way the Red Sox fans bad mouthed him, you'd think he was terrible.

Some of it is won loss record in games started by Lackey. I think it was .500 or maybe a touch below [fact check - 16 - 17 ]. high WHIP (1.419, more than .1 above his previous 4 years), ERA (4.40), average ERA+ (99) after being above 115 for the prior 5 years, had a drop in k/9 and k/bb, etc...  A FIP-based WAR would look at his low HR/9 and give him more credit than Sean Smith's method of pitcher WAR over on B-R, which had him at 1.9 WAR.  Lackey was mediocre but paid like a solid #1 - #2 pitcher.  He was basically Derek Lowe.