Comments on: The Hangover

By: Sliced Bread

Sliced Bread — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 17:25:31 +0000

[38] I hear ya. good points all around. Fortunately, Posada’s bat is carrying the rest of his game right now, so we don’t need to worry about such scenarios.. yet

[44] agreed.

By: williamnyy23

williamnyy23 — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 16:56:53 +0000

[53] Marginal utility isn’t a one way concept. It can increase and decrease. That’s why it is foolish to assume all wins have the same value to every team.

As for your second point, I’d like to see the explanation because the value of a win should somehow be related to the revenue opportunities it creates (unless the team has an owner who is only interested in the sporting angle).

By: RIYank

RIYank — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 16:35:04 +0000

[52] What’s likely is that the marginal value isn’t constant, but doesn’t decrease monotonically, either. An extra W probably gains most revenue for a team that’s already at about 90 wins. Plainly a theoretical team at some ridiculous level, say 140 wins, would add almost no revenue by moving to 141 wins; by the same token it seems likely that a team winning only 50 games wouldn’t gain much by adding one more.

You might think that the marginal value of a W would depend heavily on the market of the team. That is, suppose an extra W makes fans more excited. That generates much more money for the Yankees, you might think, since they have far more fans who’ll spend more money when more excited than, say, the Cardinals have. But it turns out empirically that this is not born out. I think Bradbury gives his theory of why in his book, but I can’t remember the specifics.

By: williamnyy23

williamnyy23 — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 16:13:40 +0000

[35] You’d think so, but I’d like to see his numbers. I also linked to him because he is credible, but I’d be curious to see his method. If he is factoring in marginal utility, it would be groundbreaking for these kinds of valuations. In fact, for his Howard valuation, he stated that he assumed the Phillies would be an average team, which definitely discounts his valuation.

As for your point about there not being declining marginal utility for wins, well, I find that very hard to believe. Just about everything has marginal utility. Just because superstars get paid more doesn’t disprove the notion. If you ignore all other factors, when owners pay players they are buying expected wins. Each marginal win has a unique value to a team. The Pirates probably don’t value a marginal win in the same way the Cardinals do, for instance. The reason is because that extra win isn’t as likely to drive greater revenue opportunities. It’s a very complicated concept, which is why I don’t really like the idea of trying to assign a dollar value to statistics.

By: Chyll Will

Chyll Will — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 16:13:08 +0000

[50] Sponsored by the Committee for Unwritten Rules…

By: The Hawk

The Hawk — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 15:40:29 +0000

[47] There’s a Nolan Ryan fund???

By: monkeypants

monkeypants — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 15:37:05 +0000

[48] Right! That explains his ability to get on base by hitting the ball at IFs (like last night), to get base hits almost exclusively without getting the ball out of the IF (last week), to hit HRs that don’t leave the park (last year). The man is a walking (running?) paradox!

By: RIYank

RIYank — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 15:33:17 +0000

[46] I knew it!
Brett Gardner is not hampered by the laws of physics. Once we fully accept this fact, everything else about Brett will make perfect sense.

By: monkeypants

monkeypants — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 15:31:02 +0000

[36] If Nolan Ryan can convince one organization to push starters a little more, and this radical idea catches on across the league…I’ll contribute to the fund that pays him.

By: The Hawk

The Hawk — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 15:22:50 +0000

I’m pro-Cervelli. He’s my new Melky, maybe – the “intangibles” guy, the energetic youngster. But also, he’s good behind the plate, seems to handle the pitchers well, and has hit pretty well thus far. He’s a work in progress to be sure, and his batting may go south but I’d like to see him play more.

In other news there was a fly ball hit by Gardner last night that floated through the air like a balloon.

By: The Hawk

The Hawk — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 15:17:25 +0000

[33] That’s exactly the point, that what is actually iffy is considered above average. Or really, what is decent is considered excellent.

I realize it’s the standard now, but the consensus here seems a bit off-the-mark simply because the more pitchers involved in a game, the more likely you’re gonna come across one having a “bad day”. I just think WHIP and ERA are telling, but IP per game should be used more often to put those numbers into context for starters. Come to think of it, so should the ol’ W-L, god forbid.

By: monkeypants

monkeypants — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 15:15:01 +0000

Now, if the team were willing to take a shot with Montero behind the plate for a couple of weeks, I would be intrigued by that experiment: send Cervelli to the bench, call up Montero to start at C most of the time, DH Posada.

By: monkeypants

monkeypants — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 15:12:25 +0000

[40] Right, you lose the DH. Now, in reality that is not that big of a deal, but managers tend to avoid such a maneuver unless very desperate, and very late in the game.

By: Chyll Will

Chyll Will — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 15:11:06 +0000

[36] Yeah, how about that? I used to hit rocks all the time, too. I don’t get $8 million a year. My mother should have chosen a more reliable banker…

By: monkeypants

monkeypants — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 15:09:37 +0000

[38] And yes, I realize that is a ‘my dog did not bite you because he has no teeth and anyway I don’t own a dog’ argument.

By: RIYank

RIYank — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 15:08:48 +0000

[38] Hm, if Posada is DH-ing, he can’t be moved into the C spot if Cervelli goes down? He can, right? (But you lose the DH, maybe?)

By: rbj

rbj — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 15:08:46 +0000

[35] I wonder if part of the equation is milestones. People will pay to see a declining Pujols still chase A-Rod’s home run record (assuming he breaks Aaron’s/Bond’s record). You might not be getting the full production from the aging superstar that you used to, but you make up for that with talented young guys, while the fannies are in the seat to see The Chase.

[32] Or else it means you carry a third catcher, who would merely be taking a roster spot, waiting for an injury at catcher. And that severely limits what a manager can do, so I’d be against a full time third string catcher (as opposed Ramon Pena? being the emergency catcher)

By: monkeypants

monkeypants — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 15:05:55 +0000

[36] OK, but my point is that having Posada “DH a couple more times a week” means, effectively, making him the starting DH because he is already not catching about two times a week. In other words, he would be not catching about 4 times a week (in your scheme, DHing rather than sitting). In turn, that means making Cervelli in effect the starting catcher.

Given the construction of the team this year, I think this (1) will never happen because no manager is going to regularly play with no BUC on the bench, and (2) should not happen because (a) over the long hall Cervelli will simply not match NJ’s production, and (b) to go this route would almost certainly mean carrying a Chad Moeller type as the double secret emergency BUC.

By: Chyll Will

Chyll Will — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 14:57:45 +0000

[25] Yes, it negates the control theory in general, but would you consider Ryan’s case an outlier to that theory in that he has more or less maintained a higher level of production than most at that stage of his career; there have been plenty of flash-in-the-pan types and he certainly isn’t one of them. The Mets, despite their protestations, could’ve easily bid on Ryan and dusted the Phillies in the proceedings, and Ryan would likely be receptive to that given how he was perceptibly treated at the beginning of his career.

By: RIYank

RIYank — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 14:57:31 +0000

Quick note on the astounding valuations of Pujols:
The person that David Pinto [7] cites is J. C. Bradbury. Bradbury is an economist, and so is very unlikely to be ignoring declining marginal utility!
I don’t believe there’s any evidence of declining marginal return on Wins, actually. Market pricing seems to indicate the opposite, if anything — huge stars are paid more per Win, I presume because once a team is at 88 wins it’s harder to find upgrades.

But of course, Bradbury didn’t mean to be predicting that Pujols will get $50M/year. He mainly meant to be dramatizing the extent to which Howard is going to be overpaid, and partly to speculate that the market price for Wins may be rising.

Yeah, okay, this isn’t a “quick note”, but I won’t change the intro clause.