New York Nine: Money well spent?

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Money well spent?

(Pictured: my opinion of how cashman could have spent the steinbrenner's money better than 80 million on AJ Burnett)

Now I know that the Steinbrenners have more money that I can ever imagine, I know in reality the money they spend has little impact on me in my daily life. All that said, it makes me unbelievably angry to see them piss away that money on unworthy bastards like AJ Burnett. Now I'm sure he's a fine man and all and now that he's a yankee so I hope he wins every game, but I don't see this working out. Let's take a look at the stats:

Year	Tm	Lg	G	GS	ShO	W	L	ERA	IP	Hit	K	BB	HBP	WHIP	SLGA	BFP	Pit	HR	TB	ER	DP	SB	CS	PO
2004	FLA	NL	20	19	0	7	6	3.68	120.0	102	113	38	4	1.17	.344	490	1816	9	152	49	11	14	5	2
2005	FLA	NL	32	32	2	12	12	3.44	209.0	184	198	79	7	1.26	.334	873	3296	12	259	80	28	24	6	1
2006	TOR	AL	21	21	1	10	8	3.98	135.7	138	118	39	8	1.30	.413	577	2171	14	216	60	18	18	4	1
2007	TOR	AL	25	25	0	10	8	3.75	165.7	131	176	66	12	1.19	.362	691	2649	23	221	69	19	31	0	0
2008	TOR	AL	35	34	0	18	10	4.07	221.3	211	231	86	9	1.34	.388	957	3650	19	329	100	14	22	9	5

I mean aside from the strikeout rate, which really isn't even amazing what about these numbers say "you know, this guy really deserves a lot of money, and for a long period of time, like five years, I'm sure this will be a worthwhile investment"? He's topped 200 innings three times in his career, incidentally two of them were contract years (shocking). He had tommy john surgery several years ago and his eblow has plagued him ever since on and off, and truth be told even when he is healthy he's really not even that impressive. His career ERA is only slightly over 4, his WHIP is around 1.3, and he's never been an All-star, never been in the top ten for cy young voting! And this guy is an "Ace"? Indeed, I fear that the power that be in the Yankee Universe instead chose to ignore those factors and instead focus on small sample sizes and subjective experince. Consider, in this past year in 38.1 innings against the yankees Burnett sported a nice 1.64ERA with 43 strikeouts and only 6 walks. Those are some damn good numbers, esepcially against a team with an offense like the yankees, but should that be everything? Sure, on a given day Burnett can be absolutely electric, pumping a brutal high 90s fastball and dropping that hammer curve, when he's on there are few that are better, but he's rarely "on" let along healthy. He's 31 years old, I don't see him getting any more durable as he gets older and he's shown to be injury prone, except when he sees those dollar signs flashing, who is to say he won't do the same for the next five years? I have no problem with the yankees spending money, I'd have a tough time being a yankees fan if I didn't, but spend the money judiciously! If you want to piss away money I'll be glad to take it off their hands.

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Some Key Terms to Know When Reading

I throw around a lot of numbers and stats so I figured I should probably explain some of them:

wOBA - a new one I'll be using, short for weighted on-base average is essentially an improvement on OPS. Scaled to average OBP (with .330 the league average) wOBA more properly weighs on-base percentage higher than slugging percentage and more accurately weighs extra base hits (a double isn't worth double of that of a single which is what SLG does) to give a better picture of a batter's worth.

.000/.000/.000 is the industry shorthand for the split stats for batting average, on base percentage, and slugging percentage, in that order, these are some of the more commonly used stats to indicate how productive a hitter is.

OPS - shorthand for On-Base Percentage Plus Slugging is becoming more in vogue in the mainstream media to get a better idea of the raw production of a hitter, instead of saying how often they get a hit OPS shows how productive those hits are.

BABIP - Batting Average on Balls in play, its pretty much what it says, how often that a batter puts in ball in play that it becomes a hit, its a stat that shows if a hitter is just having a lot of bad luck or a hot streak is just fluky. For instance a BABIP of .200 is considered unlucky its not that he's not hitting, he just isn't hitting where the fielders are not there.

OPS+ - as the name implies, OPS+ is OPS but with adjustments to park effects and other outliers to normalize the data. Indeed, as most people know some parks are harder to hit at than others, which this stat compensates for, 100 being the baseline of league average

WAR - Wins Above Replacement, as its name suggests, provides an exact number of wins a particular player is worth above what your average AAA player, or replacement player would provide in his absence. Although this is a very difficult stat to explain (I don't totally get it personally) the stat is beautifully simple in that it provides a precise value of either a pitcher or hitter to his particular team, which enables teams to monetize their worth and properly assign a dollar value.

ERA+ - similar to OPS+ its a more highly sophisticated way of evaluating a pitcher's performance adjusted for park effects, this also is on a numerical basis with 100 as league average.

FIP - short for fielding independent pitching, FIP measures the only aspects of the game that a pitcher has total control over, strikeouts, walks, and home runs. Scaled to ERA, FIP gives a truer indication of a pitcher's true talent by removing the luck apparent with balls in play.

WHIP - Walks and Hits per innings pitched, a little more well known stat, but a good indicator of how effective a pitcher is. Chances are if a guy is walking a lot of guys and giving up a hot of hits, he's not pitching all that well.

xFIP- a variation of FIP which normalizes home run rates as a way to discount aberrational home run rates that are either too high or too low to reasonably sustain.

UZR- Short of Ultimate Zone Rating, this is the number of runs above or below average a fielder is in both range runs and error runs combined. This is a difficult stat to understand because it's not one of those stats you can figure out at home, because it includes a bevy of factors including park effects and speed. As a consequence, its not a perfect stat, but its the best defensive stat we have. Also seen as UZR/150 is the Ultimate Zone rating per 150 games.

RngR - Range Runs is defined as the number of runs above or below average a fielder is, determined by how the fielder is able to get to balls hit in his vicinity. Also not a perfect fielding stat, but one of the many fielding stats that help as as fans get a fuller picture of a player's defensive prowess.

New York Nine

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Money well spent?

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