Tigers Fire GM Dave Dombrowski

[thatnewguy]

I found this reading about Dombrowski's departure, and how some guy started valuing GM performance. GM WAR?

http://sabr.org/sites/default/files/...It-2014-04.pdf

A word of caution - it likes Beinfest

Then it's garbage.

[nny]

(I really only read page 37 and 38, which is where it talks about it's formulas)

Why it likes Beinfest so much:

1) It ignores your minor league system and only looks at trades and FA signings

2) Basically, ROI for trades is: ((New players WAR * Cost of win) + salary of old player) / ((Old players WAR * Cost of win) + salary of new player)

Nothing really wrong with this, as the point is ROI. Money saved over money spent. So this is relevant to Loria.

But, like most $-based stats, it's not very good when looking at the bigger picture of wins. The value of a win is different from team to team - a team around playoff wins has a LOT higher value of a win then a team at the bottom of the league.

It doesn't care how well the team does, it cares how much money was saved (using value based off the value given by a free agent signing).

So trading Maybin and Miller for Miguel Cabrera is considered a worse ROI than trading Josh Beckett and Mike Lowell for Hanley and Anibal. For Cabrera, yeah they got the best hitter in the league but they also had to pay his salary. While Hanley and Anibal were both great players making the minimum and we dumped a lot of salary. (This is my assumption, if I get bored enough I might actually calculate the ROI to see)

In other words, it's going to greatly value those that dump salary for prospects. Guess who did that the most? Which brings me to...

3) It adds a variable to account for ownership meddling in it's FA signing ROI, but not it's trading ROI.

Page 40:

Disregarding organization-level effects may lead to a slight
overestimate of the population variance in GMs’ trading abilities, but it stands to reason
that the effect of ownership influence would be smaller for multiplayer trades than it is
for free agent signings — trading players for players makes for more complicated
transactions requiring more specific knowledge of the players and teams involved, and
unlike for signing free agents, owners’ out-of-pocket expenses are usually not the
primary investments in the deals

So it already admits this is likely going to overestimate GM trading ability, and that's why Beinfest is so good.

But the last part is the most important part. These deals ARE based off Loria. Because of the situation he was in, Beinfest constantly had to dump salary

So basically, the stat greatly values dumping salary for prospects and Beinfest was in the #1 (and not even close) job for dumping salary for prospects.

- - - - - - - - - -

Further why it's stupid and going to point #1:

Extensions/re-signing players is also ignored. So Detroit got two years of Cabrera for it's ROI

[HUGG]

Are we still pretending this organization wasn't in much better shape when Beinfest was in charge?

[thatnewguy]

Are we still pretending this organization wasn't in much better shape when Beinfest was in charge?

This is basically the same shitty organization. We've had two first round picks be decent major leaguers in the entire Beinfest/Jennings era. Dombrowksi these people are not.

[marlinsfan24]

Are we still pretending this organization wasn't in much better shape when Beinfest was in charge?

This. Though nothings changed at all really. Same shitty decision making.

[HUGG]

I mean, it's more an indictment of Jennings/Hill than it is support of Beinfest, but still.

[thatnewguy]

As far as I'm concerned, it's just a new coat of paint on the same shitty car. The engine for the most part is the same and since Hill and Jennings were Beinfest's underlings, it's not like they are doing things any differently.

[HUGG]

Boston.

Swift nailed it. New President of Baseball Ops, Cherington done as GM