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Ugh . . . Pending Fire Sale Before July 31

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  • I kind of agree with Lowell, but it's tough because there are almost like three kinds of professional baseball being played now. There's the fuck it, unlimited budget, guys like the Dodgers, Yankees, Red Sox and to an extent the Tigers. There's the middle of the road teams that have a budget but can go over, and then there's the bottom tier teams that have a budget and can't go over. Oh, there's also the Marlins.

    Anyway, Lowell's mindset works great for a team that can spend good money after bad and can deal prospects away because their scouts don't like his mental makeup or some intangible shit like that. Call it the Tigers 2004-2014 plan. I really don't think there's a trade in which they came out behind when they were dealing prospects, even if BA and the stat community both screamed they were giving up way too much to get the players they were getting. With the exception of Andrew Miller (and that deserves a big asterisk anyway because what he was meant to be and what he is are so different) is there even a player they traded in that timeframe that's a legitimate difference making major leaguer? That's where I think the Lowell mindset can work. Internally make up your mind you don't like top prospect X. Deal him for established star. Let the stat community wring their hands how dumb a move it is, and the vast majority of the time, look like a genius because the prospect never made it.

    If you have a budget, you can't deal away prospects with reckless abandon because they're cheap labor. You hope the analytics tell you what you need to know. Hell, I'd argue that you can go ahead and do away with a scouting department and instead have one or two scouts in the entire organization if you're on a super tight budget. Baseball's really easy to quantify because it's an individual game masquerading as a team sport. You can absolutely quantify an individual's impact with minimal effort.

    Now, when you're assembling a roster, go for it. Give me stats. Give me analytics. Give me all that. But when it comes to prospects, I'm lukewarm on the numbers game and believe that the "eye test" works a lot.
    Last edited by Swifty; 08-21-2015, 12:26 PM.

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    • Was gonna say I think we are on our own level at the bottom. The teams on the bottom level might not have a big budget but they DO spend in the draft/other parts(they don't mind throwing in a million or 2 to get a better prospect) and even IFA. We do none of it! We draft guys who are high risk/high reward while other teams go for talent and try to get the most Pool Money possible.

      As for the IFA Market,don't even get me started. Next year only like 6 teams can even be involved in the IFA market

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      • Originally posted by marlinsfan24 View Post
        “I like it to a certain degree,” Lowell said the other day at Marlins Park. “I don’t like it where I think some people are so extreme that they believe the numbers can explain the outcome day in, day out. Baseball is so weird. You can have a guy that swings the bat really well and go 0-for-4, and guy that swings terribly and goes 2-for-4. Does that mean the guy who swung the bat bad is a better player? I think it evens out over the course of a season.”
        This is the problem with what Lowell said. Statistics are about sample size. You don't look at a player's game by game stats. Doing that shows he doesn't really understand stats. If the player swings a bat really well, it will even out numerically regardless of if he has a bad game. You are who you are.

        A problem with statistics is when it comes to something like, say, Jose Bautista or Ben Zobrists who had years of mediocrity before breaking out into great players. Did they legitimately change, or were they "lucky" for an entire year like Garrett Jones putting up a 146 OPS+. Vise versa too, with things like Adrian Beltre in his walk year with Seattle or Lowell before we traded him.

        Figuring out what's progression/regression and what is an outlier, scouting will help a lot with that. Though as data gathering becomes more advanced, the better statistics will be at figuring that out.

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