ANY chance Ben Sheets rejoins the team?

[rluzinski]

If you are dead set on exploring a hypothetical, how much do you think Sheets' value should be deducted for missing the playoffs? What would you do to try to quantify that?

 

Of course, you are then forced into saying that Sheets' production would have been more valuable had the Brewers not made the playoffs. You are also forced into saying that Sabathia was worth significanly less because of his poor start in the post season. I mean, what team is going to pay $20+ mil for a pitcher who's just going to fall apart in the post season? And the best player in the league is basically worth nothing if his production causes his team to go from 45 wins to 52..

 

Once you start trying to value production relative to its context, it introduces all kinds of hard to answer questions. That doesn't mean it shoudln't be considered but I'm content with context neutral estimates in this situation.

[mkm13]

I am not throwing out a number. I never have. The only number I have thrown out there is that he was not worth 20.6 million LAST YEAR. It did not pass the smell test and is not accurate for the reasons I already explained. This is my last post on this. If people want to continue living in a fantasy world where money grows on trees and think Ben Sheets was worth 20.6 million last year despite missing the playoffs then go ahead.

My only suggestion for the future is for people to be able to look past what a number says and find its true meaning. You can get statistics to say a lot of things.

[mletto157]

That's the problem with the "smell test" or absolutely no evidence other than your own personal opinion. How can you just say "no he was not worth that figure - it is not accurate"? If anything you could say "I don't think he was worth that much," so at least people would know you have absolutely no reason or evidence into thinking this other than "he didn't play in the playoffs."

 

But even the only reason you have is completely flawed. By that logic if he pitched in the playoffs and pitched very poorly, he would have been worth more? CC wasn't hurt, but pitched poor in the playoffs anyway (a few years in a row actually) so is he worth even less than Sheets? At least Sheets was hurt so we could have someone else pitch who might do better.

 

So what would you rather have: a 3.1 ERA 200IP pitcher who gets hurt and misses the playoffs, or a 3.7 ERA 200+ IP pitcher who would have been available in the playoffs, but since we wouldn't have made the playoffs with that pitcher didn't have to play anyway? I'd rather make the playoffs - and I'd pay to make the playoffs; because any team that makes the playoffs has a chance at winning the World Series.

 

Based on the season he had last year, Sheets was worth $20M. He got us to the playoffs. There are many teams out there who would pay that much for a 4+ win player for a chance to make the playoffs.

[Invader3K]

Maybe he was worth that last year based on that analysis referenced, but he's sure not going to get close to that amount any time soon, so I'm not sure why this discussion is continuing in this thread which was supposed to be about where Sheets might end up.

 

Based on the link I posted earlier, it's sounding like he might not even pitch this season.

[JJHardy7]

Is there any way to calculate the value lost by Sheets (or any other player) when out? I mean if you're going from a #1 to a #6 for x innings and the bullpen maybe gets over worked for x innings and their production is hurt because of that it seems to me there's a lot of moving parts instead of saying player X is worth X period. IMO it has to be pretty difficult to figure that out for a starting pitcher. If a position player gets hurt, it might be a little bit easier to figure that out?

[logan82]

Is there any way to calculate the value lost by Sheets (or any other player) when out? I mean if you're going from a #1 to a #6 for x innings and the bullpen maybe gets over worked for x innings and their production is hurt because of that it seems to me there's a lot of moving parts instead of saying player X is worth X period. IMO it has to be pretty difficult to figure that out for a starting pitcher. If a position player gets hurt, it might be a little bit easier to figure that out?

Deosn't matter. That is already figured into the value. The player you are referring to is a replacement player. It is assumed that a replacement player is worth 0 and whatever innings a pitcher pitches is in place of that replacement player. That is why it is value over replacement player. Sheets pitched 198.1 innings at a 3.09 ERA in place of that replacement player.

[JJHardy7]

Deosn't matter. That is already figured into the value. The player you are referring to is a replacement player. It is assumed that a replacement player is worth 0 and whatever innings a pitcher pitches is in place of that replacement player. That is why it is value over replacement player. Sheets pitched 198.1 innings at a 3.09 ERA in place of that replacement player.

 

I understand that, but shouldn't there be some 'negative' value? And this question isn't just a Sheets question. He pitched nearly 200 innings last year so it probably wouldn't have made a lot of difference.

 

For example, if Sheets pitched 100 innings last year of 3.09 ERA and then was out for the year. The Brewers lacking depth and prospects call up a terrible, terrible pitcher that starts every spot in Sheets place and finished with 50 IP of 9.00 ERA and the bullpen picks up 50 extra IP and their ERA (and other indicators) go up also compared to how they would've been otherwise. I don't think simply putting in a 0 for a replacement player makes sense at each situation. Again, this isn't a Sheets thing from last year and it's not a 'real' example.

[mkm13]

That's the problem with the "smell test" or absolutely no evidence other than your own personal opinion. How can you just say "no he was not worth that figure - it is not accurate"? If anything you could say "I don't think he was worth that much," so at least people would know you have absolutely no reason or evidence into thinking this other than "he didn't play in the playoffs."

 

But even the only reason you have is completely flawed. By that logic if he pitched in the playoffs and pitched very poorly, he would have been worth more? ...

This is about whether he was worth 21 million last year. The fact is he couldn't pitch at the end of the year. That has to be taken into account when looking at his value (im not talking regular season). Why play the "what if" game? He couldn't play so his potential during the playoffs shouldn't matter.

 

He himself did not get us into the playoffs. A lot of people got us into the playoffs...he was one of the many. List the teams that would pay a player 21 million dollars for 4 wins during the regular season knowing that once they got to the playoffs he couldn't play. There is none. You have to look at it like that because that is what happened.

 

 

(pared back long quote --1992)

[Baldkin]

Every single team who just missed out on the playoffs would've paid him 21 million last year in retrospect. Most notably the Yankees and Mets.

[Thurston Fluff]

You think Sheets performance wasn't worth $20 mil because he wasn't available in the playoffs? That's fine. Fangraphs is looking at the regular season only. They are saying his 3.1 ERA over 200 IP during the regular season is worth $20 on the open market.

 

What does fangrpahs say the value of a pitcher who is guaranteed not to be available for September would be? Since you are measuring Sheets past tense we know that is a true circumstance. I don't know how using contracts handed out to players who are, to one degree or another, expected to be available is of any use what so ever in correctly assessing the value of someone who is guaranteed not to be. You cannot use a tool meant to measure relative value going forward as a way to measure value of something in the past when a major component of that tool is based on expected availability to one degree or another and that availability is known not to exist.

Sorry but I believe you've completely misused fangraphs. It is not of any value in objective measurement in this particular case.

[cwolf2012]

So you're looking for the opportunity cost lost by him not pitching? I guess it would be Total value/Total starts * number of starts missed. I don't see how you can subtract that number from his total value, but whatever.

 

If Sheets stays healthy for another 20 innings last season, his value would have been about 22.7 million assuming he continued at the same pace. So the opportunity cost of him missing 3 starts was ~2.1 million dollars (about .5 wins). His injuries cost the Brewers about 1/2 of a win for the season.

[Thurston Fluff]

So you're looking for the opportunity cost lost by him not pitching?

 

no I'm arguing you cannot use contracts handed out to players who are expected to be healthy as a means to measure the value of someone who is guaranteed not to be. That is a vital part of any contract and since fangraphs does not take a guarantee of not being healthy into account it cannot be used to assess the value of someone who was not healthy. It could be used very well to assess what he might get in the future, which is what it was designed for, but not to look at his relative worth in the past when he was not. No offense intended to Russ, I learn a lot from him, but in this particular instance I think he was putting a round peg in a square hole.

[cwolf2012]

That's easy. You just take Value/IP, and you have the number you'd need to compare the value of 2 pitchers when both are healthy.

 

And you can absolutely make an estimate on how much you should be giving in incentives based upon that number. In Sheets' case before this season, you can pretty safely estimate that he's going to pitch about 150 innings. Now that's not necessarily true, since he obviously pitched more than that. If his elbow issue had set in before it did, then he could have pitched a lot fewer than 150 innings. But on average, that's what you expect him to do.

 

So from there, you take a 3 year average of Value/IP and multiply it by the number of innings you can reasonably expect him to pitch. Then you have what that person should be worth on the FA market. Now this is pretty fast and dirty, but it's not a bad way to guess at the true value of a pitcher. In the case with Sheets, he has about $100,000 dollars/IP value on the free market over the last 3 years. Since he's coming off an injury, that value is likely to go down. As such, the 80-100 IP a GM could reasonably expect him to pitch next year would be worth ~$6-7m.

 

To put this in context of last season, we really could only expect him to pitch 150 innings, as that is the average of the 3 seasons before that. At $100,000/IP for value, you could reasonably expect him to put up about $15m of value. As it was, he exceeded that by over $5m. I think we got way more value out of Sheets last year than we reasonably could have expected before the season started.

 

The extra five million was gained in the opportunity that he would pitch an extra 50 innings. In the same respect, in 2006, we could have reasonably expected him to pitch somewhere around 180 innings based upon the 3 seasons before it. He ended up pitching only 108, so we lost 72 innings of opportunity due to injury. He still had a total value that exceeded his contract, but we lost nearly 8 million dollars of true value to injury. That's opportunity cost.

 

If you begin to value specific wins over others based upon context, then we've lost any means to quantify the argument, and it regresses to a "no, he wasn't" "yes, he was" argument.

[rluzinski]

Backup,

 

I think there is some major misunderstanding going on here. I didn't initially even bring up the fangraph values nor have I given it my stamp of approval. I don't know how many times I've said I don't completely agree with all of its methodologies. I'M the one who pointed out it's origins.

 

When a team signs a player, they are assuming SOME level of risk for every player. Some more than other's obviously. I have NO trouble docking Sheets for having had 100 percent chance of being hurt for the post season. Go for it, if you can figure out how much.

[mletto157]

List the teams that would pay a player 21 million dollars for 4 wins during the regular season knowing that once they got to the playoffs he couldn't play. There is none. You have to look at it like that because that is what happened.

 

As was said - probably any team that missed the playoffs by one or two games would have last year. Because like I said - any team that makes it to the playoffs has at least a chance at winning the World Series.

 

That's why most say the skill of baseball is making it to the playoffs - once your there luck plays a much larger factor just because a team on a hot streak at the right time can beat any other team. Look at last year for example... the Cubs won 100 games and got swept... the Angels had the best record in baseball. The same can be said about most baseball seasons; the best teams in the league (talent wise) are rarely the winners of the World Series.

[Thurston Fluff]

If you begin to value specific wins over others based upon context, then we've lost any means to quantify the argument, and it regresses to a "no, he wasn't" "yes, he was" argument.

 

I'm not arueing specific wins and losses I'm arguing the use of fangraphs as a viable means of assessing past performance. It does not take into account players not being healthy when they sign the contract so you cannot use it to assess a players relative worth when it is known they are not healthy. Granted contracts take into consideration player health as a risk factor but they do not take into account guaranteed missing of games. The very few times there are contracts like that you do not see the figure $20.5 million come up.

 

I guess a common sense argument could be - Do you really think any GM would think a player is worth $20.5 million if he knew ahead of time it was a guarantee they would not be available come September? Personally I don't. If it is true you wouldn't find one then why is it true that he was worth that? Part of the fangrpahs equation is set by what teams value players at so if no team would pay that much for a guaranteed injured player then it stands to reason they are not worth it. I certainly don't think it can be determined by using a predictive tool in a descriptive past tense manner.

 

To be clear I'm not really arguing if he was worth that much as much as I am the method/tools used to arrive at that number.

 

If you wish to assess Sheets value I think you have to use some other means. It is not possible to use free agent contracts in a formula to assess a past performance if no free agent contract was handed out to someone who was known to fit the circumstances we know about Sheets now.

[Invader3K]

If you guys are going to keep analyzing Fangraphs, maybe you should take this discussion to "Statistical Analysis."

[Thurston Fluff]

I didn't initially even bring up the fangraph values nor have I given it my stamp of approval. I don't know how many times I've said I don't completely agree with all of its methodologies. I'M the one who pointed out it's origins.

 

My bad Russ. sorry for accusing you of something you didn't do. I thought it odd you would use that. I guess I'm getting some posts confused. I wish there was a way to assess his true value but I'm not sure how. I just don't think fangraphs does it well at all.

How about this for quick and dirty. Melvin signed Soup primarily for his durability and he was deemed to be worth 10-12 million. Lets subtract that from fangraphs 20.5 million and settle on him being roughly worth what he was paid. Not scientific but maybe fair enough to get us to sing the praises of Brewer nation together once again?

[cwolf2012]

Backupcatchers, do you consider fangraphs "runs above replacement" to be a valid statistic (do you question its validity as much as the dollar value?)? The value number is simply a translation of that stat.

 

EDIT: The hypothetical of "Would they sign him if they knew he wouldn't be available?" seems pointless to me. You can't know for certain anything that will happen in advance, you can only make predictions. Regardless, if DM had the option of having Sheets last year for 10 million with the guarantee that he would give 4.3 WAR but be unavailable for the playoffs, I would really really hope he would take that deal.