Rangers Sign Shin-Soo Choo - 7 Years

[BigDDude]

One would imagine that possessing the best starting pitching in the league, as was probably the case with Oakland from 2000-2003, would be a ticket to advancing out of the first round, yet the Athletics lost in the ALDS all four years, actually losing in a winner-take-all Game Five all four years. Baseball is a sport where truth emerges over enormous data samples, playing nearly every day for six months. To think that anything definitive or decisive will necessarily emerge by incongruously funneling 162-game results into a best-of-five (or even best-of-seven) playoff series is fallacious.

Just look at Texas: the Rangers were the best team in baseball over the two-year span of 2010-2011, but they did not win the World Series. The fact that they lost the World Series in 2011 to St. Louis was largely a fluke; that's the nature of baseball in small samples, where these isn't enough of a volume to neutralize all the randomness, fickleness, and volatility of the game.

The real championship in baseball should be the regular season. Postseason results can occasionally confirm the regular season, as in 2013, but usually they just create confusion.

Nothing to argue with there.

My only comment would be to the part I have bolded, and said comment is that you have illustrated why, IMO, that playing Roto sytle fantasyball is the best way to go if you are a fantasy player. Roto is exactly what you describe, a collection of 162 games of stats to see who is better, and who is best.

I know that is an offbeat tangent, but I have so little else to contribute, that you just gave me an opening to state my opinion.

 

[fordman84]

... but these are long-term deals ...

I just wouldn't want to be paying Choo this type of salary when he's thirty-seven or thirty-eight. Rarely do such free agent deals provide teams with the value that they're expecting, for they're paying more for what a guy has already done than what he is likely to do as he ages.

Maybe the Rangers' new television deal renders the risk palatable, and the short-term promise is obvious. However, I don't think that these contracts make any real business sense, whether it's the Mariners with Cano, the Angels with Pujols, the Yankees with some of their signings, or what have you. The Red Sox figured out that you can get similar, if not better, results with a much more efficient economic model that creates greater roster flexibility and clubhouse cohesion.

And unlike the Mariners, the Rangers shouldn't have been desperate to sign any particular free agent.

We needed a leadoff hitter, a left fielder, and someone who can get on base. Couple that with there being literally no good outfielders in next years FA crop and that is why Texas signed Choo. Overpaid, sure looks like it. Will have to see what other OF'ers get in a couple of years. This might end up being a bargain. Remember, when Texas signed Beltre everyone said he was overpaid and wouldn't hold up.

 

[BigDDude]

We needed a leadoff hitter, a left fielder, and someone who can get on base. Couple that with there being literally no good outfielders in next years FA crop and that is why Texas signed Choo. Overpaid, sure looks like it. Will have to see what other OF'ers get in a couple of years. This might end up being a bargain. Remember, when Texas signed Beltre everyone said he was overpaid and wouldn't hold up.

First, let me agree with the general sentiment of the bolded part above. That said, Beltre is a hard guy to use as an example in a bang for the buck argument, due to his production falling off mid career in his Seattle years, only to come back bigger and better once he left. Most guys do not have his career arch is all.

 

[TDs3nOut]

One would imagine that possessing the best starting pitching in the league, as was probably the case with Oakland from 2000-2003, would be a ticket to advancing out of the first round, yet the Athletics lost in the ALDS all four years, actually losing in a winner-take-all Game Five all four years. Baseball is a sport where truth emerges over enormous data samples, playing nearly every day for six months. To think that anything definitive or decisive will necessarily emerge by incongruously funneling 162-game results into a best-of-five (or even best-of-seven) playoff series is fallacious.

Just look at Texas: the Rangers were the best team in baseball over the two-year span of 2010-2011, but they did not win the World Series. The fact that they lost the World Series in 2011 to St. Louis was largely a fluke; that's the nature of baseball in small samples, where these isn't enough of a volume to neutralize all the randomness, fickleness, and volatility of the game.

The real championship in baseball should be the regular season. Postseason results can occasionally confirm the regular season, as in 2013, but usually they just create confusion.

Interesting thought, but it certainly is contrary to the trend of expanded playoffs. Does make me feel a bit nostalgic for the old days when there were only two divisions in each league and only four team advanced to the postseason, though.

 

[GMATCa]

Nothing to argue with there.

My only comment would be to the part I have bolded, and said comment is that you have illustrated why, IMO, that playing Roto sytle fantasyball is the best way to go if you are a fantasy player. Roto is exactly what you describe, a collection of 162 games of stats to see who is better, and who is best.

I know that is an offbeat tangent, but I have so little else to contribute, that you just gave me an opening to state my opinion.

... a fair point.

 

[GMATCa]

Interesting thought, but it certainly is contrary to the trend of expanded playoffs. Does make me feel a bit nostalgic for the old days when there were only two divisions in each league and only four team advanced to the postseason, though.

Well, if I had my druthers, then short of putting all the teams in one big league, having them all play the same schedule, and deciding the championship with no postseason, my preference would be to return to the format of two divisions per league. I would then have the two division champions play a best-of-fifteen League Championship Series during the first half of October, followed by a best-of-fifteen World Series during the second half of October. At least that way, there would be a larger playoff sample and a better chance of somewhat replicating the game's rhythms and flow, where hitting comes in waves, teams rotate five starting pitchers or at least four, and fluky plays and dubious calls have a little better opportunity to balance each other. I also think that entertainment value would be high as tension built, sometimes reaching unbearable levels, and story lines developed as in a mini-series.

Think about it: Major League Baseball plays twice as many regular season games as the NBA and NHL, yet its playoff series are no longer and sometimes even shorter. Intellectually—and in terms of the sport's dynamics—the format makes no sense.

Of course, the truth of the matter is that the postseason is a commercial gimmick designed to maximize revenues for more markets. To be sure, MLB is a business, but the media does a poor job of analyzing what the postseason really represents, in part because of the incestuous relationship between the business and the media, which is a business itself.

Either way, the postseason makes for great competition and drama, but trying to funnel six-month, everyday, 162-game results into some hybrid of the NCAA tournament and the NHL playoffs is generally going to produce quite a bit of distortion. Indeed, that's largely why since the adoption of the three-tiered playoff format, only three times (1995 with Atlanta and Cleveland, 1999 with Atlanta and New York, and 2013 with St. Louis and Boston) have the teams with the best records in their respective leagues met in the World Series. That's why the Florida Marlins never finished in first place yet won more World Series than the Atlanta Braves while the Braves were finishing in first place in fourteen consecutive completed seasons.

For one particular example of the postseason's fluky nature, consider the 1998 playoffs. Due to a television-oriented scheduling quirk, San Diego's Kevin Brown, arguably the best pitcher in the sport that season, was able to start three of the Padres' first six playoff games, or 50 percent of his team's games during about a week-long span. In the regular season, conversely, Brown started only 21.6 percent of the Padres' games.

Largely because of this incongruous distortion, San Diego went 6-1 in its first seven playoff games that year. Then the Padres went 1-6 in their last seven playoff games, but still won the National League pennant. However, were the Padres, who won the third-most games in the NL during that regular season, convincingly the best team in the league? Or did they randomly benefit from a playoff format that resembled Wheel of Fortune in its nature?

The problem is then that the media tries to make a big deal, intellectually, out of playoff results that are often the intellectual equivalent of coin flips. Sure, you can sometimes take something substantive away from playoff results, especially over a slightly wider sample. For instance, I don't think that Detroit losing in the postseason to a seemingly more athletic club in each of the last three years is coincidental. But usually, there isn't great rhyme or reason for what happens in the playoffs because the sample sizes are just too small given baseball's volatility and fickleness.

Perhaps the best example was the Arizona Diamondbacks of Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling. Everyone likes to talk about how those two dominant starting pitchers created such a great formula for playoff success, and sure enough, the Diamondbacks won out in 2001. But they won two of their three series in their last at-bat of a winner-take-all game at home, suggesting how slim their margin for error actually happened to be and how they were thus lucky as much as good. And then in 2002, with a 98-win Arizona team where Johnson and Schilling combined to win 47 games, the Diamondbacks again won the NL West. Yet this time, they failed to win a single postseason game, being swept out of the NLDS. So if there was some reliable postseason formula in baseball, it wouldn't veer from winning the World Series one year to being swept out of the playoffs without winning a single game the next year. That would be like Michael Jordan's Chicago Bulls winning the championship one year and then, despite an elite regular season record the next year, being swept out of the First Round despite enjoying home-court advantage. But of course, that occurrence never took place; in each of Jordan's final six full seasons with Chicago, the Bulls won the championship. Media and fans make a major mistake, then, when they think that the postseason in MLB is analogous to the postseason in the NBA, where there are half as many games played in the regular season, where there are well over a hundred points scored in every game (thus not needing as many games to create big volumes), and where every mistake or success is worth roughly the same quantitative value (thus reducing volatility in results).

 

[GMATCa]

We needed a leadoff hitter, a left fielder, and someone who can get on base. Couple that with there being literally no good outfielders in next years FA crop and that is why Texas signed Choo. Overpaid, sure looks like it. Will have to see what other OF'ers get in a couple of years. This might end up being a bargain. Remember, when Texas signed Beltre everyone said he was overpaid and wouldn't hold up.

Yes, but the Rangers kept that contract under $100M and to a slightly shorter length. (For the record, I wasn't nearly as skeptical of that deal.)

Wildly overpaying long-term to fill a short-term hole represents the classic free agent trap. Choo is a very good player: last year he did 20-20 (homers and steals) with an on-base percentage above .420, and outside of Barry Bonds and Rickey Henderson, not many players can make that claim. But after two or three years, Choo could become a .260 hitter tallying 10 homers and 10 steals with a .360 OBP and declining defense. At that time, he would still be a good player for hitting at or near the top of the order, but he'd be making about twice as much money as he'd be worth.

 

[fordman84]

Yes, but the Rangers kept that contract under $100M and to a slightly shorter length. (For the record, I wasn't nearly as skeptical of that deal.)

Wildly overpaying long-term to fill a short-term hole represents the classic free agent trap. Choo is a very good player: last year he did 20-20 (homers and steals) with an on-base percentage above .420, and outside of Barry Bonds and Rickey Henderson, not many players can make that claim. But after two or three years, Choo could become a .260 hitter tallying 10 homers and 10 steals with a .360 OBP and declining defense. At that time, he would still be a good player for hitting at or near the top of the order, but he'd be making about twice as much money as he'd be worth.

That's the problem all teams have, if you don't have a stocked farm system at all positions. You end up paying long term for a short term fix. There aren't many players that hit FA in their prime and sign 5-6 year contracts. If they are impact players, they are getting more years than they are worth. Every major FA that switched teams (meaning no hometown discount) gets that. Josh is the most reasonable contract, but even 5 years for someone with his mileage is insane. Someone will give Cruz 5 years, and he should be 3 tops. You just have to give those twighlight year contracts for guys who make it to FA. The Rangers just don't have anyone in their minors that could step in. Choice now perhaps, but do you want to roll out that experiment and end up having to give up top prospects in a trade if it doesn't work out? Or waste another year of the pretty decent SP rotation on an anemic offense?

 

[anotheridiot]

Pretty sure 130 M in Texas > New York

The report was the yankees offered 140 and Boreass wanted Elsbury money, an extra 14 or so million. Tried to play hard ball, ended up costing his player 10 million.

 

[GMATCa]

That's the problem all teams have, if you don't have a stocked farm system at all positions. You end up paying long term for a short term fix. There aren't many players that hit FA in their prime and sign 5-6 year contracts. If they are impact players, they are getting more years than they are worth. Every major FA that switched teams (meaning no hometown discount) gets that. Josh is the most reasonable contract, but even 5 years for someone with his mileage is insane. Someone will give Cruz 5 years, and he should be 3 tops. You just have to give those twighlight year contracts for guys who make it to FA. The Rangers just don't have anyone in their minors that could step in. Choice now perhaps, but do you want to roll out that experiment and end up having to give up top prospects in a trade if it doesn't work out? Or waste another year of the pretty decent SP rotation on an anemic offense?

Yeah, that is the dilemma.