As for a contracts influence on keeping a guy I think we can both agree that it depends on the contract in question AND your ability to replace the guy you want to cut.

If the guy had three years left at 10 Mil per well then yes your going to keep him and hope to get something for them (ANYTHING) to minimize the total loss of the original mistake. But if lets say Ollie had two years left he should still be cut based on his performance.

I know many blame the Wilpons for this but they are not the ones who actually made the deal. The GM did!

Omar signed him and was reluctant to cut him because the signing was HIS decision and cutting him and Castillo would have been a knock on his judgement. Sort of a black mark on his tenure he would have to live with. People will talk about those signings for the rest of Omar’s career! He chose not to admit that and hoped he could turn those two around enough to get something for them. He failed yet again.

The Owners usually don’t make the baseball decisions (Yankees one of the exceptions here). They set a budget and it is the GM’s job to build to that budget.
If a GM believes a player is not worth keeping he should have no issues cutting that player and replacing him. If he doesn’t do that then it is usually for the reason I stated above! Not ownership.

The Owner should not and in most cases does not care how that budget is spent provided the job is getting done.

So any GM worth his salt who believes a player is useless should be willing to cut that player regardless of contract status and the only consequence will be he can not respend that money until that contract is up.

Now because Sandy did not have any assignable black mark associated with cutting Perez and Castillo (they weren’t HIS mistake) he cut them for performance reasons and simply stayed within the budget the Owners had set. He didn’t try and respend that money and will live with that budgetary loss until the contracts expire (which happens to be 2012)

Sandy had about 10 Mil to play with ON TOP of what Perez and Castillo were owed and filled in as best as he could while staying under the budget. (This is why Feliciano and Takahashi were let go), And the Owners really can’t say no to cutting Perez under those conditions! Since it does not affect the budget! They are paying as much as they expected to pay for this season but they are getting a better team (we hope anyway) despite the fact they are paying someone who is not on the team.

In my way of thinking the Owner needs to be appeased only in regard to club success not budgetary waste. Provided you stay within the set budget HOW you spend that is irrelevant except where performance is concerned.

If you waste 40 mil of a 140 Mil budget but win 90+ games the wasted 40 Mil is meaningless as the job got done and as soon as that wasted money comes out of the budget you will reap the savings and reduce the budget without affecting the on field performance of the club. You will merely get rid of the waste product.

Now I am not meaning to suggest here that Bay is the next target but lets say on a hypothetical he has a horrible year next year and we can fill his position with a 1 Mil player that gives us good performance.
We will owe Jason a lot of money at that point and maybe we won’t cut him right away but I would not play him or keep him merely for the fact he has a high contract with X years left.

You could (even SHOULD) try and trade him and be willing to pay what your already paying him to get something else and if that can’t be done not be afraid to cut him and put a productive player into his roster spot.

Cause in the end the limiting factor in Baseball isn’t the money it’s the Limited 25 man roster that equalizes the field for all teams.

And a good GM makes his plans around that limited resource not the money used to fill it!
He should simply cut those that do not deserve a roster spot and make do until that money becomes free to use again.

One of the only things about Sandy and moneyball that is encouraging is the fact that he can find a lot of good roster fills for a little money when he needs to. He has a 140 Mil budget with a lot of wasted money built in but he can afford to work around that waste because of his ability to KMart shop for players.

And as I type this my original concerns about losing the guys in this post is now moot since they all appear to have passed waivers so we have retained them.

Sandy took a gamble and won!
So while he took a risk I would not have I can’t really fault the guy for betting and winning.
___________________________________________________________________________________________Ket me try to succinct;ly hit the most salent points:
First off U correctly uinterpreted my personal choice of scything the 2 weeds(Castillo,Perez) off the roster this season or earlier in the case of Perez(I would have done so immediately after he rejected a minor league assignment to improve) certainly; not nearly has much on Castillo(I tend to not hold the stupidity of a franchise in offering kings’ ransom to undeserving players against the player. I choose judging his perfomance on it’s own merit compared to other solutuions I have available, NOT merely against the millions I’m wasting since I do not believe any employee in any industry who is already poerforming at their best can increase that performance merely because his employer chooses to increase his salary considerably ie., Beltran was a .270ish career hitter before his megamillions signing, he did not demand megamillions proclaiming to be a Messiah of offense; he did reap the benefits of the bidding bet NY & HOU; however; when we got exactkly what I believe we fought(bid-war) & paid for in 2005. I wasn’t upset because he was Carlos Beltran with an $18M paycheck & NOT Willie Mays’ replicant merely due to a salary increase.
So, Metsie, back on your track while roster considerations should certainly be baseball decisions, Payrolls & budgets are interrelated & despite roster implications are definitely BUSINESS decisions under the purview of BUSINESSMEN(OWNERSHIP), By & large it is my experience that most successful organizations incorporate a plan by which they establish budgetary parameters for it’s varied business interests, for example, I’m relatively certain when the Braves’ GM receives his budget allocation from his superiors at Liberty Communications he’s rarely suprised by more than say 5% from what he’d anticipated. In baseball there is much to say pro & con relative to Private ownership vis a vis Corporate Ownership, here in NY we’re fortunate, in my estimation, to have only experienced the former & not the latter. However, private ownership has a double edged sword of personalization involved with it & it certainly would not suprise me if Omar, for personal reasons eminating from his immedite boss, C.O.O., Jeff Wilpon had been rargeted for “lamefduck” status; basicly, being ‘punished’ publicly by denials of any relief from these two odiferous personalities; as much with the thinking, “your baseball operations people identified these two as necessary to compete, use them to compete!” Jeff knew the villification of Omar from fans derived from constant reminding su[pplied by press would strengthen Jeff’s case to be rid of his baseball operations governor, Omar, ensconced by his father, to control Jeff’s impulsivity as displayed in it’s fullest during Jeff’s 2004 puppeteering of weakwilled Duquette with the acquisition of Zambrano & Benson at the astronomical cost in promising personnel Kazmir, Bautista, Wygginton.

Metsie, footdragging on devouring contracts had already proven a legitimate method of lessening the overall finasncial cost when ownership delayed & dithered on the ultimate fan demanded releases of Roger Cedeno & Kaz Matsui.
Metsie, while it’s easy to conclude the two roster parasites in question were extracted merelly due to lack of current GM responsibility, I would caution that having surmised this current ownership’s previous distaste for a diet of foul contracts; that Alderson demanded the discretuionary power to dispatch poor fitting components as a contingency for accepting this daunting challenge at the Commisioner’s behest.
As to Sandy’s “gambling” proficiency regarding DFA useage in constructing “his” roster; it certainly must be considered that what seems as such a gamble to us certainly may not be as imagined when dealing in the reality of the vast exttent of names appearing on said wire in the final days of ST. What exceptionalism could u assign to Evans,Misch,Accosta, etc that would necessitate their names jumping out at those dumpster diving for immediate possibly emergency solutions? In getting Nick Evans through waivers we did not display the magician’s talent, say a Strawberry or a Harper(Bryce) might require. Just as the Wilderbeast depends upon vast numbers of peers reducing his risks while migrating across that croc filled river, so must Alderson have relied upon the myriad of uncommon names flooding across the wires from 30 sepearate spigots.
Finally, I am of the mindset that after all is said & completed Omar’s inking of Jason Bay will be considered a much more judicous contract than STL extended to Holliday. After both contracts are completely fulfilled and a prioper cost/benefit analysis of the two can be contrasted & compared despite Holiday’s obvious headstart, after comparing the two complete player contributions at bat & in the field.
In like manner, I believe the Santana negotiated megadeal by Jeff Wilpon will ultimately be judged as the most money paid for the least productivity received during the early 21st Century history of this franchise.

After 3 yrs & 3 surgeries, it can certainly be considered justified to doubt Santana will ever exceed the 16 victories he provided in 2008 supported by the most impressive lineup constructed for this franchise during the pre-Madoff apocalypse. Claims attributing the dismal results upon poor run support averages will prove to be one of those misconceptions averaging mathematics can create in lieu of detailed game by game run support examination in support of my conjecture that avg RSG for Santana is completely misleading, I submit this game by game detailed analysis of every Santana GS in ’08,’09,’10.
I chose to evaluate how many games he received zero support in(Shutout) that no pitcher can be expected to win as well as those with minimum support of 2R or fewer. compared to those GS where Santana was supplied ample support for a mere journeyman of 5R or better to compile these amazing totals:
SHUTOUTS:
2008 NONE
2009 2
2010 4(3+1 STL xtra innings 0-0 game while Santana was pitcher of record)
3Y TOTAL: 6 TIMES NYM WERE SHUTOUT IN JOHAN DANTANA GAME STARTS(GS)

2R OR LESS SUPPORT:
2008 9
2009 6
2010 11
3Y TOTAL: 26 GAMES JOHAN SANTANA RECEIVED 2R OR LESS TO WIN WITH

5R OR MORE SUPPORT:
2008 18
2009 8
2010 7
3Y TOTAL: 33 GAMES JOHAN SANTANA RECEIVED AT LEAST 5R OF SUPPORT TO DEFEND FOR THE WIN.

UNEARNED RUNS CHARGED IN JOHAN GS:
YEAR R ER UNEARNED RUNS
2008 74 66 8
2009 67 58 9
2010 67 66 1
3Y TOTAL OF UNEARNED RUNS FORCED UPON SANTANA BY SHODDY DEFENSIVE PLAY: 18R

Metsie as unbelievable as I believe these claims by me may be received by u & other readers I challenge you to perform the analysis yourself and I’ll supply the resource URL I selected for the game score anaklysis. As u may note I paid attention metely to the scores & not the game determination as to W, L or ND. you’ll find this detail supplied ny ESPN @
http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/players/gamelog?playerId=4280

NB u need to select each year & in this case there’s only 3 that are pertinent.

Metsie, I apologize for the length of this response commentary as well as for my meandering into unrelated topics important to me when considering maximizing this franchise with severely resticted resources. Perhaps spending $25M out of a total allocation of $120M (21%) will become as unbearable as we once perceived $12M out of a $150M (8%)allocation. both begin by being vast overpayments for results being provided!

As for a contracts influence on keeping a guy I think we can both agree that it depends on the contract in question AND your ability to replace the guy you want to cut.

If the guy had three years left at 10 Mil per well then yes your going to keep him and hope to get something for them (ANYTHING) to minimize the total loss of the original mistake. But if lets say Ollie had two years left he should still be cut based on his performance.

I know many blame the Wilpons for this but they are not the ones who actually made the deal. The GM did!

Omar signed him and was reluctant to cut him because the signing was HIS decision and cutting him and Castillo would have been a knock on his judgement. Sort of a black mark on his tenure he would have to live with. People will talk about those signings for the rest of Omar’s career! He chose not to admit that and hoped he could turn those two around enough to get something for them. He failed yet again.

The Owners usually don’t make the baseball decisions (Yankees one of the exceptions here). They set a budget and it is the GM’s job to build to that budget.
If a GM believes a player is not worth keeping he should have no issues cutting that player and replacing him. If he doesn’t do that then it is usually for the reason I stated above! Not ownership.

The Owner should not and in most cases does not care how that budget is spent provided the job is getting done.

So any GM worth his salt who believes a player is useless should be willing to cut that player regardless of contract status and the only consequence will be he can not respend that money until that contract is up.

Now because Sandy did not have any assignable black mark associated with cutting Perez and Castillo (they weren’t HIS mistake) he cut them for performance reasons and simply stayed within the budget the Owners had set. He didn’t try and respend that money and will live with that budgetary loss until the contracts expire (which happens to be 2012)

Sandy had about 10 Mil to play with ON TOP of what Perez and Castillo were owed and filled in as best as he could while staying under the budget. (This is why Feliciano and Takahashi were let go), And the Owners really can’t say no to cutting Perez under those conditions! Since it does not affect the budget! They are paying as much as they expected to pay for this season but they are getting a better team (we hope anyway) despite the fact they are paying someone who is not on the team.

In my way of thinking the Owner needs to be appeased only in regard to club success not budgetary waste. Provided you stay within the set budget HOW you spend that is irrelevant except where performance is concerned.

If you waste 40 mil of a 140 Mil budget but win 90+ games the wasted 40 Mil is meaningless as the job got done and as soon as that wasted money comes out of the budget you will reap the savings and reduce the budget without affecting the on field performance of the club. You will merely get rid of the waste product.

Now I am not meaning to suggest here that Bay is the next target but lets say on a hypothetical he has a horrible year next year and we can fill his position with a 1 Mil player that gives us good performance.
We will owe Jason a lot of money at that point and maybe we won’t cut him right away but I would not play him or keep him merely for the fact he has a high contract with X years left.

You could (even SHOULD) try and trade him and be willing to pay what your already paying him to get something else and if that can’t be done not be afraid to cut him and put a productive player into his roster spot.

Cause in the end the limiting factor in Baseball isn’t the money it’s the Limited 25 man roster that equalizes the field for all teams.

And a good GM makes his plans around that limited resource not the money used to fill it!
He should simply cut those that do not deserve a roster spot and make do until that money becomes free to use again.

One of the only things about Sandy and moneyball that is encouraging is the fact that he can find a lot of good roster fills for a little money when he needs to. He has a 140 Mil budget with a lot of wasted money built in but he can afford to work around that waste because of his ability to KMart shop for players.

And as I type this my original concerns about losing the guys in this post is now moot since they all appear to have passed waivers so we have retained them.

Sandy took a gamble and won!
So while he took a risk I would not have I can’t really fault the guy for betting and winning.

my goodness it’s like talking to a friggin walnut. I give up. hopeless you are.

And note RBI is not mentioned at all!

Sure it might come up with the right answer better than just using HRs and BA itself.
As the point you constantly miss is whenever you use MORE THAN one stat you will come up with a better answer.

But mashing OBP and SLG isn’t enough!

And your CHART merely shows what the OPS is where runs are high. It does not prove that High OPS is the cause merely the result of the culmination of stats that DID cause those runs to score!

Like I showed you in my chart which I noticie you ignored…

A guy with a .150 Ba can have a high OPS!
So without looking at something else does OPS tell you anything?

If I say 40 can you tell me what got him there?
NO!

USELESS STAT whose only redeeming quality is that it has a bunch of ZOMBIE worshipers who take good players (who are good for reasons other than just their OPS) and use those good player to try and make OPS something that works. When I have already showed an example where the OBSCURING of stats in OPS can lead you to take the WRONG player!

FURTHER EXAMPLES.

Pick the better player in each:

Example A:
two players .400 OBP
one hits .200 the other hits .350 which is better?

Examble B Two Players .400 SLG
One hits .200 the other .350 which is the better player?

Example C (I will repost for you) Two Players .800 OPS
One has a .150 OBP the other .350 Which is better?

Example D Two Players with .800 OPS
One HITS .150 the other .350 Which is better?

Now tell me how you knew which one to pick by merely looking at OPS?
And tell me how you expect the OPS of a .150 hitter to make your team better?

And if you can’t go back to looking up stats whose meaning and truth you can’t determine and spouting them as if you know anything about Statistical Analysis and not just how to browse to Baseball Reference.com!

ya see, when you’ve been proven wrong, that is when you stop trying to defend yourself. to avoid making yourself look like more of a wank than you already have to this point.

yes we kept castillo and Perez. Who ever said that was a wise move? We could have cut them and given the roster to someone who was better, Are you saying keeping them was a WISE move because you have a contract and must keep that guy?

In the case of Beato they could easily trade away any of those good players they are about to lose to retain rights of him (or Emaus) and be able to send them down so they can play someone who actually played better than them!

Right now we have two guys who are being awarded positions not because they are the best players but because they have no flexibility because they do not REALLY own them!

And I was the first to state that Sandy should be working to trade one of the guys he is about to lose on the waiver wire to get that flexibility back!

In Emaus’ case Havens could go on a tear in the Minors and we would not have room to bring him up without losing someone someplace else because you can’t send Emaus down.

If Beato gets rocked and shows he isn’t ready well guess what you have the Oliver Perez 24 man roster all over again!

the only difference between the NFL and MLB is that when you cut a guy in the NFL you don’t have to pay his remaining base salary! Just count the remaining signing bonus under the salary cap (if there is one anymore)

You can cut an ML player at anytime you just have to continue paying him. Well if your not going to play him it doesn’t matter how much he makes for how long!

Thinking like your saying would say that Perez and Castillo should have made this team.
Is that what you believe?
If not then I don’t really see what your point was in your reply.

“The whole point of ST is to find and take the best 25 guys!”

BTW u do understand this is MLB not NFL we’re discussing? Certainly u should understand contract guarantees considerably alter that pure methodology. Do u truly belive CASTILLO & PEREZ were considered top 25 in ’10 camp(s)? Have u heard of the CBA?
I’ve forgotten how refreshing naivety can actually be when encountered. it’s been sooo long.

Doesn’t prove that high OPS players are all guys who do things well.

EXAMPLE:

Two players, both have a an OPS of .800
Player A has a .350 OBP and a .450 SLG
Player B has a .150 OBP and a .650 Slg

It is really one of the worst LAZIEST Sabers ever invented!
It doesn’t tell you how much is power and how much is OB. It is one of those stats that takes two stats that obscure information and mashes them together in an attempt to opscure the data even further!

What you don’t seem to get through your thick sabermetric skull is that GOOD PLAYERS will ALWAYS have good sabers It isn’t the sabermetric they are good at it is baseball!

But with Sabers like OPS even a BAD player can have GOOD SABERS because you have obscured the BAD numbers in both OBP and SLG and then even further by adding the two to come up with OPS!

Putting information into a box and then into another box and then into another box.
Looks like a present but THE TRUTH is so buried you can’t tell anything about how real those numbers are!

But why am I bothering to try to explain this to a dolt?

http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/ops-for-the-masses/

you should do some reading and learn some things.

a) never have I ever said my analysis doesn’t go beyond OBP and Slug%. I just use them over batting average because, well, they are more important.
b) its not a percentage of anything, it just adds the two most important statistical averages in baseball together, to judge a players worth relative to other players in the league. which is why OPS+ is such a good stat and a better one, because it compares the player to everyone else in the league which is all that really matters. but you wouldn’t know anything about it because you are two ignorant to learn about it.

“Point is Valdespin WON THE JOB IN ST using all the numbers YOU think are important and a dozen other that the rest of us think are important!”

um, when did I say OBP and Slug% in spring training were important?

“What they did last year in A and AA means squat!”

so what Valdespin did in 400 PA last year doesn’t mean squat but what he did in 15 this March means he is ready to get 600 in the major leagues?? lol, Metsie you make me laugh almost as hard as Bayonne.

“The whole point of ST is to find and take the best 25 guys!”

ok, then the Mets opening day lineup should be…..
(and I’m assuming you would use batting average)

C – Glenn
1B – Evans
2B – Malo
3B – A-Rod
SS – Flores
OF – Maldonado, Den Dekker, Ceciliani

“Emaus might still make the roster with his performance but his performance is not what WON him the 2B position!”

You’re right. His PAST performance, in full years, won him the position. ya know, the performances that actually matter.

Metsie seriously dude how old are you and how long have you been following baseball? because you talk like you have the baseball intelligence of an 8 year old thats a fan now because David Wright threw you a ball during a game. man oh man.

Point is Valdespin WON THE JOB IN ST using all the numbers YOU think are important and a dozen other that the rest of us think are important!

What they did last year in A and AA means squat!

The whole point of ST is to find and take the best 25 guys!
Emaus might still make the roster with his performance but his performance is not what WON him the 2B position!

It was his lack of options that won it for him not his batting and not his glove!

His BA is now above .300 Good for him.

Compare him to Valdespin and tell me how he clearly won his position