Injuries, Struggles and Mulligans: Manny Acta Recaps the 2010 Indians
September 30, 2010While We’re Waiting… Fixing Browns, Running Cavs and Catching Tight Ends
October 1, 2010
Because the Yankees are the Yankees, people seem to think that baseball is an inherently unfair sport. It’s not that I disagree with that sentiment exactly, though I am going to tweak it a little bit today. At least that’s what I hope to do. But it’s going to take some time, so bear with me.
One of the things that people moan about when suggesting that baseball is unfair is that free agency is out of control, and that only teams like the Yankees and Red Sox can afford the good free agents. On this front, I happen to agree completely: good free agents generally go to one of three or four places. But I’m not so sure that makes baseball unfair—at least no more so than any other sport. After all, is it fair that a bunch a basketball players enjoy South Beach? Is it fair that some owners happen to be Art Modell? Not really, no. But we deal with it and move on.
So today I thought I’d take a look at the rosters of some well-run organizations and see where they got their best players. Then I’d compare those teams to the Indians. If other teams’ best players are all coming from free agency and the Indians aren’t, then maybe we can call the system broken and move on. Then maybe we can all adopt a more equitable hobby—like knitting. But maybe there’s something else to find. Let’s see.
For this exercise, there are a few ground rules. First, I’m going to call a team’s “best players” any player who has contributed more than one win above replacement (WAR) for the 2010 season, and I’m going to use Fangraphs WAR figures to do this. Second, I’m going to assign players to one of four categories to describe the way they were acquired: (1) free agency; (2) trade; (3) draft; (4) Latin American signing.* Finally, I didn’t have time to look at every franchise in baseball. So I picked some that are generally respected as “well-run organizations”. Notice that some of these teams have high payrolls, some have average payrolls and some have low payrolls. Here are the teams we’ll look at: the Yankees, Red Sox, Rays, Cardinals, Phillies, Twins and Indians.
*I know there are more nuances than this, but for our purposes, the classification works fairly well. I’m throwing minor league free agents and major league free agents into the first group, and Rule 5 draftees into the third. Believe it or not, that will cover all our bases.
So let’s get started. So far in 2010, the Yankees have 15 players with a WAR of 1 or better. Here’s the breakout of how they acquired those players by WAR totals: 
As you can see, they draw fairly equal from all four pools. Let’s compare them to the Red Sox to see if there’s any difference between these two “large market” teams: 
You’ll notice that the Red Sox don’t have any significant players they acquired from Latin American signings, and they rely more heavily than the Yankees do on free agency acquisitions. This surprised me, actually, given the narrative of the Yankees’ rabid spending. Let’s look at one more “high-payroll” team—the Philadelphia Phillies: 
The Phillies have garnered a plurality of their talent through the draft, which looks to be an anomaly for large-market teams. And it’s not a coincidence that they have the lowest payroll of these teams—a draft-based philosophy makes sense for those on a budget.
But those three teams aren’t really good comparisons for the Indians: they exist in markets that can support payrolls vastly higher than Cleveland. Let’s look to more medium-payroll teams to see how they get their most talented players. Here are the St. Louis Cardinals: 
You should be noticing a pattern: as team-payroll decreases, the share of value that comes from the draft (and smart trades) goes up. The share coming from Latin American signings and free agent signings goes down. To confirm, let’s look at the Minnesota Twins: 
More than half of the Twins’ production this season came from the draft: Mauer, Morneau, Span, Baker, Slowey, Valencia, etc. The Latin American signing portion is overstated, since Liriano contributes nearly all of the value in that category. Regardless, the draft is the best source of talent, followed by getting good value in trades (think Delmon Young, J.J. Hardy, Carl Pavano, etc.).
But even the Twins have a payroll close to $100 million this season, so perhaps they’re not quite the comparable team to the Indians that they used to be. Let’s look at the smallest of small-market teams, the Tampa Bay Rays. I’m guessing you’ve spotted the trend by now: 
Nearly 75% of the Rays best performances came from the draft. Listen to these names: Crawford, Longoria, Price, Upton, Shields, Jaso—all draft picks. And the next largest contribution comes from trades: Joyce, Garza, Soriano, and Bartlett. They eschew Latin American signings and rely on free agency for pieces and parts.
You guessed what comes next—your 2010 Cleveland Indians: 
Obviously, we know that Mark Shapiro can make decent trades: Choo, Masterson, Santana, and Talbot all produced more than one win above replacement this season. The only player of consequence we lost in those trades was Victor. That’s good stuff.
But do you see that maroon line of nothingness? That’s the percent of contribution from players acquired through the draft. That’s right: not one draft pick has accumulated more than one win above replacement for the Indians in 2010. In fact, check out this depressing list of draft picks who have played for the Indians this year:
| Name | Draft Year (Round) | WAR |
| Jensen Lewis | 2005 (3) | 0.3 |
| Aaron Laffey | 2003 (16) | 0.5 |
| David Huff | 2006 (1s) | -0.4 |
| Tony Sipp | 2004 (45) | -0.8 |
| Trevor Crowe | 2005 (1) | -0.9 |
| Chris Gimenez | 2004 (19) | 0.0 |
| TOTAL | -1.3 |
We’ve had six draftees contribute to the 2010 squad—which is remarkably low—and they’ve collectively cost us between one and two more wins than if we had just thrown a bunch of AAA kids out there. That is pathetic production. We haven’t had a draft pick significantly impact this club since CC Sabathia, who was drafted in 1998! As a comparison, here’s how all the teams in this study did with their draft picks in 2010:
| Team | Draft WAR |
| Yankees | 14.8 |
| Red Sox | 21.1 |
| Rays | 29.2 |
| Cardinals | 19.6 |
| Phillies | 17.5 |
| Twins | 25.5 |
| Indians | -1.3 |
So what’s the point of all this? The point is that good teams draft good players: they’re cheap, young, and, as the Rays demonstrate, capable of leading a team to the playoffs. Not one team in this study ever spent more than $10 million on a draft–peanuts when it comes to a baseball operations budget, even for the Indians. The point is also that the Indians have not, as a rule, drafted any impact players since CC Sabathia. That is not a factor of a small-market, but of a misguided set of priorities. Spending $6 million on the likes of David Dellucci and Jason Michaels rather than investing that money into the draft has consequences.
But even more, the point is that while baseball may not be fair, nothing in life really is. And while we complain about the awful free agency system, teams like the Twins and Rays are making the playoffs. And while we whine about the prodigality of the Yankees, the Reds—playing to similarly small Ohio crowds—just clinched their division. And they did it using draft picks.
Nothing in sports (or life, for that matter) is fair. But teams (and people) find a way to get beyond these difficulties, and do great things. While Cleveland will never be New York—one of many things for which I’m particularly grateful—we can certainly aspire to the likes of Tampa Bay or Minnesota, can’t we?
Hopefully in a few years, these charts will look like ancient history. Soon we’ll see Jason Kipnis and Alex White and Lonnie Chisenhall and Cord Phelps and Drew Pomeranz piling up massive WAR totals. But until then, I think it’s too easy to play the “baseball isn’t fair” card: it’s no more unfair than anything else in life. It’s time to start coping with that, and begin to draft players who can impact this club.
33 Comments
Best baseball article I’ve read all year.
Great work, Jon.
Agree. This is top notch work Jon. Maybe you should send this to the Tribe so they start putting more into the draft. This year it seemed like they were getting on the right track so hopefully that Draft pie will be getting bigger
I like the article, but would have rather you focused on more of the smaller markets that are doing well this year than the big market teams. Though I see how it drives home your point that they too use the draft. The thing is, we all knew Shapiro was a terrible drafter and he handed the last couple drafts over. So, we are hoping (until we see the results) guys like Alex White and Pomerenz start contributing.
TB is good, but what about Cinci and San Diego? Does SF make that cutoff line (they seem to be in about the same boat as us for spending habits since Barry left)?
And what about the formerly esteemed Billy Beanes’ Oakland team?
Excellent stuff, sir. Question, however…
Is there any wiggle room for those teams (ie Cleveland prior to this year) that avoid drafting certain (albeit more talented) players due to how much said players want in terms of a signing bonus or the fact that they may or may not be repped by Scott Boras?
@ mgbode:
Yeah, like I wrote, I only had time to do so many teams and wanted to get a cross-section of various payroll teams. Off the top of my head though? Cincy’s best players are Joey Votto, Jay Bruce, and Scott Rolen: two of those three are draft picks (Votto was a second rounder!). San Fran’s best players are Lincecum, Cain, and Posey–all draft picks. San Diego? Gonzalez, Chase Headley, and Mat Latos–all draft picks. Oakland is a legitimate mess these days, but that sort of proves my point: none of their best players are draft picks (Barton, Crisp, Kouzmanoff, Cust, Suzuki, etc.)
@ Scott:
Yeah. The Indians didn’t often draft high-end talent in the early aughts because they wanted to have a draft budget of $4-5 million rather than $10 million. They generally drafted for slot-talent because they didn’t want to pay more. That’s absolutely true.
But the point of this piece is that saving that $5 million is about the LEAST efficient use of resources for a MLB team–especially a team that can’t afford free agents. If $5 million is what you need to save, here are some ideas rather than cutting the draft budget: (1) don’t sign Dellucci/Michaels for a combined $6 million per season; (2) don’t lock up $65 million in a 30 year old player with no defensive value; (3) don’t drop $22 million on an injury-prone closer. For a “cost-conscious” club, those moves look really silly.
The sort of upside available in the draft is immense. And teams with limited resources can’t afford to pass on that the way we did for 8 years.
I do think they’ve turned a corner on their draft philosophy in recent years, but one of the reasons we’re where we are this year is that we have nothing to show from a talent source that really is meant to level the playing field.
Great Article……I can’t really see the trade “piece of the pie” decreasing for the next 5+ years considering 1/2 of our farm system is comprised of guys we got in trades the last 14 months.
I know you’ve supplied it in past articles, but how many players do we actually have that have a WAR over 1? Surely not the 15 the Yankees boast. The less players over a 1 WAR, the more mis-representative the pie chart is going to look, but intersting anyways.
Another interesting pie chart would be the opposite of this…for players under 0 WAR….our draft and free agency “slices” would be huge!
Correct me i im wrong but i think adrian gonzalez came over to sd from the rangers
I understand what you are saying, but there are several logical reasons why the system is still stacked. 1) The small-market team that you mention (the Rays) has been drafting in the top ten for most of the decade, with several of their best players (Longoria, Upton, and Price) being can’t miss prospects. At any rate, drafting in the top ten makes things easier. 2) the big-market teams that you also talk about (Yankees and Red Sox) are able to have a large number of drafted players for several reasons. First, they have the ability to sign these players to long deals (Posada, Rivera, Jeter, Hughes, Chamberlin, Cano) because they ARE the destination. Imagine if the Indians were New York and we still had Manny, Thome, Sabathia, Martinez. Second, they are able to take significant more risk in the draft. The Indians have drafted safe players since getting burned when they took 5 high school players with their first picks in that one draft (Denham, Horne, Martin, Schilling, and Whitney). Teams like the Red Sox have aggressively drafted risks that have panned out, in part because they can afford to pay them.
I do understand what your argument tries to get at—that the Indians can be successful. But, I disagree that 1) they have similar margin of error as large-market teams (it’s not even close) and 2) it is impossible to contend for more than 3 years at a time for a small-market team due to free agency. Watch what happens to the Rays in the next 3 years. Proof positive.
You’re right Sam, he was. I guess that’s what happens when I go off the top of my head. Gonzalez was apparently drafted by the Marlins, then went to Texas, then San Diego. My bad.
mmmm pie.
mmmmmm… smart, thought-out, informative sports blogging.
Thank you.
@Jon – thank you sir.
Part of the other issue for me is that despite having talent in the minors, the Indians seem the least likely out of all organizations in baseball to bring that talent up to the big leagues. They use the excuse of a guy needing “seasoning” more often than not (they wouldn’t have brought up Carlos Santana when they did if Lou Marson was a little less dreadful to start the year).
Shapiro has always seemed to favor guys from outside the organization (minor leaguers traded for or crappy free agents) over the ones that the Indians drafted. It’s never made much sense to me.
Teams like Atlanta, who always seem to have an abundance of young talent – promote guys quickly once they are proven to be proficient at their currently level. The Indians have “plans” for guys that mean, despite any success, that they won’t make it past a certain level in a given year (Alex White). That doesn’t seem to be the way to run a small (or smaller) market team.
Please throw out Tamba Bay. I don’t want the Indians to have to play historically bad baseball for a decade to get all those top picks. I will be very interested to see where the Rays go once all their talent hits free agency and they no longer have the #1 or #2 pick every year.
Fact remains that in baseball it is a crap shoot once you get to the playoffs but spending lots of money will get you to the playoffs more times than not.
But, yes, in the Tribe’s situation they have to draft better than they have in the recent past. I still can’t stand that Heyward was taken by the braves one spot after the tribe took Mills. Ouch.
@ Strawman:
I don’t think I disagree with much of what you’ve written.
One at a time. Your first point is that drafting in the top ten every year helps. Agreed. But Cincy, San Francisco, and Minnesota haven’t had that advantage. And Kansas City has. It’s an advantage, but not a determining factor.
And as to your second point, you’re right that counting Jeter as a “draft pick” is kind of disingenuous. I considered addressing this, but then I thought of how many draft picks of consequence we’ve had in the last ten years that we could even consider trading or resigning.
One pick. CC. That’s it. And ESPECIALLY for a team that has a small margin of error, that’s unacceptable.
I agree that the deck is stacked to some extent: like I said, nothing in life is fair. But we haven’t played our hand nearly as well as we could’ve.
“Spending $6 million on the likes of David Dellucci and Jason Michaels rather than investing that money into the draft has consequences.”
Best sentence in a very good article. Says a lot, particularly with the accompanying stat that the other teams never spent more than $10 million on the draft – and let’s not forget Pronk’s bloated waste of a contract. It’s killing us.
If the Indians drafted better they’d be able to compete. Shapiro’s trades have been 50-50 and we know Cleveland can’t compete when it comes to signing free agents which means drafting plays an integral part in the success of a team like the Indians. In this area they have failed miserably.
I like the intention of this article, which seems to me to be getting people to understand the situation in MLB and see that the Indians do have some sort of path to success. More articles like this are needed to educate Tribe fans who all they do is complain.
But I agree with some of the other commenters here when they say that the argument ignores too many factors as to why the teams are made up the way they are. Strawman seems to state that pretty well, along with the issue of staying power.
I think a very telling snapshot of the most effective way of building a team would be to classify all 30 teams by % of roster made up of the different categories you stated in the article. Then take a look at the different collective winning percentages or playoff appearances of each group.
I mean sure the Rays are the gold standard right now for the “teams built through the draft” but how many other teams have tried this model for years and never had the same success? The Yankees went through a couple year period where they made ridiculous FA decisions and suffered from performances like Pavano’s. What was their penalty? they missed the playoffs ONE year.
Yes, building through the draft is usually the only way to improve your team drastically and clearly the only way the Indians can succeed at this point. But the argument that drafting is more important to success than signing top free agents doesn’t hold much weight with me.
@5
I disagree that Oakland is a complete mess. I’d kill to have that young rotation headed by Anderson, Cahill and Gonzalez, not to mention loud mouth Braden.
@14
While I’m not going to defend the Indians drafting before the last couple years, there is a reason that the Tribe along with many other teams drafting early that year passed on Heyward. The whole scouting experience around him league-wide was kind of shady (or so I’ve read). His high school team put a lot of effort into sort of shielding him from all teams other than the hometown Braves. And when the draft finally rolled around, it was widely thought that he would refuse to sign with any team that drafted him if he didn’t fall to Atlanta, choosing instead to go to college. Its a pretty interesting situation and I read about most of this in a great article in SI awhile back in the summer sometime.
P.S. – another A+ on writing an article with enough substance to provoke intelligent discussion on the Tribe and MLB
“the argument that drafting is more important to success than signing top free agents doesn’t hold much weight with me”
Nor does it with me. Well, maybe it does, but at least that’s not the point I was trying to make.
I meant to say this: the one place where there IS a level playing field is in the draft. And it seems foolish for a team that CANNOT compete in free agency (like Cleveland) to spend eight years lowballing draft picks. That’s looking a gift horse in the mouth, IMHO.
Furthermore, I would suggest that for years teams systematically spent too little in the draft, so there’s a possibility that it was an inefficient market: i.e. there were bargains to be had, for teams willing to spend “over slot”. And we didn’t get those bargains.
Again, I’m not saying baseball is eminently fair. It isn’t. But there are enough inefficiencies for smaller market teams to compete. To throw your hands up because of the Yankees is–at least for me–not an honest response.
Amen to #18’s P.S.
The Indians seem to already be figuring this out, given the money put into this past year’s draft.
“To throw your hands up because of the Yankees is–at least for me–not an honest response.”
I understand and accept the economic system that MLB has created and that the Indians currently operate in. With this statement however, you infer that I have given up hope/desire to root for the Indians or MLB in general because of the financial realities – which I have definitely not. In fact, I find the challenge of constantly searching for hidden gems and inefficiencies to exploit incredibly fascinating, and one of my favorite parts of following the game. And I also understand that it is possible to be successful even while fighting an uphill battle, and that is what the Tribe front office/ownership should be investing all their resources in.
I will be a baseball fan and a Tribe fan for the rest of my life. I really have no choice, because I am from Cleveland and I love baseball so much. I will still go to games and still be hopeful for every prospect, even if they lose 100 games every year, and I suspect you are in the same category. So please don’t misunderstand my loyalty to the Tribe.
But settling for a broken system just because “nothing in life is fair” is in my opinion, also an easy way out. And in fact, its partially what allows the system to continue the way it is. There will never be a system that creates a 100% even playing field for all teams/markets, but to place MLB on even footing with the other major pro sports is dishonest. I understand MLB is unique from the NBA or NFL, but there are still things that can be done to make prolonged success in the league more a result of skill and good decision making, than simply what market you play in.
MLB needs to adapt to the changes that have taken place in the game since free agency began, and revenue began revolving around TV contracts. The only thing that makes me more mad than the current system, is when people like Bud Selig live in denial and say that the system is fair by pointing to teams like the Reds and Padres this year and Rays over the last few years.
Regardless of how good or bad things are, we should never cease trying to make them better.
Excellent article Jon. I’m enjoying the very informative discussion you all are having as well.
Tommy, I didn’t mean that statement about throwing one’s hands up to be directed at you at all–it’s just a sentiment that I think gets bandied about a lot and to which I’m not real receptive. I certainly appreciate the thought you put into your responses around here.
And I agree: I think baseball can do a better job of making things fairer. We can talk about those things someday. But what I’m concerned about now is how to make progress until then. In this system–the one we currently operate in–we’re not doing enough with the resources we have.
“In this system–the one we currently operate in–we’re not doing enough with the resources we have.”
Totally agree
Thanks for the responses
I thought the article was extremely well-written, I just think the system does need to be tweaked to a large degree to get to a more level playing-field
Great article. Inspired me to do a little research of my own to see if money can buy playoff appearances. (I believe once your team is in the playoffs, its anybody’s game).
Regarding the teams mentioned in the article, these are the amount of times those teams had a top 10 payroll, and then the number of times they have made the playoffs (2002-2010)
Team Top-10 payroll Playoff appearance
NYY 9 8
BOS 9 6
PHI 4 4
STL 3 5
MIN 0 6
CLE 1 1
Clearly, $ can buy you playoff appearances as indicated by the Yankees and the Red Sox, but you can also get it done without the money as indicated by the Twins. This of course doesnt factor in divisional competition which is traditionally stronger in certain divisions than others.
Other teams that have succeeded like the Twins without the payroll over the same period include:
OAK 0 / 3
SD 0 / 2 (not including 2010 as a playoff app.)
Tampa 0 / 2
Teams that have paid for their playoff appearances over the same period include:
LAA 7 / 6
LAD 7 / 4
ATL 6 / 4 (not including 2010 as a playoff app.)
SF 6 / 2 (not including 2010 as a playoff app.)
The Mariners and Mets have the worst high payroll per playoff appearance ratios in the same period:
NYM 9 / 1
SEA 7 / 0
Gary #16,
Every honest tribe fan knows that we all loved them resigning Hafner at the time. Everyone that summer was scared Westbrook, CC, and Haf would all bolt and the tribe signed 2 of the 3. The fact that Jake and Pronk got hurt and were never the same just sucks but I won’t hold that against the FO.
My thought from this is that the Indians had a bunch of good players and we have so many from trades right now because we couldn’t afford to keep them. That is why I stopped watching baseball the last two years. We can draft good players, but you don’t know which ones will pan out. So unless you sign them all to 15 year contracts the second you get them, they will just leave if they are good. Teams with high payrolls would have more drafted players because they can afford to keep them if they are good. I don’t know much about the contracts for Rays players, but I bet they’ll be mostly traded players in a few years once their stars get bought by the yanks/sox. good article, but in my opinion the MLB still sucks. You might get lucky in the draft and be a good team for a few years, but it’s pointless watching a team and getting attached to it when you know they will trade away every good player they ever get for some unknown minors.
5KMD: Believe it or not, I am an “honest” Tribe fan; and while I certainly was glad (as you said) that we re-signed Pronk at the time, I “honestly” believed that the contract was excessive – particularly for a guy that could not wear a glove and stand anywhere in the field. Now, I am certain of it. Irrespective of what we all believed at the time, my point was simply that, when viewed ex post facto, the contract is NOW killing us. It is.
Honest.
Very good article. I happen to live in Minnesota although I am originally from Cleveland and still follow the Tribe. Aside from productive drafts the successful small-market teams like the Twins and Rays have STABILITY and consistency from top to bottom. The Twins have had 2 managers since 1987. How many for the Tribe? The Twins’ top management and the farm system work smoothly together to scout, draft, and produce top prospects. That’s how the Indians teams that had success in the ’90’s did it. It’s really pretty simple: a good organization produces good results.
Liriano came over in a trade from the Giants, also their distribution is changing a bit now, with more potentially high impact signings coming in Latin America and other markets. Interesting article.
One thing I would note about the Red Sox (and I believe this only reinforces your point about drafting well), while the team’s free agent contributions were fairly large this season, you have to take into consideration how many games Kevin Youkilis, Dustin Pedroia and Jacoby Ellsbury (all Sox draft picks) missed this season. The contribution from draft picks would rate even higher for Boston if these three players were healthy.
[…] need to reiterate it’s importance, here’s what Jon had to say about the MLB Draft and what it means to Clevelanders almost two months ago: [Good] teams draft good players: they’re cheap, young, and, as the Rays […]