THE FALLACIES OF DEFENSIVE METRICS

"Basketball scorers count mechanical errors, but those are a record of objective facts: team A has the ball, then team B has the ball... But the fact of a baseball error is that no play has been made but that the scorer thinks it should have. It is, uniquely, a record of opinions" -- Bill James

If you’ve ever instinctively recoiled at a statistic that could reckon Derek Jeter the worst shortstop in baseball or doubted a respected front-office's decision to replace Mike Lowell with Adrian Beltre and Jason Bay with Mike Cameron, a recent article in New York magazine will vindicate your skepticism.

In “Database Loaded,” (New York, April 18, 2010) author Will Leitch sheds light on the arcane world of defensive metrics. And in explaining how they operate, the author unearths many of the subjective judgments, speculative assumptions, and dubious conclusions that characterize them.

Space and audience constrain Leitch from an exhaustive accounting of their infirmities or a thorough consideration of their more far-reaching implications. But in following him one step further, the flaws he identifies beg the question whether (1) the obstacles to quantifying players' defense aren't inherent and insuperable and whether (2) metrics that further presume to calibrate it in runs notwithstanding possess any real utility at all.

Now, this isn’t to join the obscurants who summarily dismiss sabermetrics and/or disparage those who formulate them. As the foundation of the old baseball Establishment’s power and privileges crumble and fade and the grizzled, tobacco-chewing lifers abdicate power to the overeducated Excel specialists, the last redoubt of the old-time religion is defended by the Yahoos.

Item: Among the phalanx of pitch-fork populists who dominate WFAN’s airwaves, one recently derided sabermetricians as “40-year-old virgins, who work at Burger King and live in their mother’s basement.” (About which one might object, "Joe, you've overestimated by at least twenty-five years. By the law of averages, at least a few sabermetricians had to have gone to high school with your daughter.")

THE SABERMETRIC REVOLUTION & THE NEW FRONTIER
Yet in their nostalgia for the pecking order of high school, what the Yahoos overlook is that the athletically-challenged "nerds" and "geeks" they once scorned have acceded to the GM's throne in organization after organization for a reason. The quantitative analysis at which they excelled held elementary insights into the game and profound wisdom about its players the cigar-chompers had ignored. One day, long ago, visionaries like Bill James had cleared a path through the trees and opened for them a new world.

James had detected the biases and inadequacies inherent in old statistical staples like RBIs, batting averages, and fielding errors-- fallacies that were perhaps self-evident but that no one had pondered thoroughly enough to recognize. For example, the conventional wisdom regarded a .300 batting average and 100 RBIs as the hallmarks of great hitter. No one had stopped to see the obvious: that a hitter cannot earn a “run batted in” unless the players preceding him in the lineup have reached base before him. 100 RBIs could as easily attach to a player of Lou Gehrig’s caliber as Wally Pipp’s. Indeed, during the 1920s, it did. Pipp amassed 109 RBIs in 1923, however, chiefly because the player hitting third, one ahead of him, reached base in an extraordinary 54.5% (.545) of his plate appearances that year. (Guess who he was?)

By contrast, newer metrics like RISP and OBA—a hitter’s batting average with “runners-in-scoring-position” (RISP) and on-base percentage (OBA)— judged hitters far more on their individual merits and thus served as more effective and reliable analytic tools. Leitch observes how commonly recognized RBI's falsities have become. But I, for one, am still old enough to recall a time when through the 70s and 80s, Phil Rizzuto, Frank Messer, and Bill White could broadcast an entire season of Yankee games without ever once discussing a player’s on-base percentage or commenting on his plate discipline or mentioning his proficiency at accumulating walks.

Probably not until Michael Lewis’ Moneyball illustrated how the Oakland Athletics capitalized on OBA to acquire players the marketplace undervalued did the newer metrics enter the broadcast vernacular. But by then, the Wall Street whiz kids running things had discarded OBA and were seeking out newer tools to identify players whose price didn’t reflect their value. After all, once an innovation develops into a staple, it no longer confers a competitive advantage.

Enter the New Frontier, defensive metrics—statistics that can tell the forward-thinking GM which players’ deft fieldwork, sweeping range, and supple glove can prevent runs but whose salary doesn't yet reflect the win values his skills confer.

The two defensive metrics which have acquired the greatest currency, Leitch explains, are Runs Saved (RS) and UZR (Ultimate Zone rating). The former, RS, John Dewan’s company, Baseball Info Solutions, devised, with help, no doubt, from Bill James. (Baseball Info Solution’s website lists the Master as a consultant.) The latter, UZR, sabermetrician Michael Lichtman, developed; the findings, for which, his FanGraphs website publishes. While Leitch happens to focus on Dewan’s RS metric, it also notes that in logic, method, scale, and above all, in the totals they assign most players, the two metrics differ very little.

Leitch's article carries significance for a number of reasons. Although baseball journalists and commentator cite or mention these defensive metrics all the time, few actually have taken the time to explain how they operate: Leitch does. Secondly, Leitch identifies much of the technological void that besets their method and the fundamental guesswork that necessarily burden their data. Above all, Leitch conveys, without necessarily stating it explictly, how misleading defensive metrics' pretense is to tabulate a mathematically certain result.

The "Runs Saved" statistic may suggest a mirror image of the "Runs Created" figure James conceived for hitting [(Hits + Walks) * TB/ (At Bats +Walks)] (since refined). They both, after all, reckon their totals in baseball's precious currency-- runs. But the result of tallying up a players' Runs Created and Runs Saved to derive a total picture of his run value wouldn't differ too much from adding the price of a Rogers Centre's ticket and one from Yankee Stadium to project the total cost of a Blue Jays-Yankees home-and-home series. Sure, both franchises denominate their tickets in dollars. Only the Blue Jays' ticket prices reflect Canadian currency.

No, the analogy isn't exact because prices are set not derived. Still, enough fanciful conjecture, subjective judgment, speculative assumption, and fundamental bias riddle the "Runs Saved" model that the defects raise the question whether the final numbers tally anything useful at all.

RUNS SAVED: THE NEW DOMINO THEORY?
According to Leitch, Dewan's "Runs Saved" statistic propelled much of the Boston Red Sox's off-season and in particular, inspired the organization's decision to replace Lowell with Beltre and Bay with Cameron. I find it difficult to believe that a GM of Epstein's competence and with the critical intelligence a legal education should instill could examine the RS metric's methodology and take them at face value. Though it wouldn’t be the first time the hubris of the New Frontier's Best and Brightest courted a tragic fall.

Whatever the case may be, let’s use Boston’s hot-corner to illustrate a few of the RS metric's many frailties.

Baseball Info Solution judges the two third-baseman as follows: “Adrian Beltre made 26 more plays than the average third-baseman, saving 21 runs [while] Mike Lowell made 23 fewer plays than the average, costing his team 18 runs.”

• Beltre +26 made plays vs average 3d baseman-- which translates into a Runs Saved = 21
· Lowell -23 made plays vs. the average 3d baseman-- translating into a RS = (-18)

The above numbers encourage, but do not justify, the following deduction. Had Beltre played third-base instead of Lowell in 2009, the Red Sox would have allowed 39 less runs (21 – (-18)) and in turn, won about five more games.

Actual Red Sox Runs Allowed in 2009 (Lowell) = 736
Projected Runs Allowed in 2009 (Beltre) = 687.
(RS^2/RA^2 + RS^2) = expected winning percentage = Δ(.031) = 5 wins

The problem, however, is the human bias upon which the numbers rest.

Recall what James once said about the error statistic: "It is, uniquely, a record of opinions." Elide the "uniquely" and one could as easily have characterized Runs Saved's methodology. Subjectivity and conjecture abound.

THE DATA

According to Leitch’s article, Dewan employs 15 to 20 video scouts and charges them with watching every single game played during a season and logging every ball’s destination on a grid divided into 3,000 zones and superimposed over the playing field.

“'Each of our video scouts has a computer screen with a replica of the field... We mark the exact location and velocity of everything,'" Dewan told Leitch, "At the end of the season, Dewan has a complete log of every [] hit to each of roughly 3,000 zones." Exact? No, not really. 3,000 zones spread over the 90,000 sq. ft. of the average MLB ballpark's fair territory still leaves a considerable margin for error. In baseball, remember, mere inches determine seasons. Even less exactitude characterizes hits' velocity and their type. See below.

A hypothetical record looks as follows:

• Location = Zone 187° /290’
· Velocity = Medium (or Fast or Slow)
· Type = Fly Ball (or Grounder, or Line Drive, or Fliner.)

What the hell is a “fliner,” you ask? Or what speed qualifies as “medium”? Or upon reviewing the hit recorded above, would all 20 video scouts, for example, have agreed independently on its taxonomy? And by the way, where does the above log account for the angle of trajectory, spin, and precise vector. How does the model adjust for variations in ballparks’ s square footage? What about where the relevant fielder was positioned when the ball landed in Zone 187° /290’?

APPLYING THE DATA

Once they compile the raw data, they apply it as follows. From what I can gather, the computer model, more or less, simulates the computer matrix AVM Systems devised for the Oakland Athletics and the operation of which Lewis describes in Moneyball.

The market for security derivatives, evidently, inspired the model and informs its logic. Derivatives-- at least, as I understand them--value and trade in an individual securities' component parts. Likewise, each subdivision among Dewan's 3,000 zones receives a run value. The value stems from the average run contribution balls hit to that zone have produced over the last ten years, given x outs and y runners on base.

To see how this works, first imagine a hypothetical 2009 game. (Keep in mind: I've arbitrarily invented the actual run values for purposes of the illustration.) In the first inning, Derek Jeter hits the ball and winds up on second base with no out. Jeter, accordingly, has created 0.7 runs for the Yankees because over the last ten years, every MLB team has scored, on average, 0.7 runs when a lead-off runner has reached 2nd base with no outs.

Of course, Johnny Damon, next at-bat, will alter the game situation and in turn, the Yankees' likelihood of scoring runs. Damon either will reach base or generate an out. The first increases the Yankees chance to score; the latter diminishes it. So let's say, Damon hits a seeing-eye single (grounder) that that travels (fast) to Zone#187/290 through the hole between third and short. Whether Jeter or not scores, Damon will receive a Runs Created number equal to the average number of runs teams have scored in identical situations over the last ten years. Because over the last ten years, every hit recorded at Zone#200 with a runner on second-base and no one out has resulted in the hitting team scoring on average 1.1 runs, Damon will receive a Runs Created value of + 0.4. Conversely, on the fielding team, the out Mike Lowell failed to record will earn him a negative Runs Saved value. Rather than simply assigning Lowell the inverse (-0.4), the model will assign his Run Saved debit based upon the average performance of 3d baseman in fielding fast grounders hit to Zone #187/290 with a runner on second base and no one out and the average run credit/debit it realized for his team.

Sounds eminently valid, no? The problem, of course, is you can't simply equate Damon's batted ball to Zone 187/290 with every other one that travelled there over the last ten years. Each one has its own precise speed, angle of trajectory, vector, spin, and type. And because our current technology does not (or cannot) permit us to measure the latter variables with precision, Dewan's log doesn't record them and human error necessarily enters instead.

Neither, of course, does the model, account for the Red Sox’s positioning of Lowell? It assumes the difference between where Lowell and every other third baseman throughout the league has positioned himself the last ten years doesn't differ significantly in distance. Further imprecisions stem from definition. Dewan's metric, evidently, doesn't register recorded outs. (It can't right? Who records the out, 3d baseman or 1st baseman). RS's metric unit is "plays made." But what precisely qualifies as "a play made"? Does merely fielding the ball qualify as a "play made"? What if Lowell caught the ball but didn't throw it because he wanted to hold Jeter at 3b?

Does the system account for the play that saves the run but doesn't record the out? Or what if Lowell fielded the ball but then Damon's speed forced an errant throw at 1B? Is that a "play made"? What if Youklis' agile stretch at 1b compensated for Lowell's throw? Is that a "play made"? What if Lowell holds the ball, baits Jeter, and tags him running to 3rd? Is that a "play made"?

As you can see, the “Plus/Minus” figure still may carry some heuristic value. But with all of its flaws, converting the number into Runs Saved further compounds the conjecture and the unreliability of the result. Think about it. How many shortstops' defense actually improves with age? Jeter's Runs Saved total was -23 as recently as 2007 (and as low as -28 in 2005) but tallied a +2 in 2009. Hey, the Captain's accomplishments never ceases to amaze me. But could Jeter actually have defied everything we know about the shortstops' historical performance, skill regression, and the aging process and not only dramatically elevated his defensive play at the age of 35 but improved it by 25 runs besides. And if not, what value is there in a metric that insists upon calculating its value in a "runs saved" that doesn't share an identity with the runs scored on the field?

HITING V. FIELDING: INCOMMENSURABLES?
Advances in technology may augment these metrics' accuracy but they may never match the validity and utility of hitting statistics. In fact, by calibrating players’ defense in runs, defensive metrics obscure the fundamental difference between fielding and hitting and encourages the misconception that a perfect identity exists in their scales.

Leitch writes,

“A hitter’s job is easy to quantify: He succeeds in getting on base (or hitting the ball out of the park) or he doesn’t. But countless variables can affect whether a fielder even has a chance to make an error: where’s he’s positioned, how quickly he reacts to the ball of the bat, what route he takes toward it, how quickly he gets the ball out of his glove, how hard he throws the ball to another fielder… But how do you decide whether the left-fielder should have been in a better position to catch a shallow, looping fly ball…It’s an extremely structured method of collating subjective judgments."

Leitch is right, of course, but not precisely correct. Batting statistics do indeed owe their simplicity and their validity to quantifying (1) an empirical fact—a batter either hits the ball or doesn’t— and (2) a uniform and binary outcome— he either reaches base or he induces an out.

Yet strictly speaking, fielding statistics also measure a verifiable either/or result as well: (1) a fielder either "made the play" (so defined) or he didn't. As argued above, the ambiguity, in part, springs from the definition. What qualifies, that is, as a "made play" deserving of '+'? Simply fielding the ball or actually recording the out? If Lowell dives, gloves the ball, and bounds to his feet, does he have to throw Damon out at 1st or does holding Jeter at 3d qualify? Does "plays made" quantify the smart but prosaic play, the time when Lowell held the ball and yielded the infield hit to prevent the runner from scoring, and how does it weigh it against the consistently spectatacular but foolish play that sacrifices a run to an out? (Think Robinson Cano in the latter instance)?

But the inchoate definition points to a more endemic ambiguity. I imagine the metric tabulates "plays made" rather than "recorded out" because a recorded out frequently implicates multiple players the ultimate credit for which, it's impossible to assign. If Lowell happens to record the out only because Youklis' deftness saves the errant throw, does the 1b deserve the credit or does the 3b for giving Youklis the chance to begin with?

Hitters enter the batter’s box alone. Hit, walk, strikeout, or homerun— on his team, he alone, controls the outcome. Opposite him, only the pitcher compares in agency; and eight teammates still support him. Isolating, let alone, quantifying a single fielder’s influence on his team’s fate, on the other hand, introduces a range of variables and a labyrinth of complexity belonging to another order of magnitude entirely.

Compare the relative simplicity in isolating the dependent variables that influence hitting stats. In the above hypothetical, Johnny Damon's Rund Created credit of 0.4, for example, depends upon the pitcher, the ballpark, or the opposition's fielding proficiency, among other factors. (And the unbalanced schedule means that Damon's runs creation incorporates a disproportionately greater number of AL East pitchers, ballparks, and opponents' fielders over the last ten years than average.) But then again, the batted ball of every other hitter in the American League is disproportionately weighted in an identical respect and it's an average of them that determines the run value of Damon's batted ball.

More importantly, the most influential variable of all-- the pitcher whom Damon faces-- changes once, at least, every game. As a consequence, we can't attribute Damon's total Runs Created to his aberrant success against any one particular pitcher. Conversely, a pitcher's Fielding Independent Pitching Statistics--strikeouts, walks, homeruns-- enjoy a parallel independence because of the myriad number and variety of hitters he faces.

Not so with fielders however. Mike Lowell played 107 games at third-base in 2009. He played almost all of them with Nick Green or Julio Lugo at SS, Youklis at 1B, and Jason Bay in the outfield. How much of Lowell's -23 "plays made" and -18 Runs Saved is owed to the inadequacies of his adjacent fielders? If Adrian Beltre had had to play alongisde of Nick Green and Jason Bay in 2009, how many fewer "plays made" would he have recorded in Zones around 3d baseman, for example, or in foul left-field because he had to shade to his left to compensate for his shortstop's and left-fielder's shortcomings? The Red Sox replaced all three this off-season. Perhaps, they apprehended the inherent difficulty of assigning responsibility for the inordinate number of balls that fell on that side of that side of the field to any one of them.

PITCHER OR FIELDER: WHOSE BALL IS IT ANYWAY?
But it isn't merely a matter of separating one fielder's responsibility from another. Beneath rhe runs saved concept lies our ignorance of the respective contribution of fielders' and pitchers' on the ball in play.

Recall the insight Voros McCracken discovered about pitching that Moneyball's chapter on Chad Bradford discusses. The reason why Earned Run Average doesn't gauge pitcher's performance accurately is because as it turns out, hits-- and by extension, the runs generated from them-- depends too greatly on both the fortuity of the ball’s bounce and his fielders' proficiency. McCracken found that the ERA's of pitchers like Greg Maddux and Randy Johnson fluctuated too widely from year to reflect their efficacy. Only outcomes they alone controlled-- strike outs, walks, and home runs-- showed the uniformity indicative of their consistent dominance on the mound.

This doesn't mean the pitcher exerts zero influence on whether a hitter sets a ball in play. It only means we haven't yet been able to quantify it. Quoth James, Baseball Abstract, p. 885 "A pitcher does have some input into the hits/inning ration behind him, other than that which is reflected in the home run and strike out column."

The converse of which is necessarily true as well. Upon balls set in play, we can't quantify the relative influence of the fielder either. How much of Mike Lowell's and Adrian Beltre's '+/-' and "Runs Saved" totals, therefore, reflect the idiosyncratic abilities and deficiencies of the Red Sox's and Mariners' pitching staffs? Seattle yielded the fewest runs (689) of any team in the AL in 2009. So too, their pitching staff's park-adjusted ERA+ of 113 led the league. To whom, do we credit the feat: the guy on the mound or the eight men surrounding him?

Why is this signficant? Why do we need to quantify the relative contribution of pitcher and fielder? Because what does it matter that Beltre saved 21 runs above the average 3rd baseman if you can’t calculate how this 21 Run Saved figures in the 689 runs his team allowed? One cannot simply deduce that with the average 3d baseman the Mariners would have allowed 21 more (689 +21 = 710) because we don't know how many runs the Mariners' pitchers would have prevented regardless. Consequently, we can't translate Beltre's Runs Saved figure into the most important knowledge of all: how many wins did the Mariners' accrue because of him?

E PLURUBUS UNUM: A ROMANTIC'S DISSENT
Baseball assumed the title of "The American Pastime" for a myriad reasons owing to the institution's history and pedigree. But one reason often overlooked is symbolic one--the identity its character shares in common with the nation itself.

For alone among the country's three professional team sports, baseball embodies America in microcosm. It captures the tension roiling within a pluralistic society committed, at once, to forging a cohesive nation out of a motley immigrant people and at the same time, to honoring the principle of individual freedom. In team athletics, the confrontation between pitcher and batter, resembling as it does individual sport like a tennis match, is inimitable. From this individual contest suspended within the matrix of a group competition evolves baseball's unique fetish of numbers. What's more, upon it rests our county's peculiar fixation with individual merit and our celebration of the pastime as a Platonic arena which rewards it.

It perhaps also drives the compulsion to break the game down into its component parts and to place a value on each. More ominously, it may also enourage the hubris that we can. The scientific method, you see, is a seductive temptress. No sooner did Newton, for example, demonstrate we could apprehend much of our world through mathematical formula than did many come to believe we could explain all of it as such. That with scientific advances and technological progress, we could unlock the key to human history, to war and peace, to surfeit and famine, to eternal economic plenty, political freedom, and human happiness and to reduce it to universally applicable formula. Then, one day a mustachioed tyrrant (or two) actually tried to implement it. And in trying to order the fate of millions, his sacrifice of million gave wicked illustration to the limits of empirical formula in comprehending social behavior and in measuring human motive and desire. The Age of Reason had made fools of us all.

This isn't to imply anything sinister about sabermetrics of course or to make common cause with the Yahoos who deny its revelations. I merely wish to sound a cautionary note. To warn how little space lies between James' insight that statistics contains hidden truths about the game the naked eye cannot see to the leap that statistics contain all of them. To dispute that with the latest technology and the right formula we can quantify and ultimately explain everything from the precise interrelation of hitting and fielding on runs to how adjacent fielders' proficiency affect their performance to how and why hitters inexplicably enter slumps and just as precipitately emerge from them.

For at some point we will reach the tipping point. Imponderables like herd behavior and attribution bias and bystander effect will manifest to thwart logic and reason. And the mysteries that enshroud the game will announce they forever elude us.

And when the day arrives, may we have the wisdom to recognize it. More importantly, may we have the gratitude to welcome it. For that's the day the science of baseball will yield to the art of baseball and it will inspire the silent awe worthy of the sublime.

CAN THE YANKEES DEVELOP STARTING PITCHING?

"Cashman didn't want Lily. He preferred Igawa... Billy Eppler, an assistant to Cashman, had raved about Igawa..." -- The Yankee Years

As so often in the repetitive and trite debates that dominate the media’s sports coverage, the dispute about how Joba Chamberlain best serves his team has obscured a series of far more important questions the young pitcher’s career raises about his franchise and its future. Now that management has consigned to the bullpen the most promising young phenom New York has witnessed since Dwight Gooden, fans, again, need to ask whether the Yankees front-office is capable of identifying, nurturing, and developing starting pitching.

Following the 2005 season, after all, Cashman’s ascendance and the Boss’ retreat was to have marked a seismic change in this regard. Perhaps, for the first time in the Steinbrenner era, the organization acknowledged the importance of cultivating its own starters. Cashman revamped his amateur and pro scouting departments, and within a few short years, the Yankees started to tout the wealth of young pitching prospects their farm system boasted. Hughes, Chamberlain, and Kennedy and just a few steps behind them, Russ Ohlendorf, Humberto Sanchez, Alan Horne, Jeff Marquez, Daniel McCutchen, Andrew Brackman, Dellin Betances-- altogether, they supposedly, heralded a new era. No longer would the Yankees have to depend on the inefficient free-agent market and improvident trades to build a rotation.

With a rotation of Sabathia, Burnett, Vasquez set to open the 2010 season, it appears very little has changed in the Bronx however. Hughes’ expected start on April 15 may comfort some, but it’s been 3 years since his first start in the major leagues and he has yet to complete more than 72 innings in that capacity. While Andy Pettitte, pitching perhaps in his final season, perfectly symbolizes the ongoing problem.

For not since Pettitte himself burst into the 1995 rotation has the Yankees’ farm system produced one of those hardy, mettlesome, 26-and-under rotation staples that organizations depend upon each season for 200 or more quality innings as their front-office milks him through four to six years of non-negotiable offers, niggling arbitrations, and below-market contracts. No Halladay. No Lester or Beckett. No Bedard. No James Shields. No Verlander. No Buehrle. No Sabathia. No Santana. No Lackey. No King Felix. No Zito, Mulder, or Hudson. The Yankees amateur draft hasn’t selected Him. Their international scouts haven’t signed Him. And the GM’s office hasn’t traded for Him. Through the Bronx a procession of stunted prospects, fragile arms, tantalizing impostors, and discarded talent has come and gone instead: Milton, Westbrook, Lily, Irabu, Weaver, Kennedy, and Wang. And neither Chamberlain nor Hughes has shown, to date, he won’t follow right behind them.

During the era’s first decade, one needn’t look beyond the owner’s box to find an explanation for the futility. The Boss had sacked, demoted, or marginalized his most discerning evaluators and had elevated toadying underlings. Until 2005, Brian Cashman occupied the GM’s office but possessed it in name alone. He was hardly a figurehead however. To the contrary, the nominal GM orchestrated the trade of the only two young prospects among the lot who burgeoned into, if not aces, then certainly fixtures of their teams’ rotation, Westbrook in Cleveland and Lily in Oakland and Toronto. True, Cashman’s gamble on recruiting Sabathia and Burnett with money, generous compliments, and solicitous reassurance— an underappreciated skill in a GM however large the wallet he wields – instead of trading Hughes for Santana rewarded him with a World Series.

Nonetheless, the Yankees fifteen-year-long failure to accomplish what every other AL franchise, save perhaps the Texas Ranger, has achieved in the interim-- to acquire or to develop that young stalwart who can anchor their rotation at negligible cost for years to come-- blights this franchise and imperils its future. As Joel Sherman recently observed, in 2013, four Yankees, 33 and older, will consume $90 million in payroll—Sabathia, Burnett, A-Rod, Teixeira and that still excludes the approximately $20 million Jeter, in addition, will earn. Relying on the free-agent market to fill a rotation ultimately exacts a toll. The question is only when it accrues. And for the cost and its consequence, Cashman should not escape responsibility.

Unfortunately, the yellow journalism that colors practically all sports coverage these days from print to radio to television conceives the world in two dimensions and projects it in black-and-white. Winners are geniuses. Losers are fools. The 2008 Cashman whose season ended in September became the petulant, blinkered little drone who’d assigned two rookies to his rotation and then whined when the press blamed him for the consequences. The 2010 Cashman whose team won the World Series became the astute, shrewd visionary because he obtained a starter with a lifetime 4.45 ERA in the American League. Of course, Cashman is neither prodigy nor fool. At some duties he excels. Notably, at bargaining and at recruiting. Rival GMs can’t fleece the Yankees anymore. (Where the Boss mortgaged the future for the likes of Phelps, Rhoden, Barfield, and Henderson; Cashman forbears.) Likewise, he deals well with agents, his recent contretemps with Boras over Damon notwithstanding. In signing Sabathia and snaring Teixeira, he shone. In player development, however, his office ranks somewhere between mediocre and wanting. The ongoing failure to harvest major league starters offsets its success in cultivating middle-relievers and in procuring supplemental bench players and some promising hitting and catching prospects.

The failure reaches far beyond the identifying, drafting, and signing of amateur talent. The problem may not even implicate the selection process at all. No, Joba’s fate and Chien-Ming Wang before him raises questions about the Yankees’ nurturing and development process. It hardly seems coincidental that abrupt and mysterious velocity deficits, suddenly, befell both Wang and Chamberlain as starters. And in each instance, Cashman continued to start them notwithstanding. In Wang’s case, they promoted a pitcher with one rotator cuff surgery already in his pedigree after a mere three minor league starts. Three starts, as it happens, in none of which Wang’s velocity had recovered its earlier heights. Cashman still assigned Wang to the bullpen and then moved him into the rotation. Two months and six starts later, still languishing at 91-92 mph instead of his usual 95-96, the Taiwanese Wunderkind tore the rotator cuff yet again. And the career of the Yankees’ most prodigious home-grown starter in a decade came to an unceremonious end after a mere two seasons in which he’d completed 200 innings. (Compare, by contrast, the Red Sox’s handling of Matsuzaka under similar circumstances; see “Free Wang, Curb Cashman,” Yankees Republic, May 27, 2009)

A similar fate, more recently, has afflicted Joba Chamberlain. The oft-repeated cliché ascribes his diminished fastball to deficiencies of character and/or stamina. Joba feeds on adrenaline he can’t sustain over six or seven innings. Hence, he belongs in the bullpen. Premise and conclusion conveniently ignore Chamberlain’s twelve starts in 2008 in the major leagues and his starts in the minor leagues in 2007. To illustrate just how spectacular Chamberlain was in 2008, compare his 12 starts in 2008 to Hughes’ 13 starts in 2007.

• Joba - 2008 - 12GS, 65.33 IPs, 2.76 ERA, 1.30 WHIP, 10.2 K/9
• Hughes - 2007- 13 GS, 72.66 IPs, 4.46 ERA, 1.28 WHIP, 7.2 K/9

A quick glance at FanGraphs explains why. Contrary to the received wisdom, as a starter in 2008, Chamberlain threw a 95-97 mph fastball from his first pitch to his last. Merely recall his start in Boston in late July 2008 when Joba threw 7 shut-out innings and struck out 9 Red Sox hitters and carried the Yankees to a 1-0 victory over Josh Beckett.

Then, injury befell Chamberlain in Texas in August, and by September, his absence all but eliminated the Yankees from playoff competition. Yet as with Wang, Cashman re-assigned his pitcher to the bullpen. And even though Joba’s velocity hadn’t returned, Cashman let Girardi pitch him the entire month as a reliever. To this day, the pitcher and his fastball haven’t recuperated. FanGraphs shows Chamberlain's average fastball velocity fell from 95.0 in 2008 to 92.5 in 2009.

The oddity is how the seeming indifference to their young virtuouso's diminished velocity comports with the organization's meticulous, near neurotic, enforcement of his innings limits and his pitch counts. Stranger still, if no physical ailment currently hampers Joba Chamberlain and if temperament and/or mechanics account for the velocity deficit, why have the Yankees relegated him to the bullpen for the foreseeable future now- now at the very moment when the two-year training program designed to prepare him to throw 200 major league innings finally has concluded. Could the Yankees, actually, have rendered such a momentous decision for their future (and Joba's) on 3 or 4 Spring Training starts?

The example of Justin Verlander would counsel against deciding matters of such consequence on so little evidence. Recall that after flourishing in 2006 and 2007, Verlander suffered a dramatic setback in 2008. His ERA rose from 3.64 to 4.84. His fastball's average velocity fell from a high of 95.1 in 2006 to 93.6 in 2008.

The Yankees have derived their formulas for innings limits and pitch counts from statistical evidence that shows how increasing the workload of 26-and-younger pitchers by more than 30 innings from season to season exposes them to injury. Tom Verducci and Will Carroll's anecdotal evidence certainly persuaded me. What I wonder is whether the Yankees have studied the long-term consequences shuttling a Chamberlain or Hughes back from the rotation to the bullpen to the rotation will have on their health and development. The disruption and irregularity alone seems to belie logic that animates innings caps and pitch counts-- slow, gradual conditioning and regimentation in a violent, unnatural motion.

All of which leave too many unanswered questions for anyone to extol the Yankees' front-office. At the end of 2010, Andy Pettitte, by all accounts, will retire; Javier Vasquez's contract will expire; and the Yankees will have to find, at least, two more starters to replace them. Worse, with Joba installed in the bullpen, no internal options currently commend themselves. Can this franchise continue to pay a premium for starting pitching to compensate for inadequacy below?

Cliff Lee and his agent, no doubt, already have begun to ask the same question.

U.S.A. & THE VALOR OF DEFEAT

"No battle is ever won. They are not even fought. The Battlefield only reveals to man his own folly and despair and Victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools."-- Faulkner, The Sound and The Fury

An oft repeated cliche about professional sports is that the field holds no place for moral victory. To the winners belong the laurels. While the losers suffer everything from an ignominious oblivion to condescending pity and malicious ridicule. From its campaign hustings to its ball fields, for the defeated, America is unkind and lonely world. Ask anyone from Michael Dukakis to the bereaved of Donnie Moore.

It is important, for this reason to honor, the 2010 men's Olympic hockey team.

No, it will not offer the weary players any solace. Nor will it comfort the broken-hearted millions who plunged from elation to despair in that fleeting period on Sunday night separating silver and gold. Alas, miracles on ice may come but once a lifetime.

Yet we forget the likes of Zach Parise and Ryan Miller and Brian Burke at our peril. For in their defeat, they impart an invaluable wisdom found perhaps nowhere in America outside wars' graveyards and the novels of William Faulkner. It's the lesson the Greeks teach us in their tragedies, if not in their Olympics, about the splendor born of lost causes. It's the lesson that we often achieve our greatest glory not in the magnificence of our victories but in the mettle and tenacity with which we contest the odds and in the nobility and grandeur we attain, as a consequence, even in succumbing to defeat.

And for this lesson alone the 2010 team deserves an honored seat right alongside the 1980 team in the annals of this still fledgling, adolescent country's Olympic history.

After all, miracles of success breed instinctive awe and will earn lasting immortality all on their own. No act of conscious or conscience is needed to secure them their legacy. But America's Horatio Alger myth notwithstanding, the lot of most of us is a fate both more desperate and obscure.

And for us that know no glory, may USA 2010 live forever. We cherish you in quiet inspiration.

THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS: PENNY WISE AND CASH STUPID

“And if, to be sure, sometimes you need to conceal a fact with words, do it in such a way that it does not become known, or, if it does become known, that you have a ready and quick defense”— Machiavelli, The Prince

Is there a reason, financial or strategic, that the Yankees suddenly have decided that 2010’s payroll must be lower than 2009’s? If so, I’d like to hear it. Was it the hardship of collecting only $2,000 for all those $2,500 Legends Suite tickets during 2009 regular? Was it the sacrifice born of selling out only eight games en route to winning a World Series instead of the maximum eleven? Was it the miscalculation in estimating the “Inaugural Season’s” concession and souvenir sales which resulted in a realized total that only exceeding the projected amount by 200%? Or maybe it was the forbearance they exercised by forswearing the price increases $5,000-a-seat to $50,000-a-seat ticket licenses authorized? Or is the explanation simpler still? Does Prince Hal regard caprice the hallmark of power and the laurels of victory permanent extenuation?

If the rationale isn’t evident, the consequence certainly is. To save a few extra million dollars in payroll, the Yankees risk forgoing the windfall each additional post-season game they play would yield them. See The Business of Baseball In the aggregate, they may have saved themselves nothing at all.

Meanwhile, for about $8-10 million dollars in one year contracts, the Yankees could have added three additional players that would have dramatically improved their chances of returning to the World Series. A $7-8 million dollar allotment for Damon would have dramatically improved their lineup. While for $2 to 4 million (four if a tendered contract, less if merely a guaranteed one), the Yankees could have re-signed Chien Ming Wang and bolstered the depth of their rotation. (This is to say nothing of the $1 million dollars by which the Yankees could have lengthened their bench by offering Eric Hinske the amount he accepted from the Braves.)

Indeed, for all the near unanimous approbation that has greeted Brian Cashman’s personnel decision this off-season, few have examined their financial wisdom given the new payroll constraints. Has the GM made the most efficient use of the off-season budget allocated him? Because from this perspective, the Yankees front-office’s decisions suggests a far more equivocal judgment than the received wisdom would imply.

GRANDER SONS
Let us not begin however by stinting praise where it's so clearly deserved.

Cashman's acquisition of Curtis Granderson belongs alongside his trades for Abreu, A-Rod, and Justice as among the Yankee GM's most adroit and inspired. In one fell swoop, he upgraded his team at center-field, procured another premiere offensive player under 30 (adding to last season’s Teixeira signing) to achieve his goal of a younger lineup, saved money to allocate elsewhere by replacing one of two $13 million salary slots (Matsui and Damon) with Granderson’s $8 million-dollar-a-year contract, and filled a cornerstone position with a player combining the rare gifts of power and speed and possessing, as such, the potential to develop into a deserving heir of Bernie Willliams’ mantle.

Of course, the full cost of what the Yankees relinquished, in the bargain, won’t materialize for some time. Furthermore, the Tigers GM Dombrowski, arguably, has reaped the greater dividends in every trade he and Cashman have struck since 1998: (i) the Mike Lowell trade (1998); (ii) the 3-way Jeff Weaver transaction which netted the Tigers Jeremy Bonderman (2002); and (iii) the disposing of Sheffield.

Qualifications, aside, as of January 2010, Granderson more than merits his cost. The Yankees yielded (i) Phil Coke-- an endearing if erratic left-handed relief pitcher who posted league average statistics in his first full major league season; (ii) Ian Kennedy—a prospect victimized by the early success he, never again, could match and limited opportunities to rebound-- and (iii) Austin Jackson—the position player with the highest ranking in the Yankees farm system but still probably years away from fully ripening.

Perhaps, the only reason why Cashman could obtain Granderson without greater sacrifice is because the center-fielder’s anomalous 2009 tarnished his value. By most indicia, Granderson’s 2009 was a subpar season. Despite hitting 30 homeruns in 2009, the ex-Tigers’ batting average and on-base percentage fell about 30 points from 2008; his strikeouts per plate appearance rose by 2.0%; and his OPS+ dropped to 100, the very figure of league average production. However, the inauspicious picture these paint can be deceiving. Both Granderson’s base-on-balls and pitches per plate appearance deviated little from his career numbers. More significantly, Granderson’s actual BABIP (Batting Average on Balls in Play) (.275) differs markedly enough from the BABIP his Line Drive percentage (21%) would predict (.330). Together, they suggest that the unlucky bounce of the ball accounted for much of the decline in Granderson’s batting average (and concomitantly, his base percentage) than a genuine regression in his performance. The same phenomenon likely explains Swisher’s swoon in 2008 and his return to his career averages in 2009.

At present, a prominent Achilles Heel nonetheless excludes the Yankees’ new center fielder from the game’s elite-- his lethal vulnerability to left-handed pitching. Granderson’s career OPS+ against lefties is a woeful 28, compared to 128 against right-handers. On Granderson’s ability to correct this defect, or to mitigate it, will hinge his legacy in Pinstripes.




PRODIGAL SONS, LOYAL SONS & SONS FORSAKEN
Still, whatever additional production the Yankees gained with Granderson in center-field, they promptly squandered in left. Nick Johnson may be able to fill the void left by Matsui's departure, but Gardner, however able an outfielder, cannot replace Damon or compensate for his loss.

Let's take each in turn.

No steadfast Yankee fan these last six years can fail to appreciate the contribution Hideki Matsui made to his team from his first game in Pinstripes on Opening Day in 2003 to his last in Game 6 of the 2009 World Series. The man his countryman call Godzilla entered and exited with a theatrical flourish few successors will equal, let alone surpass. If only for twice sealing the post-season fate of the Yankees' arch enemy Pedro Martinez-- once in 2003 ALCS and again in 2009's World Series-- he has inscribed for himself a permanent place in the Yankees lore.

(A reputation for clutch performance his “late and close” statistics at Baseball Reference only further illustrate. In the 503 plate appearances Matsui batted in the 7th inning or later-- and with the game tied, the Yankees ahead by no more than a single run, or behind no more than the potential run of the on-deck hitter-- he hit .325 with 25 HRs and 85 RBIs, good for a 125 OPS+. Throughout A-Rod’s career, by contrast, he has posted a 92 OPS+ in “late and close” situations.)

Beneath the dramatic flair however lay the tragic flaw-- the Achilles' Heel or perhaps, more accurately, the Atlas' Knee. Compelled early in his career to uphold a record for consecutive game played, Matsui inflicted lasting damage to his body. As such, he hasn’t appeared in more than 143 games since 2005. In 2006, a fractured wrist limited him to 50 games; in 2008, his chronically arthritic knees sidelined him for July and most of August. Chronically arthritic knees, which, as late as 2009, moreover, prevented his manager from starting him for more than four consecutive games as even the DH? How many teams need to rest their DH 20-30 games a year to keep him healthy?

But because Cashman signed Nick Johnson, a DH who can play the field but only first-base-- a position at which the Yankees already have a younger, more durable and proficient player-- Matsui's liability survives him in different form.

With Johnson's own history of injuries I don't quibble. I grant the Yankees their logic that none are chronic or recurring. Neither do I demur because of the ostensible loss in power posed by replacing Matsui's bat with Johnson's. To the contrary, while Johnson's injuries have sapped his power in recent years, his OPS+ numbers since 2005, actually, have exceeded Matsui's three of those five years: (i) 2005 (137 v. 130); (ii) 2006 (149 vs. 128) and (iii) 2008 (124 v. 108); and in one of the two seasons Matsui's were higher, 2007, Johnson didn't register an at-bat because a freak collision in '06 sidelined Johnson the entire year to follow. (If you place any stock in statistics that combine offensive and defensive value-- and I place little-- Johnson's Wins Over Replacement Player, since 2005, have surpassed Matsui's all four season Johnson played.)

No, my objection follows. In the 40 or so games, the Yankees decide to use Jeter, A-Rod, or Posada at DH, Nick Johnson can neither spell them in the field nor compensate for their replacements' inferior bat by improving the bat at the position where Johnson does play. With Damon as the primary DH, on the other hand, he'd have spelled Gardner in left-field and would have neutralized the loss that Posada, Jeter's and A-Rod's defensive replacements, Cervelli and/or Ramiro Pena, now pose.

For this flexibility alone, Damon, on a one-year contract, was worth his price.

In fact, the ostensible defensive liability that Damon posed in the outfield has been greatly exaggerated as well. Now, I've always regarded metrics that depend upon subjective or relative judgment rather than incontrovertibly objective and verifiable facts with skepticism. That is, Player X did or did not register a hit or a walk in Game Y. We can argue with the official scorer but not with the result: Player X stood on first. From this, we can deduce his likelihood of scoring. Whether Player X should have caught or even reached the ball that sailed over his head in the 9th inning is another matter entirely. Matters get murkier still when assigning a run value to the miscue. Did Player Y hit the cut off man? Did Player Z field the ball cleanly? And on the next pitch, how will the pitcher throw with a runner on base, the eight other fielders set themselves, react, field? Metrics go from murky to practically opaque when you combine this figure with offensive statistics to obtain an aggregate run value.

Still, in this instance, as a heuristic, they illustrate the foolish improvidence of spurning Damon at the cost of an additional 5 or 6 million dollars. After all, the Yankees' front-office, purportedly, uses them to assign players a economic value. Well, according to FanGraph's WPA statistic, even allowing for the defensive upgrade the Granderson-Gardner tandem provide in the Yankees' outfield, they still represent a total regression from Damon-Melky or Damon-Granderson. Together, Granderson and Gardner average a WPA of (0.78 + 0.57 = 1.35) Together, Granderson and Damon combined average WPA since 2004 is (0.78 + 1.77 = 2.55)

THE ARBITRARY PAYROLL LIMIT

The optimist might conclude that a team that scored a league-leading 915 runs in 2009 and won the World Series needn't worry themselves over one left-fielder. But the 2009 Yankees are only a year removed from the old, infirm, lumbering relic that struggled to score runs and by generating only 789 in total, finished 7th in the AL. Should injury befall their 38 year-old catcher for any period of time, disable their oft-injured Designated Hitter, or again, fell their indispensable 34 year old third-baseman and the Yankees will discover themselves mired in similar straits all over again-- an average to above-average lineup and pitching rotation second, and certainly no better, to their arch rival in the division.

Indeed, the starting rotation the Yankees have constructed for 2010 deserves a post of its own. (The cavalier recklessness, the unapologetic error, and the imperial effrontery that has characterized the team's treatment of Chien Ming Wang deserves one in itself.) For now, it's worth asking why Cashman squandered $11.5 million dollars on a starter with league average statistics in the teeth of budgetary constraints. In the four years, Javier Vasquez has pitched in the American League, his ERA+ has exceeeded 100, the league average benchmark, once, in 2007. Likewise, in 3 of 4 seasons, he yielded 29 or more home runs.

• 2004 - YANKS- ERA+ = 92
• 2006 - CHISX- ERA+ = 98
• 2007 - CHISX - ERA+ = 126
• 2008- CHISX - ERA+ = 98

If the Yankees wanted to guarantee themselves 200 innings for their fourth rotation spot-- an imperative with which I agree-- they probably could have obtained more with less. For Vasquez's salary, they could have signed two from the gallery of Duscherer, Bedard, Washburn, and Garland on one year contracts and still retained enough money afterward to offer Wang the guaranteed major league contract his agent required. Instead of depending upon one league average pitcher to give them 200 innings, they Yankees could have spread the risk over 2 or 3. Of greater benefit still, they would have conserved Melky and the prospects they traded for Vasquez to upgrade left-field this off-season or if necessary, in July, at the trade deadline.

In fact, the Yankees' unceremonious disposal of Wang may surpass in folly their spurining of Damon. The team's erstwhile ace may or may not recover the velocity upon which both his sinker, specifically, and his performance, generally, hinge. Still, why the Yankees didn't see the merit in risking $4 million dollars for a pitcher whose ERA+ of 124 and 122 ranked among the league's best when healthy, defies prudence and logic. Remember: three year ago, the Yankees paid Octavio Dotel $2 million while he underwent rehabilitation in Tampa. More confounding still, after the Yankees declined to tender Wang a contract, they balked at offering a major league contract regardless of the price.

All of which the Yankee attribute to and justify by the new regime of fiscal prudence they've proclaimed.

Now, when the Yankees invoke payroll limits during contract negotiations to enhance their bargaining leverage, so be it. If it's necessary to field a championship caliber team, so much the better.

But when, after fielding a team totalling $200 million dollars or more the last year five seasons, H&H Steinbrenner & Sons suddenly find religion and declare a payroll limit a year after moving into a palatial state-of-the-art ballpark where the median ticket price is $90 (see Baseball Analyst, 05/02/09) and concessions and souvenier sales, in the "inaugural season" reportedly doubled their projected totals-- then the Yankees insult their fans and demean their season ticket-holders.

More troublesome still, when the Steinbrenners arbitrarily decide 2010's payroll must be less than 2009's, if only by a dollar; when they cling to the peremptory figure they've set irrespective of the circumstance or the consequence in personnel; when they forgo a player not because his price exceeds his value (a figure FanGraphs estimates for Damon in 2010 is $9.7 million) but because their own pointless edict compels them; when the Yankees are willing markedly to weaken their team, in sum, over a difference of $4-6 million dollars, then Alice has returned to Wonderland and we truly have entered Prince Hal's reign, a terra incognita that is austere, obdurate, brutish and ominous.

FOR WHOM THE PENDULUM SWINGS

Andy Warhol once observed that everyone’s famous for fifteen minutes. Of course, Warhol died before the internet age further abridged the nation’s memory and attention span. Today, fame’s half-life doesn’t last a quarter of an hour.

Take the NFL Giants’ Tom Coughlin. Remember this September when the Daily News’ human weather vane anointed him New York’s paradigmatic coach? (See “Giants Coach Is The Man All Other New York Coaches Want to Be,” Lupica, 09/06/09.) It was around the time the press was searching for the moment’s facile theory to explain why the Yankees manager they’d portrayed as an autocratic and abrasive control freak in 2008 miraculously had become the authoritative, congenial father figure in 2009. All at once the echo chamber bleated in symphony, “Credit Coughlin.”

No doubt originally conceived in the bowels of Howard Rubstein’s p.r office and then spoon-fed the press, the Girardi story ran as follows. Following his equivocal debut as the Yankees manager, Joe Girardi retreated to home and hearth in Florida to search his soul. And on the road to St. Petersburg he had a revelation. Perhaps, his Olympian peremptory manner had alienated a few players and his penchant for secrecy, a few reporters after all. Then and there, Joe resolved to mend his ornery ways and to appeal to higher counsel. Within days, the manager digested Coach C’s Super Bowl Instructional Manual: yes, you too, in one easy step can remake your image. Later, New York’s favorite championship coach received a phone call. (Yankee sources assure me Joe Torre, in Hawaii, wasn’t accepting calls.) Perhaps, Tom told Joe to take the kids to play pool, and if they were good, to buy them ice cream.

If honest, the Giants Coach would have imparted some old newspeak wisdom. Want to change how the press portrays you? Easy, win, baby; just win. For those who lose can do nothing right and those who win do nothing wrong.

Remember the furor Girardi’s heterodox and erratic decisions throughout the post-season ignited? Well, if you do, you’re alone. “Oh, you think I recklessly squandered my relievers, overtaxed my starters, and pushed my closer to the brink of physical injury?” “Well, buddy, you can kiss my ring.” To the victor belongs the history and the press was rewriting it before the champagne dried. With Coughlin’s help, they wrote, Girardi had transformed himself into a winner.

Until six weeks later, that is, when the scribblers reversed creditor and debtor on the bill of gratitude. It seems now the mentor has been saved by his disciple. How quickly they learn! Indeed, just this week, NBC’s Josh Alper mused that were it not for Girardi’s World Series, the Giants might have dismissed his once celebrated mentor. “Coughlin isn't getting fired, though you have to wonder if that outcome might be different if the Yankees hadn't won the World Series.”

Don’t ask for whom the pendulum swings... it swings at thee.

THE PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN

With the first official skirmish between Scott Boras and the owners now joined, baseball, now, officially can embark on the 2009 off-season. Let the free-agent signings begin. Of course, unlike the regular season when owners in Miami and Pittsburgh, at the very least, must honor competition’s form and actually field a team before they can profit from it. Nothing, alas, will compel them to compete this off-season. Nothing will induce them to vie for free-agents even though the Commissioner’s stimulus package hands them $40 to $80 million dollars for this very purpose. If history is any guide, they’ll pocket the money instead. “George, Randy, Lonn, thanks, we’re going to Disney. Hell, you guys had such a good year; I may even buy the wife that hotel she’s always wanted.”

Take the Pittsburgh Pirates for example. When Scott Boras dared to question the Commissioner’s recent announcement that six franchises lost money in 2009, the Pirates’ President, Frank Coonelly, protested. More accurately, he protested too much. After all, what middle-American franchise can survive on a measly $75 million dollar stipend to supplement the proceeds from 1.6 million tickets sold at a brand new ballpark and from local broadcast contracts?

• $40 million in central fund monies (shared national TV, marketing, licensing, MLB Network and MLB.Com)
• $35 million in revenue sharing (the redistributed proceeds from a ~34% tax on each team’s revenue + the luxury tax)

I mean, how’s a team supposed to balance its books when it then has to pay those guys in uniform $49 million dollars in salary. (And The Washington Times’ Thom Loverro had the obtuseness to liken the Yankees to AIG?) Perhaps, Uncle Bud, can donate some of his $18 million dollar salary?

The articles linked as follow corroborate the numbers above. The Daily News; ; The Business of Baseball; ; Payroll Figures; ; Revenue Sharing Allocation

In all seriousness, though, how is one to trust, let alone to sympathize with, an industry where the zeal with which the Bosses shroud their balance sheets is surpassed only by the Mob’s? And to keep them confidential, there is no mendacity they will forgo. The script typically goes as follows. The owners cry poverty. From the ESPN pulpit, baseball’s clerisy decries “competitive imbalance” and warns us ominously “about the future of the game. Talk of salary caps ensues, lockouts threaten, and baseball joins Alice in Wonderland where a Pirates’ greed is noble, a Yankees’ largesse is an evil, and the object of the Game is to profit rather than to win.

The irony is that of the fourteen league pennants won since 2003, teams with payrolls well under $100 million have accumulated six of them. Take the 2008 Tampa Rays ($43 million); the 2003 Marlins ($49 million); the 2007 Rockies ($54 million), each ranked 25th or lower in aggregate payroll. Or one echelon above them, the ’04 and ‘06 Cardinals and the ‘05 White Sox all ranked 11th and 13th respectively. As a composite, they suggest that not only are an owner’s means and munificence not the primary index of his franchise’s win total, they don’t even consist of necessary conditions for the seven October victories required for a World Series.

The outcry for a salary cap only deepens the irony. The balance of power in sports no less than in international politics is subject to the rule of unintended consequences. By binding teams’ spending and encumbering players’ mobility, salary caps yield dynasties their constituent glue by cementing their hold on talent. Take the NBA, for instance. The league has convened 10 championship finals since 2000. Two teams, the Lakers and the Spurs, have represented the Western Conference in 9 of those 10 series, and between them, they’ve won 7 of the 10. Contrast the NBA’s socialized oligarchy with the MLB’s liberal free market system. Professional baseball likewise has totaled ten World Series this decade. Yet 8 different teams have represented the National League; 6 teams, the American League. All total, the Fall Classic has crowned 8 distinct champions. During the same period, only the Pistons in 2004 and the Heat in 2006, managed to break the Spurs-Lakers’ stranglehold on the title.

Of course, the system of Tory capitalism Major League Baseball has chosen over a salary cap doesn’t alone account for the more competitive landscape it creates than the NBA and the greater comparative opportunity it offers teams for upward mobility. Basketball, for example, lends itself to dynasties for discrete, albeit related, reasons. With the acquisition of a single, preeminently talented superstar talent like Kobe, Duncan, Jordan or Bird, one team can dominate the league and monopolize its championship for as long he plays plays. (Nonetheless, the salary cap then accentuates the imbalance because it inhibits the superstar’s rivals from remaking their roster and assembling enough intermediate talent through trades, free-agency, or waivers to neutralize him.) Too many other quirks and caveats distinguish the NBA from MLB for me to gauge whether the salary cap causes, or merely contributes, to King Kobe and his serfs or to quantify its influence—not in this post anyway.

Still, I hardly wish to romanticize baseball’s paternalistic free market either. The six years of vassalage under which a player serves his teams before granted free-agency smacks of a feudal order more than any parallel NBA institution. Apart from its basic injustice, it also distorts the free-agent market. Players rarely reach free-agency before their late 20s at an age well into their career’s prime. The distortion this causes is two fold. On the one hand, the team that drafts him receives two to four seasons when his talent and productivity have peaked at a marked discount. Arbitration rarely awards him his market price. On the other, the team that signs him to a long-term free agent contract pays a surcharge on those seasons later in his career when talent and productivity have started to regress.

Okay, but what does this have to do with my beloved Yankees, you ask? Well, consider its implications. First of all, it means that the signing team pays the drafting team a de facto subsidy. When the Yankees expend $23 million dollars on CC Sabathia for 2010, they, in effect, are compensating him retroactively for 2007 and 2008 seasons when the Indians paid one of the game’s best pitchers $9 and $11 million respectively. Secondly, a market that inflates free-agent salaries illustrates that a $200 million dollar payroll isn’t quite the competitive advantage one might imagine. Far from indicating a team that has plundered a championship by assembling the most prolific roster money could buy, a team with salary obligations 40% higher than its nearest equal likely evidences a surfeit of long-term contracts for veteran players that pays the player well above his worth. It’s no accident then that the Yankees’ payroll has exceeded $100 million every season since 2001 and surpassed $200 million every season since 2005 and yet through those nine seasons, they’ve won ONE World Series. Nor is it a related coincidence that measured by average age, the Yankees, during that same period, have ranked as the 1 or 2 oldest teams in the American League every year save 2002.

The Yankees' 2009 further illustrates the point. This year, the Yankees won 14 more games than in 2008. Yet contrary to the popular canard, the improvement owed less to the $60 million dollars they paid their three new free-agents than to the recuperation and rejuvenation of long tenured veterans. In my next post, I will devote my annual valedictory of the Yankee's season to analyzing the statistics that bear this out.

THE GREAT RESENTERS

"Paul had a sense of injustice early on... If his older brother was in the process of winning, he was lucky. If he won, he had 'cheated'"-- Molly O'Neill, "Coming to the Plate"

Now that didn’t take very long, did it? Barely had the parade ended or the champagne dried before the bile began to ooze and the vitriol to swell. Outside the Castle on River Ave., the Jacobins gather to besmirch the King, to tarnish his crown, and to discredit his accession.

It’s a old and tedious canard Yankee fans know too well. Composed of assumptions so tenuous, logic so facile, and malice so transparent, the argument, distilled to its essence, amounts to two whole sentences. Twenty-nine teams in major league baseball can earn a Championship. The Yankees can only buy one.

Seldom does the ressentiment of hypocrites and socialism of fools provide more titillating comic relief.

WASHINGTON'S CORPORATE POPULISTS
Ever year we witness the photo-op. A professional sports franchise wins a title and the President invites the team to the White House to favor them with his compliments. Congress, otherwise the more deliberate branch, strikes earlier. Not wanting the aura to fade, they introduce ceremonial bills congratulating the team in the days following their victory. With minor excpetion, the resolutions pass unanimously. After which, Congressmen return to their customary business-- self-promotion.

Last week it was the Yankees's turn. So Bronx Congressman Jose Serrano introduced House Resolution 893 congratulating the team on their 27th championship because the nation's poorest and most densely populated Congressional district finally had a reason to boast and preen. They'd partaken of a triumph to call their own, even if only vicariously.

Who could possibly object? Where to find such people lacking a modicum of grace, gallantry, or sportsmanship that they would begrude the Bronx downtrodden their flash of glory? Look no farther than the Capitol building; the U.S. Congress teems with them.

An unprecedented 17 House member, in fact, voted 'no' and reminded Americans of the rancor, pettines, and puerility that has come to epitomize the nation's legislature.

Item # 1: “Beantown’s Jacobin”
Asked why he voted against House resolution 893Massachusetts Congressman Bill Delahunt replied, “For those of us in Red Sox nation, it was a sad, sad day. It tells you something about the corrosive nature of money in sports and politics.”

The distinguished Representative from Quincy, after all, knows whence he speaks. Since 1989, Congressman Delahunt has received $34,000 in campaign contributions from Liberty Mutual Insurance Company-- the fourth largest property and casualty insurer in the United States. A $100 billion dollar corporation, no little thanks to Congressman Delahunt, you and I now insure against catastrophic losses. Under the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act of 2002, our tax dollars now re-insure Liberty Mutual for claims owed to terrorist attacks. Coincidentally, Massachusetts’ scourge of money and politics “corrosive” voted for its re-authorization.

Item #2: “The Agrarian Demagogue”
Congressman Bruce Braley, evidently, concurred with the Representative from Liberty Mutual.

Asked why the representative from Iowa's 5th district wouldn't extend New York's Yankees a simple courtesy, his spokesperson said, “Congressman Braley simply could not vote in good conscience for a resolution honoring the moneyed interests of the Wall Street Yankees.” I didn't know the players and coaching staff held second jobs. Then again, Girardi always has reminded me of an investment banker.

Regardless, it seems the side of the hand the Congressman shows "Wall Street" varies with the year. In 2009, the Wall Street Yankees get the back of hand. To the Wall Street Bankers, in 2006, however, the Prairie Populist extended the palm. Since his election, in fact, Braley has accepted $10,000 in campaign contribution from the American Banking Association. (See Open Secret.com)

That the fiscal regime under which major league baseball operates make the supposedly progressive U.S. code-- over which the Congressman ostensibly wields influence no less- seem oligarchic, by comparison, doesn't seem to faze him either of them.

If the Iowa and Massachusetts Congressmen fancies themselves Populist crusaders out to slay Robber Barons and to soak the rich, they would do better to hunt among the coroporations situated in their districts. For example, when was the last time Liberty Mutual Insurance Company indemnified a competitor? What about Iowa’s John Deere & Co: how much did they contribute to the competitive wherewithal of other manufacturers of agricultural machinery?

Apart from the taxes the U.S., New York state, and New York City collect from the New York Yankees, the team also redistributes a share of its profits to its fiercest competitiors. In 2008, the Yankees paid major league baseball $100 million dollars in revenue-sharing fees and luxury taxes. Largesse that comprises 25% of the total $400 million in proceeds Commissioner Selig’s office subsequently donated to small-market franchises like the Pirates, Indians, Padres Rays, and Marlins, among others. In fact, the Pirates and Indians, received $40 million and $20 million, respectively, in subsidies. (See “Revenue Shearing,” by Bill Madden, NY Daily News, August 16, 2009). The Marlins' stipend falls somewhere in between. (Hardball Times, "The Loria of It," March 5, 2008)

If the call of justice in baseball really moved them, Delahunt and Braley would revile the greed and venality of the Pirates' owner, Robert Nutting, and the Marlins' owner, Jeffery Loria, among others, that enable them to pocket monies the Commissioner specifically earmarks for acquiring and retaining their talent. In 2008, the Marlins' $20 million dollar payroll matched their subsidy; likewise the Pirates $48 million dollar payroll approximated theirs. The revenue each team garnered from broadcast rights and ticket sales their owners would have their fans, their cities, and their rivals believe evaporated into thin air. Delahunt and Braley's selective outrage is akin to railing at Pfizer for purchasing Wyeth meanwhile condoning Glaxo for exploiting U.S. tax loopholes to move job overseas.

Meanwhile, the great malefactors of wealth on Wall Street, bankers who receive bailout checks from which they award themselves million dollar bonuses while their companies waste away, find kindred pirates in Pittsburgh and related sharks in Miami.

THE TRANSPARENCE OF MALICE
Then again, demagoguery is Congress’ native language. What's a journalist's excuse?

Observing how the press reported the Yankees's 27th World Series, one would guess that journalism suddenly suspended its profession's sacred ethic of objectivity for sports coverage. A homily about money's insidious and inexorable influence colored the beat reporter's narrative. The columnists, meanwhile, celebrated a belated Halloween. Dispensing with empirical fact, reasoned logic, historical context and intellectual coherence consistency, their columns instead invented ever new and more elaborate theoretical trappings and editorial disguises for a mantra worthy of a New England adolescent: "God, I hate the Yankees." Albeit, it lacks the Red Sox fan's cri de coeur's simple integrity.

To quote ESPN Peter Gammons, “the clichéd response to [their] winning the World Series seemed to be a universal ‘The Yankees bought the Series,’ as if somehow they went outside the rules of law and bought Cook or Palm Beach County.” (“Blame the System,” ESPN, November 7, 2009) (I trust that Gammons, in his hyperbole, didn’t intend to evoke Cook County’s notorious thralldom to perhaps the most irredeemably corrupt political machine in American history—not consciously anyway.)

Gammons' blog post hardly mounts the most vigorous or cogent defense on the Yankees’ behalf. Perhaps, Gammons recalls the 2007 season and the immediate parallels it suggests too vividly. If so, he’d do well to remind his colleagues.

Before recapping it, I excerpt a few choice selections from the detractors below.

Exhibit 1---"The Best Team Money Could Buy," by SI.com's Joe Posnanski (11/06/09), "You have a sport where the New York Yankees... spent $50 million more than any other team, that team with three sure Hall of Famers and as many as four others and as many as four others, that team that bought Milwaukee's best pitcher and Anaheim's best hitter and Toronto's No.2 starter and Boston's favorite idiot and the most expensive player in the history of baseball and so on, that team will win the World Series, spray champagne... and tell you that they won because they came together as a group and kept pulling themselves off the ground. "

Exhibit 2 - "“The New York Yankees win the World Series. That is not, in itself, a very remarkable sentence to write…. They have the largest payroll in Major League Baseball for the ninth successive year: $201million" (Times Online, Tom Dart, 11/05/09)

Exhibit 3 -- "Rooting for the 2009 World Series champion New York Yankees is like rooting for AIG. The Yankees are the perfect symbol for the times - bloated excess…While the federal government was bailing out AIG, the Yankees were charging thousands of dollars for the best tickets in a new $1.6 billion ballpark paid for in part with public funding and tax breaks That's like rooting for a bully. Is there really any joy in that?" (Thom Loverro, The Washington Times, 11/06/09)(emphasis mine)

(Actually, "public funding" and "tax breaks" did not finance Yankee Stadium; tax-free NYC industrial revenue bonds enabled the Steinbrenners to borrow money at a lower interest rate because the City guarantees the loan. Hence, the bonds only cost taxpayers if the Yankees default on interest payments-- a remote possibility. What's more, the City can't forgo tax revenue it never would have collected. No NYC IRBs = No New Stadium = No Bonds to tax. But hey why should a few facts stand in the way of good diatribe?)

Exhibit# 4-- "Even Brian Cashman said last night the Yankees are a product of their payroll and then defended it, saying they play by the rules. Which is entirely true... they rose from third place because they simply outspent everybody else on Burnett, Sabathia and Teixeira. It's not complicated.” (All You Can Do is Wear It," by Boston Globe's Pete Abraham, 11/05/09) (Et tu, Pete?)

WHAT, FILTHY LUCRE SOIL THESE PURE BRAHMIN HANDS?
Consider Abraham's argument for a second. It does betray a superficial cogency, does it not? The Yankees finished in third-place and missed the playoffs in 2008. Consequently, in the off-season, they aggressively pursued and successfully signed Sabathia, Burnett, and Teixiera-- the last of the three, by outsmarting and then outbidding their arch rivals. With $60 million in annual salary spent and three premiere free agents corralled, the Yankees returned to the post-season the following year and took home a championship. In sum,

Preface: In 2008, the Yankees didn't qualify for the playoffs.

• Premise A: In the 2008 off-season, the Yankees, as a consequence, leveraged their preeminence as the league's highest grossing franchise to acquire three expensive, marquee free-agents.
• Premise B: The following season, the Yankees won the World Series ("Wear It"
• Conclusion: Because the Yankees spent $60 million this off-season on free-agents to improve their team, they bought themselves a championship.

Follow the money, right?

Only two basic flaws riddle the above syllogism. First, its logic suffers from the classic fallacy of post hoc, ergo propter hoc. That is, simply because Premise B (World Series) succeeded Premise A (major free-agent signings) in chronology does not mean the first cause the second. No doubt, it may have. Then again, pure coincidence could account for Premise B supervening Premise A. Or, more likely, a whole array of unacknowledged factors like Posada's and Matsui's recovery from injuries; the augmented offensive production Jeter, Cano, and Melky contributed; Hughes' mastery of the set-up role, among other improvements, just as easily could explain why the Yankees 2009 season surpassed their performance in 2008. Only a sophisticated statistical analysis can separate each factor and isolate its overall contribution.

Second, the press seems to invoke the "Follow the Money" rule rather capriciously; its sudden self-evident truth and received wisdom inspired less by the spending's circumstances than the spender's identity: the upstart merchant or the thrifty Brahmin.

Observe its selective and indiscriminate application to two teams' parallel trajectories.

In 2006, an AL East team-- let's call them TEAM B: 'B' for Brahmin-- possessed a $120 million dollar payroll good for the second highest payroll in baseball. On August 2, 2006, the Brahmins led their division with a 64-42 record and seemed fated for a rewarding October. Somewhere along the way however Manifest Destiny foundered. The Brahmins lost 11 of their next 15 games, suffered a rash of injuries, accused a star hitter of malingering, bickered in the clubhouse, and maligned each other in the press. Then, to culminate the fall from grace, management, to mask its hubris, played the gentility card.

Wrapping themselves in the mantle of impecunious virtue, the Brahmins Front-Office blamed their collapse on an "Uber"-franchise, the New York Yankees. (Management would renew this charge three years later when a certain free-agent first-baseman spurned them and joined their enemy.) Evidently, the money changers-- the Uber-franchise, that is, in the original German-- had purloined Bobby Abreu. A contract the landed gentry, on the other hand, insisted their poverty precluded. You have to sympathize with these poor dispossessed patricians: after all, how is a team with a $120 million payroll, and boasting the league's highest ticket prices besides, supposed to compete with the "Wall Street Yankees"?

So sworn to virtue, the Brahmins meanwhile tumbled from 2nd place to 3rd and in fact, barely averted a losing seaso, finishing 81-81 in 2006 and spending October at home.

Perhaps their superior virtue didn't console them, in the end, after all. Because as soon as the World Series ended, Team Brahmin started to spend like the noveau-riche arrivistes at whom they loved to look down their nose. In one month, they bought the free agent market's three premiere players at their respective positions. (Hmmn, sounds familiar, eh?)

Team Brahmin immediately signed the most expensive and prolific shortstop, Julio Lugo; and a coveted outfielders, J.D. Drew-- recently a Dodger with whose contract these ethical paragons may or may not have tampered. Then, miracle of miracles, they somehow managed to outbid the Uber-Franchise for the best starting pitcher, Daisuke Matsuzaka, paying $50 million just to negotiate with him and another $50 million on his contract. (The Yankees would return the favor three years later with Teixiera, albeit with much screaming and thundering by the Brahmins. To the aristocracy, turnabout is not fair play.)

By winter's end, Team Brahmin spent over $200 million and by Opening Day of 2007, their annual payroll rose from 2006's $120 million figure to $145 million, still good for the 2nd highest in baseball. Although in 2007, the 2nd highest payroll stood a full $30 million more than the $115 million dollar Mets.

THE DOUBLE STANDARD
Recall how the Red Sox-- I mean, Team Brahmin-- fared in 2007 after their spending spree in the preceding off-season? They won fifteen more games and not only returned to the playoffs, they claimed the AL East crown and won their second World Series in four seasons.

Only in the weeks following theit 2007 triumph, strangely, Congressman didn't deplore money's pernicious role in sports. Nor did baseball writers style "screeds" (Posnanski's word, not mine) invoking competiting balance and baseball's "best interest" to disparage Boston's triumph as a championship suborned. To the contrary, the pundits practically fell all over themselves to extol the Red Sox GM Office on their ingenuity and shrewdness and to declare their championship a testament to their ownership's initiative and resourcefulness.

Read the difference in a few selections from two of the same publications I excerpt from above, Sports Illustrated and The Boston Globe:

Exhibit A- "Boston's duo of GM Theo Epstein and manager Terry Francona make a superb tandem. It's refreshing to see a GM and manager get along to this degree. Also, it doesn't hurt that both are terrific at their jobs. Epstein engenders some jealousy for being so good so young." (John Heyman, SI.Com October 29,2007)

Exhibit B -- “A lot has been made of the big-name, big-money stars who helped the Red Sox win, but good teams make smart decisions; and this title, like the last one, was just as much about the throw-ins, afterthoughts and castoffs whom the Sox have given a home.” (“These Are Not Your Father’s Red Sox,” Michael Northrop, Sports Illustrated, November 7, 2007)

Exhibit C -- “Henry, the low-talking hedge funder, has had considerable help in Lucchino, Werner, and of course, the brilliant young GM who has spawned a new generation of BlackBerry-wielding, stat-driven, cold-blooded hardballers intent on reinventing baseball operations” ("Foresight Is Their Specialty", by Dan Shaughnessy, Boston Globe, November 4, 2007)

Now, had the Tampa Rays recently won a World Series, then their 25th highest, $60 million dollar payroll may have justified the stark discrepancies, indicated above, in the press' coverage and overall narrative. But the Red Sox $143 million payroll in 2007, 2nd in baseball, hardly qualifies them for the role of hero in a morality tale about the power of intellectual sophistication and economic thrift to prevail over Big Business' colossal predatory financial might.

Financial wherewithal leveraged through free agent acquisitions, as such, either explains both the Red Sox 2007 championship and the Yankees in 2009 or neither of them. Or rather, their World Series' triumphs, together with the (i) the Phillies', in 2008 on a $98 million dollar (11th in the league); (ii) the Cardinals' in 2006 on a $89 million (also 11th in the league); (iii) the Chicago White Sox's in 2005 on a $75 million dollar payroll (13th); and (iv) the Marlins' in 2003 on a $49 million dollar payroll (25th): all together they dramatize the lie inside the Resenters' great canard. First, money alone has not and cannot buy a championship in basseball. More importantly, money may not even rank as the most influential factor, among many, in the winnowing process.

The Bombers, their players, personnel department, and ownership deserve better than the deceitful broadsides, begruding acknowledgment, and qualified accolades their championship, by and large, has garnered them. But don't expect it anytime soon. Nothing succeeds like excess-- demagoguery in Congress, duplicity in the press, and in baseball, the sore loser's resentful outcry. Little distorts the mind, deranges the senses, or unleashes the bile more than another title won by the New York Yankees.