Wednesday Bantering: Links

I could have also mentioned that ticket prices are staying the same next year.

I wouldn’t want him for half of that

I also wonder if Pujols will get less interest because folks are wondering about what his age really is.

Which brings me to an interesting question . . . do you think the team is better off with him as Type A or Type B?

I’d say he’s more likely to accept arbitration if he’s Type A, with Type B he has more value on the free agent market. Obviously, he’s way more valuable if he declines arbitration as a Type A, but there is a chance he wouldn’t. On the other hand, him accepting arbitration wouldn’t be a bad thing, either.

If I were to answer the question, I’d say I’d rather have him as Type A because I don’t mind if he accepts. But, take someone like Jose Molina — Type A status would make him even less likely to accept arbitration, so we should actually prefer him to be Type B than Type A, I’d think. Seems kind of counter-intuitive, but that’s how it is.

you actually thought that’d ever happen

… and divisions. It’s one or the other.

but it isn’t perfectly designed. And not only because it’s an imperfect statistic (how do you judge defence? how do you reward versatility? which WAR do you use?), but also because you shouldn’t necessarily be deciding on who is MVP based on how much better they are than a replacement player because a replacement-player wouldn’t necessarily be starting in place of him. I think it makes more sense to compare the MVP candidates to a higher level of competition than the theoretically worst major leaguer, maybe something like wins above average instead.

Also, and this is just something you brought up that I think is interesting, I know that you don’t actually think tallying up the number of plate appearances each player is involved in makes sense at all (by the way, don’t forget that Bautista has made 218 putouts and 11 assists as an outfielder and 17 putouts and 62 assists as a third baseman). You implied the reason there but didn’t actually state it and I think it bears mentioning because it is kind of an interesting concept.

Pitchers accrue value by making more outs than replacement-level pitchers and batters accrue value by getting on base more than replacement-level batters. However, since even replacement-level pitchers will record outs more than half the time, it is more difficult — on a per plate appearance basis — for pitchers to accrue equal value. It’s the same reason that it’s hard to accrue a lot of value in the field, even bad fielders will still make most of the plays.