The Futility Infielder

After attending some half a dozen Baseball Prospectus pizza feeds and bookstore events over the past few years, this past week found me on the other side of the podium for three New York City appearances. Granted, I wasn't the star attraction, not in a Murderer's Row lineup that's included Steve Goldman, Joe Sheehan and Chris Kahrl, three of the best baseball writers in America, for my money. In fact, I wasn't even listed on the bill. But as I've said before, you can bat me ninth in that lineup any time. My new colleagues made me feel more than welcome in addressing the audience about BP's philosophy and fielding questions on a wide variety of topics.

On Saturday evening at Coliseum Books, I dropped the ball, however, and while it wasn't a crucial error, I spent the rest of the event kicking myself for not being quicker with a quip. The microphone had made its way down the row from Chris to Steve to Joe, with the topic of conversation turning to the Blue Jays, a team which, though it features BP alum Keith Law in their front office, has spent the past winter moving in a direction that appears to be less sabermetrically informed than before, with the BP 2005 essay quite critical of that direction.

Joe finished his response to a question about that essay and then turned to me with the microphone and said, "I think Jay has something to say on this."

"I do?" I looked up at him and then out at the crowd. I froze as if I were looking at a belt-high fastball while sitting on the curve. I had nuthin'. Vapor lock. Strike three. Sit down, rookie. It really didn't help that I already was sitting.

The microphone went back to Steve and the conversation turned to the Yankees. As Steve grew more and more animated in his answers about the Yankees -- he looked ready to jab his finger into George Steinbrenner's chest -- I mentally checked out for a moments, scolding myself. Just prior to the Blue Jays question, somebody had commented about the Twins, a team I cover for BP's Triple Play department. Damn it, I thought to myself, I did have something to say.

Fortunately, I got a chance to say it at Monday night's event, and even got a little mileage and a few laughs as I self-deprecatingly described my big freeze and my status as the non-roster invitee on the panel. My point came amid the longest portion of the night's discussion, one in which all four panelists chimed in on a question about successful teams that don't appear to pay heed to performance analysis and don't construct their teams in a way that BP might espouse. The question came from somebody using the Angels as an example.

The point I'd been itching to make was that the thread that runs through Baseball Prospectus' work is about building a better ballclub and a better game. People might criticize BP for getting on a particular team, but that doesn't mean we have it in for them or that we think just because they adhere to a philosophy that differs from ours that they're wrong and we're right. We get on a team when we can see misallocated resources and missed opportunities.

A few days ago I was reading John Bonnes, who writes a blog called the Twins Geek and has been for several years. John follows his team very closely and very well, and is a big enough player in his market that he's got some access. Recently he interviewed Terry Ryan, the GM of the Twins. In the third installment of his interview, he had set up an opportunity for Ryan to address BP's Twins essay (which I didn't write) which chides the Twins for putting up with "good enough" and not aiming higher. Since I can quote in this medium rather than paraphrase, here's Johnny:

The night before I interviewed [Terry] Ryan, my Baseball Prospectus 2005 arrived in the mail. It continued to perpetuate a myth that they had started and the blogging community has embraced -- that the Twins hold themselves back from a championship caliber level by focusing on winning the AL Central. I repeated the argument to Terry and gave him a chance to talk about wanting to win the World Series. Just the opposite happened.

"Our objective is to win the AL Central", he stated matter-of-factly. He constructs his roster to come out on top over six months. He believes, like the writers at Baseball Prospectus supposedly do, that the best team consistently comes out on top over a 162 game season. The same cannot be said in a seven game series, which for a GM, is about a team getting hot at the right time.

But surely he at least thinks the Twins are a team that could do some damage in the playoffs. After all, look at the front of their rotation and their bullpen….

"I don't even think about the playoffs John."

Check, please.

The point isn't that they we happened to be "right" and Bonnes "wrong," or that he equated something we've been charging for years, that the Twins do limit themselves, with myth perpetuation. As the book essay pointed out, the Twins are now in a select group of a dozen teams that have won 90+ games three years in a row without winning a pennant, and if one examines their moves during that span, their decision making patterns do suggest settling.

As a baseball fan and an analyst, I want to watch the Twins succeed, and I'm fine if they don't do it the Billy Beane way, by emphasizing OBP and station-to-station baseball at the expense of the stolen base and the sac bunt. The Twins play in a dome and they're one of the three turf teams remaining, and as such, they need to value speed a bit more highly than, say, the A's. But what I'm not fine with is the consistency with which a team with a payroll in the $50-60 million range throws away money better spent elsewhere.

The Twins need to count every bean, so then why do they do things like re-sign Shannon Stewart to a three-year, $18 million deal (as they did after the 2003 season) or Jacque Jones to a one-year, $5 million deal (as they did at the arbitration deadline in December) when numerous decent low-cost alternatives exist within the organization? They're are a corner-hitter producing factory. Over the past few years they've come up with Michael Cuddyer, Michael Restovich, Lew Ford, Justin Morneau, Matt LeCroy, Bobby Kielty, Michael Ryan, Dustan Mohr, Jason Kubel -- useful ballplayers, many interchangeable with each other and with the previous cohort of Joneses and David Ortizes, some with higher ceilings than others. As Joe joked last night, four guys had to get shot to give Ford, who hit .299/.385/.450 as a 27-year old "rookie," his playing time.

The team would have been better off not signing Stewart or not signing Jones and spending that $5-6 million on a third starter better than Carlos Silva or Kyle Lohse to improve their chances in a short series. They'd be better off giving Cuddyer a shot at second base, where he's done well in limited duty (a 105 Rate2, five runs above average per 100 games, according to BP's stats) instead of re-signing Luis Rivas for another $1.625 million. If they need a safety net for rookie Jason Bartlett at shortstop, they can do better than locking up Juan Freakin' Castro for two years at $2.05 million. Guys like Castro should be non-roster invitees who luck into spots at the minimum salary by having hot spring trainings, not players on who you blow $50K for a third-year option.

Which isn't to say the Twins don't do some things right. Letting fan fave Corey Koskie go to Toronto for three-years and $17 million (a focal point of the aforementioned Jays essay) was a bullet dodged. Letting Cristian Guzman go to D.C. after years of mediocrity was the right call. Keeping Justin Morneau in the minor leagues for half a season rather than advance his service clock may save them a couple million in arbitration down the road, and the Twins have a tendency to game the system in that manner, as I've pointed out in a past PTP. Locking up Cy Young winner Johan Santana for four years and $40 million was absolutely necessary.

There's more than one way to skin a cat, as the Twins have shown, and if they want to settle for 92 wins, they've got a good shot at the division. But if they don't claw for every single edge, they'll soon find themselves looking up at the Indians, a progressively-run team on the verge of jelling, as they spend a lonely October wondering what went wrong.

Anyway, that's a longer version of the spiel I went into on Monday night, one that hopefully sheds a little light on what BP does. I do want to thank everybody who came out to one of the three bookstore events -- it was a pleasure to meet people who've been reading me both at BP and here -- and to Joe, Chris, and Steve for letting me share the stage with them and to call me one of their own now.