Friday, June 17, 2011

Scarce resources

I wrote this a while ago and meant to post it, but somehow never did. It's slightly outdated, but I feel that I should post it unchanged, for reasons that I cannot really explain. Here it is.

Mere months ago, Sandy Alderson was installed as the Mets' general manager, and from many of his early comments on the team, it's clear that the Alderson regime (including scouting guru and Moneyball star Paul DePodesta) is putting a good deal of weight on the acquisition of young talent and its development in the farm system. Partially because of this, and partially because of the Mets' slow start to 2011, there have been calls from some quarters to throw in the towel on this season and this incarnation of the Mets, and begin trading the more market-valuable players on the team for prospects. Honestly there's not a lot there, so when people say "there are no untouchables" and "the farm system should be restocked," what they're basically doing it calling for is the exit of David Wright and Jose Reyes.

I agree with the tenor of the regime thus far - that is, that the draft and youth development are important, and further that they are more effective team building strategies than simply buying the big free agent of the offseason year after year - and I agree with the idea that in theory, no player on the roster should be dogmatically untouchable. Everyone should be available, but Wright and Reyes not only should be the last to go, but they should be traded only in the event of a monumental, earth-shattering offer.

More stuff
The value of a star

David Wright and Jose Reyes are two of the best position players that have ever graced the Met payroll. Through 2010, according to baseball-reference's version of the Wins Above Replacement statistic (in case you're unfamiliar, WAR measures a player's individual contribution to his team's win total), Wright and Reyes are the third and eighth-best position players in the franchise's history.

Granted, the Mets have not been that good at developing position players throughout their history, and most of their best players spent significant periods of time playing for other teams. WAR is a cumulative statistic - that is, the longer one plays, the more wins he accumulates. David Wright is 28, and Jose Reyes is 27. Neither one has accumulated 4,000 plate appearances as a Met. Both Wright and Reyes have a ways to go and among the leaders in franchise WAR, only Carlos Beltran is still active (and sadly, most likely is in his final year as a Met). If both continue at anything resembling their career average pace, they are likely to continue to ascend that list.

The average season for both Wright and Reyes places them in the outer fringes of the elite level. When you look at WAR as a rate statistic per 700 plate appearances (roughly the number a player will have in a 160-game span), David Wright clocks in at 5.25, with Jose Reyes at 4.08. What does that mean? In 2010, in 675 plate appearances, Matt Holliday had a WAR of 5.3. Ichiro Suzuki, in 732 PA, had a WAR of 4.1. In other words, the average years for Wright and Reyes are roughly the seasons that Holliday and Ichiro had last year.

Would you ever even dream of trading away Ichiro? It's not outside of the realm of possibility that if Jack Zduriencik tried to pull that, he'd be arrested for crimes against Seattle.

Matt Holliday's case is a pretty good example of why trading a really good player in his prime (or thereabouts) is a bad idea. He's been traded twice in the past few years - in November 2008, from Colorado to Oakland; and again in July of 2009, from Oakland to St. Louis. Both situations were relatively similar to the one in which the Mets currently find themselves - teams that are likely not going to win anything that are trying to rebuild for the future by trading a star player for young prospects.

When the Rockies dealt Holliday, they got three players in return: Greg Smith, Huston Street, and Carlos Gonzalez. Since the trade (two full seasons, then the start of this one), Holliday has a rWAR (again, that's Baseball Reference Wins Above Replacement) of 11.8. Greg Smith, in very limited big-league time, comes in at -0.2. Huston Street, as a reliever with injury problems, hasn't pitched much, so he registers a rWAR of 3.1. Last year's surprise MVP candidate CarGo (an awful nickname, by the way) has a post-trade rWAR of 6.1. That's 9 wins above replacement level from the Rockies' haul against the 11.8 Holliday's put up himself. Take into account the fact that Gonzalez is young (meaning that he will probably last longer than Holliday, but also that his continued performance is unproven), and I'm going to call this trade somewhere between a wash and a loss for the Rockies, depending on your projections for Gonzalez's future.

The A's only kept Holliday for about half a season before moving him along. In return, they got Brett Wallace, Shane Peterson, and Clayton Mortensen. None are with the A's major league squad. Wallace was traded to the Blue Jays for a fellow prospect (Michael Taylor, who also has not reached the majors). Peterson plays for Sacramento in the Pacific Coast League. Mortensen was traded to the Rockies after being designated for assignment, which usually isn't a great sign.

These are all gifted baseball players, and some or all of them might turn out to be great. Carlos Gonzalez (among others) has a shot at that. But here you can see the volatility of the baseball prospect: one becomes an MVP candidate, one is traded again and again, several remain in the minor leagues. You can't know what you're going to get from a young player - and yet, Matt Holliday just keeps producing at his expected high level. If the Mets trade Wright or Reyes, they might get the next Carlos Gonzalez, or they might get the next Lastings Milledge or Alex Escobar. There's no guarantee. These proven players are so good that it's not easy to replace them, especially with young players who may or may not pan out. Trading away prospects is almost always a better strategy than holding onto them, and the reverse is also true - if you have an elite player, and you have any chance at keeping that player for the long term, you should do so.

A reason to watch

Let's be honest, the Mets are not very good and probably won't be all season. Sandy Alderson and his posse are smart though, and they will have this franchise in shape - from top to bottom - very soon. However, I fear that too much losing may alienate the fanbase, and that will only be exacerbated by jettisoning the only two legitimate, healthy star-caliber players the Mets have. That may not seem like a huge deal, but when you have a team with the recent media buzz that the Mets have (spoiler alert: it's not good), you need all the help you can get when trying to attract any kind of free agent. You also need that help in negotiating with high-level amateur talent, which the Mets should be doing (internationally and through the draft) at a high level; knowing the history of Alderson and his cadre, this is something that's likely to happen. Scott Boras and people like him can use things like this to milk more and more money out of a team, which in turn will reduce the team's ability to draft or sign large quantities of numbers - the kind of numbers you need to guard against the volatility that we saw in the Matt Holliday trades.

To maintain any kind of positivity in the Mets fanbase, David Wright and Jose Reyes need to stay in Queens. To win now and in the future, David Wright and Jose Reyes must be Mets. To get the kind of players the Mets will need in the future, Wright and Reyes need to stay with the team. Players like them don't come along every day and are hard to replace, and they give the fans a reason to watch in a time when there isn't a lot of winning happening. There is no reason to trade Wright and Reyes aside from a pure shake-up move. There is no good reason to trade them.