Valuing Leadership
One of the comments that is most often hurled at people like us is that we don’t understand just how valuable things like clubhouse chemistry, leadership, and the like are. Even as the Mariners dissolved into a pool of awfulness last year, the cries from the media and the team itself were that a lack of chemistry and leadership, not a lack of talent, was the true culprit. After all, we’re told, major league managers and GMs understand how valuable this chemistry/leadership dynamic is. Because they value it, so should we.
Except, they don’t. They say they do, but they don’t. As Tango points out, the Cliff Floyd signing from last week is a perfect example of their actions belying their words.
Cliff Floyd, widely accepted as a veteran clubhouse leader and good influence on young players, signed for $750,000 for 2009. The league minimum is $400,000. The Padres paid $350,000 more than the minimum for a bench player because he was a good leader, a good clubhouse influence, and will theoretically improve their team chemistry. That’s what the Padres valued Floyd’s off-the-field stuff at – $350,000.
It’s not just Floyd, either. Trot Nixon, who was absolutely beloved in the Red Sox clubhouse during his prime, signed a minor league contract with the Brewers. No guaranteed money for this veteran clubhouse leader. The Mariners, of course, signed Mike Sweeney to a minor league deal – Sweeney is renowned as such a good person that the Royals named an award after him. No guaranteed money for this veteran clubhouse leader.
You could do this all day – Tony Clark is often well spoke of for his mentoring of young players. $800,000 on a one year deal. David Eckstein, notable grit master and guy who gets the most out of his mediocre physical abilities – $850,000 on a one year deal. Brad Ausmus, great handler of pitchers and gamecaller – $1 million for one year.
The going rate for veteran leadership and clubhouse presence is somewhere between $0 and $500,000. That’s the premium that teams are willing to pay for a guy with highly respected intangibles.
MLB teams can talk up chemistry and leadership all they want. When the time comes to put their money where their mouth is, they buy talent, not intangibles.
The only people who really believe in the extreme positive value of these off the field things are baseball writers. You know, the ones who have a vested interest in cultivating positive relationships with these people off the field. The off the field stuff matters to them and no one else.
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As the saying goes, “Don’t tell me what you value, show me your budget. I’ll tell you what you value.”
Couldn’t be more true here.
Quantifing the unquantifiable. I love it.
I realize I’m opening myself up to some potentially serious snark here, but I DO believe in intangibles and their effect on the game.
Are they measurable? No…not yet anyway (if a metric can be conjured up for such a thing I would expect that the fine folks here or at LL would be among the first to detect it
Should baseball decisions be made solely or even partially based upon these intangibles…well I wouldn’t suggest that either.
But when Carmen Fusco brought up the “mental aspect” of the game at the meet-up not too long ago, I craned my head looking around the audience attempting to gauge the reaction, and it was surprisingly muted. Whether out of respect, civility or tacit agreement, I cannot know…what I do know is that having a guy at my job who is a role model, a positive influence and an all-around motivator DOES have an impact on MY performance and I suspect it is the same with others I share the job with. In that regard, I do think there is some credence to the label “clubhouse leader,” though the effectiveness of said moniker has been shown to vary wildly.
I guess what I’m getting at is that over the course of the years I’ve been reading this blog and LL I’ve grown to respect the proper stats and projections above the scout and pundit’s “eye,” or over the more traditional statistics we’ve historically used to measure true talent. That being said, I feel sometimes that we dismiss “intangibles” almost to the point of nonexistence, simply because they’re things we do not have the ability to measure.
Should intangibles be a MAJOR part of talent evaluation? No. Should we recognize that a person’s emotions can affect performance on any given day? I’d like to think so…but here is anyone’s chance to slay this last little bit of old school defiance I have left in me. Fire away.
Yeah, this is kind of fun.
At the same time, I wonder if there’s really a more personal reason for paying a premium for the ‘clubhouse leader’ role. I think most people have worked with people they really liked and also with assholes, and most would prefer the former.
So maybe the bs here is the idea that these ‘good people’ are going to have a positive impact on other members of the team, or the organization. Maybe the real perceived value is being someone who won’t give the manager any problems, and not wind up in the headlines for the wrong reasons.
Not ‘leadership’, but ‘one less thing to worry about’.
In either case, yes, the reporters have a vested interest in promoting the perception.
I do think that it goes beyond writers wanting to cultivate good relationships with players. I think that a larger impulse to talk about and discuss leadership stems from being in a profession that has cultivated and continued various sports narratives. If all the sports writers (and other traditional media) suddenly say “this narrative about leadership and chemsitry has, for the most part, been fraudulent” then they are dismissing the work that has been done by their profession.
I don’t think anybody is claiming that leadership in and of itself, apart from talent, is worth millions. Otherwise Earl Weaver might be in the lineup even today. Yet your arguement assumes this is what people are saying. Your argument assumes that if teams truly valued leadership, then the “leadership” players you use as examples would be paid millions more for leadership alone.
But what I hear people who talk about leadership say is that talent without leadership is less effective than the same talent with leadership. The Mariners have made it clear that the talent they had last year underachieved. This is beyond question. Yes, their talent was likely overrated at the start of the year, but their record was far, far worse than their talent level. No one can prove that the lack of leadership was the cause. But it also hard to prove a negative and say that it was NOT a primary cause. Especially in view of the fact that the people involved say is was a primary cause. Of course, they could be wrong, but I don’t believe your argument proves that.
I would note, though, that while it’s true overall that teams mostly buy talent (otherwise how to explain the FA contracts given the likes of Dick Allen and Albert Belle), it’s hard to explain why either Cliff Floyd or Tony Clark have jobs for this season except that their teams want to have them around in the clubhouse. Neither signing is really defensible on baseball terms — not just the amounts, but their signing for any amount of money.
Actually, if I may respectfully disagree slightly, MLB teams, and just about all sports teams for that matter, do buy for intangibles a little bit.
It’s just the smart ones buy for talent first and find the honest truth in the numbers first and foremost and see intangibles as a tiebreaker or a bonus when it comes to making tough decisions in regards to which players to sign.
It’s the same kind of reasoning as to why Dick and Tony Bennett were able to build up the WSU basketball program for instance.
Dick recruited Kyle Weaver, Robbie Cowgill, Aaron Baynes, Derrick Low, etc. years ago because he knew (and eventually Tony knew) they could play within the WSU system well by playing good defense and making minimal mistakes on the court first and foremost.
But he also brought them in to Pullman because they believed these were players they could lose with first before they won.
Well, two 20 win seasons, two NCAA tournament appearances, and a Sweet 16 appearance later. . .
The rest, as they say, is history.
Now I’m not saying you can quantify the unquantifiable. Like I said, the smart ones pick players for teams based on talent and numbers first and foremost.
And quite frankly, I’d say the smart ones would base 90 to 95% of each decision based on talent.
But intangibles can be a deal breaker or deal maker in case the signing or retaining of a player turns out to be a tough decision for some reason because there are two or more players with similar stats available or the front office isn’t 100% sure how a given player would fit on the roster in terms of roles.
Let’s take the example of a sales manager who’s a proven, successful leader, someone who is accordingly well-compensated by industry standards. A truly valuable guy to his company. He knows the customer, he knows the market, he knows the product, he’s a team player, and he knows how to movitate the troops and build sales. Until he suffers a heart attack. Something changes in him. He’s no longer got the tenaciousness to energetically go after the things he knows and believes in. He can no longer generate the numbers that justified his salary.
He is moved to a lesser position in the company, perhaps kept around as a “presence” somewhere, but his pay is substantially lowered because it can’t be justified any more by the results he produces.
This is reasonable.
But it is not an argument against seeking sales managers who are genuine leaders over those who are not, those who can crank out a sale themselves but not make the others around them better.
But what about Bloomqu–oh, wait, we’re talking about Major League teams, who want to win.
Leadership is hard to quantify, I looked at last year team as a team devoid of leadership from the top down. Seattle has not had a unifying clubhouse leader since Bone, he’d call you on your effort/attitude/belt size(Silva), and you’d respond because he was there working as hard as you.
The hard part for Seattle was your vocal ra-ra clubhouse guys were mediocre baseball players (Burke, WFB)and the team leaders (Ichi and Beltre) were lead by example types.
The Kangaroo Court would have been in extended session last year, the 1995-2003 teams would have never allowed half the crap that went on last year.
Your best players don’t have to be that unified leader (Bone was never better than Griff, Gar, or Arod) But they have to have the complete support of the team, players, managers, et-al.
hahaha, that’s a case where you look at his numbers and then say: NEXT!
I guess what I’m saying is, if those guys could produce AND lead, they would be worth more than a guy who could only produce. The reason leaders aren’t signed is not because team’s don’t value leadership, it’s because they know that in a real sense a significant talent gap can trump leadership. What they really want is talent plus leadership. Given the choice of two players with roughly equal talent, clearly they will choose the one with leadership qualities over the one without it. But if the choice is between a leader who can no longer get around on the fastball enough to produce in this league, who can no longer see the ball well enough to recognize the pitch effectively, and a bona fide talent who can hit major league pitching, the talent guy will get the contract and the money.
well, to me, at the time Fusco wasn’t talking about ‘leadership’ when he mentioned the mental aspect of the game, he was talking about what he talks about at his academy website:
“Mentally: Our goal is to give [players] an opportunity to develop skills so that no longer will distractions, time pressures, stress, rapid movement or fatigue disrupt their ability to concentrate.”
I think this is a great way to take on the leadership/chemistry angle. The “pro-chemistry” crowd always ask statistically-inclined folks about examples for a given premise. You’ve done a good job of citing replacement level examples over at FanGraphs in response to one such issue.
Here, you’ve shown that declining players with strong leadership reputations don’t get much of a premium, and certainly don’t get long-term deals, if any. When veteraniness and leadership are thrown in your face, the proper response seems to me to be, “please cite a single example today of a player getting paid significantly over his abilities for intangible leadership qualities.”
I know it is implicit in your general arguments, but I can’t pass up an opportunity to repeat my position that chemistry is a symptom of performance. Bad or good chemistry is primarily a reflection of how the team is doing as a unit. Guys who hate eachother can get along well enough if things are going well. It happens in high-rise office buildings and clubhouses alike. Differences, in almost every type of group setting, become exaggerated and the focus of blame when things aren’t going well. No reasonable person believes that intangibles are non-existent in baseball or any other work environment, but they don’t often make any real difference.
Does it make sense to look at a disease-plagued and hobbled body and focus on the fact that the person has the snifles? Well, that particular infection might be enough to kill the person under the circumstances, so it’s bad that the body has broken down to that point. But, in the end, the diseases that attacked the body are more important in understanding what taxed the immune system and killed the person.
I wonder, then, why a certain segment of fandom, and a majority of sportswriters find it so fascinating to focus on the team’s snifles, while completely ignoring the cancers of poor talent evaluation and roster construction. . . .
Good analysis. Not to boot a deceased ungulate, but isn’t that just because the MLB Old Guard is getting replaced by smarter people who know what they are doing? Everett’s contract was only $1 million or something (can’t remember) but the old regime paid MILLIONS for other players to provide “veteran grit and leadership.”
Don’t believe that leadership matters that much but to play devil’s advocate maybe the value of leadership is not a fixed quantity added to the value of the player. Maybe it is a factor you should multiply by.
Salary = Talent*Leadership
If you have a small amount of talent like the players you listed, the leadership correction you apply will be insignificant.
I would argue though that at the World Series Game Seven level (not a level the M’s ever have been near), those sorts of things sometime can make a difference as can, let’s face it, luck.
World Series Game Seven is almost ALL luck.
What the M’s could use right now is someone to provide about 40 HR and 120 walks worth of chemistry and leadership.
I guess what I’m saying is, if those guys could produce AND lead, they would be worth more than a guy who could only produce.
Sure. Everyone agrees with that. I don’t think anyone has ever suggested that if you took two equal players, one with leadership qualities and one without, that you’d be better off with the guy without them.
What we’re fighting against isn’t that, though. We’re fighting against a belief that chemistry = talent, or at the very least, that .4 chemistry + .6 talent = wins, or something along those lines. The media simply isn’t presenting this as a “use leadership as a tiebreaker” position.
They are, very often, presenting the pursuit chemistry and the pursuit of talent as juxtaposed positions and then supporting the pursuit of chemistry.
That is crazy.
I have to agree with most of the previous posters on this issue, especially TomTuttle. When a club has a need that can be filled by two or more players, they are going to go with the “clubhouse leader”, assuming salary is equal.
It’s the same in a job interview situation. If your interview process produces two equal candidates for the position, you will choose the one you get along better with every time.
It’s important to realize that running a successful baseball team and a newspaper are two separate businesses. The business of the newspaper industry is to sell papers (or nowadays perhaps attract web site activity). The average sports fan would rather believe their team is composed of players of extraordinary personal traits, maybe to justify why they root for them. Don’t entirely blame the writers; they are catering to their clientele. Some of us just happen to prefer a more objective analysis and that’s why I come here, not to the mass media sources.
The Mariners have made it clear that the talent they had last year underachieved. This is beyond question. Yes, their talent was likely overrated at the start of the year, but their record was far, far worse than their talent level.
No, actually, we can’t say that. The Mariners in 2008 weren’t very good. That kind of team losing 100 games is perfectly possible just on the basis of dumb luck.
Honestly, this team went into spring training with a 1B who was terrible (Sexson), a DH who was very clearly not going to sustain his success from 2007 (Vidro), and a LF who was also very clearly in major decline (Wilkerson). All they needed was some bad luck with injuries (Bedard and Putz) and sudden aging (Johjima) to cement the deal.
Oh, and also- one of the major difference between the 2007 and 2008 rosters was Jose Guillen… who led the KC Royals to a completely crappy record, even while journalists and talk shows said the M’s were “missing his leadership”.
Based on the Varitek signing, Boston values that sort of thing higher…
It’s interesting to bring this up now, because intangibles strike me as the kind of thing that are easy to pay for if you have the cash, but among the first things to be cut from the budget when times get tough.
FanGraphs shows Varitek was worth $5.6 million last year. As a free agent, Varitek signed for… $5 million.
Not to mention that Guillen’s leadership seemed just about as solid as Silva’s…uh….leadership….
If Silva were on a competitive eating team, he would be a great leader by example. Just ask Brandon Morrow. And that’s the type of leadership you can quantify. Silva was worth thirty extra pounds of leaderhip over the course of last season.
Hell, YEAH!
A lot of fans (and KJR jocks) seem to think you can substitute leadership for talent. They may not think of it that way, but when you break down their arguments, that’s exactly what they’re saying.
Which is crazy. You can’t lead from the bench, you can’t lead from the injured reserve list, you can’t lead when you’re below the Mendoza line. Leadership is a second order criterion, something you look at when all things are equal (and remember, +/- .010 in OPS are pretty equal).
Focus on the talent first…then worry about the leadership.
I think “chemistry” on the baseball field is an overblown idea.
Baseball, more than any other sport, is a lot of individualized activities within the game. When a batter is up to bat it is batter versus pitcher. When a ground ball is hit to SS, the SS must make the individual play on the ball.
Sure there are double plays and hitting the cut off man but there are a TON of individual activities in baseball that require talent first and foremost.
I coach high school basketball and as a basketball coach, I think chemistry is more important during the game because there are only 5 guys on the floor and they must all work in sync with each other at all times. Offensively, if one guy forgets the play the entire play can break down and defensively, if one guy blows an assignment, then the other team scores. Of course talent wins in basketball as well but there are times where lesser talent that is well coached and that plays hard and smart can beat teams with more talent.
Certainly in baseball on a given day the team with less talent can win…but over the course of 162 games talent wins…and when you look at how many individual battles there are within the actual game, it seems to me that chemistry is the most overrated in baseball.
You talk about the presence of a great leader like “Mike Sweeney?” What about Griffey? If you put a figure on his worth aside from his onfield contribution, it would outweigh most other players. His nickname is “The Kid” for a reason. He plays with a certain youthful inspiration that will raise the clubhouse morale, along with giving our players a feeling of determination to not let down the great one. I agree that Griffey may not increase attendance, but his presence will be felt inside the clubhouse. I think it would be a travesty if the Mariners did not sign Griffey, but if not Griffey, sign Abreu. If the Mariners fail to sign either of these players, the Mariners will be looked at as the new Rangers in the West.
I don’t think Dave’s argument proves very much. Intangibles can mean all sorts of things: veteran leadership, fan favorite, hard worker, good citizen… Some of these are more important than others to different people. I completely agree that focusing on the intangibles as the *cause* of team’s success or failure is almost always ridiculous, and a writer-driven thing. But I’m not sure you can *prove* intangibles aren’t valuable, or aren’t taken into account by teams. This isn’t a question that lends itself very well to statistical analysis. Maybe just ask a few GMs… I’m pretty sure I know what they’d say.
I actually think teams may not value their veteran grit monetarily, but I believe some teams think that it’s a cheap way to have some “leadership.”
Granted, I agree with you guys that this veteran grit/leader thing is very overrated. Did Cairo actually have some influence on Jose Lopez hitting well last year or was it all Jose coming into his own? Now on the flip side, Jose’s decline in the field is proof that veteran “leadership” is overrated. Many times I’d witness Lopez flub a play and Beltre would walk over and say something. Jose would still make those mental errors.
If anything I see guys like Sweeney as the real world equivalent of a consultant. They come in and do a specific job since they are older players with deteriorating skillsets. Some provide value, some don’t.
This stupid chemistry argument is lame. The manager sets the tone and if he’s a good one, he will use his players properly, they win some games and we have a winning environment. You can have a team full of hired guns and still lose 100 games. John McLaren proved that crappy management negates any positive “team chemistry.”
Follow up question:
Is a player with better statistical performance paid a higher premium for their “leadership”? For example, would Derek Jeter get $1,000,000 extra for his chemistry and leadership?
Also, wasn’t Varitek given a bigger premium for his supposed leadership??
I’m not sure you can *prove* intangibles aren’t valuable, or aren’t taken into account by teams.
Well, I trust you’re satisfied when your company tells you how much they value your contributions, regardless of your actual salary.
Maybe just ask a few GMs… I’m pretty sure I know what they’d say.
I don’t care what they’d say. I care what they do. That’s the whole point of this post.
You can tell me all day that you believe that there’s a giant, pink, flying dragon chained up in your back yard, but if you never go in your back yard and put food and water out, I’m going to assume that you don’t actually believe that.
Yes, indeed. There’s some coordinated activity, but it’s not nearly as integral to the game as team work is to a basketball team or a football team. That’s why, I think, stats can tell so much about baseball play and have a fair amount of predictive value.
CWW, you can’t prove a negative, we all know that. You can, however, do the next best thing–look in the most logical and obvious places for actual evidence of a positive, which is what Dave is doing here.
Dave,
If any of the guys you mentioned were bad guys or head cases would they still be employed in major league baseball? My guess is no but because they are “clubhouse leaders” they have a contract. Based on that I would say that GMs do put some value in the intangibles but they are basically paying these guys to be in house coaches and mentors. That adds up to lost spots on the 40 man roster and up to $1 million. There value is not in performance. For those players who want to extend their career this is a good attribute to have in fact I would say it’s very valuable to the player. Look at Barry Bonds if he was a “clubhouse leader” the all time home run leader would have added another 20-30HR to his playing cards. I say that even with the steroid taboo that is on him who would pass up having him teach your young sluggers and outfielders how to be an all star while still adding serious pop to the lineup.
FanGraphs shows Varitek was worth $5.6 million last year. As a free agent, Varitek signed for… $5 million.
OK, but now you’re changing the metric that you used originally — going from “amount paid in relation to the MLB minimum” to “amount paid in relation to what FanGraphs says they earned based on production a year ago.”
If the FanGraph values are now the metric we’re going by, then shouldn’t you be arguing that leadership and intangibles have a negative value, since Floyd also signed for less than he earned on the field a year ago?
The rest of baseball valued Varitek at $0 this offseason, unless some other team made him an offer that I missed. Boston valued him at $5 million.
There are exceptions, for instance one of the rationals the Phillies stated for signing Moyer to a guaranteed 2 year contract for 6.5m a year, plus incentives, was that having him on the bench to provide leadership to their younger pitchers made the risk worthwhile. According to Fangraphs he was worth $6.0m last year pitching 196 innings with a 16-7 record. That record looks pretty good on paper, but I think you can say that any guarantee for 6.5m for a 48 year old pitcher includes a substantial leadership bonus.
I might also cite Jason Varitek’s $5m contract with a player option for 2010 of $3m. If it were not for the leadership, and sentiment factor they probably wouldn’t have signed him at all.
The Varitek example has been answered already. As for Moyer, if he was worth $6 million but is getting paid $6.5 million, then that’s consistent with the hypothesis that teams are willing to pay up to about $500,000 for intangible leadership qualities. (By the way, Moyer is not 48, nor will he be during the life of the contract.)
I understand the concept and am generally in line with your thinking…that Leadership and Grit are valued too much by media and fans more than it should be. In fact, I would suggest that the reason it’s written about so much is that writers and casual fans alike are too lazy to try to understand true sabermetrics and so take the easy way and just align people into old generalizations like Leadership.
But, what I want to understand better is the value that Dave put in his theory. Take Cliff Floyd. Dave basically states that he is a bench player and should be making the minimum ($400,000)but because of his intangiles, he was paid $750,000. While $350,000 doesn’t seem like much, it is almost an 87% increase above what he should have been paid. That’s a pretty good jump. Could that be applied with talent? For example, is Derek Jeter being paid $21 Million because he’s got leadership traits when his talent level really should have him being paid closer to $12 Million?
A prime case study might be Manny Ramirez (currently unemployed and seeking a large multi-year contract). Can one make the case that if he’s got the personality of say…Edgar Martinez, he would already have several teams competing to make him multi-year offers for $20 Million+ per year? Whereas right now, he hasn’t gotten anything longer than a 2 year offer that he foolishly turned down.
Just wondering.
@ Bermanator – One thing to keep in mind in regards to Varitek (and other catchers) is that we already know that current statistics do not do a good job in capturing their contributions to winning. There are “game calling” and “staff handling” skills that we can only roughly statistically evaluate (when we can evaluate them at all), but catching defense is also the hardest defensive position to evaluate right now.
Catcher is certainly a position that I could believe is more important to have “intangibles” than other positions. It hasn’t been proven, but the pitcher/catcher connection is one of the few collaborations that occur regularly (like on every pitch).
Anyway – my point is that using a catcher as an example adds more variables to the equation, which probably increases the difficulty of the argument you are trying to make.
djw
Exactly. If intangibles were very valuable, we would see their footprints. We would see wins and losses that couldn’t be adequately explained via the measures we already have.
We don’t see that, though, so the total impact of intangibles (or things that are not measured currently) must either be small or zero.
Griffey’s youthful inspiration and contribution to clubhouse morale, if it existed, wasn’t enough for either the Reds or White Sox, both teams that have recently experienced it first-hand, to sign him this off-season, so clearly they don’t think it’s that valuable.
I think, for fans, there is also an attraction to grit and hustle. It can be fun to watch and cheer for a player who hustles and gets dirty. Especially if the player doesn’t look like a typical athlete.
So there is a natural tendency for some fans to overvalue the Ecksteins and Bloomquists of the world.
Nice! I’m going to use this (appropriately attributed) in a class I am doing on living your values this week! (Who says ussmariner isn’t good for work?!?)
One of the difficulties of trying to quantify $$ for leadership and other intangibles … many players are over/underpaid for a variety of reasons. Looking at the wrong statistics, trying to make a big splash with fans, loyalty, nostalgia, trying to negate a park effect (think Coors Field and pitchers), good/poor agent bargaining skills, hometown discount, just plain stupidity, and more.
Even if we can agree on a reasonable idea of player baseball talent value (which many who read this site might … but I’m sure the traditional media or many baseball execs or GMs probably would not) … it would be nearly impossible to figure out why any individual player was being paid more/less than this.
Based on actions I’ve seen which corroborate information Dave presents, I’d certainly agree that GMs do not put a high premium on “leadership.” Some … sure, and some GMs more than others. Some seem to value loyalty more. Personally, as noted by a couple others above, I think it is less about general leadership and much more about mentorship. Generally, you have some fairly inexperienced players on a team. having a “proven veteran” (someone who has had success in baseball) who also “plays the right way” (works hard, doesn’t bad mouth the team, owns mistakes, gets friendly with teammates, etc.) is probably seen by the team as something that can not just help the new players develop some more talent wise (although not a lot), but also to be easier players to manage. As a “coworker” rather than a “superviser” (coach), they can get listened to on a different level.
Griffey’s youthful inspiration and contribution to clubhouse morale, if it existed, wasn’t enough for either the Reds or White Sox, both teams that have recently experienced it first-hand, to sign him this off-season, so clearly they don’t think it’s that valuable.
I was thinking about that, and one of the issues in measuring the value of things like leadership and mentoring is that there aren’t many guys like Cliff Floyd and Tony Clark that seem to have a realistic view of their limitations and the role they are likely to fill on most teams, and accept both willingly.
I can see a GM looking to fill out his roster looking for a guy like either Floyd or Clark, especially if they do have a lot of young players, because neither is at a stage where they are likely to be cranky about not playing every day and you’re not worried about either blocking your prospects’ paths to the Majors. If a GM likes how they carry themselves off the field and the diligence of their preparation for games, and thinks that’s how he’d like his young guys to behave as well, I can see that being worth something.
But one of the issues with Griffey is that once the feel-good stories stop appearing on the front page of the sports section, will he be showing that leadership/mentoring/grit/youthful exuberance/karma-producing smile if he’s playing twice a week and sitting behind Gutierrez and Chavez? Signing an aged warhorse and expecting them to be happy being used as a museum antique instead of being taken out on the racetrack might not get you the leadership you imagined.
And particularly if some of these vets get a lot of money, I’d guess it would be easier to work themselves in a lather by thinking “I get paid $6 million and have all of these numbers and I’m not playing every day? That sucks!” Whereas if you’re getting paid under a million bucks these days, that’s a more tangible reminder every two weeks of what your role is expected to be.
The greatest problem with intangibles in baseball is that they are far more relevant to other sports than they are to baseball. Fans and writers cannot resist carrying these things over from football and basketball where they have a role (especially I think in football where both teamwork and pain – and the passion and emotion need to overcome pain – are an integral part of the game) to baseball, where their role is very small. Baseball is made up from a series of isolated individual events. Few actions on the field involve teamwork. Few require anything more than the concentration and talent of the hitter or pitcher.
I do not however think that your suspicious view of sportswriters is correct, Dave. It is not the writers’ vested interest in maintaining good relationships that keeps them writing about intangibles – it is more likely the inherent human interest in these qualities of character that keeps the writers going back to them. What writers really like are good stories, and grit, determination, leadership – all of these make for good stories.
[you don't know]
So, playing recreational sports = doesn’t care about winning?
Did Philadelphia pay for Raul Ibanez’s supposed leadership qualities? The contract is pretty fat compared to what, say, Abreu is going to get. It was an even worse signing if that figured into their thinking (in terms of extra years, more dollars). On the one hand, the Seattle media likes to lambast the 2008 Mariner clubhouse while on the other lamenting the loss of “great clubhouse guys” like Ibanez, J.J. Putz and Bloomquist who clearly had no positive influence on the team’s record via their leadership. At least in this market, I think the whole conversation about “leadership” is code for “Ichiro isn’t a leader” or some such rot.
Hey, look, it only took 50 comments for someone to bust out the “you guys are softball playing nerds!” insult.
Lots of us have played the game at competitive levels. Take your ridiculous insults and shove it.
And, while I’m here, I’m basically out of tolerance with the rash of new commenters who have no desire to do anything but start pointless arguments. Vlad’s already been tossed in the mod queue – if you’re new here, you’d be wise to read for a while before you start posting, because I’m honestly tired of dealing with people who have nothing to contribute.
You don’t have a right to post here. We’re going to get a lot less lenient about the kind of stupidity we allow to get through. Be smarter or go away.
The rest of baseball valued Varitek at $0 this offseason, unless some other team made him an offer that I missed. Boston valued him at $5 million.
Type A Free Agent.
If you really think Varitek’s on-field value is $0, then I don’t know what to tell you.
Ibanez was worth $10 million last season by FanGraphs calculations. He got $10 million a year from the Phillies. Admittedly, that doesn’t account for potential decline or the shift in the economic landscape, but Raul also managed to sign before the magnitude of that shift was clear.
Anyway, no clear evidence of a leadership premium there. And considering how underpaid Ibanez has been relative to performance since coming back from Kansas City, he’s not the best argument that teams pay extra for intangibles.
“Anyway, no clear evidence of a leadership premium there”.
I think Raul’s deal represents a clear and substantial premium for the leadership shown by…
his agent!
Is it possible that team chemistry correlates with the performance of the team?
You don’t hear about many teams that win 95 games complain about not getting along.
ummmm… I that’s been discussed before
Ok, if you’ll agree to do the following: not comment on weather predictions until you have a degree in meteorology; not comment on politicians until you have held public office; and not comment on the driving of others until you have graduated from Bondurant’s Racing School. Deal?
Here’s the problem I think some people are having. Dave isn’t saying these things aren’t real, just that they don’t matter all that much (as evidenced by the low “premium” teams are willing to pay for them) — and to the extent that they do matter, we can observe and quantify them.
What Carmen Fusco called the “mental aspect” is indeed important — because it’s part of talent, and it shows up in the player’s stats (or will, if properly harnessed, just like strength or speed).
To the extent “the will to win” is important, it shows up in the stats too. But it’s not more important than talent. David Eckstein reputedly has more “will to win” than almost anybody in baseball, and it certainly has contributed to him reaching the highest level in spite of his modest physical talents — but it’s not enough to give him Pujols’ stats. Pujol simply is more talented, and we can see that result in the numbers. Eckstein may indeed be able to will himself onto the team, but he can’t will 30+ balls over the wall every year.
Let’s try an analogy. Suppose I try to sell you a fantastic health supplement based on all the latest research. It’s just a pill you take every day, and it doesn’t cure any particular ailment, but it “enhances your health immeasurably.” Alas, it will cost you a lot of money.
Now, since it costs a lot of money, you might have some questions. Does it increase your life expectancy? No, there’s no difference in how long you’ll live if you take the pill. Ok, what about a proper study: give the pill to several thousand people, and compare them to a matched group of another several thousand people. Do the people taking the pill have lower incidences of heart disease, or cancer, or any other illness? No, nothing like that shows up in the numbers. Ok, you say, but do I at least feel better when I take it? Well, you might, but that’s purely placebo. You don’t actually feel any better taking the pill. The pill’s effects are real, I insist, but intangible.
Now, you might be willing to take this pill just in case it has some effect that can’t be measured, but how much are you really going to spend? As much as you’d spend on an MRI or a colonoscopy or another test that has proven results? As much as you’d spend on real drugs that are known to treat real symptoms? How much is this unquantifiable “intangible” really worth to you?
As my grandfather used to say, “A difference that makes no difference is no difference.”
Is your grandfather Spock?
*sigh*, yes. Equating vocalness with leadership is another sign of sloppy thinking. (In a lot of ways, I think Edgar was functionally the same as Ichiro when it comes to “leadership”, but I doubt many people would say Edgar wasn’t a leader….)
Or, if an intangible is immeasureable, does it really exist?
This gets more into philosophy, so I don’t know if this is useful.
More useful is considering that we may not be able to measure now, but there might be ways of measuring it in the future and consider it in that light. Essentially, that retains the proper mindset of being open to refinement, but still firmly basing your analysis on what stats you have at present.
It really does feel like most of baseball is exiting the days of thinking stuff like this matters, along with grit, experience over ability, etc.
So, here’s a question for you. As more teams get smart, will we start to see the average career length shorten, and players getting their start at a younger average age?
The 2008 Tampa Bay Rays ran out a roster of talent and tools that lead to on field success. They let their only “veteran leader” walk out the door for less than a million dollars. Do they think Pat Burrell is going to replace Cliff Floyd’s fatherly presence in the locker room, or do they think he will play better on the field? Leadership means nothing. Skill means everything.
“This gets more into philosophy, so I don’t know if this is useful.”
I’m not here to be useful, I’m just trying to amuse.
Hehe, well I guess Adam Kennedy would provide some nice leadership, as well as some fantastic D at 2B!
I’m of the school that things like leadership and experience and stuff like that does not matter enough to really worry about it. Everyone always talks about how the teams that are young don’t have any playoff/WS experience so they won’t go far, but there are tons of examples that refute that logic (Rays anyone?)
The way I see it, chemistry and leadership and stuff like that is just so impossibly hard to get a grip on, and especially hard to predict, that there is no reason to go out and spend extra money for it. Keep the analysis to the things you can analyze, pay for talent, and if in the end someone emerges as a leader, or a previously thought of veteran leadership guy makes the team better, then that is just icing on the cake.
Is your grandfather Spock?
He might have been. He spent a good part of his life in and around Vulcan. (I’m not kidding.)
Exactly. And yet I saw commentators in the press ascribing their loss in the WS to their inexperience. Somehow that inexperience didn’t stop them from beating a much more experienced (and arguably as talented) Red Sox team in the ALCS, but it suddenly handicapped them in the WS, against a Phillies team that no WS experience on its roster to speak of either. The 2008 Rays should’ve put a stake through the heart of that misguided meme, and somehow they ended up reinforcing it.
Which just gets back to Dave’s comment about baseball writers.
It’s interesting that the Rays get mentioned as a point against the importance of “clubhouse chemistry” since Crawford, at least, made numerous comments on the positive effects of trading Elijah Dukes and Delmon Young. Dukes was (and is) oozing with talent, but his “intangibles” were enough to get him traded for a low A ball pitcher.
Another occurance was the Twin’s pitching staff last year, with Livan Hernandez. He was cited as a positive influence by Kevin Slowey, Scott Baker, and Glen Perkins. The Twin’s FO continued to let him pitch far longer than he was effective presumably because of his “veteran leadership”, as there were better starting pitching options availabe.
I think some teams have a MUCH better idea of what they think leadership is than other teams.
Some teams ascribe an almost mystical quality that “somehow” causes teams to play better.
Other teams see a quality where an older player who can get the confidence of younger players, be able to teach them about the tactics of the game of baseball (in a complementary fashion with the manager) and can show them how to approach the more mundane aspects of living on a major league baseball team (how to live it up on the road without hurting yourself, best places to eat, etc.).
While the latter may or may not contribute to the bottom line directly, I think it’s measurable (in a binary sense) and it makes for fewer distractions for the team and is hence desirable.
What about Bill Bavasi? I’m pretty sure he sincerely valued leadership. And as a result led our team into ruin. Still, I’m pretty sure he valued it.
I am glad to see more than one person mentioned Varitek as a recipient of moolah for ‘intangibles’. As an M’s fan that now lives in Boston that deal is an unspoken ‘why the heck…’ in Beantown. Yeah, he calls a good game. However, some players have ‘organizational value’. I don’t know, while I suppose they ‘do’ make managers and pitching coaches wear uniforms for a reason, if you count on a player to be such, hire him as such. Geezus, I say make the guy a bench coach and let him call the pitches like they do in College. Just get his bat out of the line-up.
Or maybe leadership is important – it’s just easy to come by, so there’s no reason to pay a premium for it.
The writers all want a fire-and-brimstone guy, because that makes for drama and exciting story lines. But I bet quiet leadership by example is more important. There may well be a dozen good leaders on every team.
Mike Snow, you are correct. I’m starting to see things through the prism of the current economic wasteland–at the time Raul basically got the deal he was looking for and could have expected (though thankfully not from Seattle).
I do want to amplify Dave’s comment about writers. It seems that a major problem with covering something as limited as sports is that sports plays by rules that are essentially unchanging, creating an experience of a news event that only varies in the way certain details play out. Instead of forcing those who cover it to describe something they have never seen before, the repetition of the games and seasons leads to the creation of narratives with which the reader (and writer, and radio broadcaster) is comfortable, not only within the sport but across sports. So if you are looking for meat and drink in the realm of sports writing and commentary, you really have to work. There are a limited number of human interest angles one can dredge up when the subjects are people in their youth who haven’t done a whole lot in their lives except play sports, and analyzing the games with the empirical attitude of a researcher leads to remarkable insight but not always to compelling narratives.
This problem with sports as a subject makes Updike’s “Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu” all the more impressive. It is mostly meditative mythology, but it does capture an essential flaw in the reasoning of the accepted narratives. Williams, because he shows the difference “between a thing done well and a thing done ill,” provides a reason beyond the accepted narratives to watch a meaningless game, and Updike even uses this to puncture the notion of “clutch” hitting as a fraud upon the game–shouldn’t everyone hit their best every time up? To assume that clutch hitting exists means that not everyone is trying their best at all times, a ridiculous notion. Updike was no sabremetrician nor even a sportswriter, but his ability write about what he saw with fresh eyes is something I sense blogs like this one are trying to do every day using different tools. In the absence of a daily dose of Pulitzer-level prose about the game, I’ll take it with gratitude.
I’m I wrong, here?
I think most people will agree that good leadership takes you places, and bad to no leadership gets you around in circles, if that. However, intangible means that you cannot quantify – so, there is no way to get a stat for “clutch.”
And Clutch doesn’t mean people aren’t trying part of the time, it means the inner battle is either, calmer or noiser for certain individuals.
But how many leaders do you need? More is not necessarily better. And I’d be willing to guess that if you pulled 25 players at random from the pool of pro ballplayers and threw them together, at least one leader would emerge. And if he didn’t… the coach is getting paid to do what, exactly?
Sorry, didn’t edit in time – I would agree that the Manager is supposed to be “the leader.” Several however, look to ballplayers, to take that on their shoulders, rightly or wrongly.
Clutch (at least, to me) – is the absolute ability to still the inner noise goinging on inside the personal battle of the moment. The little things that get inside someone’s head and alter the “regular” process.
pshmidget:
Better to use no commas than commas in the wrong place.
I hear what you’re saying. But the argument against that is that chokers – who go to pieces when the game is on the line – never make it to the bigs in the first place.
I agree with this. Not every person who is capable of leading will become a leader. You don’t need 12 leaders on a 25-man team. The other players will eventually gravitate to one or two or three guys, and they’ll become the de facto leaders for the team.
But if your leader get traded away, there are others on the team who are perfectly capable of filling his shoes.
Funny thing is, there is a “stat” for clutch, measuring how a player bats in high leverage situations relative to context neutral, and I think they have these stats on Fangraphs, and if I remember, sorting through a list of players that were good and some that were bad, the real value of “clutch” isn’t much, with no one falling all that far from 0. This, at least from a statistical standpoint, negates any “clutch”. I think the same can be said for other things of the sort; in the end it probably ends up being about even. Major League Baseball players are so used to having pressure, I don’t think that a World Series game is really THAT much different than any other game. It’s still pitch, hit, catch and throw at it’s basis, so, as Colm said, every MLB player should have already shown that when the game is on the line they don’t go to pieces.
In the same vein, I’m sure there are people that go to pieces, but the data suggests otherwise. I couldn’t find data that had any one player historically “clutch” or “unclutch,” although such data might exist.
Isn’t clubhouse leadership really valued at about 10 mill a year though? Because Silva’s other skills sure don’t make him worth that money he’s being paid.
Fixed
Not wanting to tangent from this excellent topic, but yes, there are some players who perform better in ‘clutch’ situations and ones that don’t. BPro’s Baseball Between the Numbers covered this pretty well. Check it out.
Now back to your regularly scheduled programming.
I think a false dichotomy is being drawn between Leadership/Chemistry/etc having no value and the value that some sportswriters and GM’s place(d) upon it. Obviously Bavasi placed a value on it, and he’s not a total outlier in the GM world.
There are some meta-questions not really being looked at by the stat-community, such as, why do players up and down swear by things like “the clutch”, “leadership” and the like? Humans have attested (and revered) these qualities in others for millenia, in sports, war, politics, etc. If this effect doesn’t actually exist, why do we perceive it so strongly?
Maybe that is straying too far into sports psychology, but I think there is something to it. We’ve all choked (or seen someone choke) to understand that under pressure, some people thrive and some don’t. I don’t know… sometimes I get frustrated that the concept is so readily dismissed as “non-existant” when the reality is that there are so many research questions yet to ask. Just because one set of tools doesn’t show a result doesn’t mean that there is no result to be had.
Chemistry debate: we’s having it already
Type A Free Agent.
If you really think Varitek’s on-field value is $0, then I don’t know what to tell you.
Just so I’m clear, are you arguing that teams are valuing first-round picks at $5M apiece?
Because otherwise I don’t get your point. Every single team but one did not make him an offer, as far as I am aware. One team offered him $5M.
29 teams thought Varitek was worth less than the value of the lost draft pick between No. 17 and the middle of the second round, or later if it was for a team like the Yankees who had already signed multiple Type As. One team thought he was worth much more.
So basically, Boston is paying well over what the market decided Varitek was worth that season. Based on both Boston’s actions and their words, do you think they are NOT paying him that kind of money because of that off-the-field stuff?
I think Jason Varitek is worth about $5 million as a baseball player. I think that it’s amazingly obvious that teams are not willing to give up first round picks to sign what they consider to be marginal players (Orlando Cabrera and Juan Cruz say hello) this year. I think Boston re-signed Varitek for about what he’s worth as a baseball player.
OK, I think we’re just not hearing each other at this point, but I will try one more time.
If I understood your original post, the issue wasn’t how much players were paid in relation to what they are worth (If we’re evaluating signings based on the FanGraphs metric, the off-field stuff must be a negative — Floyd is getting paid less than he earned a year ago, after all).
What you cited was how much those guys were paid in relation to what the market would dictate for similar players in the 2008-09 offseason. Floyd is making slightly more than the minimum to fill his role at the end of the bench and a “clubhouse leader,” ergo the value placed on those skills is no more than $350,000.
Jason Varitek was either going to play in Boston or not at all — I think we can all agree on that. Nobody else was interested in signing him, and if you want to make the argument that the sole reason is the draft pick then that’s fine (although clearly some teams are willing to give up picks to sign guys). But on the open market, Jason Varitek’s value to every baseball team except the Boston Red Sox was such that he didn’t get any interest from the other MLB teams.
For your argument to work here, you would have to assume that teams valued draft picks at somewhere around $5 million. Otherwise, you would think that someone would at least offer Varitek a contract with a discounted number — one year at $2 million, perhaps, with the lower dollar figure subtracting the value of the lost pick.
Or, you know, they could just value the draft pick that highly.
You’re making an assumption that draft picks aren’t very valuable. It’s screwing with your conclusions.
You don’t hear about many teams that win 95 games complain about not getting along.
Off the top of my head I can think of the 70s Yankees and A’s. The 30s Cardinals hated each other. If I thought some more, I could come up with many examples.
This is sort of a chicken and egg argument, bad clubs lack cohesive clubhouses and leaders while good teams have these elements. Isn’t that more a function of the record? To claim the loss of Guillen had more of impact than losing Jones and Sherill and getting a bag of damaged balls in return really does not understand the importance of talent vs. leadership.
Nothing beats talent, when was the last time there was a prospect who was rated five stars based on their leadership skills?
You’re making an assumption that draft picks aren’t very valuable. It’s screwing with your conclusions.
Well, that was my question, right? You think that all 30 MLB teams value the draft picks at $5M, and that explains why Varitek went begging? If so, wouldn’t you think that all contracts signed by Type A FAs would be lower, since teams would factor in the opportunity cost of the lost draft pick?
Maybe, and it’s definitely an issue that I hope somebody studies further. But I think this particular offseason is a bad time to make conclusions like that to explain why FAs are still looking for work, since guys like Abreu and Dunn are also unsigned despite having no compensation picks attached to them.
Why do you assume you know Veritek didn’t entertain and reject other offers? These things aren’t always public knowledge.
I have no idea how much a first round pick is worth, or how much GMs value it. But even if we did have the perfect knowledge that Veritek wasn’t offered anything by any other team, you’re assumption doesn’t follow. Just becuase Varitek is worth 5 million (which really surprised me until I looked him up) doesn’t mean each of those 30 teams values draft picks at an equal or higher rate. Most of those teams simply don’t need a FA catcher.