Posted by Rob McQuown on Wednesday, July 8, 2009 at 5:38 pm

The baseball world is abuzz these days with commentary on the remark by Blue Jays GM J.P. Ricciardi that Roy Halladay is available for trade.  I have some opinions on the matter which could probably use more study and research, but that will have to wait for another “Rattling The SABR” article.  I’ll present them here as incomplete concepts for thought and discussion, however:

1. I think Brian Joseph has the right focus about the value of Halladay to a competitor.  It’s all about the flag.  A team pulls in something like $1.5mil/game in gate alone, not to mention ancillary revenue streams, such as a hefty amount of merchandising.  While teams give playoff shares in bonuses, there’s still extra money here for everyone.  So, even the most cold, calculating analysis has to strongly consider post-season impact.  Adding up expected runs saved and translating that to wins using a back-of-the-envelope type of calculation as others have done today just doesn’t come close to addressing the impact of a big starter.

If you prefer to not be cold and calculating, civic pride is a big deal, and “flags fly forever”.

2. A refinement of post-season value needs to include discussion of a concept which gets surprisingly little attention, and that’s the overwhelmingly high impact a top SP has on a playoff series, and by this I mean in terms of raw volume, not an editorial of the impact of each plate appearance by pitcher vs. hitter.  Assume a “horse” SP will pitch 8 innings per game, which in Halladay’s case seems very safe.  If he goes fewer than 8, the game is likely already decided anyway.

5 game series, 3 games: 30% of IP (8 of 27).

5 game series, 4 games: 44% of IP (16 of 36).

5 game series, 5 games: 36% of IP.

7 game series, 4 games: 44% of IP.

7 game series, 5 games: 36% of IP.

7 game series, 6 games: 30% of IP.

7 game series, 7 games: 25% of IP (assuming no relief appearance in 7th game).

Now, there are a lot of ways to combine these stats.  Merely looking at historical series-length stats isn’t accurate, as one player can impact that a lot in this case.  My primary concern here is the IDIOTIC playoff system whereby a 162-game season boils down to playing a 5-game series for survival.  Getting 2 starts from an impact player has an incredibly disproportionate impact on such a series.  In such series, Roy Halladay would pitch approximately 40% of the team’s innings, typically.  And that’s assuming he doesn’t complete his games.  

With the intent of being repetitive, I think that deserves a LOT more attention than it gets… in a 5-game series, wherein a team is facing elimination, an ace SP can be on the mound about 40% of the time (if he’s not, it’s almost always by choice since the game is out of hand).  Forty percent.  All the nonsense people spout about position players being so much more valuable because they play every day… they are still involved in 11-12% of the at bats, and even a rangy shortstop is involved in something like 5 plays per game (or 6-7 balls hit near him, on which – Tom Tango and others have suggested – the fielding accounts for about 1/6 of the resultant outcome, with the pitcher and hitter accounting for the rest) — VERY crudely approximated, we can call this involvement another 3% of the game, maxing out a position player at about 15%.

For seven-game series which go 7 games, the cessation of using an Ace on a 1-4-7 schedule has reportedly improved the performance of the pitchers, but cuts into the PT impact.  Still, 25% is a LOT.   If the series is decided sooner than 7 games, the percentages are much higher, and the average for all 7-game series is something like 35%, depending on weighting assumptions, as noted.

3. From Toronto’s perspective, I think they need to undo the organization’s brutal miscalculation with Vernon Wells.  While there are dozens of things which need improvement in the fangraphs.com “value” system, it’s still one of the best available.  Sorting by that, it shows that Vernon Wells is the 2nd-worst player in baseball this season, costing the team 20 runs on defense while batting at a -2.6 (vs replacement) value, and it’s taken a couple good days for him to get out of last place (Jose Guillen just wants it worse, I guess).  Anyway, it shows his “free agency” value being -$4.0 million this year.  Adding his $8.5mil/yr bonus from 08-10, here are his salaries by year (courtesy of Cot’s contract blog):

2009: $10mil

2010: $21mil

2011: $23mil

2012: $21mil

2013: $21mil

2014: $21mil

For a team trying to compete on an $80mil payroll, that’s going to hamstring them for the next five seasons.  With Rios supposedly capable of playing a good center field, the team really needs to shed this contract before it’s apparent to everyone that Wells has lost it defensively. Even if his defense rebounds, it’s still a bad contract.

From my perspective, if the Jays are indeed going to throw in the towel this year (at this point, it’s more of a white flag after all the injuries they’ve suffered!), part of any “dump trading” needs to include the disappointing Vernon Wells.  The organization has shown recently that it can ID young talent, and arguably has the best pitching development system in the game today.  They can much more easily withstand coming up a little short on talent in a “dump trade” than they can withstand having to work around this onerous contract.

Of course, with all the talk of the economy impacting the game this year, it’s hard to envision a team taking on this albatross, but shedding Wells has to be the biggest “return” they get for Halladay, if they want to compete in the next 5 years.   I expect that if something gets done along these lines, the Jays will get some talent, while offering some subsidizing of the contract to the other team.