Protecting the Unit

For all of the criticism of Steve Phillips I’ve heard, he deserves some credit for piloting a team to the World Series. He built some pretty decent teams in New York during his tenure, and I actually really enjoy listening to his broadcasts with Gary Thorne and Steve Stone. That said, giving him a column on ESPN Insider is like the New York Times making Mike Tyson its White House correspondent (“I would just like to take this opportunity to pontificate the vociferousness of the War in Iraq. I want to eat George Bush’s children. Praise to Allah.”).

Anyway, Phillips’ dedicated his most recent column to sorting out the success and failures of last year’s free agent market. Fundamentally, a team invests in a player for two reasons: 1) to win more games/make the playoffs/fly a flag and 2) to bring in more revenue. Using the research from Nate Silver last month at Baseball Prospectus, we know that the only financial windfall comes from making the playoffs, restating the obvious idea that these two goals are intertwined. It stands to reason, then, that free agent signings should be preferred if they brought a team marginally closer to a pennant race or a pennant, and relatively discounted if the team remains far from the playoffs.

Using this methodology, Phillips’ pick for the best free agent signing, Pedro Martinez, is quite defensible, as Martinez probably would have pushed the Mets over the top if their other additions (Carlos Beltran and Doug Mientkiewicz) even approximated their previously established levels of performance. Entering his prime, Beltran was a nine win player last year, and had averaged about 7.5 wins (by WARP1), and has regressed to a five win player this year. Add another four wins to the Mets and they’re 3.5 games out of the Wild Card, definitely still in the race. Consider that the Mets are eight wins below their first order Pythaganport projection, seven wins below the third order projection. Even if they sliced in half the deficit between production and results, they would be roughly tied with the Astros for the Wild Card.

In other words, Phillips’ choice for best free agent signing was a defensible one, if not my first choice. Several of his subsequent top-ten picks were less reasonable, such as Richie Sexson (#3) and Troy Glaus (#8) who had no chance of making their teams contenders in the best case scenario. He also included Scott Podsednik (#7) who has burned the bridge between perception and reality like no player in recent memory.

But my bigger quibble lies with his naming Randy Johnson the third biggest off-season failure for the Yankees. True, Johnson has not been his Cy Young self in this, his 41 year-old season, but the Yankees cannot afford to miss the playoffs, and would not be close without him. Undeniably, Johnson has been New York’s ace this season, posting the 15th highest VORP for a pitcher so far this season in the American League. He has also accumulated an acceptable 3.90 ERA in a hitter’s park, and a 2.74 ERA in September, including a couple of memorable step-up games, such as the one where he out-dueled Felix Hernandez early in the month. And as much as we’ve been mislead by Roger Clemens, Johnson’s 15 wins, 212 IP and 201 Ks are a pretty remarkable achievement for a 41 year-old.

Certainly, Johnson hasn’t been worth the $15M+ he’ll be paid this year in terms of marginal wins, but imagine where the Yankees would be without him. Steinbrenner long ago committed to spending as much as he had to spend in order to fly more flags at The Stadium, and Johnson has been one of the few constants in a shaky Yankee rotation this year. What was supposed to be Johnson, Mussina, Brown, Pavano and Wright has seen that pentumverate start only 102 of their games this year. That’s like having two starting pitchers go down for the year during spring training, a fate that would cripple almost any team’s playoff aspirations. The Yankees have been resourceful, scrubbing up tarnished starters Shawn Chacon and Aaron Small, and getting as much as possible out of Chien-Ming Wang and Al Leiter, but the odds of them stumbling upon another such player early in the season to fill the spot that Johnson has held down seems extremely unlikely. A modest estimate of the Johnson-less Yankees would have them starting the likes of Sean Henn, Darrell May or Tim Redding at least 5-10 more times.

Also consider the revenue that the Yankees bring in each postseason through at least a half-dozen more sellouts that are pure profit for The Boss. If the Yankees indeed make the playoffs, Johnson deserves a ton of credit for gutting out over 30 starts on creeky knees and a sore back while dialing it up down the stretch. Enough credit, even, to make him the most valuable free agent pick up of the off-season.