October 20, 2014

INCREASE THE FLOOR OVER THE CEILING

Fangraphs has an interesting article on the Orioles rise to contention in the highly competitive AL East.

Fangraphs concluded that GM Dan Duquette has done an excellent job in focusing on raising his team’s floor while many clubs are more focused on raising the ceiling.

I have always thought Duquette was one of the brighter GMs in the game. He has not gotten the glowing press that other big market GMs tend to get. Most teams are looking to obtain All-Star caliber talent. A team of quality players, like the Yankees and Dodgers or Angels, should win a boat load of games.

The Orioles are not in the same financial atmosphere to try to buy a pennant. Instead, how a roster is created and sustained can yield very good results.

No doubt Duquette has created a deep Oriole roster, many relatively unknown players.

Fangraphs looked to see how it could calculate the floor for a team. It used negative WAR as a means of illustrating the base talent level for a squad. If you have negative WAR players on your roster, then your floor is lower than Replacement Level (AAA) talent.

Over the past three seasons, the Orioles have received the sixth-lowest cumulative negative WAR total, suggesting that while they may not always have a lot of star power, they don’t stock up on expensive stars while punting roster spots at the bottom of their 25-man group.

Fangraphs noted in 2014, Baltimore gave just 3.2 percent of its innings to negative-WAR pitchers (league average, excluding Baltimore, was 13.4) and 3.2 percent of its plate appearances to negative-WAR position players (league average, excluding Baltimore, was 19.4).

This follows a pattern that new Dodgers GM Andrew Friedman used when he was with the Rayswho have had the lowest negative WAR total over the past three seasons.

In contrast, the 2012 Cubs who lost 101 games had 22 players with a negative WAR. In 2014, with 89 losses, the Cubs had 19 players with a negative WAR. The 12 game improvement shows that the bottom was raised by 3 less negative WAR players and better performance from higher ceiling starters.