Wins vs. Payroll: 2010 Season Payroll Efficiency

The 2010 season has come to an end, and I thought I’d write this post before someone else did. The purpose of this is to find out which team did the most with their payroll, in terms of wins. Let’s keep it short and sweet. Here is the graph:

So basically this graph is broken down into four quadrants. We will call the bottom right quadrant, “Quadrant One,” as it is the best to be in. The upper right is “Quadrant Two,” the bottom left is “Quadrant Three” and the upper left is “Quadrant Four.” The lower the quadrant number your team is in, the more efficient your team was.

The yellow lines represent the averages. The average payroll was $90.9M and the average amount of wins was 82.

Quadrant 4

Surprisingly the Mets weren’t the worst team in this category. It’s a toss up between Seattle and Chicago, but I’m going to have to go with the Cubs. Seattle paid $1.61M per win, while Chicago paid $1.95M (The average is $1.12M per win). The Mets, not surprisingly, still sucked this year.

Quadrant 3

This will forever be occupied by the Pittsburgh Pirates. Low payroll, low wins. There is a good to case to be made about the Marlins and A’s making it to the first quadrant, unfortunately they didn’t have enough wins. Your seasons won’t go in vein!! Well… not really.

Quadrant 2

You gotta spend money to make money, right? Well the Yankees, Red Sox and Phillies think so. That’s it.

Quadrant 1

The winner has got to be the Rays. Yes, the Padres put up a damn compelling case, leading baseball with the cheapest wins ($0.4M/win), but I’ll have to add points to the Rays for an incredible 96 win season. Other winners include: The Rangers, Reds, Braves, Blue Jays, and Rockies. Way to go guys!

Complete Cost per Win chart:

It’s Always Funny In Philadelphia

Matt Diaz makes up for all his struggles this year with this video:

Quotes from Diaz (from DOB):

“I saw him come out of the bleachers out of the corner of my eye. I thought he was coming at me at first, so I kind of bowed up.”

“Then I saw their security guy go down, and I said this is dangerous, so if he comes back I’ll try to tackle him. Well he came back, and I didn’t want to get hurt or hurt him, so I just stuck out my foot and he hit it. He got right back up and their security guy crushed him.”

“We had something like that happen in Atlanta and our security guy got hurt, so I was glad no one got hurt.”

The idiotic Phillies fan is obviously trying to be cute by wearing a red suite. It’s a obvious mock to the legendary “Green Man” from my favorite TV show on television right now, “It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia.”

Here’s a clip featuring Green Man, The Phillies and The 2008 World Series:

I’d like to see Diaz and the Red Man make a cameo on It’s Always Sunny.

Brian McCann vs. David Ross

After the 2008 season, when the Braves pitching staff was in shambles, Frank Wren vowed to return the staff to it’s glory days when the word “pitching” was synonymous with the Atlanta Braves. His very first moves included claiming Eric O’Flaherty off waivers from the Seattle Mariners, resigning Vladimir Nunez, and trading for Boone Logan and Javier Vazquez. All very fine indeed, but the one move that has helped the entire pitching staff and will likely continue to do so in the future, is signing David Ross.

Up until then, David Ross was an inconsistent back up catcher for the Reds, Red Sox (in Triple A), and Dodgers. In 2003 and 2006 Ross lit the world on fire, posting .892 OPS (.336 OBP/.556 SLG) and.932 OPS (.353 OBP/ .579 SLG) respectively. But the other years didn’t serve as kindly, .544 OPS in 2004, .671 OPS in 2005,  .670 OPS in 2007 , and a .721 OPS in 2008. What the Braves knew about him was A. He walks a lot B. He strikes out a lot C. He is a very good fielder D. He has good power. I don’t think they knew he would hit for a high average, but hitting for a high average is secondary to the so called “secondary skills.” Imagine that. Anyways, he did it; He has had a line of .273/.380/.508/.888 in 2009 and .281/.385/.456/.841 so far in 2010.

So, what we know so far about David Ross:

1. Walks a lot (11%)
2. Strikeouts a lot (30%)
3. A Slugger (career .444 SLG%, )
4. Amazing fielding catcher (18 DRS in career 496 games)
5. Great arm (Runner’s have a 61.2% SB success rate against him)

Yesterday, I read this tidbit from an article written by Jon Cooper about David Ross’s personality:

“Braves catcher David Ross has become known around the team for his ability to call a good game. He’s also earned a reputation as a real fun guy in a fun clubhouse via his personality and wit.”

Calling a good game, eh? I can’t believe I’ve never looked into that. I’ve always praised Brian McCann behind the plate, for his wise pitch sequencing. I’ve also publicly yelled at him, Jonny Venter’s should not have giving up a single home run this year, and yet, because McCann called a fastball right down the plate against Joey Votto, he does. (Which leads me to ask why Venters didn’t shake it off, whatever.)
Back to the subject matter, is David Ross better than Brian McCann at calling pitching in regards to getting the best out of pitchers?

Let’s find out:

Well, the pitchers seem to respond better when Ross is behind the plate. However, there is a lot of unknown variables behind this information. We don’t know who pitched to whom. Ross might not have ever caught Lowe or Kenshin, the brunt of earned runs in this staff.

Assuming all things are equal, just from this stat we can see that Ross would save Atlanta a total of 47 earned runs if he caught the 2,061 innings that McCann caught in 2009 and 2010 and they flipped playing time.

Now, the offensive drop off is surely great enough to negate possible runs saved due to the effect of calling pitches. In fact, David Ross’s wRC/Games * 162 (weighted to run value, offensive runs created, divided by games per 162 games) =  67.8, and Brian McCann’s is 96.4. So making McCann the backup catcher in effort to create a better run differential would be stupid. I feel that that goes without saying. It would be idiotic to bench McCann, ever.

David Ross’s WAR from 2009 and 2010 over 162 games = 4.8, compared to McCann’s 5.7.

The whole point is, Ross is a damn good catcher. He would be starting on any teams whose catcher’s last name wasn’t McCann, Mauer, Molina, Martin, Martinez, Posey, Posada, or Weiters.

David Ross has only had 300 plate appearances since joining the Braves and only 1,600 in his career. Obviously it’s an incredibly small sample size, especially to compare to a player with almost 2,900 consistent plate appearances. Given the chance to start, it’s somewhat difficult to believe he’d produce the same numbers, but…

just for fun, since 2009:

In short, David Ross = good, Brian McCann = great, season four of Burn Notice = excellent.