Very Brief Book Review - The Boys of Summer

 

Roger Kahn's classic 1972 book

I read "The Boys of Summer" many years ago but recently found it on the shelf and had the urge to give it another look.  You see, I have an exam that I must study for and under these circumstances, other aspects of life suddenly gain a vibrancy that they otherwise don't generally have.  Even the most obscure items, ideas, or experiences take on an a heightened air of importance!

There are endless numbers of great baseball books out there. A great place to start that covers the last several decades is the annual Casey Award winner, found at the Spitball Magazine website.  You can browse it to see the last 37 winners but also quite a few nominees from each year - https://www.spitballmag.com/casey-award-best-baseball-book

Spitball Magazine itself is also worth a look - it's a literary baseball magazine that includes anything from poetry to interviews to short stories.  A good starter is the old compilation "The Best of Spitball".  Now, on to the main point.....an extremely short synopsis of "The Boys of Summer"...I'm tired so I can already tell I'll be mailing this part in and it'll be short!

The book mainly covers four distinct stories.  It first delves into Kahn's childhood in Brooklyn, including his relationship with his parents, a titillating encounter with his nanny, and some detail about the city and baseball at that time.

As he gets older, he starts to get into journalism and I found the parts of the book that discussed the inner workings of the newspaper and sports writing business to be very illuminating - few of us even get a physical newspaper anymore and folks who write about sports are in a completely different world that the old-timers were.  We should start a JITH newspaper that covers the Jays but issue it ONLY in physical form!

As things move along Kahn finally gets assigned to the Dodgers beat and covers the team for a couple of seasons.  There is some coverage of the games, particularly playoffs, but a lot of the action takes place in the locker room or elsewhere, as this was back in the day where the reporters had good access to the club and players, travelled directly with them, and often drank and played cards with them on a regular basis.  Some effort is also put into detailing the relationships Kahn and the players had with the front office (i.e. the owners).

Likely my favourite part of the book is when Kahn decides to visit the main players in 1970 to catch up on what everyone is doing. Unlike today, the players were poorly paid so most retired without vast wealth and ended up working as executives, business owners, or pitchmen.  Things ended up well for many but there also seemed to be a lot of regrets and even tragedy.

As promised, I am cutting this short!  I refuse to proofread it so you'll have to live with any mistakes.  The Boys of Summer is viewed as one of the all-time classic baseball books.  I would suggest that there are now many newer books that have surpassed it but it's an entertaining read and can be found cheaply at second hand shops.  Good Day!

Getting Pedantic About Vlad Jr.

"So I flip my helmet too before I round the bases?"

As the 2018 Blue Jays slip further into the darkness, the time has come to dream of brighter days and fewer shutouts. That means wondering when Vladimir Guererro Jr, destroyer of minor league New England ballparks, should start murdering baseballs for our very own Blue Jays.

Unfortunately, baseball abhors fun, so instead of watching Vladdy fulfill his destiny as a better Delgado we get to pretend that he is studiously learning to play third base from coaches who wouldn’t be let into a Major League park without a ticket while congratulating (or condemning) the front office for their ‘asset management.’

Well, if we’re going to treat players like assets and MLB like JP Morgan, I figured I’d look more closely at what it actually means to ‘manage’ an ‘asset’ like Vlad. Basically, what we’re going to do is evaluate the value that a Vlad Jr ‘asset’ provides to the team over identical timeframes to try and figure out what the actual loss winds up being.

We’ll need to make a few assumptions to make this work that I’ll list below:

Different kind of Assumption

1. I’ll be using ‘real’ values for arbitration estimates, FA contract estimates and $/WAR based on 2018 values (https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/the-recent-history-of-free-agent-pricing/).
2. Vlad will get max arbitration awards and be paid the equivalent of $40m 2018 dollars for his FA1 year because he’s fucking dope.
3. Vlad will develop the same way whether he is called up this year or next.
4. The team will not let Vladdy walk in free agency

The table below shows the service time for both approaches:

Obviously, the team gets the same amount of value from 2019-2023. Using this framework, we can express the excess value we get from asset management as the cost difference between ARB 3 and FA 1 less the excess value derived from Vladdy’s 2018 season under team control.

Now we need to understand what those numbers are.

Using Donaldson’s record $23 million award for ARB 3 and the $40 million assumption for FA 1 gives us $17 million excess value from 2024.

This means that, in order for the team to break even from the manipulation Vlad would need to provide less than 1.5 WAR ($17/$11.1 million) during the period he plays in 2018.

If we assume that he performs close to how Harper did over his age 19 season he would be worth 3 WAR over the next 82 games, meaning the strategy would actually lose $16.3 million ($17 - $33.3) in 2018 value (and infinitely more in fun value).

Looks like he grew into the batting helmet

Now let’s talk about relative win values. I know that we are garbage this year so a win is worth more in a year when we aren’t garbage. Well, let’s figure out how much more valuable!

Keeping our 3.0 WAR guesstimate for Vladdy, in order to break even on the asset strategy a 2024 win would need to be worth approx 200% (33.3/17) more than a 2018 win.

Reasonable people can disagree over whether a 2024 win will be twice as valuable than a 2018 win. According to Nate Silver’s model for the win curve, the Jays have had 4 seasons in the past 15 in that zone, meaning the plan is ‘profitable’ 27% of the time. You might be more bullish, but it’s obviously not a slam dunk from a surplus value perspective.

But let’s mention the elephant in the room. If we let him walk (or we think we can’t re sign him) all of a sudden this becomes a different discussion. I’m assuming that we get the same value from Vladdy in 2024 whenever his clock starts. But if you think there’s a 50% chance he leaves? 75%? Now all of a sudden all of my math is worthless; clutch him tight and savor the memories while he’s here.

There are obviously lots of good reasons to manipulate service time, But we should stop thinking about this as an ‘asset management’ strategy. There is basically no asset that gains surplus value by forgoing the opportunity for present returns. It is actually an insurance policy against the Yankees or Red Sox giving us a wedgie when the time comes to pay the man. Whether or not we need that insurance is the real question.

Hopefully Vladito agrees

State of the Franchise

Against my better judgement, in an early season moment of weakness, I suggested that I could contribute an article to the site.  Those of you who know me will realize that I shouldn't be doing this, as I have already sworn off all Jays related activities, including watching or listening to games, following along on Gameday, or even so much as checking in for scores.  However, I made a commitment, which I will now reluctantly keep.

It's too early to worry about Edwin and Jose.

So I'm sitting on my couch, pondering my navel, wondering the usual things like "how much would it hold? It would make a great place to put ketchup for my fries". When a call comes in. It's a friend of mine, hyperventilating about the boys at Sportsnet and conflicting messages.

$17MM Reasons Why Michael Saunders Is Leaving Your TBJ's

The Power of Canadian Fans

First off, Saunders had an amazing first half; he did deserve an All-Star nod this year.

But what happened in the second half?

First half: 298/.372/.551 with 16 home runs and 42 RBI in 82 games and 305 at bats.

Second half: 185 ABs= .178/.282/.357, 8 HR, 15 RBI, 7 doubles.

Talk about a slump! So bad we had to bring in MUJ!

So the long story short on Michael Saunders is that he's set at 17.2 million for next season (assuming the QO doesn’t get removed in the CBA talks). 17MM for a bench bat with poor D. Sure, he's a lefty, but he's a liability on the corners, has poor speed, and too prone to epic slumps. Chill your maple boner. Michael Saunders is gone.

Thanks for the first half. Good luck elsewhere.

Brett Cecil's Market (Over) Value

His nickname is "Goggles"... Get it?

There's been a lot of hand-wringing amongst some fans over the idea of re-signing long-time Blue Jay Brett Cecil, AKA Goggles (I never liked that nickname), but you can forget about another one year deal, as he enters free agency for the very first time, and as according to Ben Nicholson-Smith:

“I’ve asked a lot of people about this in the last few weeks just how many years Brett Cecil is going to get,” says Nicholson-Smith. “And it’s surprising at first glance, but the answer I keep hearing from people is that he won’t have trouble getting three years.“I know he’s struggled at times this year, but I’ve become convince that he’s not going to have trouble landing a three-year deal and I think it’d be north of $20 million.”

- Sportnet's Ben Nicholson-Smith

I think many of us view Cecil through rose-coloured goggles (see what I did there?)... Yes, he's been with the team for 10 years, he played alongside Halladay through lean years, and he often did the Winter Tours. Hey, he was even an All-Star one year! (so was Steve Delabar).

But realistically he has had a very up and down career with the team, compounded by on and off-field injuries (remember the chicken and blender incidents?), which leads me to hope that he signs elsewhere. He ended the year great, but was terrible in the first half. I don't trust him anymore. 7MM+ for 3 more years seems like a lot of cake for this old unreliable lefty.

Go get paid Brett, go get paid, somewhere far, far away. Thanks for the memories.

The Baseball Business

Life as a baseball fan used to be simple. You listened to the game on radio or sometimes you were able to catch the game on television ,usually Wednesdays and Saturdays or if you were lucky watched the game at the park. If you missed the live action, the only recourse was to read the recap and scan the box scores in the newspapers the next day. There was no fangraphs. Scouting reports from the minors were rare and you could care less on how the club allocated their payroll. The goal was to cheer the team on. Celebrate the wins, moan about the losses, then continue on with your day because all the information you could gather was limited and came from a very few sources.

Now, we not only know a players value, compared to an average replacement player, we have calculations to determine what dollar value he provides to the club. It's not only the dollars allocated to the current roster, but how future years of a contract, will affect the signing of young superstars within your own system. Budgets, revenue streams, current obligations, future obligations are to be considered as more seriously than the players who actually play for the team or might be needed by the team to succeed. Such are the intricacies of being a fan in 2016. I'm not saying it's a bad thing, just more complex, rather than simple.

With all this in mind and while it's a subject that some wish to avoid, it does affect the Jays going forward. Edward Rogers tweeted  about an article showing how much the Jays playoff run was a hit for Rogers. In the article, Solutions Research Group reports that a staggering 2/3 of Canadians followed at least a part of the Jays postseason:
      

"The report also says team owner Rogers Communications “knocked it out of the park” from an advertising standpoint – with almost half (47%) of people recalling a sponsor or advertiser naming the media giant on an unaided basis. 

SRG says the number is “significantly above” the norm for unaided advertiser awareness for other major sports events."

Ever wonder how many people were streaming the game? I did. It seems that for every 5 people watching on television there's one person who's streaming the game.

Over at BJN, Stoeten delves into some of the numbers with some "very quick and very dirty math" to conclude

  "This is revenue being generated by the Blue Jays, or by Sportsnet, because of the Blue Jays. And it’s money being made on top of big growth at the gate, and from their portion of those national US TV deals that went into effect in 2013"

It is an important distinction. That the Blue Jays, specifically the revenue they generate for Rogers and the free advertising outlet they provide to make up to advertisers with the NHL product, are important for Rogers Media and it's holdings. The Jays should no longer feel the need to go, hat in hand, to the board, for budget increases. They should be welcomed with open arms.

The numbers speak for themselves. The Jays are a power house for Rogers both on and off the field.
It's time for Rogers to recognize this and provide the support necessary to maintain a consistent contender. It's a no brainer.