FanPost

A Lower Bound For Future Rosters

Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports

I really liked watching Brandon Phillips last year. He had a decent bat (93 wRC+) and a capable glove, and had a lot of fun with Dansby Swanson. He had an above average attitude with middle-of-the-pack stats on a below average team. So when the Braves threw in the towel on 2017 on July 26th by starting Aaron Blair, I was expecting Phillips to fetch a decent prospect. My idea was basically this:

Brandon Phillips was worth 1.2 WAR through June. He could be provide around .8 to 1 WAR for the rest of the year. He would cost less than a half million in salary. He is basically a free win for anyone looking for a second baseman. His value is worth around $10 million, and with a premium for deadline probably more. The average 45 FV pitching prospect is worth around $14 million. So that is where we start the bidding, right?

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About that... Brandon Phillips started the year as a Red. He was pushed aside for Jose Peraza and his 62 wRC+ and -0.2 WAR. The Reds took on $9MM of Brandon's salary to play Peraza. He comes to the Braves and has a nice 4 months. His reward was being pushed off second base over to third before finally finding a home with the Angels for a month. We received a former fourth overall pick... from 2009. A 29-year-old AAAA catcher was not what I had in mind for Phillips (but hey, Greg Olson was an All-Star as a 30-year-old rookie catcher). Don't worry, Phillips made out all right. He found himself hitting leadoff in front of Mike Trout, Justin Upton, and Andrelton Simmons. He pulled in $10MM in 2017.

It's not that I abhor Tony Sanchez, but I was having trouble squaring away what player values really are. Is one season of 1 WAR player worth $10MM? Is a season of 1.5 WAR worth 15? Do MLB teams just hate Brandon? The answer I found was yes, I mean no, depends who you're asking.

So let's find a trade partner for Phillips in July 2017. Starting with the contenders, the second basemen look like this: Jose Altuve, Jose Ramirez, Starlin Castro, Dustin Pedroia, Daniel Murphy, and Javier Baez. The Dodgers had Austin Barnes, Logan Forsythe, and just for giggles, Chase Utley. Other than Utley, every one of them would finish with higher fWAR than Phillips. So he would eventually find a home in the playoff chase no one seemed very interested in winning, the second AL Wild Card race trot. The Twins ultimately won it, even while trading away Jamie Garcia after a week and running Bartolo Colón out for 15 starts.

All of the contenders not only had good second basemen, they were just solid all the way around. Brandon Phillips is fine, but he is not what teams are looking for when trying to make a stretch run. They need to someone to put them over the top, not maintain an even keel. I consider division winners and making the CS as the level that teams are trying to reach. I don't see a desire to put together a team that could be bounced in one night. But this is obvious and we probably shouldn't stop at "we needs lotsa gooder players to get that ring". I compiled the rosters of every team since 1980 (excluding strike years) and found two common threads that division winners and other Championship Series teams share that the others don't.

I like team aggregate fWAR as a benchmark, but it doesn't really tell you how you got there. A single number won't drill down. I am looking for measurements that contenders need individual players to meet. A good rule of thumb is that to have a playoff team, you need 6 good players, and can have only 1 ok player and one black hole maximum. But this really doesn't encompass pitching. So let's count the number of 2 plus WAR position players and starting pitchers, and see how many we need to make a playoff team.

NUMBER OF 2+ WAR PLAYERS
Finish Median Average Standard
deviation
One Delta Low One Delta High
1st or CS team 9 8.61 1.79
7.71
9.51
2nd (of 6 or 7) 8 7.93
1.36
7.26
8.62
3rd (of 6 or 7) 7 7.35
1.89
6.41
8.30
4th (of 6 or 7) 7
7.14
1.68
6.31
7.98
2nd (of 4 or 5) 7 7.09
1.62
6.29
7.90
3rd (of 4 or 5) 6
6.54
1.69
5.70
7.39
5th (of 6 or 7) 5.5
5.68
2.00
4.68
6.68
4th (of 4 or 5) 5
5.14
1.70
4.29
5.99
Last 4
4.36
1.76
3.48
5.24

The top row have teams that have either won their division, or a wild card team that made the Championship Series. The other rows of teams did neither. This chart suggests that you need nine 2 plus WAR players to really become a threat in the playoffs. Second place (out of 5, the current configuration), non-CS teams only need seven. Now look at the one delta low end for contenders (the average lowest of the middle 68%) versus the one delta high for second place. Just about where the better second place team leave off (7.90), the lesser contenders pick up (7.71). Brandon Phillips and his 1.6 WAR in 2017 doesn't help in this metric.

NUMBER OF 2+ WAR PLAYERS AND PLAYOFF CHANCES
Players Contention Percentage
10 70.1%
9 51.2%
8 44.5%
7 or less 8.0%

Teams have 9 players have a slightly better than coin flip's chance of contending. The median calculated in the first chart confirms that as well. Adding another 2 plus WAR player increases those odds to 70.1%. Teams with 7 or less had better hope they have 2 or 3 monster players. So when GM are acquiring players, that has to be on their mind.

So that is a good start but what about the rest of the roster? Could 10 Kurt Suziki equivalents carry 15 bums to the playoffs? GMs are aware that some depth is required and your team's depth can give you an idea of what kind of aspirations that the organization has. For example, if the Dodgers are trying to jettison Yasiel Puig and his 2.9 WAR for something better (as rumored) you would think a World Series run is in their sights.

To a point GMs have a level that they will allow on the field to meet their aspirations. It's like Hyde answered Fez about when a girl will make out with you he answered, "that depends on what kind of girl you're cruising for. Which is why I'm gonna aim low. Real low. Just this side of gross." The level of gross in this context isn't defined (and I won't do it on a family site). However, I have devised a basic calculation to determine the same for baseball rosters. I am gonna to name it Organizational Aspiration Index (OAI). It is defined by the sum of the WAR of your #6 position player, #4 starting pitcher, and #4 relief pitcher divided by two. (I want 50% position player WAR and 50% pitching here, so the two pitchers are added together. Hence, this is why I am dividing by two and not three.) This is your basic middle-of-the-roster player level.

ORGANIZATION ASPIRATION INDEX
Finish Median Average Standard
deviation
One Delta Low One Delta High
1st or CS team 2.1
2.06
0.61
1.76
2.36
2nd (of 6 or 7) 1.8
1.80
0.38
1.60
1.98
3rd (of 6 or 7) 1.675
1.67
0.47
1.43
1.91
2nd (of 4 or 5) 1.55
1.57
0.42
1.36
1.79
3rd (of 4 or 5) 1.5
1.50
0.45
1.28
1.72
4th (of 6 or 7) 1.25
1.35
0.47
1.11
1.59
5th (of 6 or 7) 1.25
1.28
0.43
1.07
1.49
4th (of 4 or 5) 1.1
1.15
0.41
0.94
1.35
Last 1.0 0.97 0.40 0.77 1.17

For contenders, the median is 2.1. This tells you that on good playoff teams, even the role players are good starters elsewhere. Let's look at that standard deviation gap. The middle 68% of contenders pick up at 1.76 where the second place ones leave off (1.79). OAI gives you a guess whether your team is going to run out Yasiel Puig, Jose Peraza, or Emilio Bonifacio. Brandon Phillips's 1.6 WAR will fit in well with a second or third place team and maybe some of the much lesser contenders.

OAI AND CONTENTION CHANCES
OAI
Contention Percentage
at least 2.3
67.5%
at least 2.0
54.7%
1.5-2.0
20.5%
less than 1.5 6.7%

If your OAI is 2.3 or greater, over two-thirds of the time you made some noise. But at 2.0 or lower, it falls off a cliff. So where did our 2017 Braves land? Their OAI was 1.45, which projects them in third place. They had 4 2+ WAR players, which is typically good for last place. But I guess the Phillies and their 1.10 OAI and 4 2+ WAR players just wanted it more.

NL EAST FINISH
Team
Finish 2+ WAR OAI
Nationals 1st 10 2.85
Marlins 2nd 7 1.50
Braves 3rd 4 1.45
Mets 4th 3 1.30
Phillies 5th 4 1.10

Now a word about my data set. It covers over 40,000 individual player-seasons from 1980-2017 excluding the strike years 1981 and 1994. Only players that played with a singular team the entire year are considered. This is perfectly fine for OAI, I think. After all, those are the players that a team chose to retain the entire year. An adjustment should probably be made for the 2 plus WAR players that moved teams of which there were 304. But which team gets the player and how much credit is an issue. How much is 2 months of a good player really? 1/3 of a player or full credit? So they are omitted and I'm not sure how much 6 or 7 players per season league-wide would change these numbers.

Right now we really can't project these numbers for 2018. However, I can say that the Nationals, Indians, and both of last year's World Series teams had both 10 two plus WAR players and 2.30+ OAI. So the top playoff teams know where they are setting the bar. But I would like to thank Phillips, RA Dickey, Jamie Garcia, and even Bartolo Colón. You didn't really improve our future, but you made 2017 less of a slog than it had to be. But if we want to raise a division pennant or more, our aspirations need to be placed higher.

This FanPost does not express the views or opinions of Battery Power.