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MrLomez
MrLomez

Another wrinkle to this little theory: I think the main thing we learn here is that in terms of the Bullpen the law of diminishing returns kicks in rather quickly. Ideally, given that the Giants' payroll is $80mil, according to Tango's theory, they'd allocate $8mil to the BP. Anything over that is throwing $$ in the toilet. The fact is, there are only so many innings a BP throw. Aside from 2 or 3 main guys you simply run out of opportunities to use them. (And good for Sabes, as of right now the Giants have spent almost exactly $8 mil on their '09 BP). On that point we're in agreement. But...I think your last paragraph is overstated, I would argue that spending anything less than that 10% threshold is equally stupid. Spending on a bullpen is as important as spending on any other position *up to the point* that an additional bullpen arm will not be optimally used. In other words, if a team hasn't spent enough money on its bullpen to account for all of the innings a bullpen will ultimately pitch, then it's as detrimental as not spending enough on SP's or hitters. Does that make sense? If the Giants had $6 mil going to the BP, and $2 mil to spend, they would be just as well off spending it on the BP (perhaps more so) than they would spending that $2 mil elsewhere.

Chris
Chris

@OGC Someone on McC mentioned the similarity between my pie chart and the peace sign, I admit, I missed it. It's pretty funny though, reminds me a little of Dr. Strangelove's "Gentlemen, there's no fighting in the war room!". Also, with EditGrid, anyone can download the WAR spreadsheets -- the ones from the previous post -- and fiddle around with them as they please. If you don't like some of the assumptions I made in them, feel free to change it around. Re: bullpens I'm not saying having a good bullpen isn't important, because it is -- Brad Lidge added over +3 wins to the Phillies last year because of his outstanding relief work -- and I'm clearly much happier with how the 2009 bullpen is taking shape as compared to the 2008 bullpen. But, what I'am saying, is that if your favorite team wants to find the most efficient way to add wins to the team, they'd do well to upgrade their position players or starting pitching because they-just-add-more-value to the team. Tom Tango found that non-pitchers make up for a little over half of the wins a team generates. http://www.insidethebook.com/ee/index.php/site/co... For the NL he found, and I'll quote him: Adding it up, and we get 478 replacement wins in the NL. Nonpitchers get 56% of that and pitchers get 44%. Of pitchers, starters get 78% and relievers 22%. and This implies that 56% of your payroll (above the $400K minimum per player) should go to nonpitchers, 34% to starters, and 10% to relievers. For reasons of risk, you might give a bit less to your pitchers. In the NL, nonpitchers account for nearly 56% of wins. That's a pretty big sum. Pitching accounted for %44 percent with starters accounting for 78% of that 44. It doesn't matter how good your bullpen is if your position players and starters are lousy. Again, I'm not saying that bullpens aren't important, because they are. But, I'm saying that if you have money to spend and want to improve your team, you'll get the best bang for your buck by spending it on quality position players and starting pitchers.

obsessivegiantscompu
obsessivegiantscompu

You missed a really good chance for good visual joke: with your title, it would have been great if you included both starting lineup and bench players, along with starting pitchers and relievers, and the graph above would have looked like a 60's era Peace Symbol. Nice post. Thanks for the link to EditGrid. I disagree about pursuing fixing up the bullpen. Both Lincecum and Cain ended up losing the win in at least 10 games, and that doesn't count the other starters. Tom Tippett showed in his analysis that having a top bullpen has become a key to making the playoffs, and the bullpen needed fixing, and more importantly, could be fixed relatively easily, whereas there was not enough out on the market to fix up the offense. That, to me, is the point of rebuilding, tackling another facet of the team, fixing it, and moving onto the next.