Shadow Padres Draft Philosphy

I mentioned previously that I am not doing the Matt Kemp deal. I'm also going to pass on the Justin Upton (makes more than $10 million coming from outside the organization) and I'm going to pass on the WIl Myers deal (the reasoning for this is in an upcoming post... but suffice to say, there is one player in that deal I don't want to give up).

Forgive me the sports crossover here, but Jimmy Johnson (the football coach), had a draft philosophy that was along the lines of "make a list of all the available players you'd want on your roster, and go from there." In my case, that means making the list, and first breaking it into tiers.

• Tier 1- if these guys fall to me, I'm a happy camper. Generally speaking, this tier is around 4-6 players, is likely a mix of the cream of the crop, and guys with a chance to fall some a specific reason (perhaps a hamate injury sapped a player's power and dropped his stock a bit?).
• Tier 2- If we assume the draft goes according to plan, this is the list of guys I am hoping to pull at least one player from, and possibly 2 players depending on where I am drafting and how many early picks I have.
• Tier 3- I try to find one or 2 college players that I think will make it to the show. Generally speaking, if a pitcher is described as having "upside of a work horse SP," or an OF is described as a "tweener with a high OBP," I'm pouncing
• Tier 4- The Lotto ticket. While I acknowledge that there are high school players with exceptional baseball tools, and it's easy to dream on their upside, I'd prefer to wait a little while into the draft before making a move. Guys in BaseballAmerica's top 250 can be found after the 3rd or 4th round, generally with signability concerns.
• Tier 5- College Seniors and Relievers- It rarely makes sense to draft a reliever in the first two or three rounds (there are exceptions), but in a world where Craig Breslow gets $2 million, and Wesley Wright gets something similar, developing bull pen arms, and saving a couple million here and there, is worth the draft pick. Also, in order to sign Tier 4 players, you need to find a couple of college seniors in the first 10 rounds of every draft.
• Tier 6- The 11th round pick. This is a guy you don't think will sign, but you're going to give it your all. He is a fall back to a tier 4 player not falling.
• Tier 7- Binkies- Everyone has them. It could be a guy who throws 100 MPH but has no idea where it is going. Maybe it is a guy who happens to share your alma mater. Heck, maybe it us a guy with a crazy name that you can imagine various announcers tripping over. Generally speaking, I'm hoping to find my binky in the 12th round.

After I've got my list of players broken in Tiers (especially tier 1 and 2), I start to put an order on the list.

In tier 1 and 2, I'm generally looking to land college players who I think will contribute in some way (remember, drafted player contribute both by making it to the majors, an by playing well enough in the minors to be used as trade fodder). However, as I said, I recognize that there are HS players with unique enough skills that they belong in the upper tiers.

If I come out of a draft feeling like I've added between 4 and 7 potential contributors, a lotto ticket and a binky, I've done really well.

Identifying which player belongs in which tier is part art, part science. Of course, stats play an important part of the equation (especially college stats), and I personally put a higher weight on stats against top competition (for example, Team USA and the Cape Cod League are two places where a prospect can make major moves in my draft board).

In addition, there are specific college programs that I think do a really great job developing certain types of players.

My next posts will be a review of my tiers for the 2014 draft (hint: Trea Turner was high up in my top tier), with examples of what makes a prospect someone I'm intrigued with.

Shadow Padres Organizational Philosophy on Contracts

If you look at the entirety of MLB, you quickly come to realize that huge dollar contracts tend to end poorly. It isn't a certainty, but it seems to happen way more often than not.

I can't prove it, but I think a major portion of it stems from not having all the pertinent information on a player, and as such, I'm deciding that I will not give a player from outside the organization more than $10 million annually. In fact, to maintain maximum flexibility, I'm also saying no more than 4 years, and it is on a scale:

• 1 year-$10 million max
• 2 years-$9 million max (2 years, $18 million)
• 3 years-$8 million max (3 years, $24 million)
• 4 years-$7 million max (4 years, $28 million)

Since trading away Chase Headley last year, there is a gap at 3b on my new team. Based on the rules above, you can probably guess who my replacement is going to be.

In the coming days, I'll describe why I am passing on the Wil Myers deal (it isn't because he spells his name wrong), and of through my last few years of (shadow) draft info.

AJ Preller has been extremely aggressive thus far, which means that this new column is a few days late in getting off the ground (after all, it's easy to 2nd guess the Kemp and Myers moves). It's also going to make this a great thought-exercise... since he and I couldn't be more different.

GM for a Day

One of my favorite annual baseball columns comes from John Sickels, who runs a shadow draft for his beloved Twins. He keeps track of his minor league system and provides updates on regularly on how he's performing, versus what the real life team as doing.

I've decided to take this concept a step further, and play "GM of a team."

While I'd love to be Ben Cherington, the reality is that he won a World Series 2 years ago, and probably isn't going anywhere. So, instead, I'm going to pick a team that actually changed GM's this year, and I'm going to run a shadow version of the Padres.

A few ground rules:

• If a player is traded, I'm going to give myself a sort of "right to match" on a deal, assuming I have a comparable offer to make. For example, I'm going to assume that free agents will take a small increase on their pay in order to play for me. Seriously, it is San Diego. There is no better place to live.
• Budget wise, I'm going to assume a $100 million budget for the roster, and $10 million annual amateur acquisition budget. Money will roll over annually. For example, if I spend $82 million this year, I'm going to roll $18 million into next year's budget. It will also be flexible. If my team is killing it in the regular season and I need to make a deal for a reliever, I can borrow from my amateur spending budget. Etc.
• To judge success, I'm going to use WAR at the end of the year, and add it up for my team (it is basic, I know). If my team is a 97 WAR (including the assumed baseline), I'll award myself the draft pick that goes with that win total (if my team is phenomenal, I don't want to assume a higher draft pick than would be awarded, and vice versa... If I suck at this, I expect to draft higher).
• Finally, I'm going to start from the day AJ Preller was hired, meaning that I can undo moves he has made so far (there is a little bit of hind sighting involved here. But that's ok because it is only a couple months, not a long term thing).

Tomorrow, I'll unveil some organizational philosophies, but for the time being, please know this: I'm not making the Matt Kemp trade.

A Tale of 3 Third Basemen

Yesterday, the Yanks locked up their 3b of the next few years, agreeing to terms with Chase Headley.

I like Chase Headley, quite a bit (in fact, I've got him signed for 3 more years on my fantasy team).

But this signing, along with the Red Sox addition of Kung Fu Panda got me thinking... which 3b this off season will bring the most bang for the buck?

So, I present, a tale of 3b's.

• 3b number 1- He's 30 years old, and his last 3 seasons of WAR are 7.2, 3.6 and 4.4. Steamer predicts a 3.5 WAR season in 2015, while a 3,2,1 regression aims higher, at 4.6 (amazing seasons tend to do skew the numbers a bit).
• 3b number 2- He's also 30 years old, and his 3 last seasons of WAR are 2.5, 3.5 and 1.8. Steamer pegs him for 2.1 in 2015, while the same regression from before puts him at 2.4
• 3b number 3- He's younger, at 28, and his last 3 years of WAR are 2.6, 2.3 and 3.0. Steamer has him at 3.6 this year, but the afore mentioned regression says otherwise, pegging him at 2.7.

Player 1 is obviously Headley (that 7.2 WAR year is insane, and shows that the guy has talent), who signed for 4 years and $52 million.

Player 3 is Sandoval, who signed for 5 years and $95 million.

Player 2 signed for 3 years, and $23 million. He's a SS in name, but said he would consider switching to 2b or 3b (he's played those positioned in the past, and his time at 3b hasn't been embarrassing). He's Jed Lowrie.

I said it on Twitter yesterday:

I like the Jed Lowrie deal for the #Astros. Seat warmer at SS until Correa is ready, and then becomes the team's 3b for a few years.

— Mike Bush (@mikebush) December 15, 2014

I may be wrong here, but I think the Astros may have signed the best band for the buck 3b of this offseason. Here is a comparison via Fangraphs:
Source: FanGraphs -- Jed Lowrie, Chase Headley, Pablo Sandoval

First Post

There's something weird about starting a blog, especially one about sports. Seriously, there are hundreds or thousands (millions? tens of millions?) of people who think they know more than the GM of their favorite team or commish of their favorite sports league.

I'm no exception.

In fact, to blatantly steal borrow am idea that Bill Simmons published years ago, I'm pretty sure that electing me Sports Czar would make things easier on all of the sports commissioners.

So, there are a couple of things I'll try to do here:

• Identify trends in sports that seem interesting.
• Throw out ideas I think make sense
• Point out baseball moves that I think are interesting.
• Espouse on random baseball tidbits that make me think I'm the next Billy Beane (I'm not)
• Reviews of different sporting events

There's one other thing here. Many of the players, managers, GMs, and maybe even commissioners might be on social media, and might see things written here (long shot, I know... but Tim Dierkes of MLB Trade Rumors discussed how he never envisioned being a resource for MLB leaders, which means they are reading on the interwebs.... it's just that I'm around 2 millions readers short right now- tell your friends about the blog?), I'm going to do my darndest to not criticize people on a personal basis*.

It's the difference between saying "Boy, Paul Hewitt sure is having a tough time as George Mason's Men's Basketball Head Coach" and "Boy, Paul Hewitt sucks." I don't know Paul Hewitt. He might be a good guy. He might suck. But I shouldn't make that determination (although we can say with certainty that he's had a REALLY tough time as head coach of GMU basketball).

Anyway, hope you enjoy the blog.

*This holds true for everyone, unless they have commissioned a painting of themselves as a Minotaur, in which case it is open season.