Friday, January 24, 2020

Your 2020 Giants: Trade for Will Wilson

It's been a while since the Giants traded a PTBNL (Garrrett Williams eventually) for Zack Cozart and the 2019 15th draft pick overall, SS Will Wilson,.  The Giants recently DFAed Cozart (FYI:  Cozart was ironically DFAed so that the Giants could add an Angel's pitcher who had a horrible 2019, who has now been DFAed to pick up another Angel's player, who was ranked #11 on by MLB Pipeline, oddly enough), so I have provided some analysis on the trade, now in this context of not even seeing if Cozart could meet the value of his contract, both in comments on The Athletic and on my own blog.

Thus, I thought I would capture most of my thoughts together here in one post, for reference on this trade, which now clearly was done to buy a prospect by taking on a large contract, which Zaidi mentioned he would try to do.  Below, I look at various ways one could evaluate the trade, as well as discuss likelihood of events, as I think the Cozart trade is interesting enough for future Zaidi tea leaves reading to capture all the following points in a blog post.

ogc thoughts

So now we know that the Giants front office has been relying solely upon Wilson to produce at least 1-2 WAR to get ROI on their investment in Cozart's contract.  They didn't even bother to try to see if they can coax 1 WAR out of Cozart, through their new MLB coaching team that has been put together with the idea of developing not only our young prospects, but to get our veterans a new edge to their performance (though the Giants noted in their statement that they hope to keep Cozart in the organization, so there's that).

I’ve been using $/WAR to find a breakeven WAR production point. If they get 1-2 WAR from Wilson, depending on how much $/WAR is used ($6-12M/WAR) as the market value for free agents, they break even.

This shows how little prospects get in draft bonuses, how depressed they are, by the slotting system.  It does what the draft was designed to do:  protect teams from themselves, where they over bid for the best prospects, as well as protect the poorer teams by giving them access to top talent, as the richest teams used to just buy all the best prospects, and lastly, keep bonuses lower than it would be had the market been open.

Another example to illustrate how depressed draft bonuses are over a free agent market the Giants signing of Lucius Fox.  They gave him $6M but because they went over penalty level, paid another $6M in penalty, for a total cost of $12M to the Giants for signing him. He was unique in that he grew up in Carribean, but came to states to play ball, and he was going to end up in the draft until an adviser told him to move back home, where he could get more as IFA, and the MLB approved of it.

Projections were wide.  He was projected for the first round in that draft by BP, who noted "top 20", while Fangraphs had him top 50, and BA noted first three rounds.  So he's roughly similar to Wilson, who is a mid-first rounder, though, depending on the opinion, Fox is anywhere fromaabout the same to a bit worse.  Still, it gives a feel for how much value a #15 overall pick is, and even Fox's bonus is depressed somewhat because there are spending limits via the penalties.

Like Water on a Stone:  The Volume 51/49 Method

This is part of Zaidi's professed strategy of making 51/49 moves: moves that might not work out most of the time, but if enough of them are done over time, works out more times than not. Over the first 40 years of the draft, the 15th pick overall produced 273.7 bWAR, which works out to an average of 6.8 bWAR, so this move appears likely to pay off, most of the time, per normal sabermetric analyses.

However, average only works for normalized populations. The vast majority of drafted players don't even make the majors. It's better for first round picks, but still not as good as most think. In the first 50 years of the draft, 46% of the 15th pick overall never made the majors (I included the one unsigned player in this total too). Another 22% made the majors but produced negative WAR or under 1.5 bWAR, meaning 68% of the picks never pays off a $12M investment, using $/WAR analysis.

Only 28% of them produced 2.0 bWAR or more, and 4% more produced 1.5-1.9 bWAR. So this move, based on a $/WAR basis, only works out maybe 28-32% of the time in the past, depending upon how much you value each WAR.

At 28-32% chance of payoff, it means that there's 68-72% chance that he fails to return the money invested. So more likely than not, he won't amount to much, if anything (nearly half the time never makes the majors). But if they hit on something, he'll pay off multiple fold, probably, and if he can do this move over and over, it would result in great returns eventually.  It's either a huge payoff or no payoff, just drilling holes to see if you strike oil or end up with a plugged hole.

Of course, with some professional production under his hat, it improves the odds of him making the majors, just how much, we don't know. 25%? 50%?

Defensive Middle Infielder Floor

He's been lauded for his defensive skills in college, so that, for me, gives him a floor of value, perhaps he can turn out to be an adequate utility player.

Before you scoff, Kelby Tomlinson produced 1.9 bWAR for the Giants as a tweener middle infielder, which would pay off the investment in Wilson if he can just duplicate Kelby's production.

However, Kelby excelled in rookie ball in his first pro seasons, hitting .960 OPS, with good batting peripherals. Wilson only hit .768 OPS and struck out a lot, 47 times in 189 AB, only 75% contact rate, and only 30% BB/K ratio, when you want to see the ratio closer to 100%. Hopefully the Giants see something that they can fix in Wilson to improve his strikeout rate, and at 7% BB/PA, his walk rate needs improving as well.

Wilson in the Pioneer League

He was neither bad nor good in rookie ball, but overall, seems promising to me.  He was 50th in the league by OPS, which is nice but not even good. He's maybe Top 20 among hitters 20 YO and younger. The average OPS was .754, so at .768 being above average (102?) while being younger is a positive sign. His contact rate was also above the average of 72% for the league, but his walk rate was below the average of 8.8%.

Still, if he can keep this up as he rises up the ladder, being an average hitter in the majors is still valuable, and if he can then add defensive value on top of that, then he can be useful on a major league roster, while not costing that much in payroll. So his floor looks possible to me to be above the cost of the Cozart contract.

Speculation on Red Sox Trades

There has been speculation that the Red Sox is looking to dump David Price's $30M contract on someone, and the Giants fan speculation has been that we could pick up a very good player (that is, established) through that route, a la this trade for Wilson.  So looking at how the Giants handled this way of buying a prospect could be informative regarding any similar future moves.  Though in Price's case, the buying team is likely to still use him as a starter, that's a heck of a lot more money (I think there's still 3 seasons left).

Apparently the Giants are not only rumored to be in on trading for Mookie Betts, but viewed by one analyst as the front runner for getting him in trade.  I just don't see that happening, they would want one of Bart, Ramos, or Luciano, and I would not trade any of them for Betts, even if I could get him signed to a long term contract.  I could see doing it otherwise, say maybe they would be willing to accept Mike Yastrzemski plus a bundle of prospects, include any of the younger pitching prospects not named Corry (and maybe Beede).
Opined by ogc/ at
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13 comments:

  1. ElSunday, January 26, 2020 7:00:00 AM

    No reason to trade for Mookie as they can just sign him next year as an FA.
    I fully expect the Gs to be all in on him and /or Lindor.

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  2. nomisnalaSunday, January 26, 2020 2:19:00 PM

    The 12.7 million suggests that instead of his first few years being near major league minimum plus mandatory raises, he has already cost 12.7 million would cost 3.175 million per year. When young players produce one or two WAR for major league minimum the value is outstanding. For this young player his cost for the first 4 years is already 12.7 million plus his salary. The value is not all that phenomenal, and with your analysis, he has less than a 50 percent chance of ever making the majors. Moves like this may work once in a while, but for this to be a consistent strategy does not seem to be economically feasible or smart. A good combination of keeping really good prospects, and enhancing the team with the infusion of appropriate free agents seems like a good route to go. I also hope the team will be competitive this year, as it will mean more people in the seats, and perhaps a team willing to spend more money in the future. However, the giants ownership is supposedly one of the more wealthy ownership groups in baseball, so money should not be a huge problem for them if they want to sign free agents. Especially if they are basically spending 12.7 million on a prospect who is not ranked in the top 100 prospects in any minor league rating system that I could find.

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    1. obsessivegiantscompulsiveSunday, January 26, 2020 9:45:00 PM

      Well, like a lot of things in life, yes and no.

      I guess you missed the part where I said that the average return is 6.8 bWAR. That's roughly $80M expected return on average for each player you pick up with the 15th pick overall. And you invested only $12.7M, so if you can repeat this scenario multiple times, over time you will end up making $67.3M extra value per player.

      So $67.3M vs. $80M for the same player, not a huge drop in difference when investing $12.7M extra to get him.

      But that's the catch: if you can repeat the scenario multiple times. I'll have to dig into it, but the frequency of hitting is low, it's like a lottery ticket, you have to buy a lot of tickets before you hit the big jackpot. So to your point, probably wasted.

      However, that's how you find productive baseball players in baseball, you invest all these millions of dollars, and most of that money is wasted, in order to find that gold mine of a player.

      Hopefully, as I noted, additional information regarding the likelihood of him returning value back was provided by his brief pro intro, so that the odds are greatly improved.

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    2. obsessivegiantscompulsiveTuesday, January 28, 2020 10:11:00 AM

      It's pretty clear that Zaidi is not planning on being all that competitive in 2020. He just doesn't have the guts to put it to words, basically.

      The problem in my view is that he doesn't seem to want to be competitive in 2021 either, although Bart and Ramos should be starters sometime that season, and I would not bet against Luciano either (highly unlikely, but still, he did so well in his pro debut that he's already ranked 14th and 19th by two major Top 100 lists, which for me, if a prospect is ranked Top 20, he's as close to a sure thing as you are going to get, and the rankers understand that they are making a bold statement by placing such a young prospect up that high).

      For example, Luciano hit 1.055 OPS in rookie league, 2.6 years younger than average there, as 17 YO. Acuna hit .800 OPS in rookie league, 2.5 years younger (17 YO), Soto hit .960 OPS in rookie (17 YO), 2.6 years younger, and Robles hit 1.045 OPS in rookie (18 YO), 1.5 years younger. Of course, those three had much better bat control than Marco, who struck out 39 times in 146 AB, so that's a huge negative, and I'm not saying he'll be as good as them, but at minimum, he hit well enough to invite comparisons, showing how elite his performance was in rookie ball. And these three all reached the majors two years after rookie ball.

      But you can't prepare a team to be competitive in one off-season. You need to start laying the blueprint of a competitive team at least two years out, because otherwise you are beholden to the market for free agents to fill your most pressing needs, which means big money for less returns, because you'll have to overpay some. And he's not prepared for 2021, all he has is Cueto, Beede, Webb, unless he gets Gausmann and Smyly doing well enough that he keeps them and not trade them away, two big ifs. And the bullpen is one big question mark, even Moronta, since he has to recover from his surgery and not everyone does return to prior norms.

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    3. obsessivegiantscompulsiveTuesday, January 28, 2020 10:13:00 AM

      Money is not a big problem, beyond the wealth of the owners, because the Giants can afford to spend over $200M, but is committed to maybe $170M so far. He easily has money to spend.

      Delete
  3. nomisnalaMonday, January 27, 2020 2:55:00 PM

    But here is a point: If you get a good pick in the draft, and you pay the one or two million dollar bonus, and for the first four years of his MLB performance he performs at 6 WAR, (Avg. 1.5 WAR per year) you are getting those 6 WAR for almost major league minimum. If you pay 12.7 million for that each time, and you only hit at once in three times, you are paying 38.1 million for that early career successful WAR which you could have gotten for much less, or you can pay that money for a proven major leaguer, who is almost guaranteed (barring injury) to produce that WAR. One can say a Yogi Berra in the hand, is worth several Yogi Berras in the bush. I do see your point, and if a team chooses to go that route, it could be successful. But when they suggest that their lower major league payroll, is really lower, I am not sure who they are fooling.

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    1. obsessivegiantscompulsiveTuesday, January 28, 2020 11:29:00 AM

      You seem hung up on the ideal: draft guy at cheap price, hope he develops. But we do that every year at the draft, so that's covered., as well as signing IFA's.

      So how else do you bring quality prospects into your farm system? His Waiver Roulette tactic is one way, jumping on others' borderline prospects, on the off chance that they might produce with elite player development (or so the strategy appears to be). So is signing players you think can produce for you during the season, whom you could then flip to another team for their borderline prospects, like he did with Pomeranz last season, and probably Gausmann and Smyly this season, as well as Watson, I expect him to be traded off like Dyson and Melancon last season, around the trade deadline, and that's another way, trading vets for these prospects. And, of course, trading our borderline prospects for their borderline prospects, that's how we obtained Yastrzemski last season, as well as just plain buying Gott.

      This buying of prospects by taking on a dead contract is just another way of doing it, which NBA teams have been doing for a long while now, and which Zaidi did with Cozart/Wilson. Yes, you pay more and end up paying a lot more than you would if we simply drafted them. But if you are short on prospects, what is more important to you, finding them in an ideal, relatively inexpensive way like the draft, or finding a way to use your budgetary resources to obtain another lottery ticket, as long as the expected return is positive?

      It's like in business, you have a lot of different investment options, some low-hanging fruit that gives you good returns for your money, either in terms of low investment, high returns, or both, as well as other opportunities that will cost more but perhaps return as much as the low-hanging fruit. If you have the money to invest, do you just keep the money because there's no more low-hanging fruit to target, or do you invest the money in other opportunities, as long as the ROI gives you positive returns.

      By taking this stance, you are saying that you would rather not have a potential good player because it would cost a lot of obtain.

      Whereas, Zaidi is risking $36.1M over time with each 3 moves of this time (assuming similar sized deals; which is a bad assumption, but for illustration purposes), with expected value return from that 1 in 3 of $80M. Invest $36.1M, get $80M back, that's a return of $44M extra, roughly 120% return on your money. Yes, the swings and misses with this strategy is much larger than normal, but the returns are still very much expected to be in the positive.

      Delete
    2. obsessivegiantscompulsiveTuesday, January 28, 2020 11:34:00 AM

      And to clarify your statement, it should be noted that the #15 pick of the draft was slotted for $3.89M in 2019, but Wilson signed for only $3.4M. Still, a bit more than the $1-2M figure you threw out. So for your example, you are talking about $10.2-11.7M vs. $38.1M.

      Delete
    3. obsessivegiantscompulsiveTuesday, January 28, 2020 11:48:00 AM

      About acquiring a proven major leaguer, yes, there is expected returns, for that money spent, though one could argue that given past history of free agency, the likelihood is that for every $1 spent on a free agent, you will get less than $1 returned, because a player's decline was baked into their contract. Let's say $30M return for your $38.1M investment (for illustration purposes).

      So do you prefer to spend $38.1M for a free agent veteran who is expected to return $30M (that is, a loss of $8.1M) or spend $38.1M on three prospects, high odds of failure, but overall expected return of $80M (gain of $44M), when you do hit the jackpot? In the former case, you likely get most of your money back, but likely take a loss too. In the latter case, you likely lose your money on that one deal, but with multiple such deals, then the likelihood of positive return increases greatly.

      This is all just part of Zaidi's professed strategy of making one move at a time where the move is more likely to improve the team than make the team worse. Yes, most of the time, this move fails, but its expected value is that it will pay off in a big way.

      Again, the problem is that you probably have to make this type of move multiple times to get to that expected value, as the odds of failure is great with just one trial.

      But, using binomial probabilities, if he can even pull off 3 similar type deals, with 33% odds of success, he ends up with nothing 30% of the time, with one hit 44% of the time, and multiple hits 26% of the time.

      Delete
    4. obsessivegiantscompulsiveTuesday, January 28, 2020 12:04:00 PM

      I realized I should clarify something at this point. You've been using the 33% figure because that's the odds of returning the value of the investment, so I've been using that in examples. However, to get to the $80M expected value, the odds are much different.

      Looking at it from that perspective, let's take a look at the odds of getting at least $80M return. In that case, there was only 9 players signed who produced 6.8 bWAR or more. That's 18% chance now, so the odds are almost halved.

      With that low odds, with 3 trials, you end up with nothing 55% of the time, one player of 6.8 bWAR or greater 36% of the time, and multiple players 9% of the time. So failure is expected over half the time.

      It gets down to about a third of the time at 5 trials (37% of getting nothing), with expected return of 0.90 of such a player. At 6 trials, your expected return is now at 1 player, with 30% chance of nothing, 40% of one player, and 30% of two or more players. Even at 10 trials, it would not be unusual to see no players in 14% of the time, though he should have one player 30% of the time, and multiple players 56% of the time.

      Delete
    5. obsessivegiantscompulsiveTuesday, January 28, 2020 12:19:00 PM

      Re-reading everything again, I think I'm mucking up the example, so I might have to redo my comments to make it correct.

      But the basic premise is correct: Zaidi is investing $12.7M for a prospect who, if he's like other #15 picks in the past, returns $80M.

      Oh, there's the first mistake. You said that if there are three such prospects, then you spend $38.1M to get the return. But at that point, each of the three are expected to return $80M, so while the odds of finding that one player is low still, with only 3 golden tickets of a prospect, the return accumulates, so now we are expecting $240M return over the 3 prospects.

      But that just brings up the problem with the draft that I've railed against in the past: the returns are highly skewed. High returns are expected, but only a few teams will benefit from such a pick. So average figures are not the best thing to look at when analyzing a draft pick.

      But for seeing what the expected value is, it's okay.

      So getting back to my example, we get to an expected value of one player at 5-6 prospect deals (due to 18% odds of getting at least 6.8 bWAR), but at $12.7M for each prospect, that's a cost of $63.5-82.2M for each expected player you obtain. So the return, while likely positive, is not the huge gain as I had posited above.

      I was wrong above, probably shouldn't have tackled this with a head cold. I'm going to get this sit until I'm 100%, then see if I got it right now or if I'm missing something else. Feel free to comment if you see any of my mistakes.

      Delete
  4. nomisnalaThursday, January 30, 2020 4:27:00 PM

    Get the problem, I am also batting a head cold for a week and it just does not want to relinquish. There are two other issues than just the money of obtaining a prospect one way vs. another. Most of the time when investing in a prospect you are looking several years into the future. So again the bird in the hand argument. Secondly, and this is less a baseball analysis than a public relations aspect, but teams including the giants have often proffered to the fans that a player was too expensive for the team budget, but then they go out and spend on a potential MLB player several years down the road. I hope the giants are great in 3 or 4 years, if we are all still alive, but a rich team like the giants should just not be complaining to the fans about money when it comes to acquiring proven talent, and then do some heavy stock market type gambling on prospects, when they actually have to compete and play at least 162 games this year. Even small market team fans have trouble accepting complete rebuilds. Although, clearly this is not a complete rebuild in the giants case, but it resembles one.

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    1. obsessivegiantscompulsiveFriday, January 31, 2020 2:06:00 PM

      It is not a complete rebuild, but as I noted in one of my posts, he's letting the listing ship sink on its own, so it's not that far from a complete rebuild.

      And really, what would he need to do for a complete rebuild, DFA Posey, Crawford, and Belt? Basically, he's letting the remaining contracts end, player good or bad, when they are untradeable, but has dumped a number of contracts (Dyson, Melancon, Pomeranz, Pillar) to reduce spending while either picking up prospects or clearing playing time for prospects.

      So I expect Cueto and Shark to be gone this season, and Watson as well, assuming they all pitch well in the first half of the season. I think Longoria will be stuck here for another season (third), but by mid-2021, only 1.5 season left on the contract, plus Rays money still paying down, he should be tradeable, again assuming he's healthy and producing.

      But he's not spending money he has available for any okay player, other than Gausman ($9M), which is what he needs to do to make this 2020 team more competitive. So I view this as a rebuild, even if he doesn't want to call it a rebuild, as he's not spending money to make the team more competitive, even though he has $30-50M (can't remember exact) to spend. And I get that him spending does not mean that the team will even reach .500, but I would have been much happier if he spent the money on Bumgarner and stopped.

      Sure, it's sentimental, and blah blah blah, Evans "put us in this hole" by signing players to long term contracts, but Bumgarner is not a Belt or even a Crawford, he's the Willie Mac to Posey's Willie Mays, he was a generational figure and it killed me and other fans to lose those generational players, like Jack Clark, and it still guts me.

      Maybe Zaidi didn't have that experience like we did, focused on one team, living and dying on our team's success or lack of it. So he doesn't understand that feeling. But one would think some of the owners did and could convey that to him.

      Or maybe Bum's bike crash was just something key owners could not get over, which is what I've read, that some are still grudging on that. If so, don't matter, doesn't change his place in Giants history, doesn't change the fans feelings for him.

      And it was clear that a rebuild is happening, even if he don't want to call it that, last season clearly showed that is what he's doing, so I was going to cut him slack in returning to competitiveness. But cutting Bumgarner means that he now has a shorter timeline in my mind for getting this team back to competitiveness. I would have been okay waiting another season, or two, but now I want to see big results by 2021.

      And why not? Sabean took over a losing team in 1997, and in one off-season, re-did the team so well they won the division. Then he was saddled by ownership with Bonds until after 2007, when they finally let go of the golden goose attraction, and the team was winning again in 2009, and won the championship in 2010. Both took him 1-2 seasons to re-do the team and put it back in its winning ways.

      Also, Bart and Ramos should be ascending by 2021 to be starters, Beede and Webb are hopefully set up as top of rotation starters, Corry could be making the majors in 2021, Luciano too, as well as Hjelle.

      So I expect Zaidi now to deliver us a winner by 2021, else, why put us through the misery of losing Bumgarner, because he would have still been a draw in 2021, come hell, come high waters, if he's planning on losing.

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