Q. Have you seen the Fangraphs values? Aren't they great?

A. They are super great. And the thing I like best, is the way you can flick-flick-flick between players back and forth.

Have you seen Teixeira? $30.5M of performance last year, per Fangraphs. And that doesn't count bonus money for listening to the National Anthem.

Yes, I'm kidding.

I notice also, at a glance, that Tex wasn't worth anywhere near that in previous years.* Grist to you amigos' grill against Dr. D. :- )

*If you accept the fielding column.

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Q. How much does Griffey's defense hurt the club? I was looking at Fangraphs' new valuations on Griffey.

A. Check the defensive adjustment columns.

All of those -20 run figures translate to -2 wins: -$9M per year!

What happens to those if you DH Junior in Seattle? Suddenly he's worth almost $10M more per season. Griffey has been docked a good, steady -$7m to -$11m per year for defense, for the last 5 years!

Which is weird. It's one complaint that Bill James had with a lot of defensive systems: what sense does it make to say that you're worth $0 playing a subpar RF, but you're worth $10M if you go sit down and DH?

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The batting, RLP, and position totals that Fangraphs has up? Those can be pretty well agreed on, but the defensive columns are highly controversial. Fangraphs is sweeter than ice cream, and these value columns are sweeter yet, but don't take them as gospel.

The measurement defense is still very nebulous -- and now you can see how wildly it can skew actual value, in the eyes of sabertistas who buy into every season's defensive numbers. Again look at Teixeira's values. Most of the difference between $16M and $30M is because the internet thinks Teixeira learned how to play 1B in 2008.

Do YOU think that Mark Teixeira learned to play first base last year? ... then we're talking about a system that can be off by $10M for one year for one player, right?

So Ichiro's worth $12M, plus or minus $12M? :- ) (By the way, his defensive value, and salary, is way off also.)

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I'm not saying the value columns aren't great. They are! Just don't use them as you would use OBP columns and OPS+ columns. The city of Seattle tends to do that, and it makes us dumber.

Used with discretion, the new $Value columns are just tremendous. Use them as "ley lines" to organize your thinking and find the shortcuts to sound judgments.

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Be that as it may, I guess you could say we're accepting Griffey's +$10M bonus for sitting down. LOL.*

Check Frank Thomas' valuations at DH in 2006-07 at the ages of 39 and 40: Big Frank earned a salary of $11-12M in each season, despite playing every game as a DH. That's what you're shooting for -- pro-rated vs RHP -- with Griffey.

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And we're talking about seasons in which Griffey faced all the LH'ers. It says here that Griffey's overall hitting will improve as he adds one birthday, but subtracts all the LHP's.

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But as you know, on D-O-V the $ value is not the only consideration. The prospect of paying Griffey $8M and receiving $6M of hitting stats might be the end of the essay elsewhere, but not here. That paradigm is too simple even for Roto, much less for the living, breathing city of Seattle.

Put Griffey at DH, take away the LHP's, and probably we'll all agree that he's going to be worth $6-8M in hitting stats. He's not going to ask for a whole lot more money than that.

But VORP/$ isn't the reason I buy a seat in the Mezzanine for $60. If VORP/$ were the sum total of Friday Night at Safeco, I'd buy a bleacher seat.

Cheers,

Dr D

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*True, the RLP figure changes a tadbit, and the positional figure changes significantly, but so does Griffey's production if you use his platoon splits rather than overalls.