.
Q. In 50 words or less, explain again why all the roto champs (and current MLB contenders) play Stars & Scrubs?
A. Your big contracts ossify your roster. You can't win any kind of game, board game or otherwise, if you tie your own hands. Your opponents will be working hard enough to do that for you.
There's a solution. If you pile as much of your resources as possible into as few players as possible, say 5 aircraft carriers a la Verlander, Cabrera, Fielder etc., that leaves you able to swap players in and out of the other 20* roster slots.
Agility -- dynamic options during gameplay -- is the very first principle of game theory. Almost any game. If you have three different Monopoly groups you could finish - the purples, reds, and yellows, you're orders of magnitude better off than if trying to complete one specific group, the yellows.
Chess is all about multiplying options until you have 5 attack variations and the defender only has 3 defense maneuvers. You cannot overstate the importance of Billy Beane's roster fungibility strategy. The only way to get to roster fungibility is to pile 80% of your resources into 20% of your roster -- the superstars.
..............
It's a question of player-pairs. Would you rather have Hamilton at $25M along with the best Romero/Liddi you can find, or two Nick Swishers? Talented rookies can overperform their contracts. The Scrub can give you far more value than his salary. With two Civics, you're not going to get one of them who's worth $15M more than his salary.
Don't get wrapped around the axle with pairs as such. It's a subtle and dynamic principle. The more your roster polarizes towards aircraft carriers vs minimum-salary players, the more opportunity for overperformance you have.
...............
Besides that, great players win big games. Great teams tend to have great players. Not fairly good players.
.
Q. What would be the delta between Nick Swisher and the best of the M's young-player field?
A. In Yankee Stadium, he has been a .270/.365/.475 hitter the last three years, and he's headed into his age-32 season. You've got three problems:
1) If Swisher drops off by one notch, to .250/.360/.440, the difference between him and Nick Franklin, or Brad Miller, or Vinnie Catricala, or Stefen Romero, or Alex Liddi, is going to be small. (OR, NEGATIVE.)
2) Franklin, or Miller, or Catricala, or Romero, or Liddi, or whoever is the best of this group, is ruled out of action. It's one thing to do that for a Josh Hamilton or Prince Fielder. It's another to do it for an 85-RBI zillionaire.
3) A five-to-seven year deal for Swisher rules out your Fielder- and Hamilton-type option for 2014. And for 2015. And for 2016. And ... you get it.
.
Q. How about fair and balanced?
A. One thing about Swisher: he's always destroyed M's pitching here. Lifetime, he's slugging .538 in this park, with 11 homers in 1/4 a season. His EYE is almost 1.0. I mean this guy has been one of the M's worst nightmares in this park.
It could very well be that, like Rauuullll, he sees the ball real well here.
.
Q. If GM Dr. Detecto would pass on Nick Swisher, does he have any counterproposals aside from Josh Hamilton-type splashes?
A. If I liked the Swisher idea, I'd be way onto that Alex Gordon trade that you guys talk about. Gordon is a very similar player to Swisher, get you his 70 walks, is coming off OPS+ of 140 and 125, and Gordon isn't about to be retired by ruthless AL advance scouting.
He might cost you a James Paxton, but hey, check out that contract. $11M per year, three years, fourth year team option no less, finishes right at age 32. You could get an Alex Gordon type and THEN take the next Josh Hamilton you can get.
As 90-RBI players go, I'm all for grabbing one of them. As the second man in.
BABVA,
Dr D
.