Colby Rasmus and the HS Class of 2005

It's no secret that the 2005 MLB Draft was one of the greatest of all time. Out of the many great players selected, the quintet that was most interesting to me was the high school outfielders drafted in the first round. This group included the first overall pick, Justin Upton, who was called the best high school outfielder since Ken Griffey Jr. and was the younger brother of BJ who had been drafted second (probably should have gone first) overall in 2002. Justin had been on scouts' radar since the age of 14 and by all accounts combined phenomenal athleticism with advanced baseball skills. The rest of the HS outfield class included:

• Cameron Maybin 10th to Detroit
• Andrew McCutchen 11th to Pittsburgh
• Jay Bruce 12th to Cincinnati
• Colby Rasmus 28th to St. Louis

My favorite team in any sport, by a significant margin, is the St. Louis Cardinals. I watch every game and will be heartbroken if Albert leaves at the end of the season (My sabermetric hat is in the closet for this one). That being said, I've read about and watched more of Colby Rasmus than the average baseball fan. I was thrilled when the Cards did the "right" thing and kept him on the big league roster out of spring training in 2009. I was less thrilled when Rasmus didn't get everyday playing time in his first two seasons. In 2009, he lost the time to Chris Duncan and Rick Ankiel; In 2010, he was benched against left handed pitchers despite having a fine track record. The 2010 season involved a controversy that resulted in Albert Pujols saying if Rasmus did not want to be part of the team, he should leave. It became evident that Colby had demanded a trade, but after a "talk" with Albert, he rescinded the demand. 

His 2011 campaign has been disappointing thus far. This led me to nominate Colby as an overrated player in response to this tweet from BP stat guru Colin Wyers. Over and underrated are tricky terms to use. If everyone believes something is underrated, is it still underrated? No. For something to truly be over or underrated, the majority of people have to believe describing the item with that term is incorrect. 

Fortunately for this post, Colin didn't believe I was correct and even retweeted with his comment to show all his followers how offbase I was. He might not agree that Rasmus is overrated, but the way he challenged my suggestion, by saying Rasmus couldn't be overrated because he'd start for most teams, doesn't work because his overrated player, Craig Kimbrel, would play a prominent role in most teams' bullpens. So the perception is that Colby can't possibly be overrated. 

First, let's spell out what Colby is. Colby is a potential five tool player. His weakest skill is his arm, but that's not too important for a center fielder. He could provide gold glove defense due to his speed and instincts. He could hit 30 home runs in a year. It doesn't look like he'll be a .300 hitter, but consistent .280s with plenty of doubles is foreseeable. This all adds up to a very valuable player. The problem is Colby is in his third full season in the majors and hasn't developed at all. Part of this, in my opinion, has to do with the relationship between him and LaRussa, but a lot of it is on Colby. He frequently makes mental mistakes in the field and on the bases. At the plate, his strikeout rate, while down from 2010, is up from his rookie year in 2009. The power is not showing up: His ISO is lower than 2009 levels. He is a very inconsistent hitter and needs to improve his approach at bat to at bat. 

Watching him everyday has led me to believe he won't be a star, but will be a slightly better than league average centerfielder. Plenty of Cardinals fans are calling for the team to trade him. Unless you are a big believer in Jon Jay (you shouldn't be), the Cards shouldn't do this unless they can get an attractive package in return. Colby's value is low right now, so that seems unlikely. 

How does Colby compare to his draft classmates? (chart from Fangraphs)

I've omitted Cameron Maybin because he only has 4 career WAR. Rasmus lags the rest of the group. I actually believe Andrew McCutchen is one of the underrated players in the game and this shows he's an elite talent. This year, Rasmus trails the entire group. Maybin isn't qualified for the leaderboard, but has accumulated 1.8 WAR, ahead of Colby's 1.4.

Colby's development has stagnated. Upton, McCutchen, and Bruce look to be fixtures in the NL All Star outfield for years to come. Due to Maybin's provide excellent defense, he will continue to provide excellent value even by hitting at league average levels. There's still time left for Colby to break out, but it's possible the place for that to happen won't be in St. Louis. 

Updated MLB Season Wins Totals

Here's another update to the MLB season win totals. This spreadsheet was compiled before any of the games today. As always the lines come from sbet. Around the All Star break I'll try to do a post showing the change in each team's line, projection, and pace. Should be good stuff.



As always the BP numbers favor a team's true talent level while the pace numbers reflect current performance. Unsurprisingly, the bigger discrepancies involve teams on long winning streaks (the Nats) and long losing streaks (the Marlins). The sharp bettor knows to play against these streaks as most teams return to their true talent level (as the Indians and Red Sox have after their starts).

The Phillies again look like a nice under bet. Even at this ridiculous pace they will win just over 100 games. If one of the big four were to go down it seems likely they will miss 100 wins. Even with a healthy big four, their offense needs to improve for over 100 to be a solid play.  

Apple and Macroeconomic Ramblings

As most citizens of the internet know, Apple and Steve Jobs gave their keynote address at the annual Worldwide Developer Conference today. What stuck out to me was for the first time I could remember, no new, tangible products were introduced: the entire presentation focused on software. Thanks to the must read technology blog, Engadget, the last time this happened was 2007 when the focus was on Snow Leopard.

• In 2008, Apple made the most significant keynote in the iPhone era when it announced it would allow third party developers and a 3G version. This tipped the iPhone. 
• In 2009, Jobs was ill and Phil Schiller delivered the keynote. He introduced new Macbook Pros and the iPhone 3GS. (Aside: I seriously wonder if Phil Schiller gets more nervous before pitching things to Steve Jobs than doing the "warm up" before Steve takes the stage.) 
• In 2010, the iPhone 4 was introduced, but everyone already knew about it thanks to Gizmodo. (Aside: The 2007 iPhone keynote is the gold standard of keynotes. Nothing will ever come close. Seriously, it's still awesome to watch and I already know everything that will be said) 

So today's keynote that focused on iOS 5, iCloud, and Lion, bucked the recent trend. Ironically, my local 5:30 news still sent a reporter to the Apple store to report on the new developments. It's unclear if the news station realized that absolutely nothing, not even Lion, would be shipped to the store to be sold. Additionally, as anyone who has ever tried to talk to Apple store employees knows, they know nothing about new products. In fact, many of them don't read rumor sites or watch the keynotes and instead wait to learn about new things directly from Apple. This is because Apple does not like its employees feeding information to these rumor mills (although it has been happening more lately). 

So why is this significant and how does it relate to the economy? Well, last month I attended a the conference titled, New Building Blocks for Jobs and Economic Growth: Intangible Assets as Sources of Increased Productivity and Economic Value. The keynote speaker was Ben Bernanke, but he didn't say much of interest except "the Tweeter". He did reference the Solow growth model's technology level input and how half of the US's increase in output over a period of time is due to the increase in this factor. (Aside: Robert Solow spoke at my school's graduation, but not at my ceremony. I was disappointed. Our speaker was not so hot. At least he was short.) After Bernanke was rushed out as quickly as he was rushed in (what's the value of his time?), there was a roundtable discussion. The star of this panel, in my opinion, was Edward Jung who is the CTO for one of the coolest companies around, Intellectual Ventures in Seattle. Any company that comes up with stuff like this AND this is off the charts awesome. 

During the panel discussion, there were four topic areas and here are some points I thought most striking from each topic:

Global Competition and Collaboration

• Closed door innovation is impossible because any new idea depends on previous findings/ideas.
• It only takes 50-100 feet to build internal walls. Real innovation occurs when people are brought together. 
• People closest to the problem are most likely to solve it. It is easier to move culturally relevant people to the problem than to bring the problem to the solver. 

Boosting Competitiveness, Jobs, and Growth

• The difference in value produced by the most productive and least productive workers is small in tangible assets but massive in intangible assets.
• Biggest problem facing the US is equality of human capital, not just wages. 

Measurements and Metrics

• GAAP Accounting is an antiquated way of measuring value. (Aside: Prepping for the CPA exam, I can say I support this statement 1000%). Cash flow and profits often cause a business to tell stories rather than show data. Need to measure value of business decisions/relationships. 
• Nothing destroys growth like an over abundance of metrics because all the metrics push everyone in the same direction and brings the best down to average. 
• Information is only valuable if it affects the way decisions are made. 

Driving Next Generation Innovation

• Need continuous learning to deal with future changes. More of the workforce is working later in life and needs to be continually educated. 
• Capital goes to opportunity. Show it a way to make money and it will appear. 

These are some of the ideas I've been thinking about since the conference. Apple's announcements today  fall in line with many of these sentiments. The iPhone and anything Apple builds isn't much tangibly much different (better or worse is subjective) than anything Google, RIM, HTC, etc can pump out. As I attempted to hammer at in my post on RIM in April, Apple has a sizable advantage on RIM in software. Everything we saw today widens that gap, significantly; RIM is down ~30% since my post (Aside: I exited my short position early and left a lot of money on the table. Never again.) It's not only the iPhone that Apple has an intangible advantage. The iCloud platform appears to be better than anything Google or Amazon currently over. Specifically in the cloud music field, Apple was able to convert its purchase of Lala into something of value that exceeds anything the competition can offer. 

I hesitate to write the next sentence at the risk of sounding too much like a fan boy, but I would write this about any company that acts like Apple does, even if Steve Jobs wasn't the CEO and it didn't make gadgety products. Apple is a global leader in converting intangibles of any state into products and realizing substantial profits on them. In the keynote today, Jobs said that Apple has been, "working for ten years to get rid of the file system so the user doesn't have to learn about it." This shows not only remarkable foresight, but also a commitment to invest time and money into something that won't be physically produced and, as it turns out, actually sold. These are the types of investments more companies need to make. Being committed to intangibles allows Apple to create dynamite products because the products are not made until the underlying ideas (software) are in place to make the user experience ideal: Apple does not rush products.

Final Projection for Derek Jeter's 3,000th Hit!

We are finally nearing the end of Derek's quest for 3,000. He entered the season needing 74 hits to reach the milestone and he now sits only 16 away! Sbet has stopped offering odds on a specific date and instead has prices for each of the Yankees upcoming series. These are shown below:



The implied % column may look a little off. +150 odds typically implies a 40% probability and if it were offered alone or with a line of -150, then there would not be a problem. However, if each of these odds are taken in a vacuum (100/(100+Odds)) and summed, the summed percentage is 180%. This cannot be! We can fix this by dividing each of the probabilities by the summed total and that way all will equal 100%.

Using Derek's 2011 overal statistics, home/away split statistics, and May split statistics, we can estime how many hits per game he will get and when hit #3,000 will occur.



All three statistics suggest it will happen in the first or second game of the Cubs series!

So far this season, Derek has come to bat 4.75 times per game with walks, HBP, etc, he gets 4.23 AB/G. It's possible that Derek could take a more aggressive approach at the plate as he pursues hit #3,000 during the ten game homestand from June 7-16 because he would like to reach the milestone in front of the home crowd before the six game road trip. Failing to reach the milestone could put the Yankees in a bad spot; when Stan Musial was one hit away from 3,000, the Cardinals were playing in Chicago and the team rested Musial so he could get the hit at home. Unfortunately, the game was close and the Cards needed a hit and Musial was called to duty and delivered the hit. If Jeter struggles, the Yankees could be in a similar position coming back from the trip in Cincinnati.

If Derek were to reach hit #3,000 in these series, he would need to have averages at least this high.



Now Derek has struggled this year, but he has only had three instances of not recording a hit in back to back games; He hasn't had three 0fers in a row yet and his worst stretch of the season came over a seven game stretch from May 11 to May 17 where he went 4/31.

I wouldn't touch the Red Sox or Indians odds and unless Derek really commits to not walking and tries to get that hit at home, I think the Rangers series is unlikely as well. I would put my money on the Cubs series and might put a little on the Reds series.

Updated MLB Season Wins Totals

Back again with the nearly bi-monthly look at the new MLB regular season wins numbers from Sportsbetting.com. All are -120/-120 except the Cubs who are 100/-130.



It seems like every time I do this exercise, the numbers say to take the Angels under. Dan Haren and especially Jered Weaver are coming down from their ridiculous starts and the lack of offensive is coming through. The AL West is so weak though and I could see all the teams ending up around .500.

Amazingly, the Phillies number continues to increase. Before the season, under 97 was one of the most popular bets out there. The Phillies are playing at about that pace now and it will have to continue from here on out. I'd still bet the under.

The Rockies O 82.5 isn't a bad play either. Their stars aren't playing as well as they can right now and I'd certainly expect them to end up with closer to 90 than 80 wins. Ubaldo pitched well last night and it might be the start of one of their signature runs. I think this is a good buy low opportunity on them.

Improving ESPN's Franchise Player Draft

ESPN.com had an afternoon long feature today that brought baseball writers and analysts from inside and outside ESPN together to draft the 30 franchise players in baseball. The results are here. As with anything that brings baseball minds from the saber and non-saber spheres together, there were a number of head scratching picks. While I liked the idea, there are a number of ways it can be improved.

First, there needs to be clearly defined rules. The only instructions given (at least for the public) for the ESPN draft was, "who would be your franchise player?" This is pretty open ended. Obviously, the goal of any major league team is to win games, but bringing the "franchise player" into the discussion could bring other goals like marketability to the forefront. So the first improvement is to say the only goal is to maximize wins over the life of the league.

Next, the issue of money and salaries is often more important than player skill. We know this is true because year after year, the 25 best players in an organization do not make the major league team. Rather, top prospects, who are ready to contribute now, are kept in the minors to decrease service time and miss the dreaded super two classification. It's not exactly clear if salaries were accounted for in the ESPN draft. At one point the moderator, David Kull, says (at 12:06), "Contract status has no bearing on this draft." But then Karl Ravech uses Tulowitzki's contract as a reason for picking him first overall (at 12:15). As Mike Fast pointed out on Twitter, selecting younger prospects with cost controlled years left was a good strategy. There's an easy way to fix this. Wipe out every player's existing salary and allow participants to offer each player contracts with varying years and values. If each drafter is given a set budget (I'd suggest a PV lump sum), drafters can build a team of players that can be evaluated on both future performance and cost. Doing an auction draft like this would require the player pool to be expanded to more than 30 players, but the 30 highest paid players could be seen as the franchise players (even if two are on one team).

I'd be really interested in seeing a panel of experts doing this exercise. I think the results would be slightly different than the ESPN snake draft and it would be fun to see what type of contracts prospects like Mike Trout and Bryce Harper would merit.

For reference, here are the 30 top WAR leaders from 2006-2011.


How many of these guys would have been selected back in the 2006 draft? Some of them- Pujols, A-Rod, Wright, Beltran, etc- would have been sure fire picks. Tim Lincecum was drafted this week and given the concerns about his motion and size, it's extremely doubtful he would have been picked. It's also likely a draft would have included Andruw Jones, Ryan Howard, Vernon Wells, and Travis Hafner to name a few. Likewise, sitting atop the 2006 pitching WAR leaderboard were a quartet of young pitchers who surely would have merited serious consideration- Johan Santana, Brandon Webb, Jeremy Bonderman, and John Lackey.

Everyone knows projecting the future is a fool's exercise at best. It's hard enough to project what a player will do this year (see Asdrubal Cabrera, Lance Berkman, etc), let alone for the foreseeable future. Given the task, however, I would like to see a group tackle this in a more scientific way: We all know auction fantasy drafts are superior to snake drafts.