Many corners of the baseball world seem to be doing a lot unnecessary hand-wringing over the number of free 
agents departing from the 2010 Rays bullpen. Obviously, Rafael Soriano seems headed for more expensive waters (Jerry Crasnick tweeted the Angels may give him $33MM — or $17MM less than the Rays anticipated 2011 payroll). It also wasn’t surprising to see that Joaquin Benoit is getting interest from big market teams (in this case, the Phillies).
Now, in this morning’s paper, comes word that Randy Choate and Grant Balfour have non-Rays suitors after joining Chad Qualls and Dan Wheeler in the world of free-agency.
Even Buster Olney named rebuilding the Rays bullpen the biggest personnel challenge in baseball.
Look, I understand that we reflexively fear change, especially mass change. That fear is compounded by the belief that this turnover in the bullpen is driven by payroll and not by performance. I mean, we DID win the AL East last year. Why dynamite a third of the team? Because the bullpen players are all replaceable and teams that don’t attempt to get better, end up getting worse (just ask the Indians — who were one out away from the 2007 World Series — how standing pat worked out).
Luckily, our man Pip over at Sweet Spot member Fungoes, has been through the list of Type A and Type B free agents compiled by Elias and identified the best and worst values based on each player’s two-year WAR. Notice anything? Dan Wheeler is the worst value among the Type A free agents currently on the market and Grant Balfour is the 7th worst value. Randy Choate is the 8th worst value among the Type B free agents and Chad Qualls is the 15th worst value.
What does that mean? These bullpen guys were serviceable the last few years but, outside of Soriano and the 2010 version of Benoit, they are really replaceable. I know the Mrs. will be sad if her Ray-crush (Balfour) signs with another team but I’d rather see the Rays save some money by replacing the overpriced Balfour, Wheeler, Choate, and Qualls, and use that money to replace Soriano (let’s be honest, outside of Mariano Rivera, closers are a dime-a-dozen) and get some bats.
Besides, we simply cannot bring back Balfour and Choate because Joe Maddon apparently cannot tell them apart.
“I know the Mrs. will be sad if her Ray-crush (Balfour) signs with another team but I’d rather see the Rays save some money by. . . .”
. . . signing some UGLY mf-ers….
They don’t have to be capital UGLY, they just have to be uglier than me.
I will not doubt them, they surprise us every year. But there’s also that pang of fear in believing that if we had the money those other guys had, we would be able to at least have the choice. Right now, it looks great on paper “yeah they would have done it anyway”…but really…would they if it really didn’t matter if they were right or wrong and could just cut their losses?
The other day, Brien wrote a good piece on “Moneyball” over at Sweet Spot Blog It Is About The Money Stupid. Go read it and you will feel better. Moneyball isn’t about some secret SABRmetric formula. Moneyball is simply about identifying attributes the market improperly overvalues and undervalues then, spending money on the undervalued attributes while avoiding the overvalued attributes.
That is exactly what is going on here. The Rays can only survive if they don’t overpay for players, like middle-of-the-road relievers, that other teams overvalue. See Benoit, Joaquin.
Ridiculous column. Understand baseball a little more before you may such claims as noted above.
So you base your claims that it’s ridiculous based on….your Yankee fandom, I guess?
I don’t think he’s a Yankee fan Merf. He spelled both “Anonymous” and “Ridiculous” correctly.