If a deal has a negative Net WSAB, and you do not take into consideration money or the future (or heart and soul, haha), does that make the deal "bad" in retrospect?

1 - I guess. I'm not entirely sure I understand your question. The charts are what they are - I don't mean for them to be considered in a vacuum.

But basically, a deal that yields negative WSAB is probably a bad deal unless there is a mitigating factor. For example, a salary dump of an above-average player is a bad deal if you just look at what that player did - however, you'd also want to consider what the team did with the saved salary.

Hmmmm ... so the net Win Shares of the 2004 deadline deals is (minus-)6.2, or the sum of the Dave Roberts trade.

After which they lost 3.5 games in the standings to the Giants.

Fascinating.

I give Depodesta a B/B-plus for his trades.

I give him a D-plus/C-minus for his major contractual negotiations.

Overall, I give Depodesta a C/C-plus, a pretty good grade for a rookie GM working for terrible bosses.

He's no Theo Epstein, that's for sure, but nor is he another Kevin Malone.

3- Again, keep in mind that the stats include win shares through the end of 2005.

4 - "I give him a D-plus/C-minus for his major contractual negotiations."

Why so low, considering how well he did with free agents?

4/6 - Or do you just not like the guys he picked? That, I can see as debatable - although he certainly seemed to know who not to sign. But it wasn't like he overbid on anyone by a wide margin.

This analysis appears to confirm that DePo gave up too much in the Marlin trade, inasmuch as it presents Choi as slightly below "Bench," while Encarnacion and LoDuca both contributed, more than offsetting Penny's contributions.

Am I reading it right? Why do you suppose it shows this?

Obviously, the overall DePo story is a good one, but this trade is going to be his legacy and his trademark for a long time to come, and it looks less than impressive under this particular microscope.

By the way, I was never a critic of this trade; it always made perfect sense to me.

8 - I think in the long run, the players DePo got in the trade will have more production than those he gave up. But because of Penny's injury (not to mention Choi's disappearance) in 2004, the Dodgers are working from a deficit on that one.

In other words, a healthy Penny would have dominated that trade.

The political cost of that trade for DePo was considerable. In a sense, it wasn't the last straw, but it was a big first straw. It gave life to the anti-DePo movement within the organization.

8 - It didn't help DePos cause that Encarnacion had a career year in '05. It also didn't help that Penny had a somewhat mediocre year.

why do acquisitions only count in the seasons they were acquired? that is, why don't penny's 2005 contributions count, for example?

and also, to clarify, win shares is a cumulative stat, not a rate stat, right? so more playing time translates into more win shares?

11 - They do count. I keep saying that the stats are through the end of 2005.

So Jason Phillips helped the Dodgers purely be being NOT Kazuhisa Ishii?

Off topic, I apologize: I'm considering getting tickets to the WBC. Does anyone have any advice on where to sit and where not to sit in Angels Stad. and Petco Park?

How can Choi have negative win shares above bench? I can't believe that Choi has been so bad that Henri Stanley contributed more to the team in his abscence. I assume Stanley has zero win shares, and that a bench player would have more than zero, so how can he not have a net negative result?

13 - Just as one or several helped by not being Jose Lima.

14 My expirence at Angels Stadium either involves way out in the corner on the upper deck. (Don't bother, the bleachers are better and cheaper), or in the Diamond Club. (Go, go waiter service.)

15 - A bench player who never plays in a major league game will have the same Win Shares as Stanley.

As for Choi, the position played is taken into account. Given his horrible 2004 with the Dodgers, plus production that was barely above-average for a first baseman in 2005, that's how it plays out.

Choi's WSAB with the Dodgers for 2004 alone was -1.5.

[12] ah, ok. thanks for clarifying.

18 Ah, so it's compared against the amount of win shares that a bench player who played the same number of games would make.

At PETCO, you have to be careful that you don't have a seat that doesn't give you a good view of RF. Hence, aim for the LF side of the park.

Getting Jose Cruz Jr for Tony "Who?" Schrager looks like a particularly shrewd deal right now. (I could regret saying this if Schrager becomes an all-star some day but...)

Just the sheer number of people he gave up who are completely forgotten already, like Jerome Millons (unless I'm mistaken) and Elvin Nina... Getting a good prospect like Ketchner for Jolbert Cabrera, etc...

Anyway, thanks Jon, obviously a lot of work went into that.

C

I still believe the biggest problem Depo had, well 4 problems, the bias against his age; perceived arrogance; non-schmoozing of local media and most importantly, never fully explaining why he did certain things. Should he have to explain his decisions to the public, not really but when there is such skeptism and lack of goodwill, it never hurts to be a little political.

The biggest propblem IMO is that he failed to resign Beltre.

(Not that I disagree due to the money he was asking for. Not that I disagree that it was a McCourt call, but i think thats what really caused the press to turn on him)

23 - I can't argue with the schmoozing part, but the fact is that DePodesta rigorously explained what he was doing, time and time again, never more so than with the Lo Duca deal. It was to get a starting pitcher that would take the Dodgers beyond the first round of the playoffs. The media (and many fans) just weren't buying the explanations.

Jon I enjoyed your chapter in the Hardball times. Yours is the only chapter I've read so far but looking forward to the rest of the book. Thanks for the additional information up top.
23
Depo was to classy to explain to the media that he traded LaDuca because he was on the wrong age of 30 for a catcher and would get expensive very quickly. He only accentuated the positive reasons for his trades/moves and never said anything negative about the players he moved. I liked that very much about him. It does seem obvious that he was oblivious to the need to cater to the media. He felt winning and losing would answer his critics but when you have that approach you can't have a season like the 2005 Dodgers had. He miscalculated the damage a 71 win season would have and should have made a more aggressive approach to stay in the pennant race. It seems he was to busy looking to the future and ignoring the present, and it cost him his job. It might have cost us some prospects but I'd rather have Depo and a 81 win season then a gazillion prospects. JMO

Jon,

Here's why I give Depo a C-minus/D-plus for his major contractual negotiations:

He committed a GM felony when he allowed Scott Boras to string him along. Boras dictated the timetable on Beltre and when that played out Boras mauled Depo in the Drew deal.

Certainly JD Drew has premium talents, but his medical red flags/makeup questions were so severe that guaranteeing him $55 million amounts to wishful thinking and potential roster suicide. Surgical patellar tendinitis doesn't go away, especially in a 29-year-old OF. And Drew had other known surgical risks that played out with his shoulder and wrist (not the wrist that was hit by Burnett). Another red flag: The STLC and Braves, two smart clubs and former employers, doubted Drew's competitive makeup.

Drew is capable of a very good year in 2006, but I expect this to go down as a highly inefficient contract. Sure was in '05. Maybe they get lucky and he opts out, but even that opt-out clause favors Boras. Should've been mutual.

The O. Perez deal is egregious because the LAD knew about Perez's many physical and makeup problems yet still rewarded him with a bloated contract.

Better to find some pitching bargains like Kevin Towers did with Pedro Astacio and Jim Bowden did with Loaiza (who wanted to join the LAD but was turned down by Depo).

Criticsm of the Lowe deal gets overcooked. It's a so-so deal, although I think Boras extracted about $4 million more than LAD needed to get him.

Time will tell on the Penny contract. The reason John Boles quit the LAD is that he knew about Penny's shoulder red flags but Depo didn't bother to ask him about Penny, whose shoulder immediately became a big problem. Failed integrity of process there, very un-Theo like.

When the Dessens deal got done, I thought it was an overpay. Still do.

By more than doubling Houston's offer to Kent, Depo got Kent and it paid off. Good job there.

Interesting footnote: Prior to that deal, Depo offered Nomar $27 million to play 2B, according to Gammons. As you know, Nomar again broke down. If Gammons is right, that was a foolish offer and like the Drew deal didn't properly evaluate the medicals.

On another contractual note, I believe Depo should've offered Steve Finley arbitration and gotten the draft picks. Tough call, I know.

I also believe Arizona was willing to do the Green deal without getting $10 million. They would've taken less.

The medicals on Gagne weren't so hot either when Depo gave him that deal, but Boras had Depo by the gonads there, given Gagne's contributions to the LAD.

Final Footnote: One thing I LIKE about the LAD telling Paul Friggin Bako to take a hike over that $50,000 is that they're broadcasting an ability to stick to their bid. Depo broacasted an inability to do so in his deals for Lowe, Drew, Perez and Dessens and the reported offer to Nomar.

This isn't a dismissal of Depo. He was a young GM. A smart employer would've helped him better deal with Boras. Overall, I give him a C-plus.

Trading Ishii for Phillips was an excellent trade. It filled a big hole in the needs the team because of The Trade and a lack of planning. DePo was fortunate that a catcher
was available for Ishii.

On the other hand, although Ishii's performance fell off, he was valuable to the Dodgers when they had him. Toward the end of his Dodger career how many times did they use him as a last resort because they had no one else? How many times did the team win when he was used in an emergency?

Besides, Ishii was important for revenues. Whenever he was used, the concession sales must have soared because of his slow arduous outings.

[27] i'd like to know a little more concrete stuff about "the medicals". when offering contracts, is there a general dollar-to-medical ratio that one should go by, as a rule of thumb? do "the medicals" offer some good predictive value, or do you just use hindsight after the season and say "oh, well that player got hurt and he has gotten hurt before, so you should've seen it coming". are there instances in which players who have been hurt are able to recover and don't show any more propensity to get hurt? is there some information in these players' "medicals" that can help one differentiate these players from those that are injury-prone? is it all a crap shoot? should one avoid players with any injury history altogether? if this is going to be used as a criticism, i'd like to know some criteria to use as a yardstick.

I was neutral with DePodesta in the beginning, but as time elapsed, I felt that he was not the GM we needed. His trades and acquisitions were very good for the most part (although his foot-dragging and poor communication could have impeded a few).

I was (still am) a proponent of the LoDuca/Penny trade. Mere statistics cannot quantify DePodesta's reign as Dodger GM, the same as Abraham Lincoln's election wins cannot quantify him. It seems to me that most great leaders have something in common that cannot be measured. For the lack of a better word, I'll call it "panache." Colletti has it, DePodesta didn't. There's no doubt that Colletti is intellectually inferior to DePodesta, and while having panache does not guarantee success, I believe that a successful GM has to have a certain degree of it.

How do you define panache in a person? I define "panache" much like Justice Potter Stewart defined pornography: "I know it when I see it!"

I'd like to second Molokai's plug of Jon's article-- it's good stuff. The Annual seems like a good read (though I found the review of the NL West a bit heavy-handed...yeah, everyone knows that it was a bad division already). Jon's bit on Depo was the first thing I read (of course) and it was excellent (of course). Looking forward to further perusal...

29
Will Carrol at BP has a database of historical baseball injuries and a program that at the beginning of each year will spit out a color based on the probablity of that player being healthy. Red is stay away, yellow is beware and I think green is good to go.

In the Bill James handbook a writer by the name of Sig Mejdal has taken a stab at it the last two years using a database put together using the baseball encyclopedia for the data.

Of course, there's more good Jon Weisman stuff in "The Best of Dodger Thoughts."

23 - It's hard for me to believe that we've heard the entire story concerning the firing of Depodesta. The data points simply fail to add up. Only several weeks prior to his dismissal, McCourt fully endorsed Depo in speech and action(Tracy was let go). McCourt is not a stupid person and, I believe, understands the merits of an empiricist approach to baseball. Although its too early to tell, Colletti seems to differ from DePo only in being slightly more social and slightly less statistically inclined although he has retained Depo's infrastructure and staff. McCourt, no doubt, understood why the Dodgers failed to perform in 2005(freakish injuries) and also saw the promise of 2006. McCourt must also know that the players Depo acquired out performed those that he has gave up. Was the pressure from the LA fan base and mainstream media simply too much for McCourt to shoulder? I don't believe so although I don't have an alternative explanation.

29
On 3/8/05 Carrol gave the following grades to Dodger players:
Reds - Werth, O Perez, Penny, E Jackson
Drew and Milton were both yellows.

I was just wondering whether a similar list has been made regarding Dan Evans' moves. I've often argued to anti-Depo friends that at least he was better than Evans. At the same time, however, I tend to think that you would have a pretty good general manager if you could combine the best qualities of both -- the offseason moves of an Evans with the in-season moves of DePodesta, a shrewd deal-maker who actually has a soul, someone intelligent who gives up a prospect from time to time, etc..

27 - without saying I agree with all of your criticisms, I do give points for them being well-thought-out. A few comments along the way:

He committed a GM felony when he allowed Scott Boras to string him along. Boras dictated the timetable on Beltre and when that played out Boras mauled Depo in the Drew deal.

I think that's a very important point, and it's one that's been overlooked a bit. That problem led to not only the Odalis Perez signing, which you mention later, but to the even more disastrous Derek Lowe signing. By picking up free agents at the Scott Boras Store late in the season, DePodesta assured himself of paying above market rates for essentially leftovers and castoffs.

Despite all that, I would say I disagree as to whether the Drew contract was a bad one. At the time -- and to some degree, still -- the problems Drew has had aren't related to his patellar tendinitis, which supposedly has been fixed surgically.

Time will tell on the Penny contract. The reason John Boles quit the LAD is that he knew about Penny's shoulder red flags but Depo didn't bother to ask him about Penny, whose shoulder immediately became a big problem. Failed integrity of process there, very un-Theo like.

It wasn't his shoulder at all, but a nerve in his elbow. There has been speculation that the two may be related, but so far nobody -- to my knowledge -- had been able to connect the dots.

On another contractual note, I believe Depo should've offered Steve Finley arbitration and gotten the draft picks. Tough call, I know.

True, but I think the team was wiser to stay away from him. 40+ outfielders don't stay healthy.

why would jackson be tagged as reds?

hes had one injury in his career (at the time that list was made) and it was just a forearm strain. is it just because hes a young pitcher?

Carroll was derilect in his duties when he failed to give Drew a red, but even a yellow coupled with the competive makeup question made in an awfully risky bet at $55 million guaranteed plus the out clause that favored Boras. Carroll was also kind to Milton when he gave him a yellow. The Indians, you can be certain, would've given Milton a red (strictly on physical grounds,not the immaturity issues). Molokai has done a great job of chronicling Bradley's many physical problems, which no doubt will place him in the "red flag" section in 2006. He'll be joined there by Werth, Drew, Ledee, Alomar, Gagne, Perez, perhaps Penny and Cruz.
I suspect Carroll gave Nomar a red last year. Depo, according to Gammons, had offered Nomar a 3 yr/$27 million guarantee before signing Kent. Scary.

As for quantifying the "medicals," clubs are getting better at it and Carroll makes for interesting reading, although his ego appears to outsize his work.

Durability often gets under-appreciated. Let's set aside the whole complex debate on how to protect and preserve and develop pitchers. For position players alone, the season is a meat grinder.
Baseball is incompatible with the body's connective tissues -- ligaments, cartilage and tendons. And the whole steroid/HGH dynamics makes it even tougher to project health. Simply there aren't enough good, durable players for the 30 teams.

Shortly after he got the job, Colletti said durabiliity in a player is very important to him. Seems a wise statement. Possibly it factored into the still-risky move to give Furcal $39 million guaranteed and no doubt is one reason he's courting Jacque Jones.

34 - my pet explanation has DePodesta essentially firing Jim Tracy at the end of the season. When DePodesta's short list for manager makes the Times and it includes

- Torey Lovullo, a minor league manager whom nobody outside the Indians organization had ever heard of
- Jim Fregosi, who had lost a pair of teams, most recently including the Angels

McCourt goes ballistic and reads DePo the riot act. DePo, rightfully believing the choice should be his to make, sees what's coming up, goes on vacation, and lets Frank fire him in the papers, perhaps getting some snickers on the realization that it makes the organization look incredibly incompetant.

Jon, I haven't received my copy of your book yet. I'm not worried, but was wondering if others have received it.

40 Fregosi wasn't on Depo's list was he? I thought Ned was the only one interested in him.

Nevermind, I'm sure you meant Collins, not Fregosi.

42 - sorry, you're right, I was thinking of Terry Collins. Both ex-Angels managers, though.

41 - I've gotten my copy already.

It seems pretty clear that the people DePo brought in have performed better than the people he let go. But much of the value he added on the field came through free agency, so his overpayment in cash might be distorting the picture. To make this argument convincing, however, you either need some inside knowledge of what these guys would have accepted, or you need some alternative. Who on the free agent market was mistakenly passed up?

Scareduck,

I didn't like the price for Drew when the deal got done. This isn't the classic hindsight second guess, but of course, you and I never discussed it last year so you have no reason to believe that's how I sized it up. Part of my view was informed by information gleaned from the Cardinals and Braves, who previous employed Drew.

As for J.D.'s knee, surgery for Drew's patellar problem was a short-term fix. Tendinitis is still in the cards for JD.

Go back to last winter. The knee was such a concern that Drew, shortly after getting the $55million, even risked Milton's wrath by immediately lobbying for the CF job so he wouldn't have to stop suddenly in the RF corner. That was a telling remark. For a 29 year old OF, stoppping and starting shouldn't be a concern. With Drew it was.

My recollection, which could be dead wrong, is that Depo admitted in September that Drew's medicals indeed had raised concerns about the other wrist and the shoulder, the ones that required surgery after the season.

So you have a surgical knee and concerns about a shoulder and a wrist going into the negotiations, plus the makeup questions that infuriated the previous employers, and you still guarantee him $55 million and give Boras the out clause?

If Chuck Lamar or Bowden had done something so risky, they'd get lambasted and ridiculed.

I'm not saying the LAD should've kept Steve Finley. Contrary to what a certain LAT columnist has said many times, that was a smart move by Depo.

At the time, I thought Depo could've offered Finley arbitration to get the draft picks knowing that Finley would go elsewhere for a multi-year deal. Tough call there and a very minor point.

I guess the one good thing about all of Drew's injuries last year is that he played so seldom that his legs should be fresh this year. He was spared the inevitable degradation in t