More photos » by Gene J. Puskar - AP

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Time to bust out your Kirt Manwaring Rated Rookie cards, kids. It's that time of year!

Rookie of the Year is a bit of a strange award. It's given, I presume, to the rookie-eligible player who had the most valuable season in each league. It has good historical pedigree, as Jackie Robinson won the inaugural award in 1947 (when there was only one RoY for both leagues). Nevertheless, it produces some odd results and gives a lot of weight to the perception of the "sophomore slump."

Consider this: after you adjust for the development curve and the salutary effects of experience, would you expect a random player chosen from the pool of first year players to be better than a random player chosen from the pool of ten year players?

Your first instinct might be to say that it shouldn't matter; after all, if we're adjusting for age then the average player is the average player. Except, as in the classic Monty Hall problem, my setup makes the second choice more attractive by providing the chooser with additional information. In this case, the ten year player has survived the ruthless selection that occurs at the major league level. As a result, a Good Bayesian should update his priors and select the veteran.

So what, you say. It doesn't matter that the award is given to an overall less deserving set of players. The point is to recognize the best newcomer to the league!

Well, I'm not sure that makes sense either.

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More photos » by Ted S. Warren - AP

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That some players are streakier than others is, for most baseball observers, nothing short of self-evident. Some guys get hot and stay hot only to descend into the depths of a terrible slump that can last for a month or more. Other guys go to the park, go one-for-three with a walk and a double, go home, eat a steak, and hit the sack, day in and day out. Some guys are up-and-down prima donnas, other guys are paragons of workmanlike consistency. Right?

Who's streaky? Maybe Jimmy Rollins. He started the year off on a terrible note. He hit .207/.241/.293 through the end of April. He eventually heated up and was a fire-starter for Phillies down the stretch. Ergo, streaky.

Who's consistent? Joe Mauer. Immediately upon returning from injury, he hit like his life depended on it. I mean, dude can mash, never takes a day off, professional ballplayer, baseball intelligence, intangibles, and consistency. AM I RIGHT!?

Not so fast. Consider this comparison chart:

Individual charts below.

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More photos » by Julie Jacobson - AP

Alex Rodriguez has proven that certainties in the playoffs are anything but. (AP Photo/Julie Jacobson)

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Rob Neyer wonders:

The Yankees are overwhelming favorites because they're significantly more talented than the Phillies. If they'd played in the National League East this season, they'd have beaten out the Phillies for first place by a dozen games or more. 

Which doesn't mean they're going to win the World Series. But there's a reason why so many people who don't live in Philadelphia think the Yankees are going to win. And while I know that the numbers (and many of the same people) believed the Dodgers were going to beat the Phillies, I also know that the numbers (and the people) have done pretty well this month, otherwise. 

I would love to see an exciting World Series. I just don't see any reason to think I will.

Take his assertions as true: going by third-order wins or JinAZ's TQI, the Yankees would have won about 13 more games than the Phillies against a neutral schedule.

Given that, is he right about our likelihood of getting an exciting series?

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More photos » by Gene J. Puskar - AP

Goodbye, Eric Wedge. Rest assured, you didn't do much wrong. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)

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Eric Wedge had been under some heat for a while for two straight disappointing seasons in Cleveland. The Indians were one game away from a World Series appearance two years ago, and two seasons later they were suffering from a 90+ loss season.

The Indians have racked up 31 WAR this season via FanGraphs' calculations, far more than any of the other 90-loss teams in baseball. This was achieved despite not having Grady Sizemore at full health and a set of starting pitchers other than Cliff Lee and Carl Pavano who could not strike out hitters. That 31 WAR should put them at 78 wins, but they currently stand at 65. There's your reason for firing Wedge right there; they're crazy underachieving. Next!

Well, I don't think it's actually so easy. Can Wedge really be blamed for these things? Is Wedge to be blamed for the team's poor defense (-35 runs by UZR, fourth worse in baseball)? Can he be blamed entirely for their lackluster pitching staff (22nd in baseball in WAR)? Probably not. So what can Wedge be blamed for this season? I'd say the two places where managers can be at fault are in bullpen management and lineup construction. Let's take a look at those and see ho Wedge managed (pun not intended).

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More photos » by Haraz N. Ghanbari - AP

Even if guys like Adam Dunn, left, and Cristian Guzman, right, keep producing the way they are, the Nationals can't afford to pay them free agent rates. Wonder if they're paying that batboy the market rate too. (AP Photo/Haraz N. Ghanbari)

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In the first installment of the The Road to 100 Losses, I looked at the primary culprit of the Washington Nationals' consecutive 100-loss seasons, their pitching staff. Today, I'll look at some players who might also be worthy of blame, even though their play is helping the team's short-term production.

What am I talking about here? One of the things that has caught my interest since I began climbing my sabermetric learning curve is the value of a win, or in most of our analysis, a WAR. As of now, the rate most of us are using for WAR is $4.5M, as detailed here. This means that we would expect to pay around $4.5M per WAR to acquire a free agent. This last clause is critical because for many teams, contention cannot be solely bought on the back of free agent dollars.

Consider that a team can be considered a "playoff team" or "contending team" if it reaches 90 wins. If we consider a replacement level team to be capable of around 48 wins, that would mean a team would have to manufacture 42 WAR to be "in contention." At the going market rate for free agents, that 42 WAR would cost $189M of payroll, a salary currently only eclipsed by one team, the New York Yankees. In other words, successful teams need to find ways to build surplus value beyond free agent value to be a contending ballclub.

How do you build surplus value? The primary and simplest way to do this is to invest in the farm system and the draft, as cost controlled players in their first six years in the major leagues usually provide the most value, even at the lowest production levels. However, it seems like the Washington Nationals did not receive this memo.

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More photos » by Charles Dharapak - AP

"Natinals" third baseman Ryan Zimmerman tries to play through the pain of having a misspelled jersey and a hapless team season. If it makes you feel any better, Ryan, at least you've been pretty good this year. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak, FILE)

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Last Thursday, the Washington Nationals lost a 7-6 contest versus the Los Angeles Dodgers, sealing the team's second straight 100-loss season. As Justin Bopp highlighted last week, this is only the fourth season in which the Nationals/Expos organization has lost over a 100 games.

The futility of the organization hasn't just remained on the field. At the end of last season, the club was unable to sign top draft pick Aaron Crow on a disagreement of around $700K. At the start of this season, general manager Jim Bowden resigned while under federal investigation for allegations that he and special assistant Jose Rijo were involved in a bonus skimming scheme involving Dominican players. And among other things, there was the whole Natinals thing that made the organization the butt of many jokes over the following few weeks.

When faced with a stretch of futility like this, fans can only help but ask whether their team will ever get better. The good news is that the team probably is better than their win-loss record would suggest, though not by a whole lot. The bad news is the organization has not spent money in an efficient fashion in order to produce more wins.

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More photos » by Chris Carlson - AP

The Angels are once again overachieving and are on top the AL West.

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If you'll head over to Halo's Heaven and search for "Pythag", you'll be greeted with much disdain for the word.  The most recent example of that is a FanPost which laments the fact that, once again, the Angels are being called lucky this year. 

The author of the FanPost is right; a lot of people consider the Angels to be getting lucky.  According to Justin's most recent Power Rankings, the Angels have been playing like a .529 W% team within league, compared to an actual W% of .609.  So I wanted to take a look at whether this was a skill, or if the Angels are just getting lucky.

First, how rare is the Angels current feat?  To answer I went into Baseball Databank and figured out the disparity between PythagenPat W% and actual W% for each team since 1960 (/random arbitrary date).  That's returned a total of 1236 separate teams, which seems like a pretty good sample. 

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More photos » by Lenny Ignelzi - ASSOCIATED PRESS

Jake Peavy's contract has 52 million dollars remaining on it. Will his contract, along with the 62 million remaining on Alex Rios's contract, bog down the White Sox, or will they be able to win with them?

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The White Sox have arguably been the biggest movers and shakers of this year's soft trade deadline, adding two gigantic contracts in the forms of Jake Peavy and Alex Rios.  The White Sox, through these deals, have added over 110 million dollars of salary between 2010 and 2014.  There's no question that Jake Peavy and Alex Rios will provide some sort of production over the course of these contracts, even if it's not the level of production that the White Sox are paying for.  The question for the White Sox is whether or not they can still manage to operate from under the burden of these and other large contracts.  Before adding Peavy and Rios, the White Sox were already at a $96MM payroll entering the season - 12th highest in the league, but the 13th highest was $82MM.  The White Sox certainly belong to that second tier of large-market teams, behind the New York teams, the Cubs, and the Tigers, but more in line with the L.A. teams, Seattle, and Philadelphia. 

It's possible that the White Sox could afford to add payroll because they subtracted over 25 million dollars in payroll over the 2008 offseason.   Still, these additions have pushed them right back into that 120 million dollar range.  With the economy as it is, I find it more feasible for the White Sox payroll to remain in the 100-110 million range as it did in 2006 and 2007.  Let's take a look at the team that the White Sox will have under control for the 2010 season.

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