Kansas City Wil Myers for James Shield trade analysis

Recently the Kansas City Royals made a huge trade.  They traded Wil Myers, Jake Odorizzi, and two other prospects for James Shield and Wade Davis from the Tampa Bay Rays.

The trade has been widely panned by the media and critics.  The Royals traded a significant amount of their future for a push to try and make the playoffs.  Wil Myers was the #28 2012 Baseball America prospect and Jake Odorizzi was the #68 prospect before 2012.  The question is, was it a wise trade?

I can't recall who said it (although I believe it was Billy Beane), but there's a saying that you shouldn't pull off big blockbuster trades and trade top prospects until you are "close" to being a playoff contender.  You don't do it when you're far away.

Does Kansas City GM Dayton Moore think he's close to being a playoff contender?  In 2012 the Kansas City Royals had a run differential of -70, scoring 676 runs and giving up 746.  The Detroit Tigers and Chicago White Sox were ahead of them at +56 and +72 respectively.  It seems like a pretty big gap to make up.

However, it's not impossible.  I always recall the 2008 Tampa Bay Rays, a team that went from last place to first place in just one year.  How did they do it?

The 2008 Tampa Bay Rays scored 774 runs compared to 782 in 2007.  So their offense was largely the same.  Evan Longoria came onto the scene in 2008 and was brilliant, but it appeared to make up for down years from several other players.

What made them a division winner was their pitching.  They gave up 273 FEWER runs in 2008 than 2007 (671 vs 944).  This gave the Rays a run differential swing of 265 runs (-162 to +103).

How were they able to make this transition?  The short answer is they revamped their bullpen, got Matt Garza, and all their young pitchers started playing better.

In 2007 Andy Sonnanstine had a 5.85 ERA over 130 innings.  In 2008 he had a 4.38 ERA over 193 innings.  In 2007 Edwin Jackson had an ERA of 5.76 over 161 innings.  In 2008 it went down to 4.42 over 183 innings.  James Shields and Scott Kazmir performed largely the same, but Matt Garza and his 3.70 ERA was an upgrade over all the remaining starters who had an ERA over 6.00 in 2007.

In the bullpen, Dan Wheeler, Troy Percival, and Trever Miller were brought in and provided better innings out of the bullpen.  JP Howell was converted to a reliever and pitched great.  Jason Hammel was moved into the bullpen and pitched better as well.

So boom, a better pitching staff lead to a better run differential and a first place finish.  The question is, how close are the Kansas City Royals to making the same turnaround?

On offense, the Royals are teeming with young talent.  Eric Hosmer and Mike Moustakas were highly rated prospects before 2011.  Hosmer had a great rookie season but seemed to regress in 2012.  Moustakas had an ok sophomore season with 20 home runs.  Alex Gordon and Billy Butler will be entering their age 27 seasons and reaching their prime.  Alcides Escobar had his best season at age 25.  Salvador Perez also had a great sophomore season with a .798 OPS.  If the younger hitters can mature and do better, add in a few minor upgrades (I think it's imperative they replace Jeff Francoeur), the offense has a real chance to improve in 2013.

On pitching, James Shields, Wade Davis, and a full season of Jeremy Guthrie should be an upgrade over much of the starting pitching they had in 2011.  Luke Hochevar could have a rebound year.  He seemed to have been a tad unlucky with a BABIP of .318 last year (despite reaching a career high in strikeouts with 144).  Luis Mendoza pitched reliably in 2012.  If Ervin Santana can come back to some reasonable form, it's not that bad of a staff.  It's not a scary pitching staff, but with a pretty good bullpen from 2012, it's not hard to imagine the pitching staff performing a lot better.

So the pieces of the puzzle appear to be in place for a Kansas City Royals team doing a lot better.  Is it in enough to win the division?  It doesn't seem like it given how much Detroit is a powerhouse.  However, they appear to be in good shape to atleast hit .500, and perhaps make a run at a wild card spot.  Like many things in life though, everything must align correctly for the Royals.  Much like Tampa Bay in 2008, they require many of their young players to mature and play better.  Without that, they won't have much of a chance.

Update 10/1/2014:

With the Royals making it into the playoffs in 2014 and just winning the wild card, I thought I'd look back at this and see how the Royals did in 2013 and 2014 compared to 2012.

2012 Runs Scored - 676
2013 Runs Scored - 648
2014 Runs Scored - 651

2012 Runs Allowed - 746
2013 Runs Allowed - 601
2014 Runs Allowed - 624

2012 Run Differential - -70
2013 Run Differential - +47
2014 Run Differential - +27

Effectively, the offense didn't change much in 2013 and 2014, but the pitching got a lot better.  Not so different from the 2008 Rays.  James Shield pitched like an ace as expected.  A revived Ervin Santana in 2013, strong performances from Yordano Ventura & Danny Duffy in 2014, solid innings from Jeremy Guthrie in 2013/2014, were a big part of the turnaround.

Elmo's Comedic Genius

I wrote about the comedic genius of Cookie Monster before (here) and have recently discovered how Elmo is equally genius.  This skit on Jimmy Fallon is absolutely brilliant.

Livermore Outlet Mall Analysis - Competing with Vacaville and Gilroy Outlets

So a new outlet mall just opened up in Livermore (Paragon Outlets).  I don't know everything about retail shopping and brands, but it seems pretty damn nice.  It's headlined by the Saks, Bloomingdales, and Neiman Marcus department outlets.  There are also outlet stores for premium brands like Prada, Aramani, Burberry, Barneys, Kate Spade, Coach, and others (which to be very honest, I had never heard of the brand Kate Spade and did not know about its popularity until I saw a line of 20 women lined up outside of their store at 10pm).  There are many "middle tier" stores that I shop at like Gap, Banana Republic, Jcrew, Lacoste.

Anyways, I ran upon this article about the affect the new outlet mall would have on Gilroy and their revenues.  There was the following quote:

"“I think they are far enough away that there isn’t a lot of angst here that they will create competition,” said Susan Valenta, Gilroy's Chamber of Commerce CEO.  "

This quote got me thinking, is it really true?  I know that there are people out there that do the following analysis for a living, but I'm going to play business analyst and see what I can come up with.

As far as I can tell, there are two other major outlet malls in the bay area that are at the same level of Livermore's, one in Vacaville and one in Gilroy (although many believe Livermore has more/better stores/brands, but we're going to ignore that).  There's one in Napa, but its much smaller than the others so I'm not going to count it.  (Update: Someone reminded me that the Great Mall in Milpitas is sort of like an outlet mall.  But I'm not going to count that either, it's really a half outlet mall and half normal mall.)

Using Google Maps, the following are travel distance times from a number of Bay Area locales to these outlet malls.  Presently, the new Livermore Outlet Mall is not on Google Maps, so I will use the Target across the highway as my destination point (Livermore's outlet mall is the south exit off the highway, Target is the north exit at the same spot.  I also forced Google Maps to reroute the Target directions to use the same exit instead of a 1 minute faster local road.).

City	To Livermore	To Gilroy	To Vacaville	Closer to Livermore than Gilroy	Closer to Livermore than Vacaville
San Francisco	49 mins	86 mins	66 mins	37 mins	17 mins
San Mateo	43 mins	65 mins	85 mins	22 mins	42 mins
Foster City	40 mins	64 mins	84 mins	24 mins	44 mins
Redwood City	49 mins	60 mins	93 mins	11 mins	44 mins
Palo Alto	51 mins	52 mins	96 mins	1 mins	44 mins
Mountain View	45 mins	46 mins	99 mins	1 mins	49 mins
Cupertino	49 mins	42 mins	103 mins	-7 mins	54 mins
San Jose	42 mins	35 mins	97 mins	-7 mins	55 mins
Milpitas	36 mins	44 mins	90 mins	8 mins	54 mins
Fremont	31 mins	52 mins	82 mins	21 mins	51 mins
Castro Valley	20 mins	68 mins	68 mins	48 mins	48 mins
Oakland	37 mins	80 mins	56 mins	43 mins	24 mins
Walnut Creek	28 mins	82 mins	46 mins	54 mins	18 mins
Concord	34 mins	87 mins	44 mins	53 mins	10 mins
Pittsburg	44 mins	98 mins	51 mins	54 mins	7 mins

So what do I get from this chart?

Not surprisingly, anything in the East Bay is now significantly closer to a major outlet mall.  Many East Bay communities that were closer to the Vacaville outlet than Gilroy's will find themselves closer to Livermore's outlet now, even the Northeast cities like Concord and Pittsburgh will still find themselves closer to Livermore than Vacaville.

As you move South, towards Fremont & Milpitas, the Gilroy Outlet was significantly closer than the Vacaville one, presumably getting all the business from this area.  The Livermore one is now significantly closer for many of these areas and you would expect could take away those shoppers.

If you live in the South Bay closer to the San Jose area, this is where the Gilroy Outlet finally becomes closer than the Livermore one.  However, it's not significant.  For both San Jose and Cupertino, the time travel savings is only 7 minutes.

As you move north on the peninsula, Gilroy gets further away and Livermore gets closer thanks to major highways/bridges (most notably 92).  It's basically a wash once you get up to just the Mountain View and/or Palo Alto area.  Once you get into the Foster City and further North area, Livermore's outlet mall is over 20 minutes closer.

So it appears that for pretty much most of the bay area, Livermore's new outlet mall ranges from a "bit closer" to "much closer" than the Gilroy or Vacaville outlet malls.  Even in the areas where the Gilroy or Vacaville outlets are closer, it's not enough of a time difference to make up for any major brands and/or stores shoppers really want to aim for.

Conclusion? Gilroy & Vacaville should be concerned of increased competition if they are only thinking of distance to location.

Why you invite single guys to baby showers

Not so long ago I mentioned to my colleague's wife that I went to a friend's baby shower (lets call her Samantha).  Somewhat surprised she asked me why I was invited to a baby shower, because traditionally men are not invited.  The conversation went something like this:

Me: "Why wouldn't you invite men, it's like receiving free money."

Samantha: "What?"

Me: "Guys, especially single guys, don't know what they're doing.  They don't know anything about baby stuff.  So point them to the baby registry and they will spend their vast disposable income for you.  In the event that they can't find the baby registry, or don't want to go to the store, they give you a gift card to Target or something.  In other words, free money."

Samantha: "Damn, I need to invite you to my next baby shower.  But I'd feel bad, you probably wouldn't enjoy the party, it's very girly."

Me: "If you invite 1 single woman to the party, your obligation has been met."

Albert Pujols - Terrible year but still better than most

As much of a down season that Albert Pujols had this year (30 home runs, 105 RBIs, .285/.343/.516 split), here are the top wins above replacement (WAR) of first basemen in 2012:

Joey Votto - 5.6
Albert Pujols - 4.6
Edwin Encarnacion - 4.5
Prince Fielder - 4.5
Adam LaRoche - 4.0
Mark Texeira - 3.6
Adrian Gonzalez - 3.3
...
...
Ryan Howard - -1.2

Some of these guys were injured, so I don't want to criticize too much, but Pujol's year doesn't seem to bad by comparison anymore. He did much better than many of his highly compensated counterparts.

AL MVP Miguel Cabrera vs Mike Trout

This year, the AL MVP battle will pit Miguel Cabrera vs Mike Trout.  It's one of the more fascinating MVP battles in recent memory.

On the one hand you have Miguel Cabrera, the triple crown winner.  By any traditional statistical measurement, he should win the MVP award.

On the other hand you have rookie phenom Mike Trout.  He annihilates Cabrera in WAR 10.7 to 6.9.  It's just not even close.  Mike Trout beat his closest opponent in WAR, Robinson Cano, by a healthy 2.5 margin (10.7 to 8.2).  Trout's performance was so good, only 22 other times in MLB history has anyone matched it or done better.

This vote will really pit advanced statistics against traditionalists.  In 2010, when Felix Hernandez won the Cy Young award with a 13-12 record, I thought award voters had finally adopted the use of new statistics in voting.

However, that contest wasn't like this one.  The allure of the triple crown will make it very hard for people to vote against Miguel Cabrera.  I think it'll be fascinating to see how the 1st place votes will be split.

My Favorite Advanced Baseball Statistic

My favorite advanced statistic in baseball is WAR.  It stands for "wins above replacement".  It's gotten a lot of coverage this year due to the MVP race between Miguel Cabrera and Mike Trout.

The calculation of the WAR statistic is relatively complex, but the idea behind the statistic is simple.  How much is a player worth above a replacement quality player?  (A replacement player is generally considered to be a high quality minor league player or perhaps a bench player).

The statistic is normalized around 0.  If a player's WAR value is > 0, the player is performing better than a replacement player.  If the player is performing < 0, a team would be better off replacing that player with a replacement player.

I love this statistic because of what it represents.  So much decision making in our lives comes down to a simple judgement of "Can I do better?".  For example:

• Hiring Employees: "Sally is a good candidate, should we hire her or keep on interviewing more candidates?
• Firing Employees: "Joe is a bad performer, but still accomplishes a lot of stuff.  Should we keep him?"
• Job: "Company A has a ton of problems, should I stay or go?"
• Job offers: "Company X just offered me Y thousand a year.  Should I take this offer?"
• Dating: "Suzy is a great gal, but is she the right one for me?"

Unfortunately, in the normal world, its far more difficult to calculate a statistic for "current value" vs. "replacement value", but it's what we do in our heads all the time.