by Keith Glab, BaseballEvolution.com
February 3, 2009
Manny Ramirez and C.C. Sabathia represent two of the biggest-impact midseason
acquisitions of all time. While Sabathia parlayed his success into the
richest contract ever for a pitcher, Manny Ramirez remains unsigned, with only
the Los Angeles Dodgers showing more than a passing interest so far.
Obviously, eight years separate the two players and questions surround Manny's
attitude, accounting for much of the disparity in demand. Still, this
dichotomy leads to an interesting question: which acquisition made more of an
impact, the Brewers' trade for Sabathia or the Dodgers' trade for Ramirez?
Note that for the purposes of this article that I am not interested in which
team relinquished better prospects in order to acquire each player, just how valuable the
player was individually for the few months that he toiled for his new team.
Keep in mind that the Sabathia deal was pulled off 24 days prior to the
consummation of the Ramirez trade, giving Sabathia a big, fat leg up. For a
reference point on how baseball writers gauged their respective contributions,
Ramirez finished 4th in NL MVP voting while Sabathia trailed at 6th,
although Manny's edge was a meager 17 points (138 to 121).
Let's begin with the simplest measurement: team wins. The Los Angeles
Dodgers went 54-54 (.500) prior to Manny's arrival and 29-25 (.537) thereafter,
a difference of +37 winning percentage points. The Milwaukee Brewers went
49-40 (.551) prior to Sabathia's first start with the Brew Crew and 41-32 (.562)
thereafter, a difference of +11 winning percentage points. If you include
the Dodgers' 4-4 postseason record and the Brewers' 1-3 playoff showing, then
the differential changes to +32 for Los Angeles/Manny and -6 for Milwaukee/Sabathia.
While these numbers indicate that Manny had a more beneficial impact than
Sabathia did, we must also account for the other summer acquisitions made by
these two eventual playoff teams. While the Dodgers would acquire both
Casey Blake and Greg Maddux, the only significant acquisition for Milwaukee
besides C.C. Sabathia was Ray Durham. Oddly enough, Durham probably did
more to help the Brewers win than Blake and Maddux did for the Dodgers, so we
still see Manny pulling more weight than Sabathia.
Now, onto how their individual performances may have translated into wins.
Win Shares estimates the number of actual wins a player contributed to his team
multiplied by three (so I've divided by three in parentheses for your
convenience). WARP1 -
Baseball Prospectus' Wins Above Replacement Player
- estimates the number of wins a player contributed above what a very poor
player would produce. Both Win Shares and WARP1 combine hitting, pitching,
and fielding contributions, while Batting Wins and Pitching Wins only measure
their individual aspects of the game, and do so above a league average player
rather than a replacement level player.
|
Win Shares |
WARP1 |
Batting/Pitching Wins |
Manny Ramirez |
19 (6.3) |
5.3 |
3.3 |
C.C. Sabathia |
16 (5.3) |
6.6 |
3.6* |
*To get Sabathia's Pitching Wins, I divided his
Pitching Runs by 10.6.Sabathia
has an edge here, particularly given that Ramirez' poor defense isn't accounted
for in Batting Wins and Sabathia's .229 batting average and grand slam home run
with the Brewers aren't accounted for in his Pitching Wins. I'll have to
ask Bill James sometime why Man Ram tops Sabathia in Win Shares when the other
two metrics agree that Sabathia contributed more.
There is one more factor that we must examine for these two players, and that
is how they affected their teammates. It wasn't possible to listen to a
Dodgers game in September or October without hearing about how Manny's presence
in the Dodger lineup buoyed the other Dodgers' hitting performances. As
for Sabathia, probably not enough was made about how his going 7 2/3 innings per
Milwaukee start helped their ramshackle pitching staff survive a grueling
September. So for the Dodgers, we can examine LA batters' OPS before and
after Ramirez and for the Brew Crew, we can look at Milwaukee pitchers' OPS
against pre- and post- Sabathia..
|
Before Trade |
After Trade |
OPS Difference |
Dodgers |
.256/.321/.376 |
.281/.355/.443 |
+101 |
Brewers |
.260/.332/.417 |
.251/.312/.392 |
-45 |
This surprises the heck out of me. Ramirez was over twice as beneficial
to Dodger hitters as Sabathia was to Brewer pitchers? We do have to
remember that this is also situational to a degree. Ramirez essentially
replaced Andruw Jones and, to a lesser extent, Juan Pierre in the Dodger lineup.
Sabathia took starts away from Seth McClung and perhaps Carlos Villanueva as
well. 2008 was such a crazy year that McClung and Villanueva were actually
much more valuable players than Jones and Pierre were. The Dodger offense
was so pathetic that the addition of Ramirez elevated them to another level
entirely, while the Brewer pitching staff was already decent before the addition
of Sabathia, and merely got a bit better afterwards.
So who was the better player, C.C. Sabathia with the Brewers or Manny Ramirez
with the Dodgers? I would still give the edge to Sabathia. But our
original question was which of these two players made a bigger impact, and I say
that the surprising answer is Manny B. Manny. Certainly that is the case
if we account for their playoff performances. If both of these trades had
transpired on the same day, whether that day were July 7th, July 31st, or any
other date, I think that Ramirez would have been both more valuable and the
better player post-trade, period. That is obviously a dicey hypothetical
to make, however, especially since the Dodgers would likely have needed to
relinquish even better prospects than they did had they wanted to snag Manny
three-and-a-half weeks sooner.
What does this mean for the current offseason? Teams with bad offenses
and money to spend should be tripping over each other to sign Ramirez, even if
he wants a multiyear deal with a similar per annum salary as Sabathia's $23
million a year deal. Jack Zduriencik (Seattle), Neddie Colletti (LA), and
Brian Sabean (San Francisco) should be getting into fisticuffs trying to corral
the man. Instead, we only see Colletti lazily upping his ante every few
weeks. Even though there is no way that Manny will repeat his 219 OPS+
with the Dodgers, he will likely approach his 164 OPS+ and 55 Batting Runs for
the 2008 season. Moreover, he will elevate the level of the hitters around
him. His presence for a full season would change a 650-run team to a
700-run team, and could be the difference between a third-place finish and the
postseason.
Disagree with something? Got something to add? Wanna bring up something totally new? Keith resides in Chicago, Illinois and can be reached at keith@baseballevolution.com.