January 11, 2009

Red Sox/Yankees: Win Value

There will be no shortage of comparisons of the Red Sox and Yankees rosters this spring.

Here's the first one, courtesy of Paul SF:
YFSF has a study based on the new FanGraphs stat Win Values comparing the 2008 payrolls of the Red Sox and Yankees, and how much value for their money the two teams received.
Looking at each teams' main players in 2008:

the Red Sox received $159.3 million of value for $90.7 million

the Yankees received $89.8 million of value for $138 million

8 comments:

Benjamin said...

It seems pretty obvious that if you assemble a team out of free agents, you aren't going to get much excess value above what you paid them, since you pretty much by definition paid market value (unless they're reclamation projects whose value took a hit for that reason).

I suspect the MFYs' numbers will look even worse once last year's pitching is taken into account.

nick said...

Utterly off topic:

I found out we get the MLB channel (621 in our lineup of the vast wasteland) and have already begun annoying emma with wanting to watch baseball. It's winter, she claims. Yes, but here's a game from '99 between the Jays and the A's. Check out the cool "retro" lower-third. Look at that replay of the towering HR by Canseco. Let me tell you 'bout Ricky and Dave.

It's still no replacement for the days when the trees bud, but...

lougorman'slunch said...

Since NY did not make the playoffs this is one of the few years where these numbers are actually interesting. Usually though they only point out the obvious, that the cost of winning is not a linear metric. I suspect that KC had a great win value, as did Pittsburgh.

Maybe in looking at TB it also becomes compelling, but basically, these metrics are not that interesting.

laura k said...

You know what I'm going to do today? I'm going to go around the blogosphere looking for posts that I don't find interesting, then announce my lack of interest to the blog.

I'm sure everyone will be very interested in my lack of interest!

Benjamin said...

No, that would be complaining that Buck and McCarver got a Secret Service escort from Fenway in 2007.

This is just a discussion of how a study's results confirm the reader's suspicions ex ante.

Benjamin said...

Sox mull talks, hope blocks "Bay walks".

Rob said...

I was watching a game from April of 1991 on MLB Network between the Pirates and Cubs with Harry Caray at the mic. Unfortunately, though, he was beginning to sound similar to Dick Clark of today. He was still fun to listen to, though.

Benjamin said...

Rice into HoF.