Brian Sabean hasn’t had much to do this offseason. His Giants won the World Series for the second time in three years, he has a formula he thinks works, and the fans are in love with the players on this team.
But of course a lot of things could have gone the other way during the playoffs. Remember those sliders Sergio Romo hung in Game 3 of the NLDS, with the game tied in the bottom of the ninth and the Giants down two games to none? Any one of those could have been a Cincinnati home run. What if the Giants had lost that game? Would Sabean be standing pat right now? I doubt it.
If the Giants had lost Game 3, Tim Lincecum, having fallen out of favor, and with no playoff relief work to redeem him, might have been shopped. The same for Barry Zito, who would not have been a LCS and World Series hero. You could imagine the Giants panicking about the Dodgers and chasing after Zack Greinke and Josh Hamilton. Brandon Belt might have been traded and Adam LaRoche signed. Romo might still be a tendered Brian Wilson‘s understudy.
So there is not much difference between a team that wins the World Series and all the other teams in the playoffs. One just gets hot at the right moment. But the losers always act after the season. They make changes. In fact, since 2000, teams that win the World Series bring nearly all of their players back, and losing teams almost always bring fewer of their players back.
|
Year |
Winner’s Offense |
Winner’s Pitching |
Loser’s Offense |
Loser’s Pitching |
| 2012 |
95% return |
100% return |
83% return |
99% return |
| 2011 |
77% |
84% |
97% |
72% |
| 2010 |
79% |
100% |
76% |
73% |
| 2009 |
72% |
97% |
82% |
38% |
| 2008 |
90% |
100% |
93% |
93% |
| 2007 |
99% |
82% |
86% |
77% |
| 2006 |
89% |
55% |
98% |
99% |
| 2005 |
81% |
91% |
99% |
100% |
| 2004 |
83% |
61% |
68% |
76% |
| 2003 |
76% |
79% |
59% |
32% |
| 2002 |
98% |
100% |
47% |
73% |
| 2001 |
91% |
96% |
56% |
98% |
| 2000 |
86% |
84% |
87% |
76% |
| Total |
86% return |
88% return |
78% return |
74% return |
That’s a pretty simple table, showing the percentage of each World Series team’s World Series hitters and World Series pitchers (as weighted by PAs and IP) that were retained for the following season. But the table doesn’t tell us all sorts of things. It doesn’t tell us the quality of the players that were let go (though, by weighting it by playing time, it sort of does) or why, and it doesn’t tell us whether the team upgraded, and it doesn’t adjust for how many players on each team were eligible for free agency, how old each team was, what the team’s payroll was.
Have the Giants made a mistake in “staying pat?” Are they dismissing what could have happened, and seeing the team as better than it actually is? That’s a complicated question because every team that stands pat is doing so for a different reason and from a position of different strengths and weaknesses.
The team that sticks in my memory, perhaps because of great disappointment, is the 2002 Angels, who beat the Giants in that season’s World Series. While the Giants saw considerable turnover on their roster after that Series, the Angels saw a retention rate even greater than this off-season’s Giants. To my great satisfaction at the time, the 2003 Angels tumbled under .500 and got successful again only when the let several players go and spent a ton of money before the 2004 season. But they had been a championship team that had just won 24 more games than it had in 2001, with little personnel change then. Regression should have been predictable.
Logically, a stand-pat strategy should be the wrong one. A team that wins the World Series likely got some better-than-expected performances. A team that wins the World Series might have been peaking, and standing pat merely locks in the impending decline. A team that wins the World Series likely played better than their true talent. Since 1990, 17 of 21 champions have won fewer games the following year. Even excluding the firesale Marlins of 1997-98, the average team won six fewer. Standing pat overestimates the team’s abilities.
The counterargument is that winning a World Series creates a bond between player and employer, and a team might be able to re-sign its happy players at a discount. This wasn’t true after 2010, when Juan Uribe and Edgar Renteria did the Giants a favor and rejected the team’s offers. Two of this off-season’s Giant signings seem great. Marco Scutaro was the best second baseman on the market and signed for Jeremy Affeldt money. Angel Pagan signed for around half of what B. J. Upton did, and even if he’s a worse player than Upton, he’s not half the player. As for Affeldt, I always worry when teams re-sign relievers for lots of money and years. But teams of all success levels re-sign their relievers for way too much and too long.
Perhaps as importantly, winning a World Series creates a bond between players and fans, and an organization has to be careful to respect that bond. After the 2010 World Series, I assumed the Giants re-signed Aubrey Huff for two years (!) because of his popularity amongst the fans and his marketing potential, certainly not because they expected a 33-year-old first baseman to maintain the 142 OPS+ of 2010. (Of course, such a signing also ignores the best marketing strategy: put a contending team on the field.)
It’s probably better for an organization to be hungry than to be content. But, realistically, a team isn’t going to win more than a World Series or two in a generation. Within reason, there’s no substantial harm in sitting back to enjoy it.