Which team would you rather start a franchise with

[OldYankFan]

good job. I like the last line best.



Good job proving his point though.

Edit : After actually reading through the article, I dislike the analysis a lot. I personally feel the post-season should be taken completely out of it, but the way they weigh it is just weird. Also, I dislike the way he does run scoring. Using ERA as a way to determine defense doesn't work.

I didn't say it was a perfect analysis, just not a lazy one. The line of thought follows my general line of think, though you can dispute how he comes to his conculsions.

I find it strange how some of the posters here are so quick to toss out the post season. Why should games in April against the last place club count in the analysis, while tough contests against the best team in the other league not count? Is that not at least as good a test for the team. Perhaps a better test? At any rate since all the teams under consideration make it to the post season why not include those games in the process of evaluation.

[actionjackson]

They shape up equal except for Rivera is kind of like saying "Other than that how was the play Mrs. Lincoln."

And a Razor thin Margin? Well, if you disreguard the post season sure. The 98 Yanks, of course, won a World Championship and the 2001 Mariners lost in the League Championship Series to... oh yeah... the New York Yankees in 5 games.

A better margin is what happened in the succeeding years to each team. The Yanks won World Series in 99, 2000, and lost the Series in seven games in 2001. The most dominate streak in recent history.

The Mariners...2002 3rd place in their division, 10 games back, 2003 2nd place 3 GB, 2004 last place below .500.

I'll grant you the teams don't stay the same, but many of the Mariners players had career years in 01, their best player in 01, I'd say Brett Boone. Look were his career went in compared to the best player on the '98 Yanks, now that's a tougher call, Williams, Jeter or T. Martinez., None of the three had a flame out career like Boone.

I'm not going to pick this apart, but glossing over Mendoza as a guy who soaked up innings? He was 10 and 2 that year. Those were not all "Vulture" wins.

114 wins, the 54 Indians, the 98 Yankeess, the 01 Marniers. Just one came home with a trophy, thats why the 98 Yanks are in the discussion for best team ever and the Mariners and Indians are usually not.

And please don't confuse me with some bandwagon Yankee Fan. I became a fan in the late sixties when they stunk, bad. I guess I put a lot more emphasis on post season performance than others do.

I know you're not a bandwagon fan. I know you've been a Yankee fan for a long time. But, even long-term fans of one team can have the blinders on, when it comes to the rest of the league and you've demonstrated that, not only in this thread, but in others. It doesn't have to be the Yankees, it could be any team in the league and that's OK. It's good to have a favourite team, but when you're trying to do objective analysis your bias can really get in the way of seeing the facts.

Re: Ramiro Mendoza puh-leaze. The very fact that you're using wins, which for many reasons should never be used to determine a pitcher's value, particularly a relief pitcher, tells me that I shouldn't trust your analysis. A pitcher doesn't have to vulture wins. He can come on with a 1-run deficit, meaning whoever pitched before him can't get the win. He holds the opposition off the board, Murderer's Row version 1998 goes to work getting two runs and he hands the ball off to The Sandman and it's all over but the John Sterling bellow: "Ballgame over...etc etc". The fact of the matter is Mendoza struck out just 3.9 batters per 9 innings that year, which is extremely low, meaning when he came on the defense knew it was going to have to go to work and he was probably going to give up quite a few hits, which he did. He was pivotal as a swing man (41 G, 14 GS) that year and he did soak up innings, as he pitched mainly out of the bullpen and threw 130.1 innings, more than doubling Mo's workload. Good thing too, because outside of him, Mo, and lefty specialist Graeme Lloyd this bullpen was meh at best and at worst had "issues", which of course convinced Joe Torre to run him into the ground.

As for your little time machine argument, c'mon. You're either taking over the Yankees at the end of the World Series in 1998, or you're taking over Seattle at the end of the World Series in 2001. You don't get the benefit of jumping into your time machine, seeing the results of the next three seasons and then making your decision.

It's not that people do not care what happened in the playoffs. It's that a 162 or a 154 game, 6 month grind is a far better indicator of who the best team is than 3 or 4 weeks in October. At some level you must agree with that. It's the ultimate test of a team's mettle. Ask yourself: does the best team always win in October? No, the team that gets hot and sustains that over the course of one month. Would you take the team that's at the top of the standings 1 month into the season? Of course you wouldn't. Toronto, Boston, KC, Seattle, Florida, St. Louis, the Dodgers and Philly would have been your playoff teams this year. The guys at FOX would've rightfully had a conniption. Only October baseball matters? Don't even go there because you know that the team with the best record doesn't always win in October. In fact between 2000 and 2009, it's happened twice. This year and 2007, and in 2007 the Red Sox and Indians tied for best record in baseball. The 2006 winners St. Louis had the 13th best record in MLB that year and your beloved Yankees had the 9th best record in MLB when they won it all in 2000.

And once again, yes it is a razor thin margin:

1998 Yankees

EqA: .280
RARP: 290
FRAR: 272
PRAR: 153
WARP1: 59.5
OPS+ : 116
ERA+ : 116
Pyth Rec: 108-54 .667 PCT

2001 Mariners

EqA: .283
RARP: 316
FRAR: 322
PRAR: 105
WARP1: 61.9
OPS+ : 117
ERA+ : 118
Pyth Rec: 109-53 .673 PCT

That sir is about as razor thin as it gets, by anyone's definition. EqA is Equivalent Average, which measures a team's total offensive value per out, adjusting for league offense, home park and team pitching and puts it on a scale equivalent to batting average. RARP is Runs Above Replacement Player, adjusted for position, which indicates how far above a team of replacement level players (a scrub that replaces an injured player) the offense achieved. FRAR is Fielding Runs Above Replacement Player, which does the same thing for fielding and PRAR (Pitcher-only Runs Above Replacement) does the same thing for pitching. WARP1 is Wins Above Replacement Player adjusted for season. OPS+ is the team OPS adjusted for home ballpark, era etc. ERA+ is the same thing for ERA. Pyth Rec is Pythagorean Record, which calculates the amount of games the team "should" have won, based on the amount of runs they scored and allowed.

Just for fun:

1954 Indians

EqA: .273
RARP: 245
FRAR: 289
PRAR: 199
WARP1: 62.5
OPS+ : 102
ERA+ : 132
Pyth Rec: 104-50 .675 PCT

Not just razor thin, but flip a coin in terms of which team had the best season thin. But, of course that wasn't the question Jeffy asked. The question he asked was which team would you rather start a franchise with? The answer is the New York Yankees, not because they won the lottery (er playoffs) of 1998. Not because they had a way better bullpen (which they did not). Not because you can hop in your TARDIS and check out the three seasons that followed the season of the teams in question. Not because Bret Boone's career went south after 2001. Not because somebody did an interesting and somewhat bizarre study over at baseball-almanac.com, but because they had young talented players at all the key, up the middle positions which are important to winning championships. Period. End of story. While you and I arrived at the same eventual conclusion, your arguments did not contain this information and it's all you really needed.

[ufgators]

I hate both teams how bout start one for the White Soxs?

[HoustonGM]

I didn't say it was a perfect analysis, just not a lazy one. The line of thought follows my general line of think, though you can dispute how he comes to his conculsions.

I find it strange how some of the posters here are so quick to toss out the post season. Why should games in April against the last place club count in the analysis, while tough contests against the best team in the other league not count? Is that not at least as good a test for the team. Perhaps a better test? At any rate since all the teams under consideration make it to the post season why not include those games in the process of evaluation.

Nobody's saying to not include them. We're saying don't use them as the be-all-and-end-all.

[200tang]

Nobody's saying to not include them. We're saying don't use them as the be-all-and-end-all.

What he said. You're the only one here making your team out to be THE answer. We're saying that other teams are in the discussion and you're telling us they're not.

They may be in the Top 10, but Best? If we stop at 162 games, or (154) the 54 Indians have the best record ever. If we don't stop there. But why would anyone stop there? Those teams all didn't stop. So if we keep going too they have no way to top the 98 Yanks. 125 wins. No other team has done that.

Someone said those teams are in the discussion and you're trying to tell us the '98 Yanks are the ONLY answer.

Also, the first bold part, I actually think you'd find most people would stop there, but I digress.

And the second bold part, that sounds like you're pretty much saying "The Yankees are the only viable answer" even though they're not. Maybe you didn't intend it to be that way, but that's what it sounds like.

I find it strange how some of the posters here are so quick to toss out the post season. Why should games in April against the last place club count in the analysis, while tough contests against the best team in the other league not count? Is that not at least as good a test for the team. Perhaps a better test? At any rate since all the teams under consideration make it to the post season why not include those games in the process of evaluation.

The reason is because the post-season is so short and anything can happen. It isn't just posters here either, I doubt you'll find many sabermetricians that use post-season data at all. You might as well have September games count as 2x and April games count as .5x

Although to be honest, I doubt any serious analysis will use Wins at all. You'd most likely use WAR & Average Age as the basis and add on to that.