MLB: Sabermetrics Fazing Out All-Around Players

What makes trying to beat the stock market so difficult is the fact that once you have a system which consistently beats the market, people will notice and the secret will get out. Soon enough, the market adjusts and the system is no longer effective.

Baseball general managers often have the same difficulty in picking players that investors have in picking stocks. GMs are always on the lookout for some edge which will help them pick up undervalued players to help their team win, while investors want to find undervalued stocks to make money.

In Michael Lewis’ Moneyball, published in 2003, we learn about Athletics GM Billy Beane. He uses advanced sabermetrics to try and find undervalued talent to help his team win on the cheap. In the book, we find out the focus of Beane’s efforts when it came to offensive players was finding guys with high on-base percentages (OBP).

At the time, other GMs didn’t value a high OBP, instead preferring to stick to batting averages or other measures of offensive capability. The result was Beane was able to get players on the cheap who didn’t make outs.

Well, the secret is out. More teams are valuing OBP and GMs are looking deeper into statistics to give them hints as to what players they should recruit.

This doesn’t mean there isn’t undervalued talent available. All-around players, players who are good-to-average at both defense and offense, aren’t getting the huge contracts their offensively-gifted brethren are.

At the shortstop position, Derek Jeter makes a lot of money because he’s the best offensive player at his position. He’s also the worst fielding shortstop in the majors.

For just a quarter of Jeter’s salary, Jack Wilson labors in relative obscurity (though presently on the DL). Wilson is an above average hitter among shortstops and is near the median defensively. He offers his team a lot of value at an affordable price.

And there are a lot of guys like Jack Wilson, just at shortstop there are guys like Jose Reyes and Khalil Greene who can be had for less.

These players are also available in trades. Jason Bartlett, an above average defender and slightly below average bat was traded by the Twins to the Devil Rays.

These guys are out there at every position and the market may not be able to adapt quickly either.

Many baseball teams are still using bad fielding stats (like fielding percentage and errors) instead of more useful ones (like Zone Rating) and so called “holy grail” or fusion stats (specifically, Win Shares) which try to marry offensive and defensive contributions haven’t been widely adopted yet.

At least for a little while, savvy GMs should be able to get more value at a lesser price by focusing on “all rounders” rather than offensive statistical leaders.