Its about this time every year (for the last 4, anyway) that I live up to my monikor and I pick a team from each league whom I will root for in the playoffs.

Last year, it was the Rockies and the Indians. I picked up on the Rockies mid-surge and rode that wave all the way into the green monster.

In 2004 I happed to visit Boston in August and got completely swept up in the RSN. I even bought a damn hat... As much as I hate the damn Red Sox now, watching them upset the Yankees in that historic ALCS was one of my favorite baseball experiences.

Because frankly, My hatred for the Red Sox is fairly new compared to that I hold for the Yankees.

But I digress. Pick your teams, and maybe explain a little why. I'm going with the Tampa Bay (Devil) Rays and your Philadelphia Pedro Pheliz'es.

I'm totally jumping on the Dr's bandwagon, but I've secretly liked the philles for a few years and Pete's addition to the team only made that bond stronger. I'd love to see them in the series (especially when the alternative is the Cubs or Dodgers).

Let's hear it.

A look at the importance of walks as a predictive factor of young players future success, using E. Velez, P. Sandoval, and F. Lewis as examples.

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I'm going to jump in on the off season aquisitions bandwagon. However, I am going to try to take a analytical look at what would actually make sense for this team. This is my first time really working publicly with WPA/LI, so forgive me ;)

First, a little bit on WPA/LI - from Fangraphs:

How many wins a player contributes to his team with the Leverage Index aspect removed, invented by Tom Tango.

As I understand it, this means that this is the amount a player has contributed to his team winning, corrected for opportunity. That being said, it is a pretty useful statistic for deciding how much one player will help your team vs. another.

I'm going to make a few assumptions to start out. The first is that Teixeria could be wooed into a short contract by lots of $$. I know this inherently seems stupid, but let's get to that later. I'm thinking 2 years @ 30m per. That is a lot of scratch per year and would allow him to have another big year in 2011. I certainly think he would be interested in this short of some undisclosed injury concern.

Second is that no one on the Giants experiences a significant regression. By this I mean, if the opening day roster is the same as today's roster, we can expect approximately the same run differential, and about the same W/L in 2009 as 2008. (In actuality, I expect the team to get slightly better as younger players improve, but I'm gonna leave that out of this, for now).

I'm also going to assume that, if we didn't get Teixeria, who ever we had play 1st base (TI, Bowker, Aurilia, Pablo) would put up 2008 Aurilia type numbers. I would be pretty happy with that performance from any of the rookies over a full season. In some ways I think this is optomistic.

I'm going to assume that 85 wins will be what it takes to either win the division, or be right in it to the very end (essentially, I'm assuming that Arizona and LA don't get hugely better or hugely worse than they are this year).

Lastly, I am going to assume that each additional win is worth about 1,000,000 to the franchise in ticket revenue. I am using this article Here as a reference.

Alright, with that on the table, it's pretty easy to see:

The WPA/LI of our homegrown 1st base options is about -.4. It can be expected, over the course of a season, that they will  cost the team about .4 wins.

On the flip side, Mark Teixeria has a WPA/LI of + 3.7. His performance is good for about 4 wins over what our avaliable options would give us.

Both of these values I have pulled from Fangraphs and extrapolated over the full season.

As for the team - this season we are on pace to win 70 games. Our pythag, however, suggests that we should only really win 65 games. I am going to split the difference, because I am an optomist and because I think there are factors that do allow a team to out perform the pythag (IE, the disparity in talent between our top 3 starters and our bottom two). I'm going to say we win 68 games this season.

So, based on one of my assumptions, I'm going to say, if we don't change any players, we win 68 games next season. I'm rounding up because I'm assuming we will get Aurilia like performance out of 1b all season instead of Bowkers -1.28 WPA/LI combined w/ Aurilia.

So, let us step aside momentarily to debunk a tangent myth... That getting Teixeria would make us contenders. The short answer is no, it would not. It would make us a ~ 72-73 win team next year when we need to be a 85-86 win team.

If we were to replace Jose Castillo's stellar performance this season (-2.1 wins) with Aurilia-esque performance @ the hot corner ( again, -.4 wins) that makes us about a 74-75 win team (rounding generously). Still not going to cut it. 

(now I'm just going to get crazy)

Let's put Aurilia-eqsue performance across the infield by crossing our fingers and hoping that somehow the Velez/Frandsen/Ochoa/Buriss/Denker mess manages to produce a pair of ~ 90 OPS+ players (which is something I think we all agree isn't impossible, but is pretty optomistic).

At that point, we get +4.5 wins from the SS (holy crap, that has been a black hole this season) and about -.5 from the 2b (Ray Ray was about as good as Burriss is bad).

So our all-Aurilia infield + Teixeria nets us 4+4.5-.5+1.5 or +9.5 wins.

I'll round that to 10 for the sake of optomisim.

Even if you give us +2-3 wins for improved defense, We still are 5-6 wins out.

In short, barring some miracle, getting Teixeria and having the rest of the team improve to tolerable levels DOES NOT MAKE US A CONTENDER, even in the weak NL west.

But that was an aside. The main point is that this team, with Teixeria, will win approximately 4-5 more games next season than without him. The revenue that adds to the franchise is somewhere in the 4-8 million range based on who you beleive. Since it won't get us to the playoffs, there is no added playoff revenue bonus.

So, from a simplified financial POV - aquiring Teixeria would not be wise. One would have to find an additional added incentive of ~ 20 million per year to break even.

If that salary comes at the expense of player development budgets, etc - then I think it is a poor choice - another example of mortaging the future for a different degree of mediocrity in the present.

At the same time however, from a different POV this move could be supported (Warning:  pure cojecture and speculation). If the team has a set operating budget, and it is within that budget to support a 30m salary, I could see justification for this move. While you would be paying over 6m per additional win, You would also be bringing a sense of hope to the fan base, a more entertaining product, and an outside shot at being in playoff contention. Also, depending on what develops in 2009 - having Teixeria as a 1b in 2010 (end of 2 year contract) could be extremely valueable/prudent assuming that several key players emerge (Pablo/Posey/ Etc) and elevate this team to contention. At that point, the addtional 4 wins Texeria brings are immensly valuable as they may be the difference between a playoff spot and a short season.

In closing: Does Texieria @ 30m for 2 years make sense for the Giants? If you beleive that it won't affect player development budgets and you think that the local talent can grow this team into an 85 win team in 2010, then yes. The seemingly gross overpay will be worth it in terms of ticket sales, fan support, and 2010 playoff revenue.

If, however, you worry that the salary will reduce funds avaliable for international signings and draft bonuses and / or you worry that this team's core will still be a 75 win team in 2010, then no. 30m cannot be justified if it holds back other aspects of the team's development and only improves the team from one level of also-ran to another.

So should we do this for everone else? Dunn/Crede/Furcal/Burrell etc? :)

Dunn and Burrell are both worth about +4 wins over Aurilia-level 1b too - so the same holds true.

But, one can see how getting either of these guys for ~ 15m (if possible) would be a much better deal.

Crede is basically Aurilia level, and so is Beltre. If you assume Furcal is able to play the full season, he is worth about +1win over aurilia or +5.5 wins over our current SS clusterfuck.

Burrell + Furcal + Aurilia @ 3b (altho still not a contender w/o some other stuff happening) >> Texeria + Nochoa + Aurilia @ 3b, and likely about the same price, if you think Furcal will stay healthy.