Ruben Amaro – The Good Years (Part 1)

Ruben Amaro – The Good Years

Part One of a Multi-Part Look at Ruben’s Career as Phillies General Manager.  In this part, we cover an introduction to the approach and his first year as GM of the Phillies.

The Phillies are in a state of transition and much of the blame of their recent failures was played on Charlie Manuel, which lead to Ruben Amaro and the Phillies leadership to relieving him of his duties.  While I do not disagree some of Charlie’s decisions in recent years put the Phillies at a competitive disadvantage, how much of the failures of this organization are truly his fault?  How much can be put on the General Manager for not adequately improving the squad in front of the manager?  Is it possible that the frequent contract extensions, filling the gaps with fringy players, and attempts to catch lightning in a bottle really set this franchise back multiple years?

The System

I wanted to determine a way to evaluate the decisions that Ruben Amaro has made since taking over as General Manager as an estimate of return on investment.  In this three part series, Ruben Amaro: The Good Years, The Bad Years, and The Future/Lost Years, I will evaluate each major decision, Free Agent Signings, Contract Extensions, Releases, and Trades, that Ruben has made in terms of Wins Above Replacement Player relative to that players salary as well as opportunity cost of the players given up or released.  I will not consider alternatives as there is no guarantee they would have considered playing here nor can you accurately determine the fair alternative for the player.  Finally, I will initially consider the opportunity cost in terms of actual value as opposed to future value.  I hope to come up with a method of forecasting future value, but in the meantime, will be focused an actual return.

The Formula

Once again, I will be using Fangraphs’ WAR (Wins Above Replacement) as my basis for analysis.  Fangraphs equates their WAR evaluation to a salary or cost for the player relative to the league averages.  Put simply, it is the price you would pay to replace the player’s production versus the value you have actually received.  This puts a dollar value on the WAR figures, which I will correlate to the player’s actual salary paid to determine the return on investment or surplus value of the player for the organization.  As an example, if a player was worth one Win Above Replacement, you would expect to pay roughly $4.5M for that level of production.  If the player was actually only being paid $1.5M for that year, the organization realized a surplus value of $3M for his actual performance relative to his salary.  This is a good business decision and one that has a significant return on investment for the organization.  (Please note that these figures are all estimates and not exact values and not all contract values are precise as that information is not always readily available.)

The Best Year – 2009 ($30M ROI and 8.8 WAR)

When Ruben took over after the 2008 season, he inherited a World Series Champion roster with very few holes and few changes needed.  The team was already competitive, but needed a few improvements to return to the World Series and have the chance to repeat as World Champions.  By all accounts, the decisions that Ruben made in 2009 were relatively low impact and low risk, but they worked out for the improvement of the team, but likely at the cost of future value.

Here is the list of transactions and their both in the immediate year and future seasons:

These moves returned an average WAR of 2.2 per transaction and a cumulative excess value of $30M for the organization in 2009.  However, over the life of the transaction, the return diminishes to $5M cumulative surplus value and an average WAR (per season per transaction) of .7, as the later years of the transactions wind up being a loss for the organization despite the immediate return on investment.

Free Agency

While Raul Ibanez had a significant positive impact on the 2009 season and Pat Burrell was actually worth negative WAR, retaining Pat would have actually been the more cost effective option across those three seasons.  Raul was worth a cumulative 3.2 WAR from 2009-2011, based on a 3.6 WAR season in 2009.  Pat, while experiencing a down year in 2009 at -.8 WAR, was worth 3 WAR from 2010-2011 with the Rays and Giants.  That means Ruben paid an additional $13M for 1 WAR, which equates to a negative return on investment of $8M for that decision.  In reality, Raul’s big year in 2009 helped the Phillies return to the World Series and that had a significant impact on the year, which made the premium the Phillies paid over the life of the deal worthwhile.  However, the intention of this article is to strip out those aspects of his decisions and purely look at it from a dollar value and return on investment perspective.

The Trade

Ruben’s first few moves were relatively simple transactions, letting Pat Burrell leave, replacing him with Raul Ibanez, signing Chan Ho Park to help the bullpen and spot-start, and giving Pedro Martinez a chance at a mid-season revival with a championship caliber team.  His big decision, and one of the best moves he made as a Phillies GM, came on July 29^th, 2009, when he acquired former Cy Young winner, Cliff Lee, along with Ben Francisco for four high-level prospects.  Cliff and Ben had an immediate impact on the team, providing 2.5 WAR together in only a fraction of a season and contributing to a strong Postseason roster.  As a result, the Phillies realized a positive return on investment of $8.5M in 2009.  Ben was about average for his remaining two years with the team, contributing very little in WAR and having little financial impact.  As we will see in the next year, this could have been an amazing transaction, if not for Ruben’s decision the next offseason to trade Lee despite his success with the organization.

Part Two will be posted tomorrow…