Besides, your games played statistic ignores the years 1999-2002, when he played between 104 and 135 games each season and had fewer than 500 PA’s each season. I have said this before, but Manny averages over 600 PA’s per season since he signed his Red Sox contract. JD Drew has broken 500 PA’s twice and averages fewer than 500.

I believe Carroll too, but recovery from surgery is not a skill, and avoiding a random occurrence is not a skill. Not pulling your hammy running around the bases is more what Carroll is talking about. My data comes from a chart in the Globe from the past week. Drew missed 15/16 games in his “completely healthy” seasons, but from what I can tell from his injury history, only 5 games in each of those was due to injury, leaving 10/11 for whatever reason.

Moreover, Drew’s games played stats though 2002 are irrelevant to now because the bulk of his earlier injuries were from his nagging knee problem, which was corrected in the 02-03 offseason and has not reoccurred. Statistically, I did not cherry-pick, I just corrected for factors that make a difference. Like surgery that fixes a problem. Drew’s no Manny Machine, but he’s not going to collapse on the field every fourth day.

I can just picture Boras looking out a window at Theo getting in the car and then driving away and fuming, knowing his bluff had been called and called hard.

Theo showed some serious balls with that move.

Tim
Red Sox Times

That is the worst example of cherry picking statistics. And the statistics are incorrect. Over the last four seasons he has played 100/145/72/146 games. He has missed at least 15 games in the seasons he was considered healthy. But you want to say that if you ignore his injuries, he was pretty healthy. Will Carroll has stated that health is a skill, and I tend to believe him. The players that are considered ‘injury prone’ tend to get injured at a much higher rate than other players.

Besides, your games played statistic ignores the years 1999-2002, when he played between 104 and 135 games each season and had fewer than 500 PA’s each season. I have said this before, but Manny averages over 600 PA’s per season since he signed his Red Sox contract. JD Drew has broken 500 PA’s twice and averages fewer than 500.

The guy is a health risk.

Oh that’s such nonsense. Drew has missed no more than 5 games per season due to injury for the last four seasons except for two stretches. The first was recovering from surgery which fixed his knee problem (which hasn’t recurred since), and the second was a HBP in 2005, which is a random occurrence and can’t be predicted. Will he miss games? Sure. Is WMP a great backup? Yeah. But all of this “Drew is completely unreliable” is a myth.

Like everyone else in New England, I followed Scott Boras’ negotiations with the Red Sox over Daisuke Matsuzaka’s contract with great interest. The roller coaster nature of the negotiations caused many who questioned the Red Sox strategy earlier this…

I really don’t see why you only attach the luxury tax to contracts that ‘put the sox over the limit’. It makes more sense (in most situations) to average the tax across the roster. I posted earlier on this, but let me try again…

As a simple example, let’s say a team has 25 players (and no non-contributing dead-weight contracts like Clement–clearly a contrived example!). And assume that each player in making $6.17 million. And let’s further assume that they sign their contracts on consecutive days of the same month.

In this example, 24 of the players cost the team a total of $148 million. A 25th player costs $6.17 million plus $2.5 in luxury tax. It seems like you would say that that player cost the team $8.7 million–only because he happened to sign on the 25th day of a given month.

Wouldn’t it seem to make more sense to think that the team went into the year thinking it had ~$157 million to spend, and that the $2.5 million tax should be applied evenly across all contracts?

Note, this all rests on one assumption: that going into the season the team has a pretty good idea of what it is going to spend. I think that is generally reasonable. Of course, the Abreau example is a different one–in that case, teams like the NYY were making the decision mid-season.

Averaging the luxury tax burden seems to make more sense in most situations.

(I am assuming that the luxury tax limit is $148 million and the tax rate is 40%.)