Almost exactly a year ago, I acquired pictures of Joe Sheehan in compromising situations and BP launched Crooked Numbers, proving that while simultaneity usually only implies causality, sometimes there's just no doubt. Over this past year, I've tried to put baseball's conventional wisdom to the test, but more often it's been you the readers who have put me to the test. Your comments, questions, and critiques have made me a better writer and a better analyst; it's clear that without that growth, I would not have been presented with the opportunities that have recently come my way.

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Whenever I hit that wall, I pick up my copy of Baseball Prospectus 2000. In that edition of BP (and reproduced here in 2004), Keith Woolner outlined some of the key questions left unanswered with regards to baseball research. Some are questions of amazing complexity, such as #13: Assessing the "coachability" of players and #19: Optimizing the competitive ecology of the game. Others have been researched since the article's original publication: catcher defense, the relationship between wins and dollars, the value of draft picks, and game-theoretic frameworks. But there are still many great questions left unanswered.

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When judging the value of these acquisitions, it's very easy to fall back on metrics like VORP or WARP to estimate how much a player will add to a team in terms of runs or wins. Then, by comparing those totals to estimated economic incentives for making the playoffs and the increased revenue of more wins, an estimate of the player's economic value can be made as well. For example, those of you who are subscribers to Sports Illustrated may have noticed that Daniel G. Habib called upon PECOTA to estimate the value of the players signed to some of the more recent contracts this winter. Though it was not published, PECOTA's estimate for Burnett was $8.3 million per year for a five year deal. By that number, the Blue Jays appear to have overpaid by $2.7 million per season.

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One of the main points is that we're all working with a learned scale of context. If you're Clay Davenport and you're developing EqA, you can take advantage of it by mapping the scale of your metric to the construct that all baseball fans find familiar. Or, if you're perhaps pushing OPS as the next best offensive metric, you just have to talk about it enough and show OBP+SLG enough that people start to develop that scale. I would argue that they haven't. For example, how good is an .800 OPS? League average? All-star level?

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Putting aside the dollar values on these contracts for a moment, it's important to consider just how consistent and predictable reliever performances are. There are a multitude of factors that routinely influence reliever performance more than that of starting pitchers or batters; primarily those are small sample size and the prevailing usage patterns of modern bullpens. The sample size issue is obvious--most relievers top out around 60 or 70 innings, roughly 1/3 of a typical starting pitcher's innings--but the way modern bullpens are managed (bringing in relievers in the middle of innings, for example) often means that a reliever's performance, as measured by ERA, is as much a reflection of those pitching before and after him than his own contributions. Whereas starters often get to work into and out of their own jams, relievers don't have that luxury.

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Down there at the bottom of the NL ballot, we see the names of Scott Eyre and Jose Reyes, indicating that two writers felt that those two players were the 10th most valuable players in the NL last year. Let's put aside Jayson Stark's comments that defense is both intangible and of less value than leadership--the conclusion being that when a player is in the field, saying "Hey batter, hey batter, swing batter" is more important than actually fielding the ball--and instead focus on the fact that Reyes finished the year with a .300 OBP (10th worst in the NL among players with at least 450 PA), but clearly got a vote because of his 60 SBs. Eyre was actually seventh among NL RPs in WXRL, but picked up zero saves on the season. On one hand, we have the classic overrated player and on the other, one who's actually impressively underrated. Neither of them deserves a vote for MVP, but it raises interesting questions about the criteria used by the BBWAA.

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That's all well and good, but we all know that's not how the baseball market works. There is a long list of reasons why teams choose to rearm even with terrible markets facing them. The competition may be entering a downward phase, new ownership may need to make a good impression on the fan base to keep ticket sales up, or--in the manner of budgets in any business--teams with money may spend it just to justify having it available again next year. As such, prognosticators are already proclaiming financial doom for teams investing heavily in pitchers with injury histories, aging outfielders, or a slow-footed first baseman coming off a career year.

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Because I've been lazy and haven't turned Park Adjusted Defensive Efficiency (PADE) into a regular stat report yet, I was recently running the end of season numbers for a few readers and fellow authors who were curious how things shook out. Before we get going any further, here they are. PADE is expressed as a percentage, so a PADE of 1.00 means the team turned 1% more balls in play into outs than a league average defense given their park.

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One of the few differences--other than wins and losses--between the Astros and the White Sox in the World Series is that the Astros pitching talent tends to be concentrated in their best pitchers. There's been no shortage of coverage of the performance of Roger Clemens, Andy Pettitte, and Roy Oswalt, but additionally the Astros' bullpen leans heavily on Brad Lidge, Chad Qualls, and Dan Wheeler before dropping off steeply into the depths. By contrast, the White Sox show little difference between their top four starters, and the drop to Brandon McCarthy or Orlando Hernandez is slight. While the raw difference between Cliff Politte and Dustin Hermanson or Neal Cotts is large, that's mostly because of Politte's ridiculous season. As displayed Tuesday night, the White Sox's pen can continue to roll out quality relievers long after Houston is forced to call in the likes of Ezequiel Astacio.

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New York had Mel Allen and Red Barber. In Los Angeles, it's Vin Scully. In St. Louis, Jack Buck was the voice of the Cardinals.

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