Friends:
I have spent a very pleasant New Years Day scouting all of you, and your Rule 5 Draft offerings, getting ready for our meeting at 8 AM Wednesday Morning. But right at the end I noticed a small error in my spreadsheet.
When I fixed it, I beheld a sight of purest terror!
THE ROSEBUDS ALREADY HAVE A TEAM WITH ENOUGH PROJECTED fWAR TO WIN 101 GAMES!
We haven’t even had the Rule 5 draft yet. The ‘Buds only need to fill 4 roster spots. They have $26,000,000 to spend. The 26 players they already have project for a total of 53.9 fWAR.
My goal every spring is to get my team to 55 fWAR by the end of the free agent draft. I usually don’t make it. Some years no one does. Last year only 2 did: the Cheese at 58.7 fWAR and the Wolverines at 55.5 fWAR, right after the free agent draft. (I believe that 58.7 was an all-time EFL record for projected fWAR as the season opened.)
Last year, on Opening Day, the Rosebuds were projected to have an fWAR of 51.6. This year, the Rosebuds already have 53.9 fWAR, and can get to the 55 fWAR target with one measly Rule 5 pick — Steve Pearce, for example, with his 1.5 fWAR projection, could put the Rosebuds over the top all by himself.
True, fWAR isn’t perfect. The Ws did not come close to their 55.5 fWAR projection — in fact, they only made it to 36.4 WAR at the end of the season. On the other hand, AFTER the Rule 5 draft last year, the Rosebuds were only projected to have a 40.1 fWAR roster. They improved that by 10.5 games by the end of the spring drafts. If they improve that much again this season they’ll go into the season with an fWAR rating of 63.9! That puts them in striking range of the Allegheny’s shiny new record of 115 EFL wins.
The Rosebuds did slide a little during the season last summer, ending at 48.4 fWAR, or 96 wins. But, that means they are already 5 games better than they were at the end of the season. Here is how every EFL team’s current roster, as projected by Fangraphs, compares to its actual performance last year:
| Team | 2017 | 2018 | DIFF | ||||
| WAR | WAR | ||||||
| (Actual) | (Projected) | ||||||
| DC | 14.4 | 23.9 | 9.5 | ||||
| Portland | 48.4 | 53.9 | 5.5 | ||||
| Old Detroit | 36.4 | 41.5 | 5.1 | ||||
| Canberra | 31.4 | 32.5 | 1.1 | ||||
| Cottage | 51.4 | 48.1 | -3.3 | ||||
| Peshastin | 42.4 | 38.6 | -3.8 | ||||
| Kaline | 46.4 | 38.5 | -7.9 | ||||
| Hill City | 55.4 | 45.1 | -10.3 | ||||
| Flint Hill | 56.4 | 40.7 | -15.7 | ||||
| Pittsburgh | 67.4 | 34.0 | -33.4 | ||||
True, the Balk have improved more than the Rosebuds, and the Wolverines almost as much, and the Kangaroos a little bit, too. But those were the three bottom teams in the league and they are benefitting from regressing toward the mean. They had more players having crummy years than good ones, and that will rebound a little.
The Rosebuds started with a good year. They won 96 games last year. Their team isn’t regressing to the mean. It’s getting better! Before we’ve even had a draft!
At this point we should acknowledge the pain of Allegheny fans whose team has lost 33.4 WAR since the end of the their dominant season. They are projected to finish in 8th place with a record of only 82 – 80!
But we would never dream of snickering at their misfortune. Because last year after the Rule 5 draft the Alleghenys had an fWAR projection of only 29.9. The A’s got their fWAR up to 38.3 by Opening Day. And they just kept improving until they finished the season 67.4 wins above replacement, with 115 wins, 11 games better than anyone else.
One last word: the entire league’s fWAR right now is 396.8. If we didn’t draft anybody this spring (and still had legal rosters, etc) the average team would win 87 games. That’s wouldn’t be too bad. BUT — last year the league’s total fWAR right after the Rule 5 draft was 338.7. That’s 58 games worse, almost 6 wins a team. We ended 2017 with a league total of 449.7 wins above replacement, or an average record of about 92.5 – 69.5. If we improve by that much again between now and the end of the 2018 season, our average team will have 98+ wins. This is not good.
Maybe we can’t improve that much. We have already soaked up more talent than ever; there isn’t as much left out there for us to draft from. This is also not a good thing for the league, since it makes the drafts less exciting, and makes it harder for weak teams to gain on the strong ones.
Suddenly the rule changes we are proposing seem far too puny.