Certainly, the results for the first week plus of games have been mostly positive. The Astros are a winning baseball team overall and that is huge news given how they have started the last few seasons. As an analyst, I work with a number of different precepts to start every season. The manager’s job in April and May is fairly challenging. You somehow have to marry the concept of immediate results with the idea that you are dealing with small sample sizes.
One of the monikers that we have heard around
these parts is that eventually numbers will mirror what is “on the back of the baseball card.” I will simply say that adage is overused and overly simplistic. The picture in the rearview mirror is always clearer than the one on the windshield and that is doubly true in the early going. If there is one overwhelming negative and area of concern it is the early season performance of Cristian Javier. This is where the law of sunken costs come into play.
There is a marked difference between the taxable salary and the overall salary. Taxable salaries are calculated by the average AAV over the life of the contract. Then, there is the actual cash laid out for the player in that particular season. If we look just at that last number we would see that no pitcher is being paid more on this staff than Javier this season. He is due to make 21.4 million dollars this year and next. That money will be dolled out no matter what happens.
That is the law of sunken costs. The money has been earmarked and will spent regardless of what happens. We can certainly debate the wisdom of the original contract and I am sure we will in the coming weeks and months. I will simply say that one of my hard rules is that all contracts have to be viewed in the prism of the evidence at the time of the signing. Javier was paid based on what he had done in 2022 and before. Whether he was bankable for future production is a separate question, but based on just those facts, the Astros felt like they were getting a playoff starter (top four in the rotation).
The mistake that many franchises make is they allow that money to dictate decisions. It is perfectly natural to do so. No one wants to make a hasty decision and cut a guy loose when they have that much invested. When we look at the analytics we want to look at the underlying numbers. My favorite line in literature comes from Chuck Pahlniuk’s “Fight Club”. “On a long enough timeline, the survival rate drops to zero.” This means that the underlying numbers will eventually match the production. In April, that is less likely to happen.
For that reason, I do not look at actual production this early in the season. There are just too many variables. Sometimes a pitcher can get lucky and leave a ton of runners on base or see hard hit contact go right at fielders. The reverse is also true. So, in early April I am looking at ERA estimates to see what the pitcher is actually doing. We will include numbers like xERA (statcast ERA), FIP (Fielding independent Pitching), and xFIP (a marriage between FIP and xERA). Below is what Javier has done after two starts.
Cristian Javier: 6.85 xERA, 9.54 FIP, 8.90 xFIP
There is a tremendous amount of difference here between Mike Burrows and Tatsuya Imai. They struggled in their first starts, but the underlying numbers are different than the actual numbers. I hopefully don’t have to tell anyone that the above numbers are unsustainable over a full season. The good news is that they probably won’t look that bad. The bad news is that Javier was just as bad in the first starts as the overall numbers look. That leaves the Astros with three options.
Option One: Continue the course
One of the things we noticed is that many of the Astros pitchers did not build up a ton in Spring Training. We were told they were working out on the back fields and that is something, but there is no substitute for pitching to live batters in a live game. Maybe Javier didn’t get the chance to build up enough. The idea here is to give him through at least the end of the month to see if he can right the ship. This falls under the “we are paying him a ton of money, so we want to see if we can get our money’s worth” mode of thinking.
I certainly get that mode of thinking, but not every situation is created equal. Three years in a row, the division and wild card bids came down to the last week of the season. Every game matters in that environment whether it is April or September. If this were a 75 or even a 95 win team you could bleed some games waiting for a guy to find himself. The Astros are not in that situation.
Option Two: Stretch out Ryan Weiss
Weiss pitched three innings in Friday night’s game. Presumably, he could easily go four or five innings in a start the next time through the rotation. That would mean moving Javier to the pen. It seems like a foolish errand to simply move a struggling pitcher to the bullpen, but that belies some interesting underlying numbers. Javier has a 2.25 ERA in the first and second innings of his first two starts. It isn’t until he gets to the third inning that things have gone awry.
Effectively, what that looks like is that Javier is at least passable the first time through the batting order. When hitters are seeing him for a second time they are teeing off. A number of things happen when you move him to the pen. First, you can manage his leverage. In other words, you can pitch him in only certain situations. If he is piggybacking with a starter that has struggled then the marginal costs of him also struggling is greatly reduced. Secondly, if he has to go only one time through the order then his fastball might see some extra life. We have already seen this from A.J, Blubaugh. If he is suddenly throwing 04-95 instead of 92-93 then he might prove to be very effective in that limited role.
Option Three: Call up Spencer Arrighetti
From here, the Astros could do one of two things. They could use a five man or six man rotation. A five man rotation would simply be Arrighetti taking Javier’s spot. If they want to go with a six man rotation they could also stretch out Weiss and incorporate option two. That of course leaves what to do with Javier as an entirely separate question. Designating him for assignment is the nuclear option. It means getting nothing for a pitcher you owe 42 million dollars for between now and the end of the 2027 season.
This is where the law of sunken costs comes into play. The trap is to refuse to consider him as a reliever because 21.4 million is too much to spend for a reliever. I agree. No one should ever pay that amount for a reliever. However, you’ve already spent the money. A one win reliever is worth somewhere between seven and nine million dollars on the open market. That is particularly true if they are not pitching in high leveraged situations. Yet, if the choice is getting zero dollars of value and seven million in value the choice is not a difficult one.
Simply put, the job of Joe Espada and Dana Brown is to coax the maximum amount of value out of the guys they have. A move to the pen coaxes more value out of Javier and could potentially add to the value of the overall roster. Let’s say he pitches twice a week for a combined three innings. Over the course of a full season that ends up being about 70 innings. If that happens to coincide with a pitcher that could pitch to an ERA of 3.00 to 3.50 then that pitcher has some considerable value. It isn’t 21.4 million in value or even close. Yet, if the choice is a below replacement level starter or moderately effective reliever then that should be an easy choice.
The only question is the question of when to make that move. Data can tell us a lot of things, but it can’t predict the future perfectly. Maybe Javier finds himself in the next outing or two. I tend to doubt that, but I don’t have a crystal ball. The lab is primarily a place to analyze the data already accrued. I can tell you what the data says now, and what it says now is that Javier would be more effective out of the pen. What do you think?
