re: MLB Trade Deadline News: Mets get Cespedes, Cubs Hunter Padres LOL

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When people argue against upgrading strengths, they’re really arguing for the presence of diminishing returns, but in baseball, the evidence actually supports the idea that adding a good hitter to an already good line-up actually returns a higher level of value, not a lower one. I wrote about this concept earlier this year; while people tend to want to balance out a team’s strengths and weaknesses, historical data actually shows that stacking good hitters has non-linear impacts, and the Blue Jays may actually get more of a benefit by adding a good hitter to their line-up than they would by adding an equivalent upgrade in the rotation.

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This is why you want to use something like BaseRuns or a Markov Chain when modeling team run scoring, rather than just taking individual player’s linear weights and adding them together; in a good line-up, the whole really is greater than the sum of the individual parts, because good hitters create more opportunities for other good hitters to turn their production into runs. And because players tend to hit better with men on base than the bases empty, a good hitter can have a positive impact on his teammates performances as well, further increasing the non-linear value of adding a good hitter to a team already strong in run scoring

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So when you see comments about the Blue Jays not needing Troy Tulowitzki because scoring runs wasn’t the team’s problem, ignore them. There are no diminishing returns to scoring more runs; there is no point on offense to where the marginal value of a run scored is worth less than preventing a run from being allowed on defense. All that matters is the differential between runs scored and allowed, and you don’t get any extra credit for being above average at both as opposed to dominating in one and surviving at the other

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