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To most Mets fans delight, Kiko Calero was signed to a minor-league deal that could earn him up to $1.5 million.  Many across the internet including those at Fangraphs and the Hardball Times have speculated on why he didn’t sign earlier. Naturally, the conclusion was that there were some rather large concerns about the health of his arm and shoulder. Still, most thought that the risk was more than worth the small cost he was commanding in the market and any team who landed him would get a ‘steal’. Well, the Mets seem to have inked a solid reliever to a rather small contract. Calero has a career 9.6 K/9 and 132 ERA+, and if he performs near that level for a good portion of the season, he will easily be worth his value. Nevertheless, the Calero situation has shone light on the greater reliever market which helps explain the relative lack of interest.

Relief Pitcher as a Position

In today’s major leagues, there are two primary roles which garner a lot of money and attention, the closer and the left-handed setup man. A player who can fill either of these roles effectively and has historically proven the ability to do so will likely earn a larger amount of money than other relief pitchers. While Calero has been good, his ‘stuff” isn’t terribly impressive and probably keeps him from being considered a closer candidate.  Additionally, the role of a bullpen ‘anchor’ is often given a slight premium, although these players are in many cases insurance policies for the current closer.

Look around the league this offseason and you’ll see some examples of this. John Grabow got a 2-year $7.5 million deal, Jose Valverde landed a 2-year $14 million contract, and Fernando Rodney got $11 million over two years. Each of these players is left-handed or has shown the ability to consistently get saves in the past.

The Age Factor

Calero is 35 years old. At that age, some decline is likely, especially given the fact that 2009 was his best year.  But the concern about his age goes beyond just the projected 2010 performance. For players with an injury, the potential payoff of a successful and healthy season is not just in the current year, but in a future contract. For Calero, there is less of a chance that he will be healthy and productive at age 36, 37 and 38, lowering the potential return for taking such a risk.

The Utility of the Back of the Bullpen

While a strong left hander, a closer and another ‘anchor’ are important bullpen ‘positions’ for a lot of teams, the rest of the bullpen often has a different shape. Teams would like to employ cheap and home-grown options and often have the choice of many young relievers and future starters who need major league experience. Once again, this goes beyond the current season, but also has an eye on the future. A reliever who doesn’t fill the critical roles in a bullpen is taking up space which could be used to develop arms that can pay huge dividends later on. If an older reliever becomes ineffective over the course of a season, they are often ‘stuck’ using him and cannot replace him without a release. It’s interesting to point out that the new Calero contract allows for him to be sent to the minor leagues freely.

Conclusions

These three factors show that the reasons for the lack of interest in Calero can be explained not just by injury, but by market forces as well. Some may argue, and with a lot of merit, that some of the valuations such as the ability to ‘close’ are not really indicative of the player’s value. For the most part, I agree.  Calero was a great deal for the Mets in 2010, and should solidify their bullpen greatly. For those wondering why he came cheap,  it can best be attributed to arbitrary distinctions amongst relievers in the market, a scope beyond 2010 (despite the fact that the contract is only for one year), and as many have said before, the injury risk.

Even though the NFL is the best marketed professional sport in the United States, the league is clearly not averse to doing things that generate bad PR.  They’ll fine players for acting unprofessionally, even if there was no intent to show anyone up.  They will maintain blackouts in local markets to protect the distribution of the league product, even for teams who cannot sell out their stadium.  And they still have the damn tuck rule.

So I was a little surprised this morning to hear that the NFL competition committee will vote on a rule change to overtime specifially designed at giving the team that doesn’t win the coin toss a chance to respond before the game ends.

It’s a terrible, horrendous mockery of a rule.

First, the implication that the overtime rules must be changed is based of a premise that the current rules aren’t fair.  It’s a false premise.  If two theoretically even teams–playing at a neutral site–enter overtime together, they both have an even chance to win the game.  Perfectly 50-50.  It’s the very definition of fair.

What has people ticked is that, before a down of football is played, a non-football event decides which team has a relatively small advantage over the other.  The coin toss does give one team a statistically significant advantage over the other, but not a particularly decisive one.  It takes a 50-50 proposition and makes it about 60-40 in favor of the team that wins the toss–maybe as much as 65-35 in an offensive heavy environment.

This advantage is the cause of such outrage, so much that the competition committee has to decide on a rule change regarding the very way that we will decide football games…but only in the NFL PLAYOFFS.  Remember, this rule is not good enough to decide a majority of football games, only the most critical ones.

Under the current rule, coaches have the option to avoid overtime if they think they can do better than 50-50 to win the game in regulation.  One of these options is the two point conversion.  If a team is down by seven, and scores a late touchdown, they can take an extra point with 99% accuracy [ex. point val = .99], or they can try a two point conversion with a 48% chance of success (plus or minus the quality of the offensive and defensive elements) [ex. point val = .96].  Essentially that’s a very similar probability to go win the game in one play vs. sending it to an overtime period.

The only real advantage to sending a game to overtime in this situation is to increase the sample of plays a team gets.  So if a team goes to overtime, and ends up losing the coin toss, it’s not like they’ve been screwed over.  They knew going into overtime that this outcome was a likely possibility.  And they’ve got to suck it up to win the game.  The penalty for failure to adapt to a dynamic situation is losing a close game.  No one is not okay with this outcome.

Fans of the losing team in these close overtime games are the ones who make the most noise about the overtime rules, but ultimately, it boils down to a case of leaguewide sour grapes.  Enter a preposterous rule change suggestion.  A rule that, by it’s very nature, is designed to make the game no more fair.

Entering overtime, the probability of two equal teams on a neutral field winning is still identical: 50% each.  This rule change makes the outcome of the coin flip far less important.  But now instead of one team getting an advantage at the beginning of the period by receiving the kick, each team gets an unequal, unfair advantage.  The team that gets the ball second gets an unfair advantage of knowing if they will need to score a touchdown, a field goal, or even at all.  They have the advantage of getting another DOWN if they trail in overtime, as the entire game becomes four down territory at that point.  Who the heck considers that to be fair?

Of course, this makes this one drive by the second team every bit as critical as the first drive of overtime under a current system.  A team that punts on that drive in a tie game, or a team that kicks a field goal to tie on that possession, essentially hands the sudden death advantage to the team who got the first possession.  I ask again: what overtime “problem” has this new rule suggestion actually fixed?  Is the NFL not going to have a sudden death overtime?  Are they planning on going to the non-football college rule?

The only actual solution to the current overtime is to make it a timed football period of finite length, either ten or fifteen minutes, and not make it sudden death.  The downside to this is that overtime games will go significantly longer than they currently do.  Oh, but wait, that’s also an unintended effect of the new rule proposal.

For a league that has been slow, at best, to embrace positive change, this would be the kind of jump-to-conclusions-solution that hurts the competitive balance of the league, and more significantly, panders to those fair-weather fans unable to stomach a fair result that goes against their team of choice.