Exploring My Personal Biases With Adam Jones
One of the things I absolutely love about writing for RotoGraphs is the high value interactions in the comments. I’ve found that by posting certain types of content, I can iron out the wrinkles for my own use, provide teachable moments for everybody involved, and learn about my own shortcomings as a writer/analyst. I probably learn as much from you as you learn from me.
It’s with this in mind that I re-revisit my ranking of Adam Jones, which first appeared on Christmas day.
In case you missed it, I ranked Jones as the 21st overall outfielder. It suffices to say that not everybody agreed with an upper-mid tier ranking for a perennial fantasy beast. Rather than reiterate the article, let’s focus on one of those high value comments I mentioned.
In the linked article, OrangeBlackBird looked for evidence to support or refute my concern. He found Chili Davis, Jack Clark, and Reggie Smith exhibited similar skill sets and performed well for years after their age 29 season. A couple damp blankets in Vernon Wells and Jacque Jones weren’t as tidy as comparable players.
The comparable player approach is a FanGraphs staple, but I rarely find it compelling.* A technical excuse for dismissing the comparables approach here is sample size – we’re looking at five athletes and semi-dismissing two of them. However, I’d probably have the same reaction if a list of 20 or 30 comparable players uniformly performed well into their 30’s. To borrow from the toddler block game, we’re trying to fit Jones into a square hole, but we don’t really know if he’s a square, a circle, a triangle, or some other shape.
*There are instances where it’s very compelling, but I consider it overused in an effort to provide evidence for educated guesses. Sometimes, it’s good to just say “I have an interesting guess, I find it compelling in its own right.”
For fantasy purposes, I usually treat players individually. In the case of Jones, my ranking hinges on this one concern:
any decrease in quality of contact could result in a steep decrease in results.
Jones relies on hard hit balls to drive his ISO and BABIP which in turn drives ALL of his value. Anything that causes a decline in his quality of contact could crater his performance. Think about Jay Bruce in 2014. Playing through seemingly minor knee problems (post surgery recovery) resulted in a dreadful season. Bruce, like Jones, lives and dies on hard hit baseballs. He suffered last season with his average fly ball distance dropping 10 feet and a spike in ground ball rate. Of course, his -1.1 WAR season was still worth $9 for fantasy owners (per Zach Sanders), so we can infer the cliff isn’t bottomless for Jones**.
**Ironically, I’m using a single “comparable” to reach this conclusion. Didn’t I just finish complaining about using them?
OrangeBlackBird’s questions do illuminate certain of my risk preferences. Apparently, I’d rather own a short-track record player like Steve Pearce than Jones. To put words in my own mouth, perhaps I prefer knowing it’s relatively easier to move on from Pearce if something goes sideways in his profile. I don’t know if this is true, but it is a potentially irrational component to my internalized value system. It requires more self-reflection.
With rankings and player valuation, one of two things can happen. The boring approach is to slavishly rely upon compiled rankings from numerous sources. It’s the crowdsourced approach to building a draft board. There’s nothing wrong with boring – a common fantasy saying goes something like “boring veterans win leagues.” The corollary is probably “boring drafts win leagues.”
The other approach is to test yourself and your own limits. Go out on a limb for a Carlos Carrasco (or Corey Kluber last season). If you rely more upon yourself than the crowd, you will absolutely include some odd biases in your draft plan. It appears I have a strange relationship with bust risk. Especially with players whose value revolves solely around hard hit balls. Thinking back, I’ve been bearish on Jones and Bruce for years. Always for the same reason.
Here’s the real wrinkle: as of today I don’t know if I should embrace this potential bias in my approach or seek to eliminate it. We think of biases purely as a bad thing, but in certain times and places, they can be useful. I suspect a fantasy draft is one such time and place.
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I hope everyone in my league reads this article so I can get Jones 21st overall and reap the benefits (injury aside)
Near as i can tell, your primary reason for concern on AJ is that he relies on hard hit balls. In other words, he hits the ball really hard. Any other reason for concern before I drop him from my dynasty team? …..not.
He draws walks only 3% of the time. He had nearly as many HBP (12) as walks (19) last year. Steamer projects him to be identical as a hitter to Lucas Duda and Logan Morrison, and slightly worse than Ben Zobrist, in 2015. He generally costs a lot of money, but can be replaced by much less expensive players without losing production.
But if you are in my league, I take it all back and strongly encourage you to invest heavily in Adam Jones.
How can you say he has not been worth the money for the past several years?
I would say Bruce is a decent comparison but a couple of things to think about:
1.he was trending downward
2.the shift may have affected him
3.we don’t know how much the injury affected him
4.this could of been one of those “lost seasons”
http://www.fangraphs.com/fantasy/jay-bruce-bottoms-out/
I do like your Steve Pearce logic. If you are unsure about Jones, spend the money elsewhere and get Pearce for cheaper. Benching\cutting star players is a very understudied strategy.
This is a great article that touches on something that I think RotoGraphs misses sometimes. If everything was pared down to a perfectly objective science, and everyone did what they “should” do, there’d be no skill involved. You might as well just set your league to auto-draft. No fun.
The fun/skill part is how people differentiate the value of players. You win your league by finding value where others haven’t, and sometimes that means following theoretical guidelines or taking a leap of faith or just having decent luck.
Does Adam Jones have value? Of course. More than Hunter Pence? Good god, no. And every league needs that subjectiveness to be fun.
Your point exactly: I would take Jones over Pence in a heartbeat.
From his batted ball numbers, Jones seems like a high risk high reward batter, that so far has been on the reward size because of raw talent. I wouldn’t be surprised to see him fall off a cliff when age starts to catch up.
Probably not next year though.
Great stuff Brad. I struggle with personal biases every year. I can’t tell you how many times I have had discussions with league mates and the term, “jilted,” comes up. It is important to think about biases, both personal and league biases. In one of my leagues, the managers as a whole undervalue veteran batters, in another SP’s are undervalued. That’s where you can get a leg up on you competition, recognizing biases and spending wisely. Personal bias is harder to deal with for me. If I do or don’t like a guy more than his projections, rationally or irrationally, it is hard for me to accurately assign a value to that player.
If you are ranking value, as in I rather have Pearce at round 10 than Jones in round 2, I can see your point. But aren’t you ranking who would be a better fantasy player for 2015? So would you really pick up Pearce at any round if Jones was still available? Maybe the bias in the rankings is that you let dollar amount and draft position taint the rankings. I thought this was a pure ranking-regardless of ROI.
The “comparables” listed for Adam Jones are not comparable at all. Adam Jones has a career walk rate of just over 4%. All three positive comparisons – Jack Clark, Reggie Smith, and Chili Davis – had career walk rates over 11%. They’re completely different types of hitters, creating a third possible option other than hitting the ball very hard and otherwise not providing value. They’re also simply much better hitters than Adam Jones:
Player BB% wRC+
Jack Clark 15.3 138
Reggie Smith 11.8 137
Chili Davis 11.1 118
Adam Jones 4.3 109
All three of these players’ stats, unlike Jones’, include a decline phase. The bottom line is that few players have been superior hitters with Adam Jones’ skillset, and Adam Jones is not one of them. We may not know how soon his minuscule (and shrinking) walk rate will translate into no longer being a top fantasy asset – precipitous decline at age 29 seems unlikely – but the idea that he may peter out faster than a more well-rounded hitter is based on poor strike-zone judgment, not bias.
Sorry my spacing was not preserved when I posted the comment. There were supposed to be three columns – player, career walk rate, and career wRC+.
Yeah, good point, those don’t seem like very good comparisons at all. How were they chosen as the comps? That makes Brad’s argument sound better since Wells and Jacque Jones are better comps in terms of BB%, which is the main area of concern with Jones.
Also, purely for fantasy, the fact he doesn’t run means if he does decline a bit and hits .260, he’s Marlon Byrd.
His greatest skill, beyond power, is remaining injury-free. He’s the anti-Tulo.
Outside of that, his numbers are heading in the wrong direction. Not drastically but 2012 he was an 0.839 ops player with 16 steals and last year 0.780 with 7 steals.
Been enjoying this banter about Adam Jones. I was doing some of my own research and saw the decline Brad was talking about. Three days before the article, I offered Jones for Tulo. It was accepted Had three great years with Jones, probably be good for another three. Roll the dice. Snake eyes for Tulo!
Good piece. As someone whose personal biases have always kind of made me shy away from Jones, I found that angle interesting.
Specifically, the point you raise with regard to being more apt to cut bait on a guy like Pearce compared to an established fantasy star like Jones resonated. There’s certainly value in flexibility and not having to debate whether to trade a big-name asset. That particular brand of hesitation pays off more often than not, I think, but sometimes it leads to you missing the boat on a breakout season from a waiver wire playe – such as, for instance, Pearce last season).
We all know attrition will almost always result in finishing the season with a much different roster than the one you had on draft day, but giving the wrong guy a long leash (Bruce being a good example) can hamstring you in both the current season and future ones. I’m having a hard time thinking of too many fantasy advice articles I’ve read that give this issue more than a cursory look, and it should certainly play a role in valuation.