For the purposes of this post, any player with a negative value of Wins Above Replacement (WAR) in a given year is dead weight. I'll use the fangraphs values of WAR.
Position Players
Year -- Dead Weight (# of dead weight players)
2009 -- -3.1 (5)
2008 -- -2.7 (6)
2007 -- -3.8 (9)*
2006 -- -3.4 (8)
2005 -- -2.8 (5)
2004 -- -1.4 (6)
2003 -- -1.3 (6)
2002 -- -1.2 (7)
Pitchers
Year -- Dead Weight (# of dead weight pitchers)
2009 -- -3.1 (5)
2008 -- -1.6 (5)
2007 -- -1.3 (6)
2006 -- -0.4 (2)
2005 -- -0.3 (2)
2004 -- -0.2 (2)
2003 -- -1.1 (6)
2002 -- -0.6 (3)
For some context, there were 85 dead weight position players in the AL in 2009, with a total WAR of -36.3. There were 79 dead weight pitchers with a total WAR of -17.3. So on average, you would expect a team to have about 6 dead weight position players with a total of -2.6 WAR and 5.6 dead weight pitchers with a total of -1.2 WAR. In summing the pitchers and position players below, I've put the above-average years in green and the below-average years in red.
Total
Year -- Dead Weight (# of dead weight players)
2009 -- -6.2 (10)
2008 -- -4.3 (11)
2007 -- -5.1 (15)
2006 -- -3.8 (10)
2005 -- -3.1 (7)
2004 -- -1.6 (8)
2003 -- -2.5 (12)
2002 -- -1.8 (10)
A couple of things help with limiting dead weight. The first is not having crappy players to begin with. Some of that is avoidable (signing/developing talent is a skill) and some of it is unavoidable (no matter how good you are, you're going to miss, and without unlimited resources, you have to be cheap at a couple of positions.) The other thing that helps is having depth on the bench and in the farm system so that if someone is ineffective or gets hurt, you can replace them before they hurt the team too badly.
To some degree, 2007 was indeed a sign that Terry Ryan was slipping, at least in terms of getting the little things right on the roster. But until that point, he (along with the field staff) had done a pretty good job at limiting dead weight. Bill Smith hasn't done anything yet to rectify that situation. And while the Twins have a decent core of regulars (position players moreso than pitchers) going into 2010, one area where Bill Smith could really help himself out is to add some quality depth in the bench and in the bullpen to keep the dead weight from bringing down the top performers on the team.
*Nick Punto managed a +0.8 WAR in 2007. Go figure.
I'm not sure that 2007 is necessarily a sign that Ryan was slipping. Back in the early 2000s, when very few teams payed attention to advanced statistics, it would be much easier for a good GM to do better in this regard. But now, most teams have caught on and are more sophisticated in their analysis of players. Since the Twins are a team of limited resources, you'd expect that they have an above average number of dead weight players, no matter how well they are managed.
I'm not sure exactly what the ceiling is for limiting these types of mistakes. The Twins might be above average every now and again, but in general, I think it will be hard for the Twins to outGM the other teams on a regular basis.
Certainly being limited financially hurts a team's ability to build depth and that's going to be a huge key to limiting dead weight. I think that an above-average GM could keep the team from having more than average dead weight, but I agree with you that it's an uphill climb for someone on this budget.
I would expect dead weight to be cyclical on small-market clubs. When it is high, the team tends to suck and get high draft picks. Those guys then mature into above-salary valued players for their indentured servitudes, leading to on-field success and low draft picks. Rinse, repeat.
richer clubs can just re-load from free agency (or trades where they take on salaried talent and give up prospects).
I am somewhat skeptical of that theory because of the huge lag between when a player is drafted and when he becomes a useful major league player. There is also a fair degree of variation between when a player is drafted and when he reaches the majors.
In the Twins' case, say you break it up into 4-year chunks of '98-'01, '02-'05, '06-'09.
Players drafted and signed in the first round:
'98-'01 -- Mauer, Adam Johnson, B.J. Garbe, Ryan Mills, Michael Cuddyer
'02-'05 -- Span, Moses, Waldrop, Fox, Rainville, Perkins, Plouffe, Sanchez, Garza
'06-'09 -- Parmelee, Revere, Hunt, Gutierrez, Hicks, Bashore, Gibson
Drafting high in the first round tends to get you better players when they do develop, but the Twins had a ton of picks (thanks to compensation) from '02-'05, which ought to have more than off-set drafting lower in the draft, at least from the standpoint of providing above-replacement bodies on the 25-man roster.
I think the change over the decade might be more attributable to Gardy to anything. If you look closely at the numbers above, one thing stands out. The number of dead-weight pitchers has increased recently. As Gardy has gone from an 11-man to a 12-man pitching staff that means there is one more chance for a shitty pitcher to stick around and suck. I think it's much more likely for the last pitcher on a staff to be below replacement level than a random bench guy. A couple of crappy outings for a reliever and he's on the hook with an awful ERA for awhile (Jesse Crain last year), but a PH backup can have a decent game every once in awhile and he's not dead-weight (Brian Buscher was not dead-weight the last 2 seasons).
Early in his tenure, Gardy found spots for pinch-hitters and had deeper benches (Jose Offerman, for example) but he has pretty much abandoned those guys to keep the Brian Basses around.
I would say that at least to some degree, Gardy has gone with 12 pitchers because his 2nd-4th options aren't as good as they used to be. Without the trust to ride those pitchers for full innings as he's done in the past, he needs more pitchers to satisfy his itchy trigger finger without injuring everyone. (And the very last point is a big part of why I don't complain too loudly about 12 pitchers--I don't ever want to see him trot out the same pitcher six days in a week again.)
A couple of crappy outings for a reliever and he's on the hook with an awful ERA for awhile (Jesse Crain last year), but a PH backup can have a decent game every once in awhile and he's not dead-weight (Brian Buscher was not dead-weight the last 2 seasons).
Technical note: Fangraphs' WAR uses FIP and not ERA, so I don't think that this issue is as big of a problem as you might have expected.
If we compare the change in dead weight from the first four years to the last four years in the sample, we've got a change of -6.3 wins in the position players and -4.2 wins in the pitchers. So the main drop-off has been in the position players. Which, of course, could well be related to the switch to a 12-man bullpen, since it gives Gardy fewer options to substitute for players who might be overmatched in a particular situation.
I do believe that Gardy gets a big say in how many pitchers we are carrying, but I think that the majority of that responsibility goes towards the GM. If the GM gives the manager 5-6 good pitchers in the bullpen, he's not going to want a 12-man staff. If the GM doesn't take care of assembling a good bullpen (by, say, hiring Luis Ayala as a key component of the bullpen instead of picking a Matt Guerrier off of waivers), then the manager is going to want more options to cover for the existing deficiencies in the 'pen, and if it's harder to find 5 starters than it is to find 4 starters, it's harder to find 7 relievers than it is to find 6 relievers.
No matter who you give responsibility, though, I think that the shift to a 12-man pitching staff is an important change that I didn't consider before. It would be interesting to look at dead weight with 11 pitchers vs. 12 pitchers over a variety of organizations.
I just think that given the small sample of innings that relief pitchers contribute, the ones at the end of the bullpen are much, much more likely to be dead weight because they get churned aside so quickly (a good example would be Breslow last year - panic over his April).
The numbers don't square with that, though. We've had at least as many dead weight position players as pitchers the last 8 years, and most years, more dead weight position players than pitchers.
Right, but with the extra spot on the roster now being a reliever rather than a bench player, the number of dead weight position players has basically stayed about the same while the number of dead weight pitchers has been at its highest level in the Gardy era during the past 3 seasons.