Working the bench

Finally read this Jim Tracy disseration by Dejan Kovacevic. There's a lot to digest. It all generally looks positive to me.

Tracy does look like a good guy for this job. The Pirates need to win with cheap players. Cheap players have weaknesses. They can hide those weaknesses by stocking the bench with one- or two-dimensional yet complementary players. Ergo, the Bucs need someone who shuffles the deck, works the platoon advantage, uses the full roster. Jody Gerut hits righties but can't touch the softest-tossing left-handed grandmother. Perfect: that's half the star for one-quarter to one-tenth the cost. Let other teams pay huge money for one player who does everything and the minimum for a fifth outfielder who never plays.

So bench spots are much more important on a cheap team than on an expensive team. The Cardinals or the Yankees may not need to pay much to their bench guys if they have a cast of all-around studs who never come out of the game. A small portion of what the cheap teams don't spend on top-tier veteran talent, then, should definitely go to the bench guys. In other words, keeping Craig Wilson, a player who will be "overpaid" in 2006 if you compare him to other bench players, even on teams like the Yankees, is smart cheap-team roster management.