Be honest.  Weren’t you expecting the BBTTMCBs to be a better team than this?  I was.  Don’t get me wrong, the BBTTMCBs are a good baseball team.  But outside of (maybe) Matt Holliday, no player on this team is the best player at his position.  There’s no Joe Mauer behind the plate, or Albert Pujols in the infield, or Roy Halliday on the mound.  Moreover, the BBTTMCBs are nothing special up the middle: the team features good-but-not-great players in center field and at shortstop, second base and catcher.  Particularly at catcher.  How could I have assembled a “best team” that features Bengie Molina at catcher?

(Curious about the worst team money can buy?  Click here, and here, and here.)

Assembling The Best Team That Money Can Buy

Here’s how I assembled the BBTTMCBs.  First, I looked at every player who filed for free agency during the last five years.  ESPN has a terrific list going back 4 years; I used Wikipedia to get information for the 2005-06 class of free agents.

Next, I narrowed the list to those free agents that were truly available to be “bought” by my mythical BBTTMCB team.  If a free agent actually switched teams in free agency, then of course that player was “buyable”.  But what if the free agent failed to switch teams?  Then we have a judgment call: was the free agent truly “on the market”, or did the free agent (like Pettitte in 2009) file for free agency only as a prelude to signing with his current team?

For practical purposes, we need to consider only the top five free agents during this period that did not switch teams: Matt Holliday, Manny Ramirez, Jorge Posada, Mariano Rivera and Alex Rodriguez.

I think that Holliday and Ramirez should play for the BBTTMCBs.  Holliday was a free agent for two months in 2009 and 2010, was represented by Scott Boras and was seriously pursued by other teams.  Similarly, Manny Ramirez was represented by Scott Boras, and was a free agent for four months before he re-signed with the Dodgers in 2009.  While it’s not clear whether Ramirez was pursued by any team other than the Dodgers during this free agency, the consensus here at IIATMS is that Ramirez belongs on any team that money can buy.

In similar fashion, we can quickly disqualify Mo and Jorge from the BBTMCBs.  Remember that with Rivera and Posada, we need to factor in the Yankees’ express policy of not negotiating with their free-agents-to-be until they actually become free agents.  Posada was a free agent after the 2007 season, but signed a new contract with the Yankees before any other team was eligible to negotiate with him. Rivera re-signed with the Yanks one week later than Posada, and while Rivera might have talked with other teams during this week, there’s no evidence that he did so.  It’s my judgment that Rivera was never truly “on the market” in 2007.

As per usual, A-Rod provides us with a difficult case to evaluate.  After the 2007 season (technically, during the last game of the 2007 season), A-Rod opted out of his contract with the Yankees, becoming a free agent (along with Posada and Rivera).  The opt-out was controversial, and it looked at the time as if A-Rod’s career with the Yankees was over.  However, A-Rod soon approached the Yankees on his own (apparently without the knowledge of his agent, Scott Boras) and asked to sign a new Yankee contract.  A-Rod and the Yanks agreed to the basic framework for this contract on November 15, 2007, just days into the period when A-Rod might have negotiated with other teams.  It’s my judgment that, like Rivera and Posada, A-Rod was never truly on the market in 2007.

But I must disclose that the rest of the IIATMS writing staff disagrees with me, and thinks that A-Rod should be included on the BBTTMCB roster.  Evidently, the staff feels left-over anger from A-Rod’s opt-out in 2007.  There’s also some feeling that A-Rod’s current contract can only be understood as a product of free agency. So, bowing to the wishes of the others at IIATMS, I’ve made A-Rod a provisional member of the BBTTMCBs.  For the moment, A-Rod is the backup BBTTMCB third baseman, behind Chone Figgins.  But we will consider how well the BBTTMCBs might have performed with A-Rod starting at third base.

Whew!  Now that we’ve determined which players qualify as those that “money can buy”, we must next figure out which of these players are good enough to make the BBTTMCB starting lineup.

Creating The Starting Lineup For The Best Baseball Team That Money Can Buy

To determine which eligible free agents should be in the BBTTMCB starting lineup, I relied on the three year (2007-09) Wins Above Replacement (WAR) statistics available at FanGraphs.  WAR is a terrific statistic for my purposes, as it provides a single number I can use to evaluate and rank all potential players – pitchers and hitters.  Use of WAR presents me with some minor problems, but I’ll deal with these problems when they come up later on.

(WAR is a calculation of the number of wins that a given player adds to his team over the course of a season.  WAR compares a player’s performance with that of a fictitious, bottom of the barrel, “replacement player”.  I’ll defer to  the young sabermatricians here and elsewhere for a better description, but I go by these rules for evaluating WAR: (1) for everyday players, a WAR of 2.0 to 2.5 is about average, a WAR of 4 to 5 is a solid performance, and a WAR of 8 or more represents a terrific year at a superstar level, and (2) pitchers produce lower WARs than hitters, and relief pitchers produce lower WARs than starting pitchers.)

Here is an expanded chart for the  BBTTMCBs, showing the WAR figures for each of my starters for 2007-09, as well as for the single season of 2009.  You can use these numbers (together with other numbers available at FanGraphs) to figure out why free agents like Jason Bay and Torii Hunter did not make the BBTTMCBs starting lineup.  You may also be able to find players I missed who belong on this squad.  (I’ve also shown the 2010 salaries and ages of each member of the team.  We’ll get to a discussion of these numbers shortly.)

The numbers confirm our initial impression: our team is strong up and down the baselines, but relatively weak through the middle of the field.  A double-play tandem of Scutaro and Polanco is not exactly Alan Trammell and Lou Whitaker (combined WAR of 12.2 in 1983), or even Jeter and Cano (WAR figures upcoming).  While the BBTTMCB starting pitching is dominant, the team’s relief pitching is nothing to brag about.  The eye-opener on the BBTTMCB squad is Bengie Molina.

Obviously, when Bengie Molina is the best catcher that money can buy, there has to be something wrong with the BBTTMCB strategy for acquiring baseball talent.

The Best Team That Money Can Buy Takes On The Yankees

Let’s compare the BBTTMCB squad with the Yankees roster.  I’ll use the 2009 Yankees’ roster, since we want to compare a full year’s WAR figures for the two teams.

At first glance, the 2009 Yankees may look a lot like the BBTTMCBs.  There are four Yankees on the BBTTMCB team (there are also 4 Red Sox players on the BBTTMCBs – no other team has more than one BBTTMCB player).  But the differences between the Yanks and the BBTTMCBs are striking.  The Yanks outclass the BBTTMCBs up the middle of the field: the Yanks’ 3-year WAR numbers are a cumulative 9.4 wins above the BBTTMCBs at catcher, shortstop and second base.  Even with Brett Gardner as a part-time player in 2009, the Yankees’ 2009 WAR numbers at catcher, shortstop, second base and center field are a cumulative 4.9 wins greater than the comparable BBTTMCB numbers.

Up the middle, the 2009 Yankees are a lot better than the best team money can buy. How could this be?  Because Posada, Cano, Jeter and Gardner are all home grown players. If the last 5 years of free agency are any guide, baseball teams cannot purchase top-performing catchers, second basemen and shortstops on the open market.  In contrast, note how the Yankees acquired their players up and down the foul lines: Teixeira and Damon through free agency, Rodriguez and Swisher through trades (where the Yankees took on additional salary as part of the trade).  The evidence indicates that teams can buy quality players on the wings, but need to develop quality players up the middle.

A similar rule of thumb seems to apply to pitchers.  A wealthy team can buy starting pitching, as the Yankees have done (three of the five BBTTMCB starters are Yankees).  It may take time and patience to acquire starting pitching in free agency – for every C.C. Sabathia, there seems to be a Kevin Brown – but money can buy starting pitching.  In contrast, it seems to be more difficult to buy quality relief pitching – the Yanks’ 2009 bullpen combo of Hughes and Rivera tallied more than twice as many WARs as did the BBTTMCB tandem of K-Rod and Fuentes.

How would the 2009 BBTTMCBs have fared against the Yankees?  Overall, the 2009 BBTTMCBs have a 1.9 WAR edge over the 2009 Yankees.  But this calculation may be  misleading, since a player’s WAR drops during any year that the player is injured and cannot play the full season.  The 2009 Yankees lost some WARs due to A-Rod’s hip injury, and the 2009 BBTTMCB lost some WARs because of Manny Ramirez’s drug suspension.  The Yankees’ loss of WAR was probably greater, because (at this point in their respective careers) A-Rod produces more WARs per season than Man-Ram.  So if we discount for injuries and drug suspensions, I think the Yanks and the BBTTMCBs are close to an even match.

But we need to make a second adjustment to our cumulative team WARs.  The BBTTMCBs have a statistical advantage over the Yanks: the BBTTMCB starting pitching rotation is made up of one number one starter, three number two starters and one number three starter.  For this reason, the BBTTMCB starting rotation gets to start more games than would be possible for any real starting rotation.  In 2009, the BBTTMCB rotation started 160 games – they would have started over 162 games, except that Lackey missed 6 games with injury.  Let’s make Lackey the BBTTMCB’s fifth starter for the moment, with 27 starts in 2009.  In contrast, real baseball teams may not have a single, stable number 5 starting pitcher over the course of a full season.  For the 2009 Yanks, Sergio Mitre had the fifth-most starts, with 9.  This is not an unusual result for a real baseball team: for example, in 2009 Boston’s fifth starter Clay Buchholz had 16 starts, and Angels’ 5th starter Matt Palmer had 13 starts.  For this reason, it’s probably not fair to compare real and fictionally constructed baseball teams using five man rotations.  If we use a four-man starting rotation for comparison purposes, then the 2009 Yanks gain 2.5 WARs on the 2009 BBTTMCBs, which is enough to confer a slight overall WAR advantage to the Yanks.

(By the way … remember our debate whether A-Rod should be the starting third baseman for the BBTTMCB squad?  In 2009, BBTTMCB starting third baseman Chone Figgins had 1.4 more WARs than did A-Rod.  It’s hard to argue that the BBTTMCBs were hurt in 2009 by leaving A-Rod on the bench.  But if we have this discussion again following the 2010 season, then maybe I’ll relent and allow A-Rod to start for both the Yanks and the BBTTMCBs.)

It’s a close call, I have to admit.  But in my judgment, the Yanks’ strength up the middle, plus Hughes in the 8^th inning and Mo in the 9^th inning, more than compensate for the BBTTMCB’s superiority in the outfield and depth in starting pitching.  The Yanks also have two other measurable advantages over the BBTTMCBs: the Yanks roster is 1.5 years younger on average, and a cumulative $20 million cheaper.  (Savor the preceding sentence: it may be the only time we report that the Yanks have a money-saving advantage over another team, whether real or fictional.) When it comes to getting younger and cheaper, it helps to have a few players on your squad like Hughes, Joba and Gardner, who have not become eligible for arbitration or free agency.  Obviously, the BBTTMCBs will never have any players like this on their team.

Why The Yankees Are Not The Best Baseball Team That Money Can Buy

The differences between the Yanks and the BBTTMCBs go beyond age and salary advantages.  The Yankees were built differently than the BBTTMCBs.  The Yankees developed a core group of players in their farm system: not just the “core four” of Jeter, Pettitte, Rivera and Posada, but also a younger core of Cano, Hughes, Gardner, Joba and now (we hope) ‘Cisco” Cervelli.  Sure, it took money for the Yankees to retain (or in the case of Pettitte, to re-acquire) the older core component, but with the exception of Pettitte, it’s simply wrong to state that the Yankees “bought” any portion of their core.  Based on recent experience, you cannot buy shortstops like Jeter, catchers like Posada or relievers like Mo Rivera on the open market, not at any price.

There’s a second point to make here.  Our BBTTMCBs are a make-believe team – not only because the team does not exist, but because no team could ever be so lucky as to acquire only those free agents that continue to be top performers after they’ve been acquired.  (Note that in this regard, the BBTTMCBs have a number of players that have yet to prove themselves post-free agency – our WAR numbers for Scutaro, Figgins, Holliday, Cameron and Lackey are all based on their performances pre-free agency). Free agency represents an unpredictable grab-bag of talent: for every Mark Teixeira, there will also be a Mo Vaughn; for every J.D. Drew a Russ Ortiz; for every Marco Scutaro a Julio Lugo; for every C.C. Sabathia a pre-2010 version of Barry Zito.

The real-world version of The Best Baseball Team That Money Can Buy would not be a top team. Teams can use free agency to fill holes in their core lineup, particularly when the holes need to be filled with position players on the right and left edges of the field.  But you can’t build a successful team with a core of free agents.  At least, no one has done it yet.

So … the next time someone makes a snarky comment on how the Yankees bought the 2009 World Series, you can quote me: The Best Baseball Team That Money Can Buy starts Bengie Molina at catcher … with Pudge Rodriguez backing him up!

From now on, we can refer to the Yankees as better than the best team that money can buy.  Or if you’re keeping up with the acronyms, BTTBBTTMCB.