Over at 538, Neil Paine's back with a good look at how much the Hot Stove League really matters, at least in terms of what we can know about it now...
Since the 2000-01 offseason, only about 14 percent of all wins above replacement (WAR) in any given MLB season have been generated by hot stove acquisitions. That number is on the decline; last season, hot stovers created only 7.6 percent of all the WAR in baseball. That wasn't much more than the share of all WAR (5.4 percent) generated by players making their major league debuts (a cohort not typically known for its immediate impact).
How insignificant has the offseason been recently? Before the 2014 season, you could have zeroed out the WAR each team received from its hot stove pickups (relative to average), and absolutely nothing about the playoff picture would have changed, in terms of which teams qualified for the postseason. That's because, under this exercise, the typical team would see a movement of only about plus-or-minus two wins over the entire season if there were no hot stove winners or losers at all.
This analysis strikes me as essentially correct.
Last winter the Royals turned over two positions -- Omar Infante at second base, Nori Aoki in right field -- which seemed like big deals for a small-market club. In the event, though? Infante and Aoki combined for approximately 2 Wins Above Replacement, roughly commensurate with the $7 million they collectively earned. It was money well spent, but just so. The Royals also added Jason Vargas to the rotation, who more than earned his $7.5 million.
So the Royals, in fact, are not a good example here. Considering how narrowly the Royals missed missing the playoffs, their off-season probably did make the difference.
Ah, but of course here's the rub: We can say this because we know what happened to the Royals. The problem with Hot Stove analysis is that plenty of teams make similar off-season moves and don't squeak into the postseason by a game or two. These moves do help explain a team's success, but what's significantly more important are the players already on the roster. And luck. But the former's uninteresting and the latter's unfathomable. So we spend the winter obsessing over the Hot Stove.
Which is fine. More than fine. As Paine writes, we need something to talk about until spring training.
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