Candidates, Don't Hire Jim Caple as Your Poll Analyst

Jim Caple has a characteristically dull article up on ESPN.com today, slamming the 60% of web readers who stated via an ESPN poll that they didn't want A-Rod on their team.

Now, before you read Caple's article, I'll give you three seconds to come up with the most obvious reason why the vast majority of these people voted this way.

One...

Two...

Three...

Ready? All together now: "Because my team would then not be able to afford any other good players, and you cannot win with one player." That was easy, right? Not for Jim Caple.

He starts by mocking the people who voted this way and talking about how baseball is the most individual sport and how it hasn't mattered how much of an ass various great players have been. Fine, I'm with him on that. And clearly a subset of those voters are morons who think they are more likely to win with David Eckstein at short than A-Rod, even if the rest of the team stays the same, because of Eckstein's grit and piss and vinegar and all that.

Eventually, he gets around to addressing the more obvious reason for the majority vote against having A-Rod, and gives us the following syllogism:

I understand people worrying that signing A-Rod would preclude their team from obtaining other necessary players. But that's a needless concern. Signing someone like A-Rod, Derek Jeter or Manny Ramirez to a contract for $20 million to $25 million per year isn't what hurts a team financially. It's signing the likes of Jeff Weaver for $8 million and Richie Sexson for $15 million, then trading for Horacio Ramirez and his $2 million salary (not that I have any particular team in mind).

Uhhhh.... CAN'T IT BE BOTH? Or, perhaps more accurately, either?

If you're a small-market team, EITHER spending big bucks on decent players OR huge bucks on great players can sink you. If the Mariners had spent their money more wisely, for a pitcher actually worth closer to $8 million or a first baseman worth closer to $15 million, or multiple players for less than that, they would be a far better team. But they would not have been able to spend this money at all if it was tied up in ONE player, A-Rod. And actually, the Mariners aren't such a bad team as it is. Not a great team, but not a bad one.

Given a choice, I would rather have A-Rod than Weaver plus Sexson. But both options are bad. The ESPN voters were not asked to assume that if their team would not sign A-Rod, it would waste the money on total flops. Why is Caple assuming this? I guess because, being a Seattle writer, he's focused on the Mariners. So focused in fact, that he misses a painfully obvious logical point.

*EDIT: I decided I was too hard on Caple. Yes, purely as an explanation of how people voted in the online poll, the article sidesteps the point. But his main purpose there was to debunk the widely and genuinely held opinions about A-Rod being a "cancer" and not a "winner," etc., making many of the same arguments that I've personally made to neurotic Yankees fans. So on a second reading, I identified with him, and was filled with tender feelings of regret. Okay, maybe that's going a little far...