Gee, a lot of really smart people seem to hate the Billy Wagner signing for the Braves.

Zach and Paddy hate it. Jack hates it. Rob doesn't hate it, but Keith does (I don't subscribe to Insider, but thankfully the big finish is given away in the title). Adam doesn't seem to like it much.

All of these people are probably smarter than me. And I'm sure there are more just like these, and that all of those people are smarter than me, too. But I just can't make myself come around to their way of thinking. It looks like a solid move to me. Or maybe "solid" isn't the word; it's a gamble, and a significant one, but I think it's a good one.

Yes, most closers are overpaid. No, I would probably never pay $12-$13m a year for any closer who wasn't this guy (and definitely not this guy). Yes, I believe pretty much any good reliever (and any halfway decent starter) can probably be a good closer.

But this isn't just a good closer. This is Billy Wagner, who has never (aside from a 24-inning injury-wrecked season in 2000) put up an ERA+ worse than 140, who has only been below 180 once in the last seven years (cumulative ERA+ of 210 during that span, in 410 innings). Who, if he pitches just over 2 more full seasons at anything approaching his career rate (so that he can get the requisite 1000 IP to qualify), will become the all-time career leader in strikeouts per nine innings pitched. Who went a year and three weeks without throwing a major league pitch and then, at age 38, struck out 26 fools in 15 1/3 innings.

And this isn't $13 million. This is $7 million. Times are tight and all, but a big league team can still afford to take a little gamble with $7 million.
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I know, I know, it's also a draft pick. The 20th overall. And according to Jack Moore at FanGraphs (link above), people who have studied these things have found that a pick in that range has an average value of $5.5 million. So you could really say that they're actually paying $12.5 million or so. I'm not willing to do that.

Oh, I realize that statistically, economically, it's correct. But I bet a lot of statisticians play the lottery, even though they know the expected payout is a lot less than the buck or five the ticket costs them. This, for the Braves, is sort of like the reverse lottery -- yeah, the pick is worth $5.5 million, but whoever gets picked isn't going to be worth $5.5 million (although I guess Chad Cordero, the 2001 pick, was close to that). He's either going to be worth a lot more than $5.5 million (Denard Span was the 20th overall pick in 2002) or virtually nothing (Chris Bootcheck, Jeremy Sowers, and six guys who haven't played in the bigs yet -- and at least a couple of them probably never will -- round out 20th overall picks this decade). In the nineties, C.C. Sabathia and Torii Hunter were 20th overall picks, but so were guys named Benji Grigsby and Vince Faison.

Draft picks are really important, and it's great that teams are starting to really value them, but there's a danger in taking that too far. These late-first-round picks have a very high bust rate.

And then, there's the fact that the Braves have two excellent closers -- Rafael Soriano and Mike Gonzalez -- who, like Billy Wagner, are Type A free agents. They both had very good 2009s, and they're aged 29 and 31, respectively. It's almost a given that some team will want to sign one of them to a multi-year deal. And if that happens (and the same team doesn't sign a higher-ranked Type A), the Braves get a first-round draft pick right back, and a sandwich pick. If they're both gone, of course, the Braves could get two first-round picks and two sandwich picks. Of course, there's the danger that Soriano and Gonzalez both accept arbitration...but the downside is that you're down the first-round pick. What happens then is you're stuck paying a lot of money for 220 innings of three of the better relievers in baseball. Really can't be too upset about that. But, again, at least one of them is very likely to sign with someone else, meaning the Braves net at least +1 high draft pick in the deal.

Wagner might get injured again. He might suddenly realize he's almost 40 and lose effectiveness. The Phillies and Mets might put the Braves 15 games back by June, making an elite closer as useful to them as an extra baby toe. All those smart guys may be right on about this being a bad move.

But the potential payoff here is huge, a lot more than $7 million plus the unlikely-but-potential loss of the right to draft a player who may or may not be somebody two to five years down the road. It's a gamble, but I'd roll the dice.