Economic Roster Analysis
by PWHjort on Aug 28, 2009 3:10 PM EDT
29 comments
The Braves' roster is made of two types of players, acquired and developed. These two types of players are divided into 3 sub-categories based on service time. Those who are yet to become eligible for arbitration, those who are arbitration eligible, and those who have already qualified for free agency. I took the 25 players that I consider the most important 25 to the club to this point (Vazquez, Lowe, Kawakami, Hanson, Jurrjens, Soriano, Gonzalez, Moylan, O'Flaherty, Carlyle, Acosta, Medlen, Chipper, Escobar, Prado, LaRoche, McCann, Anderson, McLouth, Church, Diaz, Ross, Kelly, Norton, and Infante) in an attempt to see how valuable they've been to the club, how valuable they've been relative to their salaries, and various other things. Here is what the table looks like:
| Name | WAR | WAR$ | Salary | Salary*GP/162 | AdjSal-War$ | |
| Pre-Arb Players: | ||||||
| Acquired: | Jurrjens | 3.1 | $13,950,000 | $450,000 | $352,778 | $13,597,222 |
| O'Flaherty | 0.6 | $2,700,000 | $400,000 | $313,580 | $2,386,420 | |
| Carlyle | -0.5 | -$2,250,000 | $425,000 | $333,179 | -$2,583,179 | |
| Developed: | Yunel | 3.0 | $13,500,000 | $425,000 | $333,179 | $13,166,821 |
| Prado | 2.0 | $9,000,000 | $415,000 | $325,340 | $8,674,660 | |
| Hanson | 1.4 | $6,300,000 | $400,000 | $313,580 | $5,986,420 | |
| Moylan | 1.2 | $5,400,000 | $410,000 | $321,420 | $5,078,580 | |
| Medlen | 0.7 | $3,150,000 | $400,000 | $313,580 | $2,836,420 | |
| Acosta | 0.1 | $450,000 | $412,500 | $323,380 | $126,620 | |
| Arb-Eligible Players: | ||||||
| Acquired: | McLouth | 2.3 | $10,350,000 | $2,000,000 | $1,567,901 | $8,782,099 |
| Diaz | 1.6 | $7,200,000 | $1,237,500 | $970,139 | $6,229,861 | |
| Church | 0.9 | $4,050,000 | $2,800,000 | $2,195,062 | $1,854,938 | |
| Gonzalez | 1.1 | $4,950,000 | $3,450,000 | $2,704,630 | $2,245,370 | |
| Developed: | McCann | 3.7 | $16,650,000 | $3,500,000 | $2,743,827 | $13,906,173 |
| KJ | 0.6 | $2,700,000 | $2,825,000 | $2,214,660 | $485,340 | |
| Infante | 0.9 | $4,050,000 | $1,850,000 | $1,450,309 | $2,599,691 | |
| LaRoche | 1.8 | $8,100,000 | $7,050,000 | $5,526,852 | $2,573,148 | |
| Post-FA Players: | ||||||
| Acquired: | Garret | 0.2 | $900,000 | $2,500,000 | $1,959,877 | -$1,059,877 |
| Ross | 1.2 | $5,400,000 | $1,400,000 | $1,097,531 | $4,302,469 | |
| Vazquez | 5.3 | $23,850,000 | $12,500,000 | $9,799,383 | $14,050,617 | |
| Lowe | 2.9 | $13,050,000 | $15,000,000 | $11,759,259 | $1,290,741 | |
| Kawakami | 1.4 | $6,300,000 | $7,666,666 | $6,010,288 | $289,712 | |
| Soriano | 1.8 | $8,100,000 | $6,100,000 | $4,782,099 | $3,317,901 | |
| Norton | -0.7 | -$3,150,000 | $800,000 | $627,160 | -$3,777,160 | |
| Developed: | Chipper | 2.2 | $9,900,000 | $11,000,000 | $8,623,457 | $1,276,543 |
| Total: | 38.8 | $174,600,000 | $85,416,666 | $66,962,448 | $107,637,552 |
For analytical purposes, I cut off the "developed" tag at AA. That is, if you spent your first full season at AA with the Braves, you're considered a developed player. LaRoche I considered developed.
The columns are simply, name, WAR, WAR$ (which is $4,500,000*WAR), 2009 salary, 2009 salary pro-rated based on the portion of the season we've completed (127 of 162 games), and the 2009 pro-rated salary minus the WAR$ (so, how much more or less valuable the player has been to the market than he's making).
There are some very good signs. First of all, this team, as it is currently constructed, has posted about 39 wins above replacement. Replacement level teams figure to post a .300 winning percentage. A replacement level team would've won 38 games of the first 127. Add the 39 and this is a 77-50 team*.
*If you want to know where the 10 wins went, ask Casey Kotchman, Jeff Francoeur, Jordan Schafer, etc.. The "as it is currently constructed" is key. Basically the theme of the Braves blog-sphere as of late has been: "This team is good enough, I hope it's not too late". This piece doesn't deviate.
Secondly, only three players on the roster are worth less to the market than they are making. Buddy Carlyle (who has suffered from Diabetes, so we don't have meaningful data on), Garret Anderson, and Greg Norton. Garret Anderson has posted a .785 OPS since June 2, so there's plenty of reason to believe he may be able to push his value out of the red by seasons' end. He doesn't have a shot at being a super-valuable player, though. Norton has been awful (actually the worst current Brave, Frenchy would blow him away if he were still here). I don't get him, but whatever. And Carlyle will likely improve over the final month as he pitches with the aid of modern medicine.
Point is, there are 22 players on the roster that make less than the market values them. That is good for a club, if you didn't know.
Categorically, the pre-arb developed bunch is--by far--the most marginally valuable unit on the team. Naturally. The Braves are good at development and those players are cheap (to the tune of ~$400,000). I would suggest this is nearly universally true. The pre-arb bunch is worth $49 million more than the market pays. The developed portion is worth around $36 million and the acquired portion is worth around $13 million. The arb-eligible bunch is worth a collective $39 million over market value, being split nearly identically between the acquired and developed portion. The FA bunch is worth around $20 million over market value. $19 million of that comes from the acquired bunch and $1 million comes from Chipper.
The most valuable Brave is Vazquez, making slightly more than $14 million less than the market values him. The next three are, in order, McCann, Jurrjens, and Yunel. All three of them are valued at between $13 million and $14 million more than their salary.
This team is chucked full of very valuable contracts. Nearly every player on the team makes less than the market values him, including the free agents (who traditionally make more than the market values them, that's the reality of the whole service time and arbitration phenomenon). Say what you will about Frank Wren, but he's put together a very, very valuable roster. If this team were to keep up the pace for the rest of the year and someone bought every player as a free agent, it would cost them $223 million. That's more than the Yankees' 2009 payroll.
And yes, I took my inspiration from this post.
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I just don’t buy into the whole WAR market values stuff, because any team with a clue should be able to get the majority of their talent “below market” value. Unless you’re the Yankees and are totally unable to develop your own talent, it’s not really meaningful data when taken in the context of an entire club’s payroll.
Q: If on-base pct is so important then why don't they put it on the scoreboard? -Failcoeur
A: Because the Braves don't want to show their fans how bad you suck.
by timmy3 on Aug 28, 2009 3:17 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs
Yeah, I tend to agree
Basically, the premise that a 1 WAR player is worth $4.5 million is just off scale. Apparently, Derek Jeter is among the underpaid since he’s been worth 5.7 WAR thus far. Even Mark Teixeira, with the ridiculous deal that he signed, is somehow underpaid. That’s placing just way too much monetary value on a team’s win. Somehow this is entirely skewed, since a 1 WAR player this year looks something like Mark Teahen, James Loney, or Jack Cust-basically, guys who may never end up making $4.5 million in a year.
The skew seems to also look way too favorably on teams who simply refuse to spend money. I mean, what’s a team that wins 70 games worth? Not very much, I’d think. They might have been in the postseason picture at some point, but in the end, they didn’t really come close. But somehow, this scale says that a 70 win team is worth $96.3 million, which is more than the Braves’ annual salary, good for 12th in the league. Even worse, a 65 win team would be worth $73.8 million, good for 17th in the league.
The Pirates had the lowest annual salary entering the season (so it’s even less at this point, since they dumped everyone making any kind of money), so, at best, they had the value of a 54 win team. And yet somehow, despite the fact that they’re among the worst teams in the league, they’re going to end up being way underpaid as a team since they could easily win 60+ games this year.
The teams at the top, and the Yankees most of all, are doing a ridiculous job weighing this scale in the wrong direction.
by Bronn on Aug 28, 2009 4:01 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
Wow, even more confusing
I didn’t think to do this math at first, but apparently the Yankees only have to win 93 games to justify spending $200 million this offseason. That’s a bit crazy. A team winning 60% of its games gets to 97 wins. Basically, there’s a 93 win team every single year, but there’s NEVER been a $200 million/year until now.
I’m calling BS on Fangraphs’ win value system.
by Bronn on Aug 28, 2009 4:17 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
Basically, there’s a 93 win team every single year, but there’s NEVER been a $200 million/year until now.
The system is not saying you need to spend $200M to wins 93 games. The cost of a win also changes each year.
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by VictorW on Aug 28, 2009 5:18 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
The Yankees are spending enough money
to skew the entire system this guy is using. Of course the Yankees overpaid C.C. Sabbathia. They were bidding against themselves-no one else even made an offer on him. The Yankees didn’t like that the deal wasn’t done at one point, and threw in an extra 2 million per year just to get him signed sooner (again, he probably would have had to sign for the first amount, because no one else was in the bidding). If this was any other organization with fewer assets, that would be considered wasteful to the extreme.
Yet his WAR valuation proves to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Because such an amount of money was spent, and so many wins were produced, that means that this HAD to be the value per win. And as it turns out, even if you ignore that C.C is making less money in the first year of his deal and look at his 2010-2015 salary ($23 million) he still looks like a steal because he’s produced more WAR$ than his contact is paying him. But his huge contact is influencing the WAR$, even though there were much, much cheaper ways to get 5 WAR (Javier Vazquez, for example).
I just think the entire concept of creating WAR$ has large flaws in it, especially when one team has enough money that teams won’t even bid against them for top name free agents like Teixeira and Sabathia.
by Bronn on Aug 28, 2009 11:20 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
CC had other offers for $20Mish a year from teams like the Brewers and other teams like Boston and even Atlanta were willing to pay $20M a year for Teixeira. And they should be willing to since they’re 4+ win players. The difference is the Yankees are always willing to offer more years than the other teams along with the same dollar amounts.
The free agent market is “overpaying” in the sense that you can get cost controlled talent through trades, team friendly contracts, and players who haven’t hit free agency yet. Those players, however, aren’t always available which is why the free agent market players cost a premium relative to cost controlled talent. Additionally, trades like Vazquez cost prospects, which is allows the team to get an asset for below market value.
This offseason, the DH/1B/Corner OF market crashed a bit, which is where most of the bargains were, but there were still plenty of non-Yankee players who signed for around market value. Perez, Lowe, Kawakami, K-Rod, and Garland come to mind. Bradley, Wood, and Ibanez were probably overpaid at the time, though Ibanez raked this year. Most players were around their market value with Orlando Hudson as the big outlier this offseason.
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by VictorW on Aug 28, 2009 11:49 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
Atlanta wasn't willing to pay Teixeira 20 millionish
That’s why they traded him. If they thought they had anything close to the money but were going to debate over the number of years, they certainly would have held on to him in an attempt to keep bargaining. But the Braves weren’t even close to the type of offer he’d want, and they knew it. I know that I’m supposing quite about FW’s thinking, here, but if you believe you’re remotely close to the contract a superstar on your team wants, you don’t ship him out for a league-average first baseman.
Interestingly, Washington was the only real competition for the Yankees (Boston was out of the discussions very early), and the Nationals just can’t be an appealing destination, for obvious reasons.
I basically feel like the entire concept of WAR$ is flawed due to the fact that FA is only one aspect of team-building, and probably the biggest crapshoot. And yet, WAR$ simply confirms its own correctness. “This is how much money was spent on free agents last year, and this is how many WAR they we were worth.” There’s no room for saying that the free agency crop that year was overrated, or underrated-they apparently, as a group, were worth exactly what they made. Which is a big problem.
And it also makes this particular number very ineffective for practical usage. It’s unwieldy for evaluating how well teams have spent, as this post illustrates, and it also values players still on deals signed 5 years in the same way that it does guys last offseason, even though the market is constantly changing, drastically. I find it to be a flawed valuation system with limited application, so it really needs some revamping.
by Bronn on Aug 29, 2009 2:44 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
actually we made an offer in the neighborhood of 20 million and he said no thanks i want to test FA (in other words go to the yankees) so we traded him
by McCann's the Man on Aug 29, 2009 10:22 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
The Braves were willing to pay Teixeira $100M over 5 years. The team traded him because Teixeira figured he could get more years and slightly more money per year on the free agent market. The Angels, Nationals, Red Sox, and Yankees were all very interested in Teixeira and he could have made $20M a year with any of those teams.
I basically feel like the entire concept of WAR$ is flawed due to the fact that FA is only one aspect of team-building, and probably the biggest crapshoot.
The biggest crapshoot of team building is obviously anything involving prospects and the draft (pitching prospects especially). Understanding the going rate of wins on the free agent market affects other aspects of player acquisition, like trades.
There’s no room for saying that the free agency crop that year was overrated, or underrated-they apparently, as a group, were worth exactly what they made. Which is a big problem.
It’s supposed to work this way. If there’s a weak free agent market, then the price of wins goes up because of scarcity. Likewise, wins are cheaper if there’s a surplus, like with the corner OF/1B/DH types in the recent off season. This, in turn, affects the trade market.
it also values players still on deals signed 5 years in the same way that it does guys last offseason, even though the market is constantly changing, drastically.
Yes, it should. If a player is worth 4 wins and is paid $16M two years in a row, and the price of free agency wins goes up in the second season, then that player’s value versus salary is higher the second year since wins are more expensive now. Let’s say wins are worth $4M a win today and we sign a player expected to produce 3 wins a year to a 2 year deal. If next season, free agent wins are worth $3M a year, then that player will have little trade value. If wins cost $5M a year, however, then that player will have more trade value. There are other ways of evaluating cost per win too.
The WAR and Salary figure that Fangraphs list is more of a comparison of what happened vs what they were paid, as opposed to what a player’s true talent level is (or projected true talent level) vs what they are paid and the projected market. If we are talking about evaluating long term deals, then you consider projected production (decline, age) and projected FA market rates (2002-2008, for example, was about a 10% increase each year),
I think the original post may have been a little confusing as for how to use WAR and salary. Saying the Braves would be worth $220M or so on the free agent market doesn’t really tell you anything. A better and more time consuming use of WAR and salary would be to compare this data to other teams or something like which Braves have the most trade value. The post does cover that to an extent. You can see Escobar, Jurrjens, and McCann are the Braves with the most trade value (AdjSalWar). Jurrjens is also close to Lowe in value, but has way more trade value because of salary, and that’s before we consider that JJ likely hasn’t already peaked and Lowe already has, injury risk, years of team control, etc.
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by VictorW on Aug 29, 2009 1:47 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
You're going to great lengths to explain what I well understood
My issue is not a lack of understanding in how this number is generated, but the fact that I disagree with what it’s design and it’s usefulness.
Saying the Braves would be worth $220M or so on the free agent market doesn’t really tell you anything
It doesn’t tell you anything because that assumption is inaccurate, not because the number is being used incorrectly. Any particular free agent class may end up producing a value of $4.5 million per WAR, but that’s only true for the specific players who were free agents that offseason. There’s only a given amount of capital available for signing free agents each off season (except in New York), which means that if you say any non FA has “this” value on the FA market, you’re effectively changing the market to the point where the statement does not apply.
For example, if everyone in the league were a free agent, you’d still only have the Yankees with the ability top $200 million per year. That would obviously reduce the cost of adding WAR in free agent because the market is saturated. And yet, we get WAR$ values for players who aren’t even arbitration eligible yet, which doesn’t make sense-there will always be young players who can produce positive WAR for almost no cost.
You see what I’m getting at? It’s basically affirming the consequent.
“One WAR was worth $4.5 million on the free agent market. Hanley Ramirez was worth 7 WAR. Therefore, Hanley Ramirez would have earned $31.5 if he’d been a free agent.” But the problem is that a player of Hanley’s caliber would have definitely signed a huge deal, and have subsequently altered the entire value of the market.
The biggest crapshoot of team building is obviously anything involving prospects and the draft (pitching prospects especially). Understanding the going rate of wins on the free agent market affects other aspects of player acquisition, like trades.
Not sure I agree when we’re looking at a financial standpoint. Aside from first round picks, prospects are cheap. Even with first round picks, almost all of the cost is in the bonus. You pay a guy a $6 million signing bonus once, and then he’s extremely cheap until he gets into arbitration. With prospects, you don’t roster a guy on your big-league team until you’ve got plenty of minor league data on him that suggests he’s ready. And if it appears that he’ll never be ready, you can simply release him-you won’t have a Barry Zito contract hanging over your head for it. That’s why I say free agency is a crapshoot-you have to outbid everyone else (at least, this is often how it works) for the services for a player, and you’re hoping that he performs above the value the second highest bidder assigned him in order to justify the money you’re paying him-and the costs can be extreme.
by Bronn on Aug 29, 2009 4:28 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
And yet, we get WAR$ values for players who aren’t even arbitration eligible yet, which doesn’t make sense-there will always be young players who can produce positive WAR for almost no cost.
The WAR$ value for players says the number of wins that player produce would have cost X amount of dollars on the free agent market that year. For these pre-arb players, you can use the values to determine a player’s trade value or how good of a deal a team got when they bought out a player’s arbitration years.
But the problem is that a player of Hanley’s caliber would have definitely signed a huge deal, and have subsequently altered the entire value of the market.
Teams that were willing to drop huge deals for Teixeira or CC like the Angels, Red Sox, and Nationals would have been willing to pay $31M a year for HanRam. If he signed for $36M a year or $26M a year, how much do you think that’s change the whole picture? So a win would be worth $4.4M or $4.6M instead of $4.5M? Doesn’t make much of a difference.
I agree that suddenly dumping many free agents onto the market would crash the value of wins on the market and if every player was a FA today, win values would be much less than $4.5M a year. WAR and WAR$, however, is not trying to predict or simulate that situation. As you know, it measures how much free agent wins cost in a specific year. From there, you use the information to determine which teams got bargains, which teams overpaid, and appropriate trade values of players.
That’s why I say free agency is a crapshoot
Okay, I misunderstood you. That makes sense. Free agency definitely has the most money on the line.
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by VictorW on Aug 29, 2009 5:31 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
For these pre-arb players, you can use the values to determine a player’s trade value or how good of a deal a team got when they bought out a player’s arbitration years.
I think it’s pretty useless for actually looking at trade value. Jason Heyward has produced 0 WAR this year. Is his trade value less than Omar Infante’s?
That’s obviously an extreme example, but WAR$ doesn’t compare how long guys are under team control for, and if you’re using it to talk about trade value, it certainly doesn’t say anything about most rookies, who are cost controlled for a very long time and can only be expected to improve as they age. What is Jordan Schafer’s trade value? Probably a lot more than -$1.8 million.
And that’s my point-it’s a very limited stat the way it’s been created. It really doesn’t have much meaning for pre-FA players, and is really pointless for pre-arb guys. Yet they tag it with their value stats for all of those guys, as if it’s some assessment of their value. They really should just stick to WAR, and they can use their WAR$ figure when they write articles purely about the free agency market.
I actually really liked Dave Cameron’s Trade Value series, and nowhere in it can I find a reference to WAR$. He doesn’t really explain his process for it, but I think it’s clear that much of it was subjective-that is, he was projected Elvis Andrus to develop some power without using numbers to support his assertion, and he references the “upside” of Ryan Zimmerman.
I’m a big stat guy, but if there’s a stat with a very limited application and a name that suggests it be used in many ways that it doesn’t work, I can’t bring myself to appreciate it.
by Bronn on Aug 29, 2009 10:51 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
Prospect value is obviously determined from projected performance. So either project that value for six years or use a shortcut method. It’s based on work done by Victor Wang, someone with a name eerily similar to mine.
Yet they tag it with their value stats for all of those guys, as if it’s some assessment of their value.
WAR and WAR$ does measure the value of what happened that year. If a player did produce 3 wins, then he did and if 3 wins cost $12M on the free agent market that year, then it did. Unfortunately, there’s plenty of people who will look at those values and say something like “Scutaro was worth $35M the last two years. Does that mean he deserves a $17M/year contract this offseason?” I think I’d rather have WAR listed without WAR$ as well, because of these misinterpretations, but, at the very least, I hope it helps some people realize that even average to slightly above average (2-3 wins) players have a lot of value. The concept of putting a dollar value on wins, however, I still think is valuable.
Dave Cameron’s trade value series was mostly subjective, but a fun read. I thought Escobar deserved a place somewhere though. This is the basic method to calculate a player’s trade value. Here is Fangraphs evaluating Halladay’s trade value with it and Beyond the Boxscore (my second favorite site behind this one) evaluating the McLouth trade. I did something similar when the Braves were talking Escobar + prospects for Peavy, and came to the conclusion that Escobar alone was too much to give up for Peavy.
If you still think the usefulness of this is limited, then that’s fine. I really enjoy following trades, trade rumors, and free agency so it gives me a tool to help evaluate the transactions.
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by VictorW on Aug 30, 2009 12:49 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
Escobar has more trade value than Halladay if you actually use the trade value calculator, it’s just Cameron’s series featured a lot of guys with only a 1.5-2.5 years left on their contract. If the list was done from a purely statistical standpoint, 90% of the list would have been players that still have their arb years coming or are in their 1st arb year. Guys like Halladay obviously carry more value though to teams in contention because he can push a team into the playoffs so the list strays from fangraphs all stats base somewhat
by McCann's the Man on Aug 30, 2009 9:52 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
Yeah the trade value calculator is context neutral. There’s methods for adjusting for added playoff probability that isn’t included in that basic calculator. There’s a Hardball Times article on it somewhere. I doubt most contending teams would be willing to part with Escobar for Halladay, unless they had a Andrus or Alcides waiting in the wings. Even then, they’d probably trade the prospect first.
The decisions behind Dave Cameron’s choices for the trade value post seemed to change quite a bit. Wieters showing up so high and above McCann was pretty iffy.
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by VictorW on Aug 30, 2009 11:52 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
McCann that high was even a little iffy, top 10-15 no doubt but 6 was a little high even though I love him. I guess Cameron loves catchers
by McCann's the Man on Aug 30, 2009 12:32 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
Yeah, slugging catchers are awesome. I love McCann. I’d say his value is similar to the other player’s he around on the list, like Wright and Braun. Same years of control as Wright, but costs $20M less over the period. Braun is real good and signed for longer, but he’s also a corner OF.
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by VictorW on Aug 30, 2009 8:43 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
It's because the Free Agent market isn't the same as the pre-FA market
If you try to buy a team via free agency, you’re going to spend a lot more money (to the tune of ~6-7 million per WAR, depending on the economic climate). It’s not the teams, it’s the horrible contracts (which you do have a point, some teams have a habit of giving out bad contracts). Alfonso Soriano, Vernon Wells, etc.
http://www.capitolavenueclub.com/
by PWHjort on Aug 28, 2009 5:00 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
Teahen, Loney, and Cust are all players still under arbitration. The system puts a price on wins bought on the free market. Arbitration eligible players are something like 40%/60%/80% of their value depending on the year of arbitration. The one for Super Two’s is roughly something like 30/50/70/90%.
But somehow, this scale says that a 70 win team is worth $96.3 million, which is more than the Braves’ annual salary, good for 12th in the league. Even worse, a 65 win team would be worth $73.8 million, good for 17th in the league.
The point of using WAR is not to find out how much a team is worth. It’s to analyze how well a team is spending its money on free agent signings and trades. Though, I suppose at the team level you can get an estimate of how a team builds itself. The Yankees basically pay market value for all their FAs while teams like the Rays have to stockpile cost-controlled talent through trades, good pickups, and the draft.
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by VictorW on Aug 28, 2009 5:16 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
I'm not ignorant of Custs', Loney's, and Teahean's status
And maybe I was a bit unfair to include Jack Cust in that group-looking over his numbers, he’s been fairly valuable in every year, even though he’s not having a good season. But guys like Teahen and Loney are not the types I would have paid $4.5 million in this environment.
Both guys play average or poor defense at corner IF/OF positions, and provide fairly average OBPs and limited power. That’s not surprising since they are on pace to post 1 WAR, just barely better than replacement level. But the WAR$ somehow sees these as $4.5 million contributions. I simply can’t buy that.
Brian McCann, for an example, was signed to a long term deal ( I know it was a steal even at the time, but here it is) is making only $3.5 million this year, $5.5 million next year, and $6.5 million the year after that (though it starts really growing beyond 2011). He’s practically managed to produce the value of his contract in just the 1.75 years since we’ve signed him.
In my attempt to come up with a guy who was signed for $4.5 million this year, i came across Jorge Cantu. Last year, he posted a .346 wOBA. He was signed for a mere 3.5 million. Even though his power has fallen off, he’s still managed to have a productive season (1.0 WAR to date). Sure, there are bargains in every environment, but the system is scaled so that practically everyone posting a positive WAR is actually worth more than their contract.
by Bronn on Aug 28, 2009 11:02 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
Oh, okay, I misunderstood what you meant with that. I agree that the DH market has crashed, and the salary for those low level types (like Garrett Anderson) weren’t up to par. In this case, then WAR is saying these players are nice bargain pickups for teams. The mid level corner OF types, however, still got at or around market value like Dunn, Bradley, Ibanez, and Burrell. I still don’t know how Ibanez got a better contract than Dunn.
What I was getting to earlier though was that players like Cantu and McCann aren’t fair comparisons to any free agent because they haven’t hit free agency yet. Part of the reason free agents cost so much more is because the newer players are so underpaid.
Some players off the top of my head who aren’t worth their contracts: Wells, Zito, Alfonso Soriano, Torii Hunter (even though he is picking it up this year), Jose Guillen.
I think your problem with putting a dollar value per WAR is that it might be implying to you that spending $4.5M on a win is always worth it. It’s “worth it” if a team can afford to acquire free agents in the right spots, but obviously small market teams can’t afford to do that, which is why they typically only sign players from the bargain bin.
Baseball:Sabermetrics::Luddites:Technology
by VictorW on Aug 29, 2009 12:09 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
The Jeter and Teixeira’s are judged to be underpaid because there are lots of guys a la Alfonso Soriano, Jason Schmidt, Barry Zito, and our own Garret Anderson to a lesser extent balance the system out.
by McCann's the Man on Aug 28, 2009 6:30 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
It still raises alarm bells
Here’s a guy who several people thought was overpaid, making more money that he ought to. And on top of thatt, he’s underachieving compared to his projections (at least as far as ERA, and OPS against are concerned) to a great extent. But somehow, he still apparently is providing more monetary than his contract. I just think the WAR scale is weighted too heavily.
by Bronn on Aug 28, 2009 10:48 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
Yes, virtually all players who haven’t hit free agency yet will be underpaid compared to what they could make on the free market, though there are a few exceptions like Mr. Francoeur. Comparing the entire payroll of a team to its WAR production or win total doesn’t really tell much except the way a team is built.
Baseball:Sabermetrics::Luddites:Technology
by VictorW on Aug 28, 2009 5:24 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
FWIW
Baseball prospectus had a very good article about win value recently. At least, since I’m not a subscriber, the little bit that I read looked extremely promising.
Several of their premises included-
1) The value of wins differs between teams (basically, the Yankees have SO much money that they’re stupid not to spent $150 million at this point).
2) There’s not much difference in value between a 60 win team and a 65 win team (duh, right?). Also, there’s not much difference in value between a team that wins 110 and 115 games, since you’re most likely the best team in the world in both cases.
3) As a result of number (2), the value of each win was scaled so that the value per win peaked right around 95 wins. There was a nice little graph showing this.
If anyone here still subscribes to BP, and is interested in that sort of analysis, I suggest you look it up. It seemed like great stuff.
by Bronn on Aug 28, 2009 4:11 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs
I'll check it out
Thanks for the tip.
http://www.capitolavenueclub.com/
by PWHjort on Aug 28, 2009 4:14 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
Not a subscriber either but it sounds like win curve and marginal value stuff. Here’s an example from 2005-2006 from The Hardball Times.
Baseball:Sabermetrics::Luddites:Technology
by VictorW on Aug 28, 2009 6:04 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
It's similar
But I don’t think they were exactly looking at revenue, and they were actually looking at how teams actually spend money, and at player value (which is what the THT article BEGINS to do at the end). Again, since I’m not a BP subscriber, I didn’t actually read the whole article, but it looked good enough to tempt me into subscribing.
by Bronn on Aug 28, 2009 11:09 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
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