After watching Jason Heyward's spring, many (including myself) have been thinking it would be a good idea to have him start on opening day.  This of course starts the debate about how the financial implications compare vs. how the team will perform with / without Heyward on it.  I've put some numbers down to help myself decide what I think about the situation and I thought I'd share.

For those who don't know, baseball salary rules for young players work as follows.  Players with less than 3 years of service time basically make the league minimum, which for my calculations I will assume is $400k.  Players with more than 3 years of service time but less than 6 years of service time are "arbitration eligible".  The arbitration process allows a player to earn a salary that is a fraction of his "market value".  Players with more than 6 years of service can become free agents, and agree to any contract.  In the three years of arbitration, the process is supposed to produce salaries that are 40%, 60%, and 80% of the "market value" in arb years 1, 2, and 3.

A wrinkle in the arbitration rules is that a "year" is defined as a certain number of days (172 to be exact), and a player must have at least that many days to get credit for 1 year.  Thus, if a player accrues 171 days of service time in a season that does not count as "1 year".  A typical baseball season has ~180 days, so getting to 1 year of service is possible without starting opening day.  To prevent abuse of this system, MLB rules allow the top 17% of players with at least 2 but less than 3 years of service time to become arbitration eligible.  These players are called "Super 2's", and go through arbitration 4 times instead of 3.  In the past, the cutoff for super 2 status is typically in the range of 128 - 140 days of service time.  Counting forward from the start of the season, this means that players called up after June 1 are typically "safe" from Super 2 status.

That's a lot of words, so lets use a specific example; Jason Heyward.  In the example that follows, I've made some assumptions in the calculations: 

First, I've assumed that Jason Heyward will go to salary arbitration every year he can, and receive exactly the "proper" amount - i.e. 40% / 60% / 80% of his "market value" in the arbitration process.  The splits for super 2's are harder to find, so I've used 30% / 50% / 70% / 90% as a basis.  It is straightforward to redo the calcs with any basis you like, so feel free to change it and comment below.

Second, I need to establish what Jason's "market value" is to project his salary for each of the possibilities.  The actual process does not use WAR, but that's what I use here.  I have assumed that Jason Heyward will play at a 5 WAR pace every single year.  Now, all we need is $ / WAR, which was about $4.5M / WAR last year.  You are free to use whatever WAR projection / cost you like, as you'll see I don't think it changes the conclusions at all.

Here's the year by year breakdown for three cases, with service time and salary listed:  starting Opening Day, calling Jason up June 1, or calling Jason up ~April 20, so he just becomes a Super 2.

            League Min     0.4                                          

            WAR               5                                             

            $ / WAR          4.5M                           

Year    Opening Day               Non-Super 2                Super 2           

2010    1yr       $0.4                 < 1yr    $0.4                 < 1yr    $0.4

2011    2yr       $0.4                 1+ yr    $0.4                 1+ yr    $0.4

2012    3yr       $0.4                 2+ yr    $0.4                 2+ yr    $0.4

2013    Arb 1   $9.0                 3+ yr    $0.4                 Arb 1   $6.8

2014    Arb 2   $13.5               Arb 1   $9.0                 Arb 2   $11.3

2015    Arb 3   $18.0               Arb 2   $13.5               Arb 3   $15.8

2016    FA       $22.5               Arb 3   $18.0               Arb 4   $20.3

2017    FA                               FA                               FA      

TOTAL           $64.2                           $42.1                           $55.2

Looking at the table above, one thing is clear:  having Jason accrue a full year of service time in 2010 is a bad financial decision.  The penalty for this is the difference in cost between his market value salary and the league minimum (or Arb 1 year salary for Super 2).  For a player of Jason's potential, this is a lot of money.

Secondly, the "penalty" for letting a player hit Super 2 splits the difference between the opening day and June 1 time frames in this example.  I'd say the "minimum penalty" would be a scenario where the arbitration targets are 20/40/60/80%, in which case the total difference is about $4M.  Again, I'd love to see some "real" numbers here rather than the 4 fractions I've arbitrarily chosen.

So, now that we understand the financial impact, what about the impact to the team that Jason brings when he's playing?  In my opinion, there is a trap that many people fall into here, and it starts along the lines of "If the Braves finish X games out of first / wild card at the end of the year, then you'll regret not having Heyward up the entire time".  People then assume that the difference in games is certainly made up by having Heyward in the lineup.  The fact of the matter is that there is no way to evaluate game-by-game how a player will contribute - i.e whether Heyward could make up those 2 games that the Braves lost in April - May when someone else was playing RF.  The best method that I'm aware of is to calculate the player WAR, and pro-rate that contribution over the time period of interest.  Then, take the difference in what Heyward would contribute and what his replacement (Cabrera / Hinske / Diaz / other) would contribute and see how many "wins" are at stake.

For example, lets now assume Heyward will produce 6 WAR if he plays every single game this year.  If we assume the season is 6 months long, then that is 1 WAR / month.  Let's now assume that whoever plays RF if not Heyward will produce 1.5 WAR (0.25 WAR / month) if they played every single game this year.  Again, pick whatever numbers you like.  Thus:

Heyward plays every day:  6 WAR from RF for the year

Heyward plays starting June 1:  4.5 WAR total from RF for the year

Heyward plays starting mid-April:  5.6 WAR from RF for the year

If we take the differences in each scenario, we find that Heyward as a Super 2 only costs the Braves 0.5 game.  Heyward called up June 1 costs the Braves 1.5 games.  Thus, if the Braves finish 2 or more games out of a playoff spot, having Heyward around vs. not does not swing the stakes in the Braves favor in this example.  If Heyward plays at less than 6 WAR and / or if the replacement RF plays at better than 1.5 WAR, then Heyward's presence / absence makes even less of an impact on the Braves postseason chances.

Obviously, players don't contribute in a linear fashion as indicated in the argument above - a really bad April / May for the replacement vs. an unbelievably hot Heyward in the same time frame, for example, might make the total win difference higher. 

As a Braves fan, I simply cannot justify letting Heyward start opening day.  To me, the decision is Super 2 vs. non-Super 2, and based on Jason's spring, I think the Super 2 route is probably the right way to go.  You give up some $ later on, but not nearly as much as opening day, and you minimize your chance that not having Heyward all year long costs you a playoff spot. 

If you've made it this far, I'll end with this:  another possibility that I haven't included is that Jason can be signed to a long term contract sometime just before arbitration eligibility (think Brian McCann, Ryan Braun, Evan Longoria).  Players usually give up money by doing this, but they gain the security of having a guaranteed contract.  The team also gains cost certainty.  In some cases, the total figure could be less than the middle column listed above!  This possibility is the best case scenario in my opinion, as the team retains control of Heyward for as long as possible, gets the most playing time from him, and gets him at the minimum amount.