Caution: If numbers, statistics, and graphs make you want to jump out of the highest window of a 10 story building, please don’t read further. Save yourself now – this is your last chance.
Baseball’s always been a game of statistics. Home runs, wins, and runs batted in used to rule the day; then we moved on to ERA and OBP. The third of four eras was the era of OPS and WHIP. Up to this point, baseball statistics were fairly easy to understand. But now with the invention of “sabermetrics”, you can seemingly put together any combination of three or four letters, and it’s some measure of a ballplayer’s performance. My personal favorite is the Failure to Use Coherent Knuckleball metric; though it never really caught on for some reason.
One of the most popular sabermetrics is WAR, or Wins Above Replacement. I’ll be brutally honest, I don’t know exactly how it’s calculated. I do know it’s a combination of rate stats (for example SLG% instead of doubles or home runs), including fielding, and accounts for both position and ballpark. If you’re dying to know more, check out Beyond the Box Score’s Position Player and Pitcher WAR articles. But simply put, higher WAR = better player.
Now for the meat of the post. So far this offseason 75 players have signed new contracts for at least $1,000,000. For each of these players, I calculated the average WAR from 2007-2009. If a player missed a year for any reason, too bad, the zero counts. There is certainly an added risk for a player who missed an entire season for any reason. I plotted these WAR values against the players average yearly salaries in their new contracts. The final step was simply asking excel to create a linear trendline, which is basically a “best-fit” straight line for all the given points. Check out the graph below, and then I’ll continue to ramble.
The Y-axis is WAR and the X-axis is $/year. The little equation near the top of the graph is the line’s equation. It’s also an equation we can use to calculate what a player “should” have made per season based on current market value. If you want to simplify it, multiply a player’s 3 year average WAR by 2, then add 1.5 and SHAZAM, that’s how much that player should earn per season.
I calculated how much each player “should” make versus how much each player will make, per season, and I present to you…the five best and five worst contracts of the offseason*.                         *based on WAR alone, which I don’t fully buy into
The Duds:
5 – Mike Gonzalez. Baltimore is supposedly paying $3.7MM more per year than they should be paying.
4 – Randy Wolf. Maybe if one good season made a player, Milwaukee wouldn’t be overpaying the starter by $4.0MM per season.
3 – Rafael Soriano. Tampa Bay will pay this reliever $4.1 more million dollars than he deserves.
2 – John Lackey. The Red Sox felt it necessary to sign a big name starter, and they had to pay $7.3MM over market value to get him.
1 – Jason Bay. Our new left fielder…who will make $10.75MM more than he deserves. (I’ll get into Bay more in a bit)
The Studs:
5 – Placido Polanco. Color me surprised that the Phillies actually underpaid Polanco by $3.0MM per season.
4 – Kelly Johnson. The Dbacks wisely signed Johnson for $3.2MM less than he’s worth.
3 – Ryan Church. Yarr, the Pirates made out like…well…pirates by signing this former Met for $3.7MM less than market value.
2 – Troy Glaus. Atlanta signed Glaus to help out at first, and he may pay off in dividends, as they’ll pay him $5.07 less than he deserves.
1 – Kelvim Escobar. Yep, the Mets have both the worst and the best signings of the offseason. Escobar may have missed almost all of last season, but great seasons in ’07 and ’08 allowed the Mets to sign him for $6.9MM less than he may be worth.
Jason Bay, Jason Bay, Jason Bay. Oy vei, Jason Bay. There are two reasons why Bay topped the list of failed signings. Firstly, his 2007 season was poor, to put it nicely. He finished the season with an OPS of .747, which is far below his career norm…but led to a WAR of 0.0, which was averaged into his 3-year WAR. Ouch. Secondly, Bay’s supposed poor defense led to terrible defensive metrics, which brutalizes his WAR value year after year, despite well above average offensive play. His defense isn’t that bad, so I certainly think he’s worth more than WAR gives him credit for (that’s a lot of rhyming). Even so, maybe the Mets overpaid him by a few million, but I believe he was needed in the lineup regardless.
Another notable player is Alex Cora, who is shockingly being underpaid by $400,000 by the Mets. It’s also interesting to note that Sheets would hypothetically be worth around $6MM, though his missing 2009 hurt a lot. Based on only his 2007-2008 seasons, Sheets would be worth a bit over $8MM. A fully healthy Sheets should earn a few million more after incentives. I actually believe that WAR undervalues good starting pitchers, but I’ll leave that for another lifetime.
I hope no one’s brain melted after reading this post. Feel free to head to Fangraphs and calculate various players’ market values using the “WAR times 2 plus 1.5″ equation! It’s a hoot, a holler, and a half!
20 comments
prismo
1/25/2010-4:34pm at 4:34 pm (UTC -4)
And by the way, this is just a very straightforward numerical analysis of a popular metric. It definitely doesn’t mean I support any of it, including using WAR to quantify how well someone can play baseball.
GravediggerHebner
1/25/2010-4:42pm at 4:42 pm (UTC -4)
Where did the equation (2.01 x 1.4626) originate?
I assume the Mets signed R.A. Dickey because of his good score in Failure to Use Coherent Knuckleball.
prismo
1/25/2010-4:51pm at 4:51 pm (UTC -4)
It’s the equation of the trendline that excel autogenerated. It’s the linear line that best fits all the data.
In case you don’t remember generally useless high school mate, 2.01 is the slope of the line and 1.4626 is where it intercepts the y-axis.
GravediggerHebner
1/25/2010-4:53pm at 4:53 pm (UTC -4)
I don’t remember that, and I guess the answer to the smart-ass question I asked of my math teacher “when am I going to need this in real life?” just got answered. Thank you.
prismo
1/25/2010-4:59pm at 4:59 pm (UTC -4)
Eh, you don’t need it, not for this anyway. Whomever created WAR (was it Fangraphs?) jam-packed so many statistics and variables in, it lost almost all meaning as a metric in my opinion. It’s too all-encompassing. I prefer home runs! “Man hit ball far, run around all bases” Now that’s a metric I can relate to!
njstuckintx
1/25/2010-5:00pm at 5:00 pm (UTC -4)
amen to that!
saltygary
1/25/2010-6:08pm at 6:08 pm (UTC -4)
Wow I was way to High in HS to remember that now…
dirtysanchez
1/25/2010-4:43pm at 4:43 pm (UTC -4)
wow…that actually is a really good explaination of this stat. Good job adam
njstuckintx
1/25/2010-4:46pm at 4:46 pm (UTC -4)
While the numbers help in putting a quantitative analysis on a subject subject, I must say they scare me. The same numbers can be looked at in multiple views, each creating a different interpertation. It’s interesting to see and I can’t completely ignore them, but I can’t say they are the end all to end all.
I wonder why Marquis isn’t on there, as he signed himself a pretty favorable contract in comparison to some of his better piers.
metsfan4decades
1/25/2010-4:58pm at 4:58 pm (UTC -4)
The post headline actually caught my eye – very clever.
And thanks for the warning about stats, graphs and more stats. I’m duly impressed with those of you talented enough to do this. Thanks for the analysis.
And only the Mets could wind up with the best of the top 10 and the worst. As usual, just leaves me shaking my head.
Hope the guys over on AA read this post. They hate, hate, hate the Cora signing almost as much as they hate the contract we gave KRod. Most of them believe Cora is completely worthless. They keep harping on the fact that we should have signed a starting SS b/c of Reyes question mark. What teams have two starting SS on their roster?
GravediggerHebner
1/25/2010-5:12pm at 5:12 pm (UTC -4)
My tiny knowledge of trendline equations aside, this is very interesting stuff that if nothing else is fun to play with.
I should probably think of a better way to phrase that.
Always appreciate a reference (even if unintended) to one of my old favorite Saturday morning TV shows, Shazam. Now if you could work the mighty Isis into a post you’d be on top of the blog mountain.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZ6ZDQZV9nA
This one doesn’t include Shazam but gives you a better idea about Isis:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYmbt2RVqCg
saltygary
1/25/2010-6:09pm at 6:09 pm (UTC -4)
Very cool post, thanks for putting in the work. Any way you can indicate which dots are specific Mets. If it’s asking too much, no worries.
prismo
1/25/2010-6:17pm at 6:17 pm (UTC -4)
Escobar is the dot between the 3 and 4 WAR closest to the numbers 3 and 4 at the bottom of the graph.
The three dots between $16 and $18 are in order from left to right: Bay, Lackey, Holliday
saltygary
1/25/2010-6:24pm at 6:24 pm (UTC -4)
THANKS! Holliday is not that far off, very surprising.
GravediggerHebner
1/25/2010-6:19pm at 6:19 pm (UTC -4)
Johan Santana 4.1 = 9.7, actual $21.00, oh my
Carlos Beltran 4.8 = 11.1, actual $20.07, ouch
Oliver Perez 0.9 = 3.3, actual $12.00, yikes
Francisco Rodriguez 1.4 = 4.3, actual $12.17 oh dear
Gary Matthews Jr. (whats negative 1.1 divided by 3?)
David Wright 6.4 = 14.3, actual $10.25, bargain
I’m going to end on a high note.
Mr North Jersey
1/25/2010-6:26pm at 6:26 pm (UTC -4)
Omar Minaya will be on Hot Stove Thursday at 7:00pm on SNY
prismo
1/25/2010-6:29pm at 6:29 pm (UTC -4)
Maybe he’s planning on getting something big done by then! (wishful thinking)
Mr North Jersey
1/25/2010-6:35pm at 6:35 pm (UTC -4)
LoL, been reading some of his replies on Ken Davidoff’s Baseball Insider.
“–Kevin Kernan of the New York Post asked Minaya about the team being “a joke.” Minaya, taken aback by the question, smiled and said, “I don’t think we’re a joke, but I do think that when you lose, let’s be honest. We didn’t have a good year last year. In New York, for people to pay more attention, you’ve got to win.”
Gee Omar, we didn’t have a good year? You think?
joed1
1/25/2010-8:17pm at 8:17 pm (UTC -4)
How ironic considering he will be on Hot Seat for the rest of this year.
rustyjr
1/25/2010-8:20pm at 8:20 pm (UTC -4)
tell me about it – joed im a diehard fan who tries to be even keeled but this front office really is out of touch with the fan base