Someone pointed me to this on Reddit, and I think it's pretty fascinating in the wake of the giant contracts we're seeing this winter, so I wanted to share.
For all the shit we talk about the Lester debacle, the fact that his Cubs contract was only slightly more "valuable" than Ellsbury's MFY one surprised me, but I guess 2016 makes up for it.
Looking at that list, I kind of feel like the cutoff for a decent deal (from the team’s perspective) falls neatly at anything under $10Million per bwar. So Adrian Gonzalez would be the delineation
I was surprised to see Beltre's Seattle contract so high. I thought that was seen as somewhat disappointing and thus why he signed a pillow contract with the Red Sox.
That's an impressive list - find that person and offer them a membership!
What really stands out is how much worse the odds of getting anything resembling "value" out of these contracts has trended over time. We can quibble about the cutoff point, but if we set $10mn as the current market rate for 1 WAR...
For the entire list, 46 of the 86 contracts delivered an inflation adjusted $10mn/WAR or lower vs. only 40 contracts >$10mn/WAR. And only 22 delivered $20mn/WAR or worse, so you're twice as likely to get market value or better than dramatically overpay.
If we move the cutoff to contracts signed 2000 and later, 29 delivered $10mn/WAR or lower vs. 35 contracts >$10mn/WAR and 18 at $20mn/WAR or worse. So since 2000, the hit rate on big deals is <50% with just over a quarter of deals paying more than 2x market.
Looking only back to 2010, it looks even worse. Of the 35 deals on that list, only 11 (31%) paid $10mn/WAR or less vs. 24 that cost >$10mn/WAR. You were more likely to pay $20mn+/WAR (14/35 deals, or 40%) than to get value from the contract.
Edit: Interestingly, the Sox have had a much better than average hit rate. 6 contracts in the "win" column (Pedro, Clemens, Manny, both JDs, and Pedroia) compared to only 3 losers (Adrian Gonzalez - and not abysmal at $10.7mn/WAR, Crawford, Price) which were all signed during Henry's ownership tenure.
For all the continued complaining about the Lester situation, his contract looks pretty bad here. Guess we’ll see how things work out for Bogaerts and Betts etc because you can’t re-sign all of your guys, and Betts was a special situation re-signing before FA with Covid.
I was surprised to see Beltre's Seattle contract so high. I thought that was seen as somewhat disappointing and thus why he signed a pillow contract with the Red Sox.
I think he was a disappointment relative to very high expectations going in - he was coming off a 48hr/163 OPS+ year with the Dodgers and put up no better than a 112 OPS+ with Seattle. But he was still all-world with the glove (9.5 dWAR during his 5 years with the Mariners) which kept his value up.
That's great data. I put it all into a spreadsheet so I can sort it different ways. For example, I sorted it all by team. Here's what some teams have spent per bWAR on those contracts:
- Yankees: $10.1m
- Red Sox: $8.4m
- Braves: $4.1m
- Orioles: $16.4m
- Cardinals: $5.0m
- Dodgers: $8.6m
- Giants: $7.9m - despite having two guys in the negative (Zito/Cain)
Here's the positional breakdown, $ per bWAR:
3b: $5.9m
C: $7.5m
DH: $8.2m (I only put JDM in this category)
SP: $8.4m
OF: $9.2m
2b: $13.0m
1b: $16.1m
So giving first basemen huge contracts like this is a recipe for disaster. Best to give them to third basemen. Hello Raffy!!!!!
Not surprisingly, but the best deals seem to be the guys who were better in their 30s than in their 20s. Certainly some similarities between Devers and Beltre, at least to this point in their careers.
For all the shit we talk about the Lester debacle, the fact that his Cubs contract was only slightly more "valuable" than Ellsbury's MFY one surprised me, but I guess 2016 makes up for it.
It's also a function of how well you think WAR calculates starting pitching and Fenway left field defensive value.
A starter who is healthy enough to take the ball every fifth day and give you better than average innings has more value to a team's bullpen and starting depth than a straight WAR calculation will say. WAR is also prone to really weird results, like Teddy Higuera being more valuable than Roger Clemens in 1986.
Manny was a terrible defensive player, but I'd rather have him in the lineup playing bad outfield and Big Papi as DH than replacing one or the other. He may have had a higher WAR if Ortiz were playing first and he was only a DH, but the team was happy with the alignment they used.
His dWAR was always awful, but I always felt like he wasn't really a liability in left at Fenway. I thought his skill at playing the wall relative to whoever was visiting balanced out his other flaws in half the games.
Barry Bonds is literally incredible. Two contracts on here. Also his second Giants contract he only played like two weeks in 2005 due to injury after the greatest 4 year run in baseball history. (Maybe three years on the contract though, just off the top of my head his second contract was signed after 2001)
edit-So I did look it up Bonds had four Giants contracts
Interesting how the Yankees, for all their big contracts, have none near the top of the list nor none near the bottom. So while they haven't been particularly efficient with their signings, they haven't been royally screwed either.
I don't have time to think about how to do it properly, but the main thing that the bottom of that list tells me is that you can't calculate $/WAR like that, because of how WAR scales to replacement level (e.g. Zito being 'worst' because he was -0.2 instead of -4.8 bWAR total)
There was some commentary after the Mookie deal on this (albeit with less exhaustive data) and I do think it’s fairly likely the Sox simply don’t believe these kinds of deals are a good bet. Because, statistically, they are not.
whether you have the talent pipeline and ability to backfill annually (as Tampa has largely been able to) and the discipline not to pay, say Chris Sale one of these, is where it gets tough
the Yankees operate essentially without a budget so any $/production stats lose relevance. It appears Dodgers have decided to live that way as well. I hear the desire for Sox to join them but probably isn’t meant to be, so wrestling with a couple huge player bets (which historically are not high probability) vs many smaller ones is where they will be.
the Yankees operate essentially without a budget so any $/production stats lose relevance. It appears Dodgers have decided to live that way as well. I hear the desire for Sox to join them but probably isn’t meant to be, so wrestling with a couple huge player bets (which historically are not high probability) vs many smaller ones is where they will be.
The part about the Yankees is definitely not true in recent years, but as for the Sox, you may be surprised to know thay had a top 3 payroll in the sport every year from 2015-2021 and were the top 1 in 2018 and 2019.
The part about the Yankees is definitely not true in recent years, but as for the Sox, you may be surprised to know thay had a top 3 payroll in the sport every year from 2015-2021 and were the top 1 in 2018 and 2019.
I meant what I wrote, and what you say above is not really responsive to what I said. My point was not "the Yankees always spend the most" because I am aware that is not true going back a few years.
What is true, and you may have missed, is that the Yankees project to $270 million all-in for 2023 when all is said and done (https://www.spotrac.com/mlb/new-york-yankees/payroll/) and are already at $230 mil. They spent $250 mil last year. If you can find a year the Red Sox have spent that much, it would be reasonable to say that they too do not have a budget. I think what you'll find if you look is that the Sox spend consistently high, but appear to have a ceiling which is different than the Yankees---appears to be more in the $200-210 mil range. Hence my original point. We'll see if that changes, but I try to stick to the data.
Under Cohen one can certainly add the Mets to the 'will spend anything club' alongside the Yankees no dispute there. So you are aware, those two (and the Dodgers, as I noted) were far ahead of the Red Sox in 2022 and both are tracking that way for 2023 as well.
What is true, and you may have missed, is that the Yankees project to $270 million all-in for 2023 when all is said and done (https://www.spotrac.com/mlb/new-york-yankees/payroll/) and are already at $230 mil. If you can find a year the Red Sox have spent that much, it would be reasonable to say that they too do not have a budget. I think what you'll find if you look is that the Sox spend consistently high, but appear to have a ceiling which is different than the Yankees---appears to be more in the $200-210 mil range. Hence my original point. We'll see if that changes, but I try to stick to the data.
I mean, BOS was the only team above the third tax line in 2018, right where NY is now. Your point is both wrong and meaningless, BOS and NY have had similar spending habits for some time now, only dependent on when each resets their tax rate (generally every 3 years). Again, combining the six years from 2016-2021, BOS spent more on payroll than NYY, try sticking to that data.
Also Cots is always better than Spotrac, NY projects around $290M right now, 2023 will likely be the first year they are over the third tax line, as BOS was in 2018.
Basically everyone has spending limits these days except the Mets. The Dodgers are trying to reset their tax rate this year, the Yankees were so careful to stay under the lowest tax line in 2021 that they played the awful Rougned Odor all season because TEX was paying his entire salary, and they barely stayed under.
And lumping together how a team has behaved under different CBAs is pretty silly also, obviously back in the day, NY outspent everyone. Just as obviously, they have not done much of that in recent years, 2023 is a go-for-it year for them and that's what they seem to be doing.
I mean, BOS was the only team above the third tax line in 2018, right where NY is now. Your point is both wrong and meaningless, BOS and NY have had similar spending habits for some time now, only dependent on when each resets their tax rate (generally every 3 years).
Also Cots is always better than Spotrac, NY projects around $290M right now, 2023 will likely be the first year they are over the third tax line, as BOS was in 2018.
Again, you simply misread (or misunderstood) my point. It was not wrong, and it was certainly not meaningless. You above seem only to emphasize just how much more the Yankees are spending than the Red Sox have ever spent, precisely the point I'm trying to educate you on!
You may feel that 2018 spending is more relevant to current and projecting forward spending---I expect most do not.
And lumping together how a team has behaved under different CBAs is pretty silly also, obviously back in the day, NY outspent everyone. Just as obviously, they have not done much of that in recent years, 2023 is a go-for-it year for them and that's what they seem to be doing.
You are the one lumping together spending under different CBAs, though...I'm talking about last year and this year. Again, please take the time to carefully re-read my initial post.
Again, you simply misread (or misunderstood) my point. It was not wrong, and it was certainly not meaningless. You above seem only to emphasize just how much more the Yankees are spending than the Red Sox have ever spent, precisely the point I'm trying to educate you on!
You may feel that 2018 spending is more relevant to current and projecting forward spending---I expect most do not.
This is a chart of historic spending and contracts that have already expired., nothing to do with current contracts or future ones. Maybe educate yourself a bit?
You are the one lumping together spending under different CBAs, though...I'm talking about last year and this year. Again, please take the time to carefully re-read my initial post.
That is completely irrelevant to this thread, though. The initial Reddit post very specifically says it is "Only including contracts that are complete", so again maybe you should take the time to read the thread you're responding to.
This is a chart of historic spending and contracts that have already expired., nothing to do with current contracts or future ones. Maybe educate yourself a bit?
That is completely irrelevant to this thread, though. The initial Reddit post very specifically says it is "Only including contracts that are complete", so again maybe you should take the time to read the thread you're responding to.
I did read it, of course. That is why I made a point about team spending and how player contract choices relate to the amount the team is wiling to spend. I believe most understand the connection between those things.
You need to read more carefully. You posted a chart of the Yankees team payroll at post 28. I responded to that in post 31, quoting the chart about team payroll that YOU posted. You responded to my post in post 34 saying it was all about past contracts. My post was not about the Reddit link, it was about your post about Yankee spending. I think you confused yourself.
I don't think many would disagree the reddit thread is about past contracts.
I would hope others do not disgaree that your post about Yankee spending is about current and future spending.
The connection, in my mind at least, is that teams willingness to spend on mega contracts is related to their total payroll ceiling/willingness to spend. You may disagree, I do not know.
You need to read more carefully. You posted a chart of the Yankees team payroll at post 28. I responded to that in post 31, quoting the chart about team payroll that YOU posted. You responded to my post in post 34 saying it was all about past contracts. My post was not about the Reddit link, it was about your post about Yankee spending.
Dude, this is all stemming from your post #24 where you wrote:
"the Yankees operate essentially without a budget"
Which is factually incorrect for a lot of years, until 13 days ago when they said 'fuck it, let's go for it'. That was my only point in responding to you, no idea why you keep pushing back except out of obstinance.
Dude, this is all about your post #24 where you wrote:
"the Yankees operate essentially without a budget"
Which is factually incorrect for a lot of years, until 13 days ago when they said 'fuck it, let's go for it'. That's my only pont, no idea why you keep pushing back except out of obstinance.
Yes, in the past two weeks, they have pushed above the third tax line although the offseason is not over. Again, what is happening in the past two weeks is totally irrelevant in the context of this thread about completed contracts. Your initial point was wrong, dunno why you're incapable of just backing off of that but you do you.
And again, the Mets have no budget, pretty clearly. If the Yankees had no budget, they would probably have signed Benintendi, but they do and they didn't.
I mean, still no, actually, but yes quite obviously, for the first time ever in the past two weeks, they have pushed above the third tax line although the offseason is not over. Again, what is happening in the past two weeks is totally irrelevant in the context of this thread about completed contracts.
I' believe most teams (and most on this board) recognize the relationship of mega contracts to team payroll, and also recognize that the historical performance of past mega contracts may impact willingness to commmit to future mega contracts. Your mileage may vary, and you of course bring a very Yankee-oriented view to these things.
I' believe most teams (and most on this board) recognize the relationship of mega contracts to team payroll, and also recognize that the historical performance of past mega contracts may impact willingness to commmit to future mega contracts. Your mileage may vary, and you of course bring a very Yankee-oriented view to these things.
Again, my only point was to correct your factual mistake, since the Yankees very clearly have had a budget limit for a bunch of years now, up until a couple of weeks ago (and again, this is the same thing Dombrowski did in BOS in 2018 when he was going for it). Some years NY's limit has been staying under the third tax line, some years it has been staying under the lowest tax line to reset the tax rates going forward. You seem incapable of processing that, so we should probably just move on.
The Manny/Ortiz dwar thing always bugged me. You put together your team and then you have your two middle of the order bats. One is going to play a position and one is going to DH. Manny is the better choice to play the field and Papi is the DH. From 2004-2007 Manny gets hit, per bref, with a -7.3 dwar and Ortiz gets hit with a -5.3 dwar.
You need a DH and they do not play defense (except a few NL games in which Ortiz always seemed decent enough), so on those teams Ortiz' defensive ability seemed neutral in terms of wins.
Meanwhile, Manny at least played the field, and Papi didn't, so it makes no practical sense that Ramirez gets dinged more than Ortiz.
So he himself would have had more value as a baseball player, by bref war, if he had been on another team that didn’t have David Ortiz (so Manny could have been DH) Seems glitchy to me but whatever.
I’d be pretty handsome if I wasn’t so fat and exercised. And yeah Manny was so bad that he probably would’ve had slightly more value as a DH but that’s how the Red Sox built their team. Everyone knew that at the time but they’re just putting a number on the real world value but it probably would’ve been like a half a win or so.
Manny Ramirez's teams were almost always good, usually very good, with him playing the outfield and rarely DH-ing. Like almost every year he played more than half the games, his teams were finished in first or second place and won a ton of games.
Of course an individual player isn't directly responsible for his team's success, and his bat helped make up for some defensive issues.
But defensive stats (especially the ones that are a decade or two old) and player reputations are really not very revealing either. For example, for a lot of the years Manny was with the Red Sox, some of the stats didn't account for the impact of the LF wall correctly. They would ding the LF for not catching short fly balls that hit the wall, because they would have been outs in other parks, so it must be the LF's fault when a 320-foot pop fly hits 15 feet high off the wall.
I remember a year after the trade, somehow Jason Bay's defensive stats cratered as soon as he moved to Fenway, while Manny's improved as soon as he left Fenway. Then Bay's numbers bounced up again when he left Boston. Surely just a coincidence, as those defensive numbers were the best we had at the time, so that means they were correct, right?
And I think part of Manny's bad defensive rep came from some of his fielding mistakes being legendarily hilarious.
(This all was pretty much just an excuse to post this video): View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcewudvPjdM
Thank you for the kind words. I changed the dividing line from ages 27/28 to 29/30. To ensure that I selected a comparably talented group of players, I required a minimum of 28 WAR by the player’s age 29 season. Again, I limited it to the past 50 years.
As before, the details are long. They are spoilered here:
That yielded a group of 127 players; 28 were still active, leaving a study group of 99. It’s a really good group of players, largely the same as the leaders through age 27, but with a few changes. The leaders in WAR through age 29 were ARod (80.6 WAR) and Albert Pujols (73.8 WAR). The bottom two players are Adam Jones (28.6 WAR) and Rafael Furcal (28.1 WAR). The median players are Tony Gwynn and Eric Chavez, who both had 35.5 WAR. The mean for the group was 38.8 WAR. (The earlier study looking at players up to age 27, had a mean of 28.8, which means that in the two additional seasons, our “mean player” put up 10 WAR on average. That sounds like just the sort of player I wanted to look at this study.)
What happened next? From age 30 on, this same group of 99 players put up a mean of 21.3 WAR. At the top of the list is Barry Bonds (96.3 WAR after age 29); he’s 40 WAR ahead of the #2 player, Mike Schmidt (56.6 WAR). Yo La Tengo's suggestion of isolating the PED players looks like it might have merit. The median players were Will Clark (20.7 WAR) and Fred McGriff (20.5 WAR). The bottom of the list is Darryl Strawberry (1.9 WAR) and Edgardo Alfonso (-1.2 WAR).
These players put up 65% of their career WAR by age 29 and just 35% after that. Looking again at my five arbitrary categories:
Excellent return (>40 WAR): 8 players (8%), ranging from Bonds and Schmidt down to Paul Molitor (45.9 WAR) and Rafael Palmeiro (41.4 WAR).
Good return (30-39.99 WAR): 12 players (12%), ranging from Jim Thome (38.6 WAR) to Ryne Sandberg (30.2 WAR).
Solid return (20-29.99 WAR): 26 players (26%), ranging from Dave Winfield (29.7 WAR) down to Bernie Williams (20.4 WAR).
Poor return (10-19.99 WAR): 24 players (24%), ranging from Jack Clark (19.8 WAR) to Ted Simmons (10.6 WAR).
Catastrophic failure (<10 WAR): 24 players (24%), ranging from Don Mattingly (9.3 WAR) to Edgardo Alfonso (-1.2 WAR).
It’s a different picture than it was two years earlier. The rate of “poor return” or “catastrophic failure” has increased 16%, from 41.4% to 48%. Almost half of the players in the sample (48/99) produced less than 20 WAR after their age 29 seasons. But it’s still not as bad as I had expected. The mean player in this group would be expected to average 2.1 WAR over a 10-year contract, mediocre rather than a black hole.
Now let’s look at pitchers. There are 40 pitchers who qualify; seven of them are still active, leaving a study group of 33. At the top of the list are Clemens (62.6 WAR by age 29) and Blyleven (59.5 WAR). The two lowest pitchers are Andy Pettite (28.8 WAR) and Josh Beckett (28.3 WAR). The median pitchers in the group are Roy Oswalt (36.8 WAR) and Mark Buehrle (36 WAR). The mean for the group is 38.6 WAR by age 29. (This is 9.4 WAR higher than the mean for the study group that was two years younger. Another sign that we’ve identified a group of really good pitchers.)
And after that? The pitchers’ mean score is 19.3 WAR, ranging from Clemens (76.6 WAR) and Maddux (56.2 WAR) down to Matt Cain and Brandon Webb, who both posted -2.1 WAR from age 30 on. The median pitchers in this group are Frank Tanana (18.1 WAR)and Dave Stieb (14.3 WAR). As a group, they put up 2/3 of their career WAR by age 29, with just 1/3 after that.
Let’s look at the five arbitrary categories:
Excellent return (>40 WAR): 3 pitchers (9%): Clemens, Maddux, and Mike Mussina (45.1 WAR).
Good return (30-39.99 WAR): 5 pitchers (15%), ranging from John Smoltz (38.3 WAR) to Andy Pettite (31.4 WAR).
Solid return (20-29.99 WAR): 5 pitchers (15%), ranging from Pedro (26.6 WAR) down to Mark Buehrle (23.1 WAR).
Poor return (10-19.99 WAR): 8 pitchers (24%), ranging from CC Sabathia (18.9 WAR) to Doc Gooden (11.4 WAR).
Catastrophic failure (<10 WAR): 12 pitchers (36%), ranging from Kevin Appier (8.9 WAR) to Brandon Webb (-2.1 WAR).
Again, pitchers are substantially riskier, with 60% producing less than 20 WAR after age 29, but the results aren’t any worse than they were looking at the age 27/28 split. Perhaps the lesson here is that while some pitchers fall apart, the ones that don’t continue to produce for a long time.
To summarize: The results of this study haven’t changed as much as I expected. While these longterm contracts are risky, failure is by no means certain.
This group is two years older than the previous study. Position players now produce a mean of 21.3 WAR (22% less than the 27/28 group). The percentage of catastrophic failure (players producing less than 10 WAR) has nearly doubled, from 12.6% to 24%. The percentage of players producing an excellent return (more than 40 WAR) has been cut in half, from 20% to 8%. There’s still value there, but the risks are greater and the rewards are less. Spread over a 10-year contract, our “mean player” would produce 2.1 WAR per year.
For pitchers, the picture is remarkably unchanged from the earlier study. The younger group produced an average WAR of 19.9 WAR after age 27. This older group produces nearly the same average result: 19.3 WAR after age 29. The rate of catastrophic failure (less than 10 WAR) is only a bit higher; it was 31% for the younger group and is now 36%. The percentage of pitchers producing more than 40 WAR after the age cut-off is lower, but only marginally so (9% in the 29/30 group vs. 10% in the 27/28 group.)
I think Yo La Tengo’s suggestion of trying to weed out the PED players is a good one: Bonds, Clemens, Palmeiro, and other players from that decade appear prominently in the lists of the most successful older players. Hardly surprising, but worth noting.
Amos Otis shared a fantastic breakdown of how the megadeals have played out in the "New Math" thread.
While "failure is by no means certain," with these deals, it is 6x more likely than an excellent return for batters and almost 7x more likely than an excellent return of pitchers. And that includes results from the PED crowd.
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