There is still a lot of off season to go, but as it stands right now the AL West division might be a tougher battle than most would think given how it shaped up this past season.

The key to understanding that is to go back to the season in reviews that I did earlier, which ranked teams based on their BaseRuns Pythagorean record. According to those, here is the revised 2008 AL West Standings:

1. Anaheim 83-79
2. Texas 82-80
3. Oakland 78-84
4. Seattle 66-94

The Angels will get some players back from injuries in 2009 but they have also lost their 1B combo of Casey Kotchman and Mark Teixeira and their closer in Francisco Rodriguez, who although he had an over-rated season because of his saves total, was still an asset. Vladimir Guerrero and the rest of the Angels’ outfield being a year older doesn’t bode too well either. All in all, the Angels profile around a 83-88 win team by talent at the moment.

The Rangers are likely losing Milton Bradley, but should be looking at some regression from their starting rotation and more at bats to Chris Davis. Other than that, they’ll remain close to intact from their 2008 squad, so them holding around the .500 mark seems likely, in the 80-85 win range.

The Athletics benefit from the extra year as that goes to development rather than aging as is the primary case for Anaheim. They lose the innings from Harden and Blanton, but also should have a more robust offense this time around rather than the one that many were hard pressed to pick out of collegiate lineup. Along with Texas, 80-85 wins is about where they look right now. If they can pick up a Jason Giambi on the cheap you could add another win or two to that spread.

Those three alone wouldn’t make for much of a story, but the Mariners are now no longer fit to be completely left out of the question. Due for some pretty massive positive regression in both the lineup and starting rotation, new General Manager Jack Zduriencik also did a makeover on the defense. They are likely not finished dealing, but as it stands now, they appear to be in the 75-80 win range.

What we have is all four teams being within about a 10-win spread of each other heading in to the new year. Whether that gap stands when Spring Training rolls around is obviously yet to be determined, but for a division that the Angels won by 21 games last season, there is merit to paying attention again.

Brian Sabean has been lampooned in the past for a wide array of his transactions. This offseason, however, he has done a very decent job in terms of bringing in the right personnel. Josh Phelps joined the team in order to platoon at first base with Travis Ishikawa. Then, Sabes inked Jeremy Affeldt and Bob Howry to fill out the bullpen. Edgar Renteria, coming off of a down year bound to regress, signed to replace Omar Vizquel. And, most recently, Sabean brought Randy Johnson to the rotation, finishing up quite the formidable pitching staff.

This all leads to one of the hottest topics on the inter-webs these days: can the Giants contend in 2009?

The simple answer is a yes given the context of the division. The Padres are in full rebuilding mode. The Diamondbacks have lost three key pieces in Orlando Hudson, Randy Johnson, and Adam Dunn. The Rockies traded away Matt Holliday and have been actively shopping Garrett Atkins. Even with a healthy Troy Tulowitzki, the Coors Gang is not all that threatening.

Lastly, even though the Dodgers will likely bring back Manny Ramirez, they will be losing ace Derek Lowe and relying on Jason Schmidt to help fill the void. The Dodgers will be the team to beat in the division, but they might not be as scary as some would think.

With this in mind, it seems that ~85 wins could net the division title for any of these teams. Do the Giants have what it takes to reach that threshold?

Their starting rotation, as mentioned above, is extremely stellar. R.J. called it potentially the best in the National League. Though this seemed like a stretch to many commenters, the projections for Tim Lincecum, Matt Cain, Randy Johnson, Jonathan Sanchez, and Barry Zito, range from +1.4 to +5.4 wins. Summed together, this quintet projects to be worth about +15 wins next season.

Affeldt and Howry joined a bullpen featuring the likes of Brian Wilson, Keichii Yabu, Billy Sadler, and Merkin Valdez among others. All of these relievers add up to around +3 wins. Considering that a team full of replacement players would win 50 games, before even venturing into the lineup, the Giants are up to 68 wins.

The lineup, however, is widely considered to be their achilles heel, as they do not really possess any terrific hitting talent. Phelps/Ishikawa look to platoon at first base. The projections for these two do not really tell the whole story, as they will be facing only opposite-handed pitchers. Ishi’s minor league equivalency is not all that sunny, either. These two combine to be about a league average hitter playing -5 run defense. This results in approximately +0.3 wins.

At the keystone corner, Emmanuel Burriss will apparently be logging most of the playing time. With only one year of data, we do not know all that much about Burriss. He appears to be a bit above average in the field while lacking any true offensive prowess. With adjustments for his position and production relative to the replacement level, not average, Burriss could range anywhere from +1.2 to +1.5 wins.

Renteria is a very interesting case, due to his disappointing 2008 campaign. Shifting back to the senior circuit should help his cause, and one would figure he could not perform any worse than he did last season, anyway. I’m calling Edgar a +2-run hitter and +1-run fielder for next season. After adjustments are thrown in for playing time and position, this amounts to +2.8 wins.

Pablo Sandoval will man the hot corner next season. A top-tiered prospect if there ever was one, Sandoval has all the tools to become a household name next season. Weighting his projections gives us a +7-run hitter and +1-run fielder, pitting Pablo at +2.5 wins. All told, this gives the Giants +6.8 wins in the infield. Solid production out of Burriss could bump that up to +7 wins very easily. And, if not from Burriss, a more optimistic projection for Sandoval could do the very same trick.

In the outfield, the Giants will bring back Fred Lewis, Aaron Rowand, and Randy Winn. Winn, one of the most underrated players in the game, has a +2.9 win projection next season, which actually leads all offensive players on the team.

After moving to the bay, Rowand struggled both offensively and defensively in 2008, in no way earning his $12 mil average annual value. Prior to last season, Rowand had posted +14, +3, and +8 marks in UZR, and +0, -6, +25 offensive runs respectively. In 2008, he produced like a league average hitter while costing the team -12 runs relative to an average centerfielder. Assuming both of these marks regress a bit, Rowand’s worth will be somewhere in the +2.3 win range.

Last, but not least, Fred Lewis combines some good pop with slick fielding. His 2009 projections call for +4 runs offensively and +5 with the glove. Playing a corner outfield position hurts his value, but overall, Lewis looks to be a +2 win player. These three combine to be worth +7.2 wins. Summing the infield and outfield results in +14 wins. Add Bengie Molina’s +2.3 win projection and we have +16.3 wins for the Giants offense.

The 2009 Giants will be getting approximately 18 wins out of their entire pitching staff and 16.3 wins out of their lineup. If we round that up to +17 for bench contribution or as “insurance” if certain players vastly outperform their projections, we are looking at an 85-win team.

Some of these projections may be a bit too optimistic for their owners, but the Giants appear to be talented enough to win anywhere from 78-85 games next season. Even a 78-win team could jump up to 85 wins a decent portion of the time, meaning that the Giants are in no way locks to win the NL West, but are definitely capable of contending next season.

If Sandoval really pulls his weight, Renteria shows that last season was a fluke, the bullpen holds fort, and the rotation meets their projections, there is no reason this team could not win the division. In the playoffs, we then are looking at a Lincecum-Cain-Unit rotation that could definitely scare some teams. A few key aspects of player performance will need to come to fruition for the team to surpass 80-wins, but it is not out of the realm of feasibility.

This afternoon, we looked at the offensive side of the Win Value equation. Linear weights are pretty widely accepted now, and since wOBA and wRAA match up so well with what people understand about offensive value (Albert Pujols had a good year, Jeff Francoeur did not), it’s not a big surprise that there isn’t much questioning that part of the formula. We get into a bit stickier water when we move to the Fielding side of things, however.

In the Win Values calculations here, Fielding is fairly straight forward – it’s simply a player’s total UZR at all positions for the given year. We talked a lot about UZR the last few weeks after it was added to the site, but if you’re looking for a more detailed explanation of the system, the introduction can be found in part one and part two. Essentially, it’s the best fielding metric publicly available, and while it’s not perfect (I generally give it an error range of five runs in either direction, meaning that a +10 could be anything between a +5 and +15), it’s a big step forward in defensive evaluations.

UZR, unlike the offensive component wRAA, is relative to the league average of the position for that player. We talked about this a few weeks ago in talking about how to read the UZR numbers. +15 in LF is simply not an equal performance to +15 in CF, as the players they are getting compared to are drastically different. This creates the need for position adjustments to account for the difference in quality between positions. However, when displaying the Win Values here, we’ve broken them out into separate components to be as transparent as possible, so the Fielding numbers do not include the position adjustment. We’ll get to those next. The fielding total is simply a sum of the players UZR from each position he played in the given year.

The current version of UZR on FanGraphs does not include a few minor things, such as the value of arm strength and turning double plays. Some of these will be added in soon as MGL updates the data, but the changes are going to be minor – despite the emphasis put on it by many, there just isn’t a huge difference betwee most major league players in terms of the runs saved through their throws from the outfield. However, if you feel like a particular player has an exceptional arm and should be rewarded for it, feel free to add in a couple of runs to make up for the fact that UZR doesn’t include that portion of his defensive value.

The other important point to make here is that you’ll notice that catchers have no values entered in the Fielding portion of their Win Values. Evaluating catcher defense is something we’re simply not very good at right now, and while there are strides being made (including a great article by Tom Tango in the 2009 Hardball Times Annual), there’s a lot of things that we haven’t figured out how to quantify yet. So, we’ve just left catchers alone, ranking them all as league average, and will let you all adjust their final win value however you’d like to reflect their defensive value relative to other catchers.

If you think Joe Mauer’s catching abilities and leadership are worth one win, just add one win to what we display as his win value here. Quantifying catching defense is something that we just haven’t figured out yet, and so we’re not pretending that we have. Consider it an opportunity to fill in the blanks.

Tomorrow, we’ll look at the position adjustments and how the wRAA, UZR, and position adjustments add up.

With the rumored signings of both right-handed starter Brad Penny and catcher Josh Bard, the Boston Red Sox organization has begun to make some changes to its 40-man roster at the Major League level. Prior to those two (upcoming) additions, though, the Red Sox also added three prospects to the 40-man roster: pitchers Felix Doubront and Hunter Jones, as well as catcher Mark Wagner.

Doubront is a left-handed Venezuelan who has been state-side for the past three seasons. He recovered from a terrible 2007 (which included an 8.93 ERA in 11 A-ball starts, but just a 5.89 FIP) to post a 3.67 ERA (2.90 FIP) in 115.1 A-ball innings in 2008. Doubront allowed 115 hits and posted rates of 1.87 BB/9 and 9.21 K/9. The 21-year-old hurler finished the season in High-A ball and posted a FIP of 2.13 in 14 innings of work. Doubront features a curveball as his out-pitch, as well as a modest fastball in the low 90s, a slider and an occasional change-up.

Hunter Jones, 24, was originally signed as a non-drafted amateur free agent out of Florida State University in 2005. Despite his modest beginnings, Jones has never posted an ERA above 3.19 in pro ball. In 2008, the left-hander split time between Double-A and Triple-A. In Double-A, Hunter allowed 21 hits in 22.2 innings of work and posted rates of 1.59 BB/9 and 10.32 K/9. At Triple-A, he allowed 55 hits in 50.2 relief innings and posted rates of 2.49 BB/9 and 8.88 K/9. In the last two seasons, just eight balls have left the yard against Jones in 162.2 innings. His repertoire includes a sinking fastball that sits in the upper 80s and touches 91 mph. He also has a curveball and change-up.

Wagner was originally drafted in the 29th round out of high school by the Atlanta Braves, but chose to attend the University of California-Irvine and jumped up 20 rounds in 2005. The 24-year-old hit more than .300 in his first three pro seasons before slumping terribly in 2008 at the Double-A level. In 342 at-bats, the right-handed batter hit just .219/.297/.363 with a .143 ISO and a .294 wOBA. He posted rates of 10.0 BB% and 22.8%. In the past, Wagner maintained near-even walk and strikeout rates. On the encouraging side in 2008, his BABIP was just .256. Defensively, he is at least average, with the potential to be above average.

So, you’ve probably noticed that the Big New Thing around here is Win Values for position players. David has added them to the player pages, the team pages, and even the leaderboards. Now, instead of sounding like a total nerd by telling your friends that Pujols is awesome because he had an .843 wOBA (not his real number, but not out of the question), you can simply tell them that he was a nine win player last year, worth about $40 million in 2008 salary. Nine wins. Forty Million. Everyone understands these numbers.

That’s the beauty of win values – we can express a player’s contribution to his team in ways that are both meaningful and easy to understand. As much as I love WPA/LI, it’s just never going to be something that the casual fan is going to understand without a good bit of explanation. Win values, though – I can tell my mom that Adrian Beltre is a four win player and she’ll understand in 30 seconds. And, without too much more explanation, I can explain that those four wins are worth about $18 million in salary, and so not only is Beltre worth his salary, but he’s actually something of a bargain.

Win Values are a big open door to acceptance of our particular brand of analysis among non-statheady fans, and even within our little insulated community, they’re still a big step forward over the commonly accepted performance metrics of the last few years. However, rather than just telling you that and having you trust us, we figured it’d be a good idea to explain how the win values are calculated and break down each part of the formula for you to see. So, this week, we’ll be looking at the calculations of each part and walking everyone through the steps to create a win value for a particular position player.

This afternoon, we’ll start with the “Batting” component. Sticking with the Adrian Beltre example, we see that he hit .266/.327/.457 last year. However, while that’s interesting, do you know how valuable that is just by looking at it? Me either. That’s why there’s wOBA, which takes all the results of a player’s plate appearances throughout the year and uses run value weights to sum up a player’s production at the plate in a number that is easily converted to runs above average. That number, wRAA, is found right next to wOBA on each player’s page. It is, essentially, a player’s value that he produces at the plate relative to a league average hitter. You can read more about wOBA in The Book, and we went into detail about it a while ago.

However, you may notice that a player’s Batting value doesn’t match his wRAA value on the player cards. That’s because the wRAA numbers on the site are not park adjusted, but to build a proper win value, you have to include the effects of a player’s home environment. Getting back to Beltre, he plays in a park that depresses run scoring, so the runs that he creates are more valuable than they would be if they came in a park where runs were more plentiful. So, while his raw offensive line may have only been worth 3.9 runs, when we adjust for Safeco Field, his Batting value goes up to 5.9 runs.

That number – the 5.9 in Beltre’s case – represents the amount of runs above or below average that each player created with their bat for a given year. This number is not position adjusted, as I detailed my issues with offensive position adjustments back in November. We’ll add the position adjustments in later, so it gets included in a player’s total value, but I think it’s incorrect to add it to the offensive total.

So, when you’re looking at the Win Values section, that’s Batting – offensive runs above or below average, not position adjusted, but adjusted for the run environment of his home park.

It appears the Boston Red Sox are not going to wait until 2009 before securing a new battery. Theo Epstein and company have agreed to terms with free agents Brad Penny (1 year, 5-8 million) and Josh Bard (1 year, 1.6 million).

Just a few days ago I noted Bard as a smart addition for the Sox. Considering the relative small risk involved, and the potential for a decent reward, you have to like the deal for the Red Sox. At 1.6 million, the Sox are paying for less than a half of a win, an investment likely to produce profit, especially considering that Bard has averaged ~1 WAR per season over his career.

Bard’s addition would seemingly lower the chances of Jason Varitek returning. Given that neither Bard or Varitek should catch knuckleballer Tim Wakefield along with George Kottaras familiarity with the pitch thanks to Charlie Zink. I guess if nothing else the Sox could either carry three catchers, which seems excessive, or simply release Bard if Varitek does return, but reading between the lines neither seems overly likely.

Right-shoulder ailments ruined Brad Penny’s 2008. Actually, that’s a bit unfair, Penny’s stubbornness towards those injuries ruined his 2008. Rather than do the sensible thing by not attempting to pitch through such aches, Penny “soldiered on” and hurt both the Dodgers and his free agent stock in the process. Penny’s walk per nine rates were the highest of his career, his strikeout per nine the lowest, and his FIP the highest by a little less than half of a run. It’s safe to call 2008 the nadir of Penny’s career.

Only a slight change occurred in Penny’s velocity and pitch usage. Penny still threw ~70% fastballs that sat around 92-93, along with a good number of curveballs. 2008 did see Penny’s change, a pitch he used heavily in 2007 and no other year, fade into the back of his arsenal. It doesn’t appear Penny’s pitches were more hittable in 2008 either, despite increased homerun rates, Penny’s batted ball variety hovered around his career averages.

Penny’s contract calls for a three million dollar bonus if he reaches at least 160 innings. There’s a pretty decent chance Penny cashes in on that. Marcels says 127 innings and a 4.11 FIP, placing Penny around 2.5-3 WAR, or in other words, earning more than what his contract is worth. This suggests Justin Masterson will remain in relief and Michael Bowden along with Clay Buchholz won’t be in the rotation initially.

The Red Sox cadre consists of highly intelligent baseball folk, so to see chances taken on players like Bard and Penny makes sense, just as it did with Bartolo Colon last season.

Walt Jocketty and the Cincinnati Reds signed Willy Taveras to a two-year deal this weekend. The financial terms of the deal have not yet been disclosed, but the team plans on leading Taveras off and putting his glove in centerfield. Taveras will be replacing Corey Patterson, who, in 392 PA last season was worth -25.5 runs with the bat while supplying league average defense in center. Patterson made $3 mil in salary in spite of his -$5 mil fair market value. Essentially, by playing Patterson for 135 games, the Reds would have had to spend $5 mil more just to get back to zero wins above replacement from his roster spot.

Taveras had a disappointing 2008 season, posting a .301 wOBA while playing -7 run defense in centerfield. He, too, “cost” his team money, though not nearly as much as Patterson. Willy earned $2 mil in actual salary despite being worth -0.8 mil. He did, however, manage to steal 68 bases.

In 2007, Taveras hit .320/.367/.382 for the Rockies with a wOBA of .344. He only played 97 games but still managed to match his 2006 stolen base total of 33 swipes. His offense has never been superb, but Taveras could always stake claim as a menace on the basepaths. And, prior to 2007, his UZR ratings pegged him as a very solid fielder.

Taveras’ defense has taken a turn for the worse recently. After posting +7 and +13 UZR ratings in 2005 and 2006, Taveras was worth -10 runs in 2007 and -7 runs last season. His lack of offensive prowess may not have mattered as much while he stole a ton of bases and manned centerfield ably. In 2008, only the baserunning facet of these skills seemed evident.

For the 2009 season, Taveras projects to be at -12 offensive runs and between -2 and +2 runs with the glove. For the sake of this analysis, let’s call him a -12 run hitter and 0 run fielder, deeming him average at the tough position. Playing around 140 games with 540 PA, Patterson would receive an additional +20 runs for value above replacement level as well as adjusting for his position.

Added to the offense and defense, this makes Taveras +8 runs, or roughly +0.8 wins, next season. This would mark an improvement over the -0.2 wins in 2008 and the +0.6 wins the year before.

At the 2009 fair market value of $5 mil/win, this makes Taveras a $4 mil player. He signed for a two-year deal, which would be valued at anywhere between $7-8 mil based on these projections. We will know more about the contract’s terms this week, in order to compare his actual received salary to the fair market value.

If Willy can find and harness his offensive numbers from 2007 while reverting to the defensive performances seen prior to the same year, these numbers vastly shift. With a .332 wOBA and +5 run defense, and the same number of plate appearances, Willy becomes a +2.4 win player. His fair market value in this case is closer to $12 mil.

By signing Taveras, Jocketty and the Reds are likely paying him somewhere in the vicinity of the +0.8 wins while holding out plenty of hope that his actual value inches closer to the +2.4 win mark. A few aspects of his performance will need to revert to prior instances of success for this to take place, but it still seems more sound than throwing Patterson out there for another season. Well, more sound assuming that they are not paying Taveras an exorbitant fee.

As long as the deal stays much lower than the $12 mil fair market value based on his “extremely optimistic” projection, it isn’t an awful signing.

The deal does, however, depend a lot on the hope that the Taveras from 2008 is not truly Willy. Two-year deals based on a hope are awfully risky, so this will be considered a win for the Reds if and only if his production improves. It might not be considered a loss if the average annual value is even lower than the $4 mil fair market value based on his actual projection if the production fails to improve. Still, for an organization with some nice young pieces in place, a two-year deal based on a hope seems like an odd move.

This has been FanGraphs’ 3rd full year in production and I wanted to take a moment to acknowledge all the hard working people that make FanGraphs possible:

Our Writers – Dave Cameron, Eric Seidman, Marc Hulet, Matthew Carruth, R.J. Anderson, David Golebiewski, Peter Bendix, and Brian Joura have become in my opinion one of the best writing teams in the business.

Tom Tango – The creator and inspiration behind many of the stats on FanGraphs including, but not limited to wOBA and everything Win Probability. His support of FanGraphs has been invaluable.

Mitchel Lichtman – Who graciously provides us with UZR fielding model to bring you the most advanced fielding metrics possible.

Our Projection Providers – Sean Smith (CHONE), Dan Szymborski (ZiPS), Baseball Info Solutions (Bill James), Tom Tango (Marcels), and Jeff Sackman (MINER) for allowing us to display their innovative projection systems.

Steve Moyer and Damon Lichtenwalner – Our go-to stats providers at Baseball Info Solutions are continually working to provide us with the best and most accurate data in the business.

Our Supporters – Anyone who has ever linked to a story or player on FanGraphs this past year, we could not continue to exist without your support and I’m grateful you feel our content is worth informing your readers about.

Our Readers and Visitors – In the past year you have turned the site into not just a destination for baseball stats, but a growing baseball community. It is you who inspire us with your contributions and visits to continue to try and make FanGraphs the best it can possibility be.

Happy New Year!

Brian Sabean needs to do something silly soon. Like, trade Jonathan Sanchez for Jorge Cantu or Tim Lincecum for Alexis Rios silly, otherwise, the Giants are having an amusingly solid off-season. It started by adding Josh Phelps, next signing Jeremy Affeldt, and then inking Bob Howry and Edgar Renteria, but Sabean may have topped himself today by signing Randy Johnson for one year and eight million. Okay, there are some jokes to be made concerning the Giants and Johnson’s advanced age, but he’s still pretty good.

In fact, Johnson was one of the better starters in the league last season, even at 44 years of age. Johnson threw 184 innings while maintaining a 3.76 FIP, an 8.46 strikeout per nine ratio, and walking only 2.15 per nine. Johnson’s .316 batting average on balls in play is a bit higher than you would expect from a pitcher who allows 18.2% line drives, but not high enough that you can claim bad luck.

Marcels punishes Johnson for his age, but still has him throwing 158 innings with a 4.11 FIP. That’s a ~2 win improvement over 158 innings than a replacement level starter, or a slightly worse version of Kevin Correia’s 2008. If Johnson pitches to that level, he’s earned his contract, and that speaks more to the quality of the contract than the Giants expectations of Johnson. This is a far better contract than the one given to fellow senior hurler Jamie Moyer.

Johnson’s velocity was down from previous years – from 92-93 to 90-91, but even that didn’t stop the Big Unit from helping to form an outstanding rotation in Arizona. Speaking of which, now the Giants rotation is something like: Lincecum, Matt Cain, Johnson, Sanchez, and Barry Zito. That very well could be the best rotation in the National League.

Dave and Matthew have written extensively about Johnson being a bargain and Arizona mistakenly letting him walk, but both points need to be touched upon again. At the time, Matthew wrote: “[Arizona] made a huge, potentially division-costing mistake…” at the time, Johnson to the Cubs was the rumor du jour, now Johnson has landed with a division rival. Pardon the awful pun, but the Diamondbacks might be snake-bit by this move multiple times in 2009.

Congratulations to the Giants fans who’ve endured a post-Bonds world, this Giants team is looking like a potential contender for the division crown. Now, just prepare yourselves for all of the witty “Giants/Big Unit/Giant of a Pitcher” headlines sure to follow.

Earlier this week, the wins above replacement and fair market value calculations were added to the player pages. The additions enable us not just to view the productivity levels of certain players, but also how much money they could have commanded on the open market. The numbers are now available on the leaderboards, too, offering up the capability to find players worth the most/least in a given season or period of time.

One of the most interesting aspects of this data involves comparing what a player earned to what he actually made. For instance, in my Jayson Werth post, the data indicated that, from 2007-09, Werth would make something like $6.55 mil while actually providing $54 mil in wins above replacement. The next logical step would be to show the actual salary next to the deserved salary. This step recently came to fruition, meaning that we can now compare, on a player’s page, what he actually made to what his production merited.

With that in mind, I thought it might be fun to take a look at a few players and see how they are valued compared to what they deserve. As an example, we will once again turn to Werth. From 2005-2008, he produced +9.1 WAR. He actually earned $2.9 mil in this span despite being worth $38.5 mil. Sure, he has been under team control, but the numbers here are fascinating. Essentially, Werth has been paid 13.28 times less than his production would indicate over this four-year span.

How about teammate Chase Utley, who has been the second most productive hitter over the last three years? Chase has been worth +30 WAR from 2005-08, a total worth the lump sum of $118.2 mil. Due to being under team control and having some arbitration years bought out in his 7-yr deal, Utley has actually made just $13.4 mil over the last four seasons. Utley has made 8.82 times less than he deserves.

Perhaps some form of this could be parlayed into an analysis of General Manager’s, as getting $118.2 mil worth of production for just $13.4 mil is no small feat.

How about Alex Rodriguez? Would you believe that A-Rod has actually been underpaid relative to his production over the last four years? Sounds ludicrous given his contract, but it is true. A-Rod has been worth +28.5 WAR in this span, which translates to $110.6 mil. His actual salaries add up to $98.4 mil, a full $12 mil below his fair market value.

And, as good as Manny Ramirez may have looked recently, he has actually been overpaid. ManRam has amassed +14.8 WAR since 2005, worth $59.5 mil. He actually made $76.2 mil, just about $17 mil more than his production merited.

These are just a few examples, and it would be extremely interesting to see how an entire roster stacks up in this regard, but all of the data we have used in our dollar valuations is now available on this site. And, even better, we can compare the fair market values with actual money earned to really see who has or has not earned their salaries.