Barry Zito got paid $18.5 million last year and produced -0.4 Wins Above Replacement. You and I checked in at about 0 WAR — and by staying off the field, we out-produced Zito. I don’t know about you, but my paycheck didn’t look anything like Zito’s last year. And while my employer might be happy about that, the Giants are wondering what they got for their millions. In the everyday business world, an employer could find a way to get rid of a guy like Zito — an under-performing, overpaid employee. The Giants can’t. In fact, to get another team to take him, they’d need to pay most — if not all — of his salary. Regardless of his performance, Zito’s getting his money.

Then there’s Albert Pujols. He was paid $16 million last year and he produced 5.1 WAR. There’s nothing wrong with $16 million, if you were the St. Louis Cardinals. In fact, Pujols was worth a lot more. Teams fell over themselves trying to give Pujols a 50% raise this off-season, and that was no surprise.

So we know that the Giants had a bad deal with Zito, and the Cardinals had a good deal with Pujols. Those are extremes, and they’re obvious. But baseball, like life, is usually lived in a gray area — like the players who got the medium deals. But to figure out who those guys are, a more sophisticated analysis is required.

In today’s and tomorrow’s articles, I’ll determine the average price paid for a win in the past five years. To do this, I’ll first explain the difference between the expected price of wins before a season begins and the actual price paid after a season is finished. There are several important differences between expected price and actual price, and they’ll matter when we take a retrospective look at these contracts.

Read the rest of this entry »

“No offense, but I don’t like Stanford.” — Tony Renda, Cal Star Second Baseman

The rivalry is under assault in sports these days. Because of high-profile incidents in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles, law enforcement has a reason to try and suppress the vitriol inherent in some storied rivalries. The state of the modern game changes things too — free agency means fans are reduced to rooting for laundry, and interleague baseball means that a team is just as likely to see one team as any other.

But college is different, right? Maybe not.

Read the rest of this entry »

The 2010 and 2011 drafts were anything but ordinary for Brewers scouting director Bruce Seid. Extenuating circumstances led to Milwaukee not signing its top pick two years ago, and as a result the team had a pair of first-round selections last June. Seid used them on a pair of college arms, right-hander Taylor Jungmann — out of the University of Texas — and Georgia Tech southpaw Jed Bradley. Both agreed to deals, but not until the last minutes leading up to the August deadline.

——

Seid, on not signing first-round pick Dylan Covey in 2010: “It was an unfortunate situation. [The diabetes] is something he was unaware of when we drafted him. Before we began negotiating a contract, we had our medical staff do a full blood panel and it came up with some red flags. That was obviously surprising to all of us, but when it was all said and done, I felt good that we were able to help identify this for Dylan and the Covey family. It gave him a chance to deal with, and structure, his life and get back on track in his goal of becoming a major league player.

“We had scouted him to his last game. Just like any high-school pitcher, he had some ups and some downs during the season. The last two or three times that he pitched, we had a national cross-checker there — as well as our east and west coast scouts — and he was back on top of his game.

“The whole situation was tough. It was probably the day before the deadline when I started to get the feeling he wouldn’t be signing, that the whole thing — the health issue — was bigger than all of us. We understood that he wanted to get his health situation under control, and that he had to do what he felt was the best for him and his family. We felt that was honorable.

“The one positive for us was that we got the extra [first-round] pick this past year, and we feel we did pretty well with it. We were able to capitalize on that 15th pick with a guy we feel is an advanced pitcher. He may be able to start at a higher level than where Dylan would have been at this point.” Read the rest of this entry »

Episode 139
With normal Monday guest managing editor Dave Cameron on assignment, Bradley Woodrum plays the part of baseballing analyst for this edition of FanGraphs Audio. The topics covered? Just one, really: Yoenis Cespedes’ four-year, $36 million contract with the Oakland A’s. Also: how Oakland outfielder Collin Cowgill might be a four-win player.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio after the jump. (Approximately 35 min. play time.)

Read the rest of this entry »

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

For much of the past decade, the Philadelphia Phillies had one of the best offenses in baseball. But that was not the case last season, and the biggest question facing the Phillies this season is whether the offense rebounds, or continues a regression that could threaten to leave them on the outside of the postseason for the first time in six seasons.

Philadelphia’s offense began to make some noise in 2002 and 2003, and in 2004, the core of their playoff teams began to take shape. Jimmy Rollins, Placido Polanco and Pat Burrell were already on hand to start the season, and then Chase Utley came along in May and Ryan Howard in September. The group would finish in the top six in wOBA in 2004, 2005 and 2006 before punching up to second-best in the game in 2007. By 2007, Shane Victorino was on hand, and ’07 was the season that Jayson Werth stormed onto the scene as well, with a nifty .385 wOBA. That season, their wRC+ of 107 as a team was fourth-highest in the game. It would also be their pinnacle as an offense, as would be their .354 wOBA.

Read the rest of this entry »

In the past, while researching pitchers that had started team’s Opening Day games, I came across the name Glenn Abbott. Abbott had been the Mariners’ Opening Day starter a few times including in 1979, the team’s third year in existence. During that season, Abbott would go on to be pretty awful over 518 batters faced. Notably, he struck out just 25 hitters that year, a 4.8% strikeout rate that I found fascinating in its ineptness.

Late last week however, Jeff Sullivan reminded me of the 2003 Detroit Tigers and a Lookout Landing reader noted Nate Cornejo’s season that year in which Cornejo fanned a mere 46 hitters over a larger 842 batter sample. Amazingly, Cornejo netted 1.9 WAR that year. Cornejo’s strikeout rate was superior to Abbott’s by a touch, but it struck me that because of the changing nature of the game, with strikeouts more frequent in 2003 than in 1979, that Cornejo’s season was perhaps worthier of enshrining.

Read the rest of this entry »

Over the weekend, the Rangers and their breakout acquisition of 2012, catcher Mike Napoli, avoided arbitration with a one-year, $9.4 million contract for 2012. The Rangers and Napoli were reportedly discussing a multi-year deal prior to this agreement, and by getting this deal out of the way, they can continue to do so without an arbitration hearing looming. With Napoli now signed, the Rangers are reportedly at their budgetary limit for 2012. While it remains to be seen what exactly that means for the present and future (particularly given the ambiguous role that the money from the team’s cable contract might play in the future), it does raise the question about how much room the Rangers have for multi-year extensions.

This issue reared its head earlier in the off-sesaon when the Rangers were said to be bidding on Prince Fielder, which lead some such as myself to speculate on whether the Rangers should sign Fielder or extend star outfielder Josh Hamilton, assuming such a choice was necessary. That issue went by the wayside when Fielder signed with Detroit, and the Rangers have put their extension talks with Hamilton on hold after his latest “incident.” However, both the Rangers and Hamilton will probably want to revisit a possible extension in the future. With that in mind, let’s pose the same question with Napoli as we did with Fielder: if the Rangers budget remains tight and they can only extend one of Napoli and Hamilton, which should they choose? Would it be better to choose neither?

Read the rest of this entry »

In a bit of a stunner, the Oakland Athletics have become the latest #MysteryTeam to end up with a top free agent.

Source: Cespedes can be a free agent at end of his four-year, $36 million contract with #Athletics. #MLB

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) February 13, 2012

The Miami Marlins also made a run at Cespedes, but it appears they were only willing to offer him $36 million over the course of 6 seasons. This sort of scenario is obviously preferable for Cespedes; not only will he be paid $9 million per season over the next four years, he will then become a free agent instead of having to go through the standard six years of team control.

Many people assumed that Cespedes would receive more guaranteed money than this — some estimates had him approaching $60 million — so on the face of things, this looks like a good deal for the A’s. It’s obviously a risk, since it’s difficult to tell how Cuban players will translate to the majors, but the A’s only need him to be an average major-league player (2.0 WAR/year) for this to be a market-value deal. And if he doesn’t pan out, the A’s only have him under contract for four seasons and can move on easily enough.

Cespedes will likely be given a chance to contribute to the A’s right away, so what should we expect from him?

Read the rest of this entry »

Each day this week, we’ll be looking at the best pitches of the 2011 season — and, of course, the pitchers responsible for throwing them. Today, we look at the three best fastballs. Chris Cwik will look at the league’s best sliders tomorrow. Curveballs, changeups, and assorted other pitches will follow.

Allow me to note immediately that this post concerns only four-seam fastballs (or, at least, what’s been classified as a four-seam fastball, per our PITCHf/x data). There’s enough difference between the four-seamer and the other fastball variants — the two-seamer, sinker, and cutter — that it makes sense to isolate each one. We will look at the other sorts of fastballs later in the week.

Allow me also to note that, in evaluating the “best” pitches, I haven’t used any one criterion exclusively, but rather have exercised judgment while utilizing a number of criteria — and our other writers will be doing the same thing for the other pitches to follow, as well.

Read the rest of this entry »

Prospects have never been trendier amongst baseball fans than they are right now. The MLB Draft is now televised, most baseball blogs and online publications now publish at least a Top 10 Prospects list for each organization, and struggling fan bases such as that of the Kansas City Royals have begun to see their attendance rise as their prized minor leaguers begin to reach the majors.

The same can be said for their popularity within major league organizations, too.

Teams have begun pouring so much money into the draft that the new CBA contains specific limitations to curb the spending spree. Teams now often value control years more than overall talent and have become extremely cautious in parting with top prospects to acquire proven talent. This generalization goes for both big-market and small-market franchises, too, which is something that was not often said in previous years.

Which teams have benefited most from homegrown talent in recent years? Which teams have drafted amateur players and developed them into major league talent the best?

Read the rest of this entry »