Over the last few years, we have analyzed nearly every notable contract signed in Major League Baseball, and one of the tools that we have used regularly is a pricing model that we often refer to as $/WAR. Basically, this calculation takes a look at the expected production from a player during the life of the contract that he just signed, then also the total cost of the contract over the length of the deal, and divides the production by the price. This calculation attempts to estimate the price paid for the expected production, and gives us an idea of what teams are paying for projected wins in baseball’s closest thing to a free market.

To be clear, FanGraphs didn’t invent this calculation, and this isn’t an idea specific to us. Doug Pappas was doing similar calculations a decade ago using a method he called Marginal Payroll and Marginal Wins. Nate Silver also wrote about the marginal value of a win during his time at Baseball Prospectus, and Tom Tango has been calculating $/WAR for contracts for years on his blog. Over the last few years, plenty of others have written about the price of a win in MLB, and there are multiple methods to perform this kind of calculation.

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Comcast SportsNet Houston went live Oct. 1, 2012, and has been in trouble ever since. Actually, the trouble may have started before the first broadcast signal beamed to homes in the Houston area. Now the network and its various constituent owners are fighting in federal bankruptcy court and in Texas state court. The situation may get worse before it gets better.

The Houston Astros own the largest equity stake in CSN Houston, at 46%. The Houston Rockets own 32% and Comcast has the remaining 22%. Comcast owns NBC Universal, which operates Comcast Sports Group — the network of regional sports networks that includes CSN Bay Area, CSN California, CSN Chicago, CSN Philadelphia, CSN Mid-Atlantic and CSN Northwest.

Not only do the Astros have a large stake in CSN Houston, but also a 20-year, rights-fee deal that was supposed to pay the team, on average, $80 million per season. That figure is in line with other recently-inked broadcast deals for MLB teams in medium-to-large television markets: the Rangers and Angels are on the high end, with deals averaging $150 million per year for 20 years. The Padres are on the low end, with a deal averaging $60 million per year for 20 years.

But what the Astros were scheduled to be paid for the broadcast rights to their games differs significantly from what they received. Forbes reported that the CSN Houston deal called for the Astros to be paid $56 million this year, but the network paid only $25 million because it didn’t have the revenue to meet its obligations.

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Nolan Arenado excelled defensively in his rookie season. The Colorado Rockies third baseman won a Gold Glove, and he had the numbers to back it up. The rifle-armed 22-year-old ranked second at his position in assists, fielding percentage, and Defensive Runs Saved. He ranked third in UZR.

At the plate, he wasn’t as good. The right-handed hitter had a .267/.301/.405 slash line, with 10 home runs. Discipline was an issue, as his 4.5 walk rate was one of the worst in the National League.

His track record suggests Arenado will always be an aggressive hitter. His minor-league walk rate ranged between 4.8 and 8.1, and his strikeout rate between 8.0 and 13.0. Despite his free-swinging ways, he’s shown plenty of potential on the offensive side of the ball. In four-plus seasons on the farm, he hit .299/.345/.473.

Arenado talked about his offensive approach during the 2013 season. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben and Sam discuss the early movement on the free agent market, then break down the Jose Molina, Brian McCann, and Joe Smith signings.

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Episode 403
Dave Cameron is both (a) the managing editor of FanGraphs and (b) the guest on this particular edition of FanGraphs Audio — during which edition he analyzes as many of the recent transactions as he can tolerate.

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.)

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Joe Smith, who has long contended with Scott Baker and Jim Johnson for The Most Boring Name in Baseball, reportedly signed a three-year, $15.75 million deal with the Angels over the weekend. This might seem like another multi-year contract of the sort bloggers like to complain about, but I don’t think that conclusion is self evident. The more important question might be how this fits into a coherent off-season strategy for the Angels to improve their run prevention.

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Knock on wood, I certainly hope so. This piece isn’t about sending a tribute to the area, rather it is a discussion of the composition of the minor leagues and those who reach the major leagues.

While this article became a study of a the California League’s population, the concept began when I was thinking about Jake Lamb’s prospect status. Lamb signed with the Diamondbacks last June and I stumbled upon him during his first Spring Training with the club — he ranked among the 10 best prospects I saw in Arizona. Intrigued, I followed his injury-riddled season closely and thought he would never garner the attention I believed he deserved because of his old age and collegiate pedigree (though, Hulet ranked him higher than anyone else this off season!).  Suddenly, I found myself buried in Excel attempting to discover what Jake Lamb’s chances were to become a major leaguer.

Statistical studies of prospects are difficult because the minor leagues are vast and rife with variables and failure. There are 189 teams across 16 full-season, short season and rookie leagues, each stocked with talent that may never make a major league 25-man roster. With over 5,000 minor leaguers vying for 750 MLB roster spots it can be easier to study the successes.

Studying only the players who reach the major leagues may be easier, but often such studies snag on “survivorship bias.” Survivorship bias may be present when a study’s population consists of a select group amongst a larger class. If one is going to study success, it’s wise to study failure too. For a demonstration of survivorship bias, read Dave Cameron’s post on The Value of Hunter Pence.

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At the end of last week, polite and Canadian and polite Marc Hulet published his 2014 organizational prospect list for the Arizona Diamondbacks.

It goes without saying that, in composing such a list, Hulet has considered the overall future value those prospects might be expected to provide either to the D-backs or whatever other organizations to which they might someday belong.

What this brief post concerns isn’t overall future value, at all, but rather such value as the prospects from Hulet’s list might provide were they to play, more or less, a full major-league season in 2014.

Other prospect projections: Chicago AL / Miami / Seattle.

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In case you haven’t heard, The Hardball Times Baseball Annual 2014 is now available to purchase on ye ole internets. You can find my post on the book here, Dave Studeman’s post on the book here, and listen to Carson Cistulli’s FanGraphs Audio episode with Studes here.

After you’re done consuming those posts, you can buy it from Createspace (where we get the biggest cut of sales), from Amazon (in both print and for the Kindle) and from Barnes & Noble on the Nook.

Because we’re giving folk, and since it’s the beginning of the holiday season and all, we want to give you a chance to win yourself a free copy of the book. So today, tomorrow and Wednesday, we’ll be running a trivia contest based on one of the articles in the book. The first person to post the correct answer in the comments will win a free physical copy of the book (sorry, no free Kindle or Nook versions). It’s just that simple!

Today’s question comes from the article entitled “The Most Storied Postseasons.” In it, Dave Studeman details the 10 most storied postseason careers, using ChampAdded as his metric of choice. Studes ran the list both before and after the 2013 postseason, and there were changes. The question before you today, dear reader, is this:

Which player got bumped off of the 10 most storied postseason career list, and which player played his way onto it during the 2013 postseason?

To win the free copy, you have to get both parts of the answer correct.

Good luck!

Over the weekend, the Cardinals signed Jhonny Peralta to a four year, $53 million contract. I think it’s fair to say that, heading into the off-season, he was expected to sign for much less. The Tigers didn’t bother making him a qualifying offer. He was coming off a 50 game suspension for using PEDs. Some teams that expressed interest in him saw him as an outfielder, not a shortstop, and his offensive production levels aren’t that fantastic for a corner OF. He was so overlooked that Carson Cistulli even forgot to include him in the Contract Crowdsourcing series, but the general consensus from other contract prognosticators was something in the range of $20 million over two years.

But Peralta landed a deal for twice as long and more than twice as much money, as the Cardinals spent aggressively for the right to fill their shortstop hole without trading from their base of young talent. They could have acquired a cheaper shortstop from a financial perspective, but the cost of talent would have been substantial, so they chose to spend their monetary resources rather than their physical ones. Eno’s already talked about some of the risks and rewards of signing Peralta, so rather than rehash that post, I wanted to talk about Peralta’s price, and perhaps how we should have seen this coming.

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