Over the last couple of years, we’ve previewed the upcoming season by going position by position around MLB, looking at the how teams stack up to their various competitors at each spot on the diamond. We’ve enjoyed doing these pieces, and we like that they provide an alternative to the team-by-team or division-by-division approach to other season previews. By starting at the position level, we can see exactly where a team’s strengths and weaknesses lie, and identify some areas of for potential upgrade as well.

Additionally, by not just focusing on the starter at each position, we’re able to compare and contrast different strategies for manning a particular position on the field. How will one team’s everyday player compare to a left/right platoon? Or is a team with a hot young prospect on the way up in line for a second half upgrade once the service time issues are out of the way? What teams have enough depth to sustain quality performance in case of an injury? These are the kinds of things we can readily identify through this series.

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Over the last few years, we’ve seen several players with stalled markets become the beneficiary of an unexpected serious injury. Prince Fielder failed to generate interest at the price that he was asking until Victor Martinez blew out his knee and the Tigers suddenly had an opening in their line-up. Ervin Santana apparently wasn’t all that interested in playing in Baltimore or Toronto, so Kris Medlen’s elbow problems led him to Atlanta. One team’s needs in November and December might not be the same as their needs in February or March, and while players who sign late generally get less money than players who sign early, needs can develop that increase demand for a player closer to Opening Day.

So, naturally, when news broke on Saturday that Jose Iglesias was going to miss at least four months and maybe the entire season, all eyes turned to Stephen Drew. He’s the only free agent SS of substance left on the market, a solid contributor who held down the position for the defending World Champs a year ago and would perhaps even be an upgrade over Iglesias for the 2014 season. Drew’s market has been essentially non-existent at the price that Scott Boras is asking for, but the Tigers make all kinds of sense for Drew.

They’re a contender with a sudden need for a shortstop, they pick towards the end of the first round, they’ve historically been willing to give up draft picks to sign free agents, and they’re a strong contender with a real shot at winning the World Series. Once Iglesias’ injury became known, the general assumption is that Drew would be in camp with the Tigers within a few days. Except the obvious fit isn’t such an obvious fit for Dave Dombrowski, who has reportedly suggested to local media that he will not pursue Drew as a replacement for Iglesias. And in this instance, I think he’s entirely correct: the Tigers do not need Stephen Drew.

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The news out of Phillies camp this week is that Ryne Sandberg and Jimmy Rollins were not on the same page. Despite being healthy, Rollins wasn’t in the line-up for four straight games, and Sandberg went out of his way to praise Freddy Galvis‘ energy. Suddenly, a pretty cut and dried starter/backup depth chart seems to be not quite so cut and dried.

In the end, this may turn out to be nothing. Perhaps Sandberg is just trying to motivate Rollins by letting him know that he’s not guaranteed a spot in the line-up everyday. Perhaps he was just resting an aging player in meaningless spring training games. Perhaps the team just wanted to see if Galvis could hit big league pitching, and the only way to get him those at-bats in March is to let him play the first few innings. But because of the structure of Rollins’ contract, it isn’t too hard to see that this could also be the groundwork for ensuring that 2014 is his last year in Philadelphia.

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Yesterday, I created a model of agent pricing using projected 2014 WAR as the only variable. As I noted in the post, I would classify this model as more of a toy than a rigorous attempt at analyzing the market, as we know there are plenty of factors beyond next season’s performance that influence the size of a free agent contract. Ignoring age and health are obvious flaws, as both are significant factors in contract size, especially when forecasting how many years a player might sign for. And we know that the market pays a different price for offense than it does for defense, reflecting some of the uncertainty that the defensive evaluations have relative to our ability to measure offensive production.

So, before I say any more about this model, let’s remember that this was essentially designed as something like the Marcel projections for salaries. Tom Tango built the Marcel projections as something of a baseline forecast, using very simplistic adjustments and ignoring things like park factors in order to show the bare minimum that a projection system should be able to accomplish. Likewise, I’d say that any serious attempt at evaluating the free agent market should be able to do better than what this basic model can do. This system is as simple as it gets — without being completely wrong, anyway — and we can almost certainly do better, but doing better comes with added complexity, and it’s still nice to have a simple, easily explained baseline to measure other forecasts against.

That said, let’s see what this basic pricing model — naming suggestions welcome, by the way — spits out for a dozen of the more notable 2015 free agents. For now, let’s ignore the future and pretend that these 12 players were free agents this past off-season, and see what the model would have forecast for them as 2014 free agents. As a reminder, we’re using a hybrid ZIPS/Steamer WAR forecasts, and the model multiplies projected WAR by five to estimate annual average value and projected WAR by 2.0 (for 3+ WAR players), 1.5 (for +2.0 to +2.9 WAR players), or 1.1 (for 1.0-1.9 WAR players) to estimate the number of years a player will sign for.

Because I selected 12 of the more notable pending free agents, we’re only looking at players with either a 2.0 or 1.5 multiple, as they’re all projected as above average performers for 2014. On to the forecasts:

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Back in November, Ken Rosenthal reported that the asking price for Ervin Santana was “more than $100 million on a five year deal…” It’s mid-March, Santana is still unsigned, and over the weekend, he left the Proformance agency and is now looking to sign a one year deal for essentially the value of the qualifying offer. Instead of $100+ million over five years, he’s going to get $13 or $14 million for one year, and then try again next winter.

It didn’t have to be this way, of course. In that same early off-season report, Rosenthal listed Ricky Nolasco’s asking price at $80 million over five years; he signed for $50 million over four instead. It’s not that unusual for agents to throw out a high early valuation in an attempt to give themselves room to make concessions while still landing a high value contract. The problem for Santana isn’t so much that his initial ask was absurd — it was, of course — but that it didn’t adjust downwards quickly enough as the market told him that it was absurd. With a more aggressive response to what the market was saying about his value, Santana likely could have landed a deal in that $40 to $50 million range earlier in the off-season, before teams spent their money on other alternatives.

But because someone in Santana’s camp believed they could land a deal closer to their original price, the market moved on without him. His story is an example of how harmful it can be to have an unrealistic baseline heading into free agency. And unfortunately for Santana, the market simply doesn’t care about W/L record and ERA the way it used to. Anyone developing a free agent pricing model based on outdated statistics is going to be in for a rude awakening when the offers actually come rolling in, because teams are better at forecasting future value for aging free agents than they were even five years ago.

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Justin Masterson is scheduled to be a free agent at the end of the 2014 season, but over the last few days, he’s made it clear that he hopes he never gets there. He wants to re-sign with the Indians, and in fact, he’s made them an offer, and one that seems pretty generous on the surface, to be honest.

According to the Cleveland Plain-Dealer, Masterson has asked the Indians for a three or four year extension in the range of $40 to $60 million. I think we can safely assume that a three year deal would be closer to the $40 million figure and a four year deal would be closer to $60 million. Just to make the math easy, let’s say that his offer is $40 million for three years with a $5 million buyout on the fourth year, making it either 3/$45M or 4/$60M, depending on if the option is picked up. That’s the kind of structure that would make sense given the range of numbers being tossed around.

And of course those numbers pale in comparison to what the Reds just gave Homer Bailey a few weeks ago. Bailey, also set to be a free agent at the end of the year, got $90 million for five years with a $5 million buyout on a sixth year option, so the Reds either paid 5/$95M or 6/$115M to keep Bailey in Cincinnati for the long term. Even the low end of Bailey’s total guarantee is 50% higher than the high end of Masterson’s reported asking price, making this seem like an obvious no-brainer for the Indians.

I even said as much on Twitter yesterday after reading the report on his request. But the more I look at it, the less sure I am that Masterson’s offer does represent a significant discount to the Indians. I think that instead, the Bailey deal may have skewed our perceptions for what a reasonable price point looks like for this situation.

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