Casey Blake Remains A Dodger
Jayson Stark at ESPN.com recently reported that the Dodgers and Casey Blake reached an agreement for 3 yrs and around $17.1 million. The exact details of the contracts are not known as of this juncture, though I will update when they become available. Blake, a third baseman who has dabbled at several other positions throughout his career, joined the Dodgers towards the end of July last season. In 58 games wearing Dodger blue, he posted a .251/.313/.460 line with 10 home runs. This resulted in a slightly below average .327 wOBA.
All told, his -3 runs on offense, +1.4 runs on defense, and positional adjustment for playing third base pegged him as a league average player over the final two months of the season. With injuries to Jeff Kent and Nomar Garciaparra, acquiring Blake allowed Joe Torre to shift Blake DeWitt to second base, stabilizing the defense and lineup, in a sense.
The average annual value of Blake’s supposed contract with the Dodgers is $5.7 mil, meaning that they would essentially be paying him to add about 1.15 wins above replacement per season. How does his 2009 projection look in this regard?
Marcel says Blake will hit .265/.336/.440, with 18 HR, and a .335 wOBA. His wOBA would basically represent the league average, and based on his projected playing time, he would be worth +1 run above average with the bat. He was -3.7 runs below average via UZR in 2007, and -4.7 in 2008. Let’s say, at worst, he is -5 runs at third base next season. Add in his +2.5 positional adjustment and +20 runs to represent value above replacement level, not average, and Blake is projected to be worth +18.5 runs in 2009. This easily converts to +1.85 WAR.
Assuming the going rate is around $5 mil/win this year, Blake’s fair market value for a one year deal is $9.25 mil. Factoring in a 10% discount rate for a multi-year deal, and an appropriate contract would be 3-yr/$25 mil. The Dodgers supposedly signed him for around $8 mil less than his projection calls for. Now, granted, Blake will be 36 by the end of the 2009 season, and when this contract ends, he will either become a utility bench player or retiree. Even with aging curves, though, there is little reason to think he will only be worth 3.45 WAR (the 1.15 WAR per year based don his $5.7 mil AAV) over the duration of this deal.
Having traded Andy LaRoche to acquire Manny Ramirez, it isn’t as if Blake’s signing will prevent a top-tiered prospect from earning playing time. He isn’t going to put the team over the top, or make up for Manny’s lost production if he signs elsewhere, but based on the committed money and his projected production, this looks like a very solid deal for the Dodgers.
Eric is an accountant and statistical analyst from Philadelphia. He also covers the Phillies at Phillies Nation and can be found here on Twitter.
Agreed… Marcels + CHONE defensive projectins agree as well. Same with Loretta… two good signings from Ned. What is this world coming to?
Not to self-promote too much, but if you click the link next to my name, you can see the Google spreadsheet I did for free agent position players with Marcel/Rally’s projections and “predictions” for the market.
I did for free agent position players with Marcel/Rally’s projections and “predictions” for the market.
Nice!
I enjoy these less celebrated signings.
” it isn’t as if Blake’s signing will prevent a top-tiered prospect from earning playing time”
Wrong. Blake DeWitt.
Eh, I would tend to think DeWitt will see plenty of time at 2B.
It’s not his natural position, DeWitt has much better at 3B than 2B.
If DeWitt is considered that top-tiered of a prospect, especially after significant time last year, then Blake likely would not have been re-signed. Colletti obviously feels the better team has Blake at 3B and DeWitt at 2B as opposed to DeWitt at 3B and I guess Loretta at 2B.
I would actually think Loretta would pose a more serious threat to DeWitt than Blake.
Colletii also thought giving Andruw Jones $36.2 million was a good idea.
Not to mention Jason Schmidt and others nonsense signings….
DeWitt at 3B just feels right, when he moved to 2B it wasn’t the right thing to do.
Haha, yes he did. For the record, when I say top-tiered prospect, I mean a LaPorta or Longoria, etc. DeWitt looks like he can be a nice player, but he is not one of those guys, so it isn’t as if Blake’s signing is impeding the progress of someone who deserves to be in the majors along the lines of Jim Thome’s signing with the Phillies with Ryan Howard waiting in the wings.
It seems that when calculating value a player’s offensive value it is compared to replacement level, but the defensive statistics in this case appear to be calculated compared to the average. This is then used to calculate total wins above replacement, which seems to me to be a significant inconsistency. Or is it just that average level defense is considered to be freely available?
Bob, your first asseertion isn’t exactly correct. Using wOBA and the formula ((wOBA – lgwOBA)/1.15)*PA gives us offensive runs above AVERAGE. Then we use UZR or the + – system to give us defensive runs above AVERAGE. A play in the + – is worth 0.8 runs. We then factor in a positional adjustment, and add +20 runs so it is above REPLACEMENT and NOT average. Then we convert to wins.
A replacement level player is considered to be about average defensively and below average offensively.
Eric, great write up as usual. I just had a hypothetical question that you would probably be able to clear up. I understand the logic of calculating offensive runs above average using the league wOBA, adding defense, doing the positional adjustmjent, and then adding +20 runs to get above replacement.
But would one come to a similarly correct result if one figured offensive runs above average using the POSITIONAL wOBA (i.e. .310 for SS, .340 for LF), then adding defense, then adding 20 runs (thereby forgoing the extra positional adjustment of +2.5, or +7.5, or whatever.
Thanks
Great question. I’m honestly not exactly sure. I would tend to think that the answer would be yes, but I could very well be wrong. Why don’t you test it out on some players and write back with the results?
According to one of Tango’s comments on The Book blog “You don’t want to use positional averages, because this will force the average player at each position to be equals. If you’ve been reading my stuff on the matter, you will see that I think it’s ridiculous to presume that the average 3B = average 2B, when considering hitting and fielding. The avg 2B is very close in fielding to the average 3B, but the average 3B is a much better hitter. To equate them each and every year is sloppy work. These players aren’t paid the same, and we shouldn’t pretend that they are the same.”
Here is the link: http://www.insidethebook.com/ee/index.php/site/comments/how_to_calculate_war/#comments
Right – the problem with using positional averages is that you’re then making the implicit assumption that each position is equal. No one believes this, of course, as it’s not true.
Dave, why should people be concerned with the market value of WAR/Marginal Wins (~5 million)? Shouldn’t the deals be more concerned about the actual value of WAR/Marginal Wins (I believe you said ~2.5 million in 2008)?
Isn’t the problem that the market is inflated to begin with? 😮
The salaries of players with less than six years of service team are tremendously suppressed by the rules of the CBA. If we set average player value at all players divided by all money, then our conclusion would be that every single free agent deal was a bad one. After all, every free agent would sign for twice their “actual” worth. Valuations done that way would suggest that if a team wanted to improve, they should just go acquire a solid player who isn’t yet arb. eligible.
The problem, of course, is that solid players who aren’t yet arb. eligible just aren’t available to be acquired, so that’s not a practical plan of action.
What we’re trying to measure is how well teams are doing at finding value among the pool of players they could actually acquire. The pool of players who are available are essentially free agents and players whom teams are willing to pay comparable amounts to free agent rates to acquire in a trade.
For instance, Jake Peavy is available to any team that will pay the Padres the difference between Peavy’s salary and what he’d get as a free agent. The acquiring team would essentially be paying free agent rates for Peavy. Thus, he essentially costs the same as if he were a free agent to the acquiring team.
The market value for acquirable players is best viewed through the market value for free agents.
I don’t get the fuss about positional averages. Stats such as VORP and advanced defensive measures are relative to replacement (replacement level defense is more or less positional average). Sum them to determine value relative to position and then simply add a positional adjustment to compare value across positions of that’s the bend being bent.
Got it. Forgot about the team control part.
Though i’m still not sure if other teams should be rewarded because the market value has been artificially raised by previously terrible signings. 😮
VORP has several significant flaws. Why use it when there are better metrics available?
WAR isn’t complicated.