Contract Crowdsourcing 2011-12: Results
A couple weeks ago, we spent some time in these pages attempting to crowdsource the forthcoming contracts of some of this offseason’s key free agents and also Nick Punto. Below are the results of that exercise.
But first, it makes sense, perhaps, to revisit some of last year’s crowdsourced contract values and compare them to the actual contracts received by the same players.
Last year’s effort was of a slightly more ad hoc nature; however, our full-time employee Dave Cameron did publish all of the first-base results together.
Below are those results (Crowdsourced Contract) along with the actual contracts received by each corresponding player. (Note that contract values are of the average-annual variety.)
Player: Paul Konerko
Crowdsourced Contract: 2.4 years, $11.0 million
Actual Contract: 3 years, $12.5 million
Player: Carlos Pena
Crowdsourced Contract: 2.3 years, $8.9 million
Actual Contract: 1 year, $10.0 million
Player: Aubrey Huff
Crowdsourced Contract: 2.2 years, $8.8 million
Actual Contract: 2 years, $11.0 million
Player: Lance Berkman
Crowdsourced Contract: 1.7 years, $7.7 million
Actual Contract: 1 year, $8.0 million
Player: Lyle Overbay
Crowdsourced Contract: 1.4 years, $4.8 million
Actual Contract: 1 year, $5.0 million
In fact, it looks like the Crowds did relatively well in this case. Aubrey Huff got considerably more than (a) our readers expected and (b) he probably should have. If there’s a pattern of any sort, it’s that the estimated annual values are slightly lower than the actual ones. The average projected annual salary among these five players is $8.3 million; the actual comes out to $9.3 million — or roughly 12% higher.
Now here are this year’s results, sorted by position and then average annual value. Note that Ystd and Sstd are the standard-deviation values for Years and Salary, respectively. Note also that positions aren’t “projected” positions, necessarily, but just how the player was classified in our crowdsourcing posts.
Name Yrs Sal Ystd Sstd POS Ramon Hernandez 2.0 $5.3 0.7 $2.3 C Jorge Posada 1.1 $4.6 0.4 $2.4 C Rod Barajas 1.7 $4.2 0.7 $2.2 C Albert Pujols 7.4 $25.2 1.3 $3.4 1B Prince Fielder 6.5 $20.9 1.0 $3.3 1B David Ortiz 2.2 $11.3 0.7 $4.4 1B Carlos Pena 1.7 $8.3 0.8 $2.6 1B Derrek Lee 1.2 $5.8 0.5 $2.5 1B Jim Thome 1.0 $5.0 0.2 $2.6 1B Kelly Johnson 2.4 $6.6 0.9 $2.9 2B Aaron Hill 2.1 $5.6 0.8 $2.6 2B Jamey Carroll 1.6 $4.0 0.7 $1.9 2B Jerry Hairston 1.5 $3.7 0.7 $1.7 2B Mark Ellis 1.5 $3.6 0.7 $1.7 2B Aramis Ramirez 3.2 $12.1 0.8 $3.1 3B Wilson Betemit 1.7 $4.3 0.7 $1.8 3B Nick Punto 1.4 $3.1 0.6 $1.8 3B Jose Reyes 5.8 $17.4 0.9 $2.8 SS Jimmy Rollins 3.5 $11.9 0.8 $2.3 SS Rafael Furcal 2.1 $7.6 0.8 $2.2 SS Clint Barmes 1.8 $4.4 0.7 $1.7 SS Carlos Beltran 3.1 $12.3 0.8 $3.0 COF Michael Cuddyer 2.7 $8.2 0.8 $2.3 COF Josh Willingham 2.4 $8.0 0.8 $2.6 COF Jason Kubel 2.2 $6.4 0.8 $2.0 COF David DeJesus 1.9 $5.6 0.9 $2.1 COF Grady Sizemore 2.4 $10.0 1.1 $4.9 CF CC Sabathia 5.9 $23.1 1.1 $2.5 SP C.J. Wilson 5.0 $15.5 0.7 $3.1 SP Mark Buehrle 2.7 $11.1 0.9 $2.8 SP Hiroki Kuroda 2.2 $10.6 0.9 $2.7 SP Edwin Jackson 3.3 $10.4 0.9 $2.5 SP Javier Vazquez 1.5 $9.0 0.6 $2.6 SP Jo. Papelbon 3.5 $11.5 0.8 $2.3 RP Heath Bell 2.8 $9.6 0.9 $2.2 RP Ryan Madson 2.9 $8.6 0.6 $2.0 RP
Notes:
• It’s very possible that the 12% difference we saw between last year’s first-base crowdsourced contract and the actual contracts remains in effect for this year’s edition. For example, Albert Pujols is likely to receive more than the $25.2 million for which he’s been projected above. Adding 12%, or $3 million, to the top of that average annual salary gives Pujols a more likely $28.2 million annually.
• Grady Sizemore’s numbers are only from those who thought the Indians wouldn’t pick up his option.
• Javier Vazquez’s numbers are only from those respondents who believe Vazquez won’t retire.
Carson Cistulli has published a book of aphorisms called Spirited Ejaculations of a New Enthusiast.
Sorry, but 2.3 years, $8.9 million is quite different from 1 year, $10.0 million even though the dollar amount is close. Same holds for Berkman – so really wisdom of the crowds got 2/5 right….
He may have been offered 2 years and asked for 1.
I disagree Mettle. If he was offered 1/10, how much do you think a 2nd year would have been? 8MM$ maybe? So, that’s 2/18.
I don’t see how you can call that “quite” different, if I can make a reasonable case that it’s “quite” similar.
I think mettle was assuming that the money was a total figure, and not a per year figure (which is what I was assuming as well until I looked underneath and saw the salary figures for some of the bigger names)
Can we get medians instead of means?
looks like someone has a median fetish…
I think the underestimating may be an artifact of how people answered the question. I have a feeling that some of us may amalgamate the allotted contract — by definition, the 100% percentile offer on the market — with what we believe the player should receive. Even if that is subconscious, I would always expect this exercise to produce underestimated values.
Continuing that point…it’d be interesting to see how the percentile in our estimates which corresponds (in a normal distribution sense) to the 100th percentile in a sample of size 30 compares to the actual contracts given out.
In other words, we’d be simulating the result of taking a random sample of 30 of our estimates, taking the top one, running this simulation a whole bunch, and seeing how close this comes to htiting the actual contract given out.
That’s probably the best way to see precisely how close we really are.
3 years and $10 million for Sizemore?
The Indians made a big mistake in not picking up his option
That’s one of the more interesting ones — and also the one with the largest standard deviation ($4.9 million) of any of the above projections.
As Cameron notes over at The Book (link below), if Sizemore were worth much more than his $9 million option, the Indians could’ve re-signed and then traded him.
Of course, that doesn’t mean Sizemore WON”T get $10 million; it likely does mean, though, that there wasn’t a market for him getting that much last week.
http://www.insidethebook.com/ee/index.php/site/comments/contract_crowd_sourcing/#comments
What’s his market now? 1/6. 1/8 tops ?
Thome just signed a 1 year 1.25 million dollar contract with the Phils.
yeah, so much for these being low.
Where’s Coco Crisp?
If you assume Sabathia’s 6th-year option vests (which is a FAIRLY safe assumption, considering how specific the injury clause is), then we pretty much nailed it.
5.9/23.1 gives you $136MM.
Rounding off to 6/23 gets you $138MM.
Actual contract (if option vests): $142MM.
Looks to me like the big FAs are going to be a little higher than this, and the role-player types a bit lower.
The very limited sample from last year’s crowd-source and actual figures doesn’t prove much of anything, except that these crowd-source estimates are at least in the ballpark.
Having some kind of reasonable estimates is very helpful to me.
Thank you FanGraphs and crowd.
I think you meant to say “and also Nick Punto, WORLD SERIES CHAMPION”.
Looks like we pretty much nailed the Barajas contract!
And the Carroll and Papelbon contracts as well
And the Reyes contract
NAILED the CJ WIlson contract… Exact terms