Contract Crowdsourcing 2021-22: Ballot 4 of 11
Free agency begins five days after the end of the World Series. As in other recent seasons, FanGraphs is once again facilitating a contract crowdsourcing project, with the idea being to harness the wisdom of the crowd to better understand and project the 2021-22 free-agent market.
In recent years, we’ve added a few features to the ballots based on reader feedback. You now have the option to indicate that a player will only receive a minor-league contract, or won’t receive one at all. Numbers are prorated to full season where noted. The projected WAR figures are from the first cut of the 2022 Steamer600 projections.
Below are ballots for seven of this year’s free agents — in this case, a group of outfielders, including a postseason star.
Meg is the editor-in-chief of FanGraphs and the co-host of Effectively Wild. Prior to joining FanGraphs, her work appeared at Baseball Prospectus, Lookout Landing, and Just A Bit Outside. You can follow her on Bluesky @megrowler.fangraphs.com.
15 years, 450 million for Rosario.
i think you mean 20 years 600 million
Only if it includes rights to Pablo Sandoval…
I found Schwarber to be the hardest one. I picked 5/$80M but there’s not a ton of interest in a guy who is a bit slow in left field and hasn’t had a ton of experience at first. But if I was a team that needed a first baseman I would definitely be checking in on Schwarber, and I think that will increase his contract considerably.
He feels similar to Marcell Ozuna last year. A player that has shown flashes of being a really good bat (140+ wRC+) but on the whole they’re probably just a good bat (career 117-118 wRC+) with no real defensive value. Ozuna got 4/65 with a team option so your guess feels close to me.
Yeah, I agree he’s tough. I had him a little lower, around $60-70m because I feel like there are just a ton of similar players on the market, so he can’t go too high or teams will just opt for cheaper alternatives, like Belt, Rizzo, Canha, JDM if he opts out. I’m not 100% sure Conforto will be cheaper, but he probably is. Castellanos is similar in overall value, I think. Bryant on the higher end. Nelson Cruz is possibly an alternative for AL teams. Then there’s also the players who will be MUCH cheaper that you could get and then allocate other money to a different position, like Soler, Rosario, Gardner, Pederson, Dickerson.
Yeah, after reading this and the previous comment I think that the Marcell Ozuna contract looks like a good comparison. A comfortably above-average hitter with limited value in left field (and might be DH / 1B) has a career year hitting but over a slightly truncated season (Ozuna’s was more truncated but also even better than Schwarber).
I put Schwarber down for 4 years at 12 million a year
oh he’s getting a lot more than that.
Put 3yrs, $48M on him. Him & Kris Bryant (in #3) were the 2 toughest, IMO.
Agreed. I did 3/42 mostly because of the other options that aren’t negative defenders, but also because this is the same guy that got non-tendered a year ago. If he wasn’t worth more than 1/10 on the FA market last year, I don’t think one year of great hitting was enough to make him suddenly worth a huge commitment.
Yoshi Tsutsugo appears on both ballots #3 and #4
TIL: Tommy Pham is already entering his age 34 season!
Yep, same age as Paul Goldschmidt, Brandon Belt, Trevor Cahill, Kyle Seager, J.D. Martinez, and Khris Davis, even though they all feel like they should be older.