FG on Fox: What to Expect from David Price
On Tuesday night, the Red Sox made David Price the highest paid pitcher in baseball history. Dave Dombrowski is clearly a Price fan, having previously traded for him while running the Tigers, and made good on his stated desire to bring a #1 starter to Boston. Of course, at $217 million over seven years, Price certainly isn’t coming cheaply, and the Red Sox throwing money at free agents certainly didn’t solve their problems a year ago, so it’s fair to be somewhat skeptical of this kind of team-building approach. But, rather than simply paint with broad strokes, it’s instructive to look at how pitchers who have performed similarly to Price have fared during the same stretch of their careers as the Red Sox just signed Price for.
To identify a list of similar pitchers, I used the FanGraphs leaderboard to identify pitchers in the last 20 years who had compiled between +26 and +34 WAR in their age-24 through age-29 seasons; this gives us a group that approximates the +30 WAR that Price put up during his six years as a full-time starter. Nineteen pitchers have accomplished this feat, Price included, though a couple of them — Felix Hernandez and Clayton Kershaw — are present-day peers, and thus, don’t have anything to tell us about how pitchers like this perform in their early 30s. So, excluding those two, we’re left with 16 pitchers who were comparably dominant during their 24-to-29 seasons.
How’d they do from ages 30 through 36? Well, take a look.
| Pitcher | Innings | WAR | WAR/200 IP |
| Mike Mussina | 1,444 | 36 | 5 |
| Roy Halladay | 1,413 | 35 | 5 |
| Andy Pettitte | 1,282 | 28 | 4 |
| John Smoltz | 813 | 24 | 6 |
| Javier Vazquez | 994 | 19 | 4 |
| Roy Oswalt | 832 | 16 | 4 |
| CC Sabathia | 861 | 15 | 3 |
| Dan Haren | 958 | 12 | 2 |
| Kevin Appier | 930 | 11 | 2 |
| Justin Verlander | 557 | 11 | 4 |
| Zack Greinke | 425 | 10 | 5 |
| Johan Santana | 482 | 8 | 3 |
| Jack McDowell | 327 | 5 | 3 |
| Jose Rijo | 86 | 2 | 3 |
| Ben Sheets | 168 | 1 | 1 |
| Brandon Webb | 4 | 0 | 0 |
At the top, we see four very obvious success stories, with Mussina, Halladay, Pettitte, and Smoltz all maintaining their dominance, putting up performances as good or better than they did early in their careers. This is the kind of performance the Red Sox are clearly hoping for, and if he pitches like any of these four, this will go down as maybe the most successful free agent pitcher contract in baseball history. These four represent the best case scenario, and show that yes, it is indeed possible for a pitcher to maintain greatness even after turning 30.
Dave is the Managing Editor of FanGraphs.
“if he pitches like any of these four, this will go down as maybe the most successful free agent pitcher contract in baseball history.”
But if he does pitch at the level of those top 4, the Red Sox will only have him for 3 years and then he’ll be off shopping for another contract. So it’d be just a solid 3 year deal. If he pitches like Brandon Webb, they’re stuck with the contract.
It would be a fantastic three year deal.
Are you me?
Yes.
I didn’t mean to imply it wouldn’t be fantastic. My point being that they won’t get it for a full 7 years. It’ll be 3 great years or 7 meh to bad years.
“So it’d be just a solid 3 year deal.”
If he pitches like those 4 for 3/90M, it’s a fantastic deal.
several of the middle category pitchers performed well in their 30-32 yr seasons and then completely fell off afterwards. if price follows that path, he’ll likely opt out of the contract. that could leave the sox getting good value for the contract, as well. so, the odds of a good result are somewhat higher than this suggests.
I’m very glad he stayed in the AL. improves our playoff odds.
Seems disingenuous to include Justin Verlander in that list. He’s accumulated 11 WAR from 30-32. At low end estimate of 2 WAR for each of the next 3 seasons, he’ll end up around the Oswalt/Vazquez territory.
CC is just about done but could tack on another 1-2.
If you’re going to accuse someone of being disingenuous, you should present a lucid argument.
I see Johan Santa has been replaced by John Santana (in the text, not the table). One of these times, Johan’s name will be correct!
You mean John Santa?
One of these times, you’ll be the fun person at the party.
You never will be.
Fixed!
I want to lick your sweet spot Johanna.
“if he pitches like any of these four, this will go down as maybe the most successful free agent pitcher contract in baseball history.”
Really? The most?
Kevin Brown, 3 year $14 million contract in 1996 (23 WAR)
Randy Johnson, 5 year, $52 million contract with D-Backs in 1999 (40 WAR)
Greg Maddux, 5-year, $28 million deal with the Braves beginning in 1993 (39 WAR)
Roger Clemens, 4 year, $40 million deal with the Blue Jays beginning in 1997 (26 WAR, 19 in 2 years with Jays)
These contracts all seem like better values (on a expected value/value basis) than Price’s would be even if he ends up being worth 36 WAR over 7 years like Mussina, and far better than if he ends up at 24 WAR like Smoltz.
Dave, I’m not sure I agree with your understanding of expected payout here. The analogy to a card game is imperfect because there are only 52 cards in a deck. This means that your hand and the hands of your opponents are dependent on each other – if you have a card, no one else at the table does – which is why you sometimes get “unexpected wins.”
By contrast, the careers of pitchers are independent of one another. The “success rate” of the pool might be around 1/3, but that does not mean that Price’s success would spell doom for two others (say, Greinke and Zimmerman). They could all succeed or all fail because their results are not tied to one another. By extension, you should not necessarily buy all those raffle tickets at $9.99 because the contest could have multiple winners. If so, then your 10 tickets would just be a random draw, and you would be as likely to win 0 times (and therefore waste $99.99) as 10 times.
On balance, you’re an excellent analyst and fangraphs is the best place for content. For these reasons, I think you can do better than to repeat the “gambler’s fallacy” to explain the David Price contract.
Some of the guys who miss your cutoffs:
Kevin Brown (21 WAR from age 24-29, 44 (!) WAR in the next seven seasons).
Tom Glavine (24 WAR from age 24-29, 27 WAR the next seven seasons).
Fun fact of the day: The Indians’ starting rotation, which produced 16.1 fWAR last year, will make a combined $10.7 million in 2016.
This is roughly what David Price will make by Memorial Day.
WAR/200 IP is not helpful. One of the issues is how often pitchers get hurt. A median outcome is C.C. Sabathia. He had the best season of his career at age 30 (7.5 bWAR), a good but not spectacular year at age 31 (3.5 bWAR) and has been, um, a deadweight contract from ages 32-34.
This probably isn’t the right place to ask this question, because these numbers aren’t predictive and the article’s title includes “what to expect.”
David Price’s clutch score is -1.69 (career); which is an ugly number. It’s 0.02 (playoffs); which is a pretty innocuous number.
The narrative seems to be “David Price is terrible in the playoffs.” I read Eno’s article about this from October, which made a lot of sense. But dealt specifically with the playoff sample.
My question: Is that just part of the overall picture of a guy who hasn’t performed well in high leverage situations, generally?
I’m not entirely sharp on these kinds of numbers, so feel free to explain to me like I’m a five year old; thoughts?
“it is true that even the best hitters on the planet are most likely to make an out every time they step up to the plate.”
You sure about that?