Figuring Out Jose Fernandez’s Trade Value
Jose Fernandez is available!
Just posted at https://t.co/gtnhE81RUu: Untouchable? Hmmm, Marlins talking to Dodgers, others about Jose Fernandez https://t.co/cI8CdFLWt5
— Jayson Stark (@jaysonst) December 7, 2015
Jose Fernandez is not available!
Mike Hill on Jose: "He's not available. We haven't made him available. But, it doesn't stop the phone calls from happening." #Marlins
— Joe Frisaro (@JoeFrisaro) December 8, 2015
Jose Fernandez is maybe still available!
Hearing tonight that Marlins think they're making progress with unspecified team. But a deal still appears unlikely https://t.co/NKI3zZClAq
— Jayson Stark (@jaysonst) December 8, 2015
There has been a lot of conflicting information about the Marlins’ willingness to move their ace over the last few days, though Hill’s assertion that they aren’t shopping him is mostly meaningless; you can effectively let everyone know a player is potentially available by entertaining offers and giving the impression that there is a level at which the team would agree to a deal. Rather than Hill saying Fernandez “isn’t available,” it’s maybe more realistic to suggest that Jose Fernandez is available, but only for asking prices that make him effectively unavailable, though the Marlins are at least willing to let teams pay an absurd price if they want to.
Of course, Fernandez is probably worth a price that might appear on the surface. When he’s been on the mound during his career, he’s been the best non-Kershaw pitcher in baseball, putting up an absurd 64/69/75 ERA-/FIP-/xFIP- line through the 289 inning innings he’s pitched in the big leagues. For comparison, David Price is at 78/73/78 over the last three years, while Zack Greinke is at 64/79/82. Both of them landed deals north of $200 million for the seasons that cover their mid-30s, while Fernandez is 23. Certainly, Fernandez is a significant health risk, but the performance and youth would almost certainly have made him the most coveted free agent on the market this winter if he were available for bidding.
How high would the price have gone, assuming Fernandez restricted the contract terms to just three years, the same number of years of control a team would be getting in trade? The shorter term and his age would almost certainly push the AAV past Greinke’s record $34 million total. In fact, if you give him some small innings increases over the next couple of years as he gets further away from Tommy John surgery, even $40 million per year might end up being a bargain.
| Year | Age | WAR | $/WAR | Est. Value |
| 2016 | 23 | 5.0 | $8.0 M | $40.0 M |
| 2017 | 24 | 5.3 | $8.4 M | $44.1 M |
| 2018 | 25 | 5.5 | $8.8 M | $48.5 M |
| Totals | 15.8 | $132.6 M |
Value: $8M/WAR with 5.0% inflation
Aging Curve: +0.25 WAR/yr (18-27), 0 WAR/yr (28-30),-0.5 WAR/yr (31-37),-0.75 WAR/yr (> 37)
I’m not sure teams would get to that $133 million figure, but anything in the $110 to $130 million range wouldn’t surprise me. Let’s call it $120 million just for fun, which also doesn’t account for any extra value to be gained from getting a chance to sign him to another deal in a few years, or potentially receive draft pick compensation if that’s still a thing in the next CBA. If you factored in the potential value of exclusive negotiating rights or expected to get some compensation when he left in three years, you might push to that $133 million level, but that seems like something of a ceiling to me. Regardless of the exact number, though, the conclusion is pretty obvious: Jose Fernandez is worth a lot.
And because of his limited innings totals to this point, he’s not going to be paid a lot of money in arbitration. MLB Trade Rumors projects him for a $2.2 million salary in 2016, and then even if you give him aggressively large raises in his next two arbitration trips to account for high-quality expected performances, you’re probably looking at something like $8 million next year and $15 million the year after. So, over the three years that the Marlins still own his rights, he’ll be paid something like $25 million. That puts roughly a $100 million difference between market value and expected salary for Fernandez during his team control years.
So yeah, when you have a $100 million asset, you ask for the moon, and maybe a couple of dwarf planets to be named later. But even that might seem light relative to what the Marlins have reportedly asked for.
How exorbitant is the price on Jose Fernandez? Sources say the Marlins have asked the Dodgers for Julio Urias and Corey Seager.
— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) December 7, 2015
By pretty much any account, Urias and Seager are both top five prospects in MLB right now, with Seager often ranking #1 on such lists. Both are nearly major league ready, with Steamer projecting Seager for +2.8 WAR in 2016, and Urias for +2.5 WAR if he threw 200 innings in the majors as a 19-year-old. Two near-ready elite talents of this level is a pretty clear no for the Dodgers, but it’s not unexpected for the Marlins to at least ask for Seager or Urias as the primary piece in return.
But Seager should probably be a flat no.
The last big test of the market’s valuation of a quality prospect put Yoan Moncada at $63 million — the $31.5 million Boston gave him in a signing bonus, and the 100% tax on that amount — along with some international signing restrictions that hurt the team’s ability to acquire talent in the next few years. Overall, the cost of signing Moncada was probably something in the $70 million range for the Red Sox, though Moncada wasn’t at Seager’s level as a prospect, plus came with additional risk as a player without a track record in the U.S. And that money was paid up front, and the Red Sox will still have to pay Moncada his salaries when he gets to the big leagues, so he’ll cost significantly more than that figure over the six or seven years of big league performance they get from him. Comparing a signing bonus to the market value of a big league contract is apples to oranges.
So how much more would a team pay for Seager’s rights for the next six years? Well, here’s what the contract estimation tool spits out for a 22-year-old shortstop already projected as nearly as +3 WAR player in 2016.
| Year | Age | WAR | $/WAR | Est. Value |
| 2016 | 21 | 2.8 | $8.0 M | $22.4 M |
| 2017 | 22 | 3.0 | $8.4 M | $25.6 M |
| 2018 | 23 | 3.3 | $8.8 M | $29.1 M |
| 2019 | 24 | 3.5 | $9.3 M | $32.9 M |
| 2020 | 25 | 3.8 | $9.7 M | $37.0 M |
| 2021 | 26 | 4.0 | $10.2 M | $41.4 M |
| Totals | 20.6 | $188.3 M |
Value: $8M/WAR with 5.0% inflation
Aging Curve: +0.25 WAR/yr (18-27), 0 WAR/yr (28-30),-0.5 WAR/yr (31-37),-0.75 WAR/yr (> 37)
And, believe it or not, that may very well be too low. After all, when I included Corey Seager on this summer’s trade value list, Dan Szymborski was nice enough to run five year ZIPS projections for him, and his forecasts had Seager at +20 WAR over that stretch, and then you probably add another +5 WAR for the sixth year of team control in that projection, so ZIPS had Seager as something like a +25 WAR player over the next six years. At that level, the contract estimator spits out a value of $232 million, putting Seager in the same range of expected value as what the Red Sox just paid for David Price.
Even with aggressive estimations for arbitration, Seager probably won’t make more than $45 or $50 million during the next six years of his career. Depending on how aggressive a projection you’d use for his aging curve, Seager might have something like $130 to $180 million in value above and beyond his expected contract. Now, a lot of that value is tied into years down the line, and it’s worth discounting that value relative to a guy like Fernandez, who would likely provide more value over the next three years. But Seager is so valuable that it would probably be difficult for the Dodgers to part with him for a guy with just three years of team control remaining, especially one with Fernandez’s health risks.
Urias, though? That’s not crazy at all. Because of the lower innings totals he’ll likely be asked to throw over the next few years, the Dodgers can’t count on capturing the full value of his +2.5 WAR/200 inning projection, so six years of Urias is probably worth something closer to the $100 million figure that we’ve eyeballed for Fernandez. Like Fernandez, there’s health risk with Urias, simply because he’s a 19-year-old pitcher, so the Marlins would almost certainly demand more than just one elite pitching prospect for their one elite pitcher. But as a primary piece in the deal, with some lesser stuff included to round out the package, Urias actually makes sense.
For other teams in the mix, that $100 million range is probably the baseline, and that’s just what a fair offer would look for. The Marlins almost certainly aren’t moving Fernandez for a fair offer, so it’s probably going to take something more like $125 to $150 million in value to pry him out of Miami. Should a team give up those kinds of talents in order to get three years of a guy who has made just 19 starts over the last two seasons? Probably not. But if Fernandez proves healthy in the first half of the year, he might actually cost more in July than he would now. He’s a boom or bust acquisition, in that you’re either going to look like an idiot or a genius for giving up the farm to get him. But if you’re a team like the Dodgers or the Astros, and you have win-now aspirations and a strong farm system, the gamble just might be too enticing to pass up. That’s what the Marlins seem to be betting on, anyway.
Dave is the Managing Editor of FanGraphs.
I believe you’re starting Fernandez’s projections at 180 IP (Steamer).
Is that a realistic number considering he’s coming off only 90 IP in 2015 and only 50 in 2014?
The problem with trade proposals for guys like Jose Fernandez, or Sale or Sonny Gray is that they are so valuable that you would need to detract from your present value, as opposed to future value in the form of prospects. And while that might make sense on paper, I’m not sure it’s clear cut in reality.
I think the Dodgers could pull it off without detracting from their present value.
Doesn’t mean they’d choose to. But they could. The pool of elite talent in their farm is stupid-deep.
I think you might be right. But there are few teams that would be able to give up a $100 million asset without detracting from the present value of their team. In terms of prospects it seems like someone like Urias, who is an elite prospect but at 19 and with only a handful of innings above AA and so not quite major league ready, would be the only type of player you could send that wouldn’t seriously detract from the value of the team you field over the next 2 seasons. When you get down into players who are a little further away in the minors, they would have to be really, really highly regarded for you to believe they are worth $100 million in surplus value.
And this is why Sale isn’t going anywhere. Take Fernandez’s value, but add another year of control, and defined salaries that are way below market value, and hasn’t missed basically a year due to injury, and you have Sale.
Older, though.
Basically irrelevant given Sale’s contract takes him through age 30 season (i.e., it’s not paying for the downside of the aging curve). That Fernandez is younger when his contract runs out doesn’t give him any additional value to the team that has him on that contract.
I get the idea behind determining a player’s value by comparing the difference between his market value and what he’s set to earn, but doesn’t that model break when a player’s wins start adding up quickly? For example wouldn’t a 3 win player making $24mm almost certainly have more trade value than a 1 win player making $8mm?
No? Almost (only saying this in case I missed someone finding something different) every analysis on free agent contracts has shown that teams pay linearly for wins. Do you know of anything to suggest otherwise?
Well I’m talking about trade value, not what teams are actually paying these guys in FA. And no and I don’t know of any studies to suggest otherwise but I would imagine if a team was on a certain spot on the win curve and had an open lineup/roster spot they would give up more for the 3 win/$24mm player than the below average $8mm player. Teams on that part of the win curve would be the ones willing to pay the premium. Whatever the highest bidder is willing to give up is a player’s trade value, not what the rest of baseball collectively values that player at.
100% yes. A couple of points:
1. Teams absolutely do not pay linearly for wins, because they have a limited number of roster spots. You’d much rather have 1 4-win guy than 4 1-win guys.
2. Some teams don’t care about surplus value. They just care about value (perhaps due to their position on the win curve, the feelings of their owner, or some other reason). So they’d prefer a guy getting paid $24M a year for 3 wins over a guy getting paid even just $6M a year for 1 win, because they need the extra 2 wins.
I think the assumption Fangraphs makes in evaluating free agent deals — that teams care about getting surplus value from the contract, as opposed to just having good players — is often not realistic.
Right but there is supply in demand in this situation. There aren’t an infinite amount of supply for 3 win guys and 1 win guys. You have 25 roster spots and the odds that your roster is deep enough that you don’t have a replacement level scrub on there is miniscule. Sure the Dodgers/Yankees are pretty much exceptions in that they have the cash to afford whatever they want but teams absolutely operate within a budget. If you give teams a $500mm payroll sure they would prefer the 3 wins for $24 mm but if the payroll is less than that, they may prefer the 1 win for $6mm and then $18mm for other stuff.
I’d love to see the cubs get more involved here, with their combination of present and future talent, you’d think they would be a good match. Javier baez + gleyber torres + almora or McKinney + duane “frank” underwood? marlins get their 3b, ss and possibly CFer of the future; cubs still have one of the best farm systems in baseball and rotation that is as deadly as their lineup
Yeah, it starts with Schwarber. Add the other guys you mention and maybe.
Yeah – That doesn’t get it done. It’d need to include Shwarber for them to be interested, I think. Maybe what you listed, plus Schwarber.
Not close to enough. It’s a nice list of names, but the Marlins have to walk away with at least one “can’t-miss” guy like Urias or Seager.
Any team dealing for Fernandez will want immediate returns as they’ll only be acquiring three seasons. At this stage can he be trusted to pitch a full season and stay effective into September and a long postseason run this season? I guess it could go like Harvey’s route, but I’d imagine teams would fear a Strasburg style shutdown in year 1. Acquiring an ace is highly valuable for the regular season too, but any team paying the price for Fernandez is going to want to contend this season. If he can’t handle that workload year 1/3 it’s a major consideration.
I’d love to see the Twins put together a package for him, but I have my doubts. It is interesting that he might not be worth the number 1 prospect…….would anyone deal him for just 1 minor leaguer?
Is there a contending team called the “Twins” that I’m not aware of?
Seems like, based on what you said about Moncada, he would be a good starting point for a deal with the Red Sox. His value has only gone up since signing.
If Boston paid for him, I can see that as a starting point. But I think they’d still need to add one of Owens or Swihart, one of Devers, or Benintendi and some whipped cream.
This is what I was thinking – the Red Sox have the pieces to get this deal done with the Marlins. The conversation starts with Moncada and Benintendi and proceeds from there.
The Red Sox add 2-3 more higher end prospects other than Swihart and Owens.
The farm system will be seriously weakened by the Fernnandez and Kimbrel trades, but how good would Fernandez look as the Sox #2 starter behind Price?
But if pitchers ranked BA 1-10 bust 60% and hitters 40% of the time, how does that factor into Urias’s and Seager’s value?
The risk is already accounted for in the valuation. If the risk weren’t there, the value would be much higher.
Insults and Other Troubles
Like felony fraud!
I’m guessing that the bust rate for players like Seager (already in the majors, projected for 25 WAR the next 6 seasons) isn’t anywhere close to 40%. I would think that a majority of the busts are younger, lower level prospects.
No, the bust/success rate is not included in these formulas. It is in black and white above that starting at $8MM/yr for 1 WAR and projections…values should be decreased for bust/success and are not which is why MLB GMs continually APPEAR to overpay to us.
Flay if you will but Fangraphs has a history of being rigid in their beliefs despite evidence to the contrary. Two of these areas that stick out at the top of my head are overvaluation of prospects and undervaluing high-leverage innings from RPs.
The $/WAR figures are estimations on what teams pay for free agents correct? So why would you use it for determining “surplus value” for non-FA players like Seager and Fernandez? You could end up with a situation where a young mediocre 1 WAR player could end up with more “surplus value” than Mike Trout.
I get what you are saying (though I think your phrasing could be a little clearer) but the reason for looking at it this way is that you don’t have seperate pools of money for cost-controlled guys and free agent guys, you just have one budget for payroll. Surplus value like this doesn’t make sense for evaluating contracts given to pre-arb players but it sort of makes sense when talking from a total payroll perspective.
Yup. Basically, teams have a certain amount of money to spend, and they want to maximize their roster strength with that money. Mike Trout, as great as he is, would actually be a detriment to the Angels if he was being paid $100 million a year. So, in general, teams do trades with similar amounts of surplus value involved, but not necessarily similar amounts of money and player value.
A great example is the great Nick Punto trade of 2012. The Dodgers took on a ton of money, but also got way more player value from the Red Sox than they gave up. Where the trade appears more square is in surplus value, which favored the Red Sox, but only slightly. The Dodgers in that case did that trade because they had just had a huge increase in budget room and there weren’t enough options on the market to fill it up, so they prioritized absolute player value a little bit over surplus value.
I’m Shutting this down.
The extreme negativity, misogyny, hate, and pure idiocy a lot of you “men” post here daily truly makes me cringe.
WTF?
If you think about trade Jose Fernandez, you must hate women. That is a sentiment that I can appreciate.
Won’t somebody please think of all the potential heartbroken women in Miami???
…are you OK? Do you need somebody to talk to?
Obviously the wrong browser tab. Which means the misogynistic idiocy is still going on whatever redditt thread that was me meant for 🙁
Fernandez has 289 career IP and serious run prevention problem in other-than-home parks. Let’s calm down.
Dave, don’t the Giants seem like the logical fit here, given that the Fish want controllable MLB ready talent in return? The Gianta are ready to win now, and they’ve got the ammo to swing it.
Like the Dodgers, the Giants can build a package around a young, controllable, high-output middle infielder. Unlike the Dodgers, the Giants’ chip — Matt Duffy — has already posted a near 5.0 WAR season — twice Seager’s projected 2016 output. Pair Duffy with a starting-caliber power hitting MLB ready catcher in Andrew Susac, add in SP Chris Heston, a controllable young starter coming off a very solid rookie season. Top it off with a high end prospect like SS Lucious Fox, the Miami native international signee and you’re starting to build an offer that would have to look appealing.
What do you think?
I’m guessing you’re a Giants fan.
The 60-40 ratios are for real. Just because seager spend 25 days in the big doesn’t mean he is exempt from the historical stats. He’s still a prospect and we tend to forget what a large failure rate there is in first round picks and later the top prospects. Trade an a established star for a prospect and you will mostly win. If you traded Fernandez for the Dodgers top prospects over the last 15 years (not including clayton) you’d be giddy. Think about that
I’d only be giddy if I were a Marlins fan. Billingsley alone produced almost 20 WAR in his first six years of MLB service time, which is what Seager is projected at in this article. In other words, if there were a prospect that existed right now that you were certain would have Chad Billingsley’s career, it’d be an overpay to deal him straight up for 3 years of Fernandez. Kemp would be a bigger overpay. As would Russell Martin. Ethier put up 17.6 WAR in his pre-FA years, which would make him about fair value. These are all players that, had you traded Fernandez for them one-for-one, would all INDIVIDUALLY have been worth it. That doesn’t even include Carlos Santana, Kenley Jansen, Edwin Jackson, James Loney, Jonathan Broxton, AJ Ellis, Dioner Navarro, etc. who have all produced significant positive value in their pre-FA years. And that list doesn’t even incude guys yet to complete the majority of their pre-FA years like Dee Gordon, Joc Pederson, Yasiel Puig, Nathan Eovaldi, Scott Van Slyke, etc., who I’m sure the Marlins would also like
Oh so a package like Swanson, Inciarte, and Blair?
Is 16 WAR over the next 3 years worth more than 20 over the next 6? I would say a resounding yes, especially for a team with depth and a large payroll (allowing them to plug in players above replacement level across the board).
I would be replicating this analysis without adding inflation for future $/WAR. That would prevent us from doing what the author has done, and do the opposite of discounting future returns. 1 win in 2016 should be worth more in a trade than 1 win in 2022. In this analysis, it is worth less.
To add to my comment, does anyone think that Maikel Franco has more trade value than Fernandez? How about Kevin Pillar? Joe Panik for Jose Fernandez?… Marlins will need to add additional pieces!
It’s certainly the case for some teams. For others it’s not the case.
Obviously value is dependent on where a team is.
Fangraphs already projects Seager to be the 3rd most valuable non-pitcher on the Dodgers this year. How is this trade a significant upgrade for the Dodgers in the near term?
wrong post, whoops