Holliday Contract: So Far, So Good
The big contract this offseason was the deal given to Matt Holliday by the St. Louis Cardinals: a seven year deal with 120 million dollars in guaranteed money. The contract will pay $17 million dollars annually to Holliday, paying him as a roughly 4.5-5 WAR player to begin the contract and less as inflation of free agent contract (likely) picks up in subsequent offseasons.
At least for one season, the Cardinals are getting more than their money’s worth. Holliday has been absolutely fantastic for the Cardinals this season, slashing .307/.379/.535. He’s been above average in every factor of hitting, walking 9.3% of the time, striking out under 15% of the time, hitting for solid power with a .229 ISO, and posting a .323 BABIP that is actually a step back from his career .347 mark. Put it all together, and Holliday has a .392 wOBA and a 150 wRC+. Combine that with solid defense in left field – +8 UZR this season after three straight positive seasons – and Holliday checks in as a 5.8 WAR player so far in 589 plate appearances. With 21 games left this season, barring a major collapse down the stretch, Holliday should eclipse the six WAR mark for the second time in the last four seasons.
That means that Holliday will be worth somewhere in the neighborhood of 20-25 million dollars when all is said and done in 2010. This strong age 30 campaign not only provided the Cardinals with excellent value and kept them in the playoff race for most of the season, but it also bodes extremely well for next season and beyond. One of the major concerns with Holliday was that his decline phase could begin soon, but he showed no sign whatsoever of slowing down in 2010. ZiPS projects a .401 wOBA the rest of the way. CHONE’s updated projections have Holliday as a 4.4 WAR player over 150 games, and that’s assuming that he’s an average defender. According to these projections, Holliday should once again provide some value over his contract in 2011 as well.
With all that said, the issues with a seven year contract are rarely in years one and two. The worries around Cardinal Nation and elsewhere mostly had to do with paying Holliday, an elite player, but not an Albert Pujols or Chase Utley type, $17 million dollars as he approaches his late 30s. If Holliday was only performing at that market value 4.5 WAR mark, there would be reason to worry that Holliday could slowly depreciate into a below average player in the 5th, 6th, and 7th year of the contract. Holliday should still end up declining over the next six seasons, but with this season as a starting point, there’s far less reason for Cardinal fans to fret over the end of his contract. Barring catastrophe, his abilities should be able to keep up with inflation, and he just may provide surplus value for the Cardinals for years to come.
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Yes and finally we don’t have to hear about how Matt Holliday is nothing more than a Coors Field creation like so many MSM members loved to claim over the years. The guy is a great player with one of the most natural line-drive producing swings I have ever seen, and hopefully by the time this contract is up we will all be debating his Hall of Fame credentials.
HOF is not happening but as the first middle of the order hitter to leave CO while still in his prime I am excited to see him putting up numbers similar to his Rockies numbers, his age 24 year looks a lot like Cargo’s age 23 peripherally hopefully Gonzalez continues to mature as a hitter
I couldn’t have said it any better. Holliday’s line from ’06:
GM 155 AB 602 R 119 H 196 2B 45 3B 5 HR34 RBI 114 BB 47 K’s 110 SB 10 CS 5 .326 .387 .586 .973
’10:
GM 138 AB 525 R 85 H 161 2B 40 3B 1 HR 26 RBI 91 BB 55 K’s 83 SB 8 CS 4 .307 .379 .535 .914
Very similar lines from a hitters dream to a home run suppressing but otherwise neutral park. But everyone else who was a member of the Rockies only does well because of the stadium according Mr Cameron and everyone over at ESPN’s Monday Night Baseball.
Good analysis.
After he arrived in STL as a rental I was pleased as punch with his results, but pessimistic about the way he seemed to get them: “ANOTHER ball hit through the infield? What a luckbox!”
After getting a lot more time to watch him, I’ve concluded he bashes the ball so GD hard that it’s sincerely hard to field. But, my (cosmically worthless) short-term luck-and-subsequent-overrating concern has shifted to a, “what happens to those ground ball hits once he gets older and his bat speed starts to betray him?” one.
Health and performance willing – big conditions – he might be known as a Cardinal more than a Rockie. Which is still weird for me to even consider. But, I think the only smart thing for me to do now is cheer.
Very true about early years in contracts. They are usually busted by the backend.
Example: Alfonso Soriano’s been worth $58 million in production through Sept. 2010 in his contract. He’s been paid $56 million through the season.
But what is the likelihood he is a perennial 4.5 WAR player the back 4 years of his albatross of a contract (assuming that the dollar value of a Win does not exceed $4 mil)
David MVP Eckstein,
you are really out of your mind if you think Soriano has been worth his contract through pretty much any part of that deal he signed, maybe his first year but that is it. There is no way he has been worth up to 58 mil to this point, maybe 30 mil… and there is absolutely no way he will be worth the last 56 mil available to him. I really hope you were being sarcastic, if not you should maybe watch soriano play some more or just look at the drop off in his numbers from the nats to cubs and his recent years, the proof is all there moron.
Look at his WAR by season. Nothing in 2009, but a +4.5 WAR guy in 08, +7.0 WAR in 2007
also worth more than 3 WAR this year
At 4 mil per WAR, thats $58 mil to date. The dollar value has fluctuated from 2007-2008, but was around 4.5 mil a few yrs ago before bottoming out around 3.5 this year
I don’t think name-calling helps. Just say why you think he’s wrong.
Holliday has been a marginal impact relative to his salary.
WAR doesn’t reflect true contribution to team winning as its based on runs which involves team-work. So an inefficient run producer’s value gets overstated based on his aggregate HR & RBI stats which can be masked simply from an excess of opportunities with men on base; not necessarily game winning impact.
How do you explain the fact BR has him listed as a career minus clutch contributor (-3.5) & has regressed this yr (-0.7) vs ’09 (0.3)?
I don’t know, maybe the fact that “Clutch” isn’t really a year-to-year, repeatable skill?
Clutch is relative to his performance, so -0.7 from his line isn’t so bad. Pujols is worse (-1.09), but I still want Pujols at the plate with two out, two on, down by 2 in the 9th.
MsFanDustin, I’ve never felt comfortable with “clutch” not being a repeatable skill for the simple fact of why would teams pay $4m – $5m per win above replacement if there wasn’t sustainable advantage; especially in a long term contract situation such as Holliday’s 7yr/no trade/$120m deal.
The fact WAR or wOBA don’t necessarily reflect that behavior within their definition doesn’t necessarily deny the existence the skill does exist & teams do place a market value on it above & beyond replacement level.
Like Tango suggested today on his blog, WAR & it’s components are a framework, not an absolute. We may need to consider as a community, the value in extending it.
RBIs aren’t a factor in wOBA runs. See http://www.insidethebook.com/woba.shtml
I would put the only negative of Holliday’s contract that it might not allow them to re-sign Pujols if the first-baseman asks for a mega-contract.
With the way that Pujols has talked about LaRussa lately, he’ll sign cheap if given the opportunity to stay with his manager in StL.
But it also might help them. I know money is big, but would Pujols want to bat in front of Colby Rasmus and Yadier Molina for the next couple of seasons?
yea cause Rasmus is such a talentless scrub. idk why you mention molina he usually hits 6th or 7th.
Agents love WAR & wOBA because it presents their clients in a positive light outside the team context.
This translates into the agent’s ability to demand an extended contract term based on current or past WAR performance even though teams know the player’s future performance will decline as he ages.
Have we created a monster with our zeal in defending WAR & wOBA from outside criticism; thus limiting our ability to think creatively towards a more complete objective understanding of the behaviors which may be missing from our metrics?
Is that perhaps why Tango developed WPA & LI to compliment or even extend WAR/wOBA?
After much of his data research for the Book is based on the time period up to the end of RoidBall.
Guys:
Food for thought on this thread & much of what I’ve been viewing the past few years as a “lurker” can best be summed below:
Bill James once said: “Good analysis never begins with statistics. Good analysis always begins with a specific question, and a question which is of interest to baseball peoplewhether they are actuaries or artists or aging scouts. Proposing a system which instantly evaluates everything that every player does is analogous to fixing insurance rates for drivers by attaching a box of sensors to the hood of every automobile and keeping track of how often every driver does something dangerous, and calculating exactly how dangerous that was. It’s not the real world. It’s not practical, and it’s not useful. Maybe, in 50 years, it will be practical or it will be useful, but it’s not now. Our general knowledge is limited by our specific knowledge. Our ability to have an impact on the discussion cannot be larger than our ability to find a question which has an actual answer.”
n3M5jb thanks 🙂