How Are the Stars Being Acquired: Infield
Ranked by WAR amongst players with at least 300 plate appearances:
First base
Albert Pujols – drafted
Prince Fielder – drafted
Adrian Gonzalez – traded
Miguel Cabrera – traded
Mark Teixeira – free agent
Kevin Youkilis – drafted
Derrek Lee – traded
Ryan Howard – drafted
Joey Votto – drafted
Kendry Morales – amateur free agent
Scoreboard:
5 drafted
3 traded
1 free agent
1 amateur free agent
Second base
Ben Zobrist – traded
Chase Utley – drafted
Dustin Pedroia – drafted
Felipe Lopez – traded
Robinson Cano – drafted
Ian Kinsler – drafted
Aaron Hill – drafted
Brian Roberts – drafted
Placido Polanco – traded
Brandon Phillips – traded
Juan Uribe – free agent
Scoreboard:
5 drafted
4 traded
1 free agent
Third base
Evan Longoria – drafted
Ryan Zimmerman – drafted
Chone Figgins – traded
Kevin Youkilis – drafted
Alex Rodriguez – traded
Pablo Sandoval – amateur free agent
Casey Blake – traded
Mark Reynolds – drafted
Michael Young – traded
Scott Rolen – traded
Scoreboard
5 traded
4 drafted
1 amateur free agent
Shortstop
Hanley Ramirez – traded
Derek Jeter – drafted
Troy Tulowitzki – drafted
Jason Bartlett – traded
Marco Scutaro – traded
Yunel Escobar – drafted
Erick Aybar – amateur free agent
Brendan Ryan – drafted
Rafael Furcal – free agent
Elvis Andrus – traded
Scoreboard
4 drafted
4 traded
1 free agent
1 amateur free agent
All told we have a breakdown of: 18 drafted, 16 traded, 3 free agents, and 3 amateur agents. I’m sure most people see the developing theme here, but let me state the obvious: the best players in baseball this year were not acquired on the free agent market. Despite the hype and headlines that come with big-time contract signings and hot stove nature, the aggression on the trade, draft, and international scouting fronts seems to pay off with more impact players. Maybe it’s a one-year fluke or maybe it’s just an infield thing. We’ll cover the outfield and wrap up the series tomorrow.
This is misleading.
“Miguel Cabrera- traded”. Nope, traded and then SIGNED, for a lot of money, same with Lee (less $ though)
“Alex Rodriguez- traded”. Same thing as Cabrera, more $ though.
“Derek Jeter- drafted”. Yeah, and then signed for one of the largest contracts in baseball history.
Look, this is a cute thread, but let’s be real, money talks. If the playoffs started tomorrow, 6 of the 8 teams would be in the top 10 in payroll. Something needs to be done to ensure competitive balance in baseball.
Nope, capitalism baby. If the Yankees have more money / are willing to spend more money, then they should be able to do it.
Revenue sharing is immoral.
Eliminating the competition is not good for the Yankees in the long run. They need a team to play against after all.
You do realize that you haven’t actually presented an argument here, right?
Why “should” they be able to do it?
its called revenue-to-payroll percentages. until a minimum is enforced across the league no one has a right to complain about the yankees spending money.
Why shouldn’t they?
Every year, every league has its doormats. Installing a salary cap or revenue sharing whatever financial control people want to dream up wont change anything.
Instituting a salary cap will make the doormats and powerhouses differ a lot more from year to year. You will of course have doormats, but they won’t be the same doormats every single damn season.
The exception is if a team is brilliantly or horribly run, in which case they may be able to sustain success or failure over the long haul (see: Patriots, Raiders).
“Nope, capitalism baby. If the Yankees have more money / are willing to spend more money, then they should be able to do it.
Revenue sharing is immoral.”
The day the Yankees allow a third (fourth, etc) team in NY is the day you can claim this. Until then MLB is anything but capitalistic.
“You will of course have doormats, but they won’t be the same doormats every single damn season.”
Which is the way it is now. There have been several cases of teams going from “worst to first,” and there are teams that have sustained mediocrity, like Pittsburgh. But I don’t see them as any different than the Indians of the 60’s – 80’s.
This is largely correct, in that rich teams get to keep the starts they draft or trade for, and simply tagging guys like Jeter, etc as “drafted” doesn’t really make sense.
As for “something must be done!” I hope you don’t mean a salary cap, which is a cure that is probably worse than the disease. ~28 or so owners would love it, the players would fight tooth and nail against it (as well they should), and crappy teams that have no intention of investing in their product would benifit the most. If you add a salary floor then you’ve totally screwed intelligently-run poor teams. It’s a disaster waiting to happen, I tells ya!
This year is definitely a big-money year, but recent years have had a mixture of rich and poor teams making the playoffs. There are a number of equalizers out there. Primarily the draft, but also revenue sharing, the Yankees tax, and the inherent randomness of the playoffs (if you can get there). That doesn’t remove the advantages the big boys have, true. So maybe those things can be beefed up?
My pipe dream solution is to put more teams in big markets. The NY metro area could support 3-4 teams. Boston could probably have 2 (they used to). LA and Chicago could have 3 apiece? The owners, of course, would never go for that. They love their little cartel.
If there was some kind of floor on the teams receiving Revenue Sharing it might help a bit. I’m thinking of the Marlins in particular, who have gotten more money from revenue sharing in recent years than they were spending on player salaries. I somehow doubt that the rest was being re-invested in the product.
i often find myself thinking “if only i could watch MORE boston-ny games on espn, then i’d finally be content.”
there is no such thing as intelligently run poor teams. lucky? yes. intelligent to not spend the resources available to you? no.
When the NY Metro area had 3 teams, the Yankees were still the class of MLB.
Even as it stands now, with two teams, other than a brief run in the late 80’s early 90’s, the Yankees have outperformed the Mets.
Lol @ TomB: Poor teams are dumb because they don’t spend resources they don’t have?
OK. And I suppose Nigerian peasants who die of parasite infections are “dumb” because they don’t just fly to the US and get cured, too. I mean, what are they thinking?
“Poor” and “dumb” are not synonyms.
I am pretty sure that Robinson Cano was signed as an undrafted FA.
If not he was an IFA.
Cano was a UDFA, yeah.
Robinson Cano was an IFA.
You left out Jimmy Rollins who has over 650 plate appearances.
He didn’t forget Jimmy — these are top 10 lists by WAR, and Rollins (much as it pains me to admit) has only been worth 2.3 WAR this year. Andrus, the next lowest guy on this list, is at 2.9.
Another (better?) way to look at this would be career WAR — obviously Jimmy would be way up that list, clearly one of the better drafted SS over the past decade.
ehh, the definition and fact checks on some of the list is questionable.
A. Robinson Cano was signed out of the Dominic, he’s definately a IFA.
B. If a guy have already signed a major multi year deal when he already has FA status, doesn’t that count as FA regardless of wether he signed with his old team or not? (A-rod and Jeter and Michael Young etc)
C. What about guys who signed long extentions before they reached FA? lots of guys fit this bill here. Pujols, Miguel , Cano , etc…
One of the advantages for trading for a player before free agency is that you get exclusive negotiating rights to try to work out an extension. It is easier to retain a player by signing him to an extension while he’s already under contract than to try to negotiate a deal on the open market and beat out every other team that is vying for him at the same time. Players signed to contract extensions don’t ever have free agent status (at least not over the period where they sign the extension). A-Rod is an interesting case because he did become a free agent, but then refused to negotiate with any other team and basically negotiated an extension with the Yankees. Extensions are something of a grey area because, inancially, this avenue is much closer to paying free agent prices, but there is also a significant advantage to resigning players you already have. A lot of players would prefer to stay put rather than uproot and move to a new team and/or city if they can get their market value where they are, so trading for a player and then resigning him is different from waiting for him to hit free agency and trying to fight for him on the open market. The point of the article is that waiting for and relying on the free agent market is not a very reliable way to aquire talent, and part of the reason is that a lot of players are willing to negotiate extensions with their current teams before they ever reach free agency. If you were waiting for Santana or Miguel Cabrera or A-Rod to become free agents, then the team that was more aggressive and traded for them first beat you to the punch and you never got a chance at them.
Long term extensions signed under club control are not in any way comparable to free agent deals. The exclusive negotiation advantage of the club is even greater because they not only control exclusive negotiating rights, they control them for several years. On top of that, these deals are generally not market value like extensions for players not under club control. Players take value well below market when they sign these deals because that’s the only way to capitalize on early success to ensure long-term security. They can either go through arbitration every year and hope they stay healthy and productive and make more money but with no assurance that they ever get the big bucks, or they can take a long-term deal that the team doesn’t have to give them if they are willing to take a discount to pay for the security. For example, Pujols at $16 million a year with a club option is nothing even remotely resembling his value in free agency. Drafting a player and signing him to a long extension while still under club control is much different from signing a free agent because all the advantages of club and salary control still apply.
Amen, and thank you for being so polite to everybody else. You, sir, are both a scholar and a gentleman.
Shouldn’t one distinguish players traded after free agency from players traded before free agency? Players before free agency in theory have surplus value; players traded after free agency don’t, or at least they only have surplus value if they’ve improved their play or signed a bad contract.
They’re not really comparable situations.
Also, do a re-count for 2B.
This series is incredibly flawed as has been pointed out by many commenters already. Lots of filler recently on this site to accompany the usual quality posts.
All you’ve done is list the Top 10 players at each position according to WAR this season. I’m sorry, but one good season doesn’t make a star. In which bizzaro baseball world are mid-30’s Scott Rolen and Casey Blake considered stars and David Wright is not?