How Giancarlo Stanton Contracts Would Have Gone
In case you were wondering, yes, you’re already used to this. The biggest contract in the history of North American sports is being handed out by perhaps the most famously cheap organization in the history of North American sports, and with a press conference scheduled, that means we’ve got something official: the Marlins are giving 13 years and $325 million to Giancarlo Stanton. Potentially. It’s complicated. But the contract’s agreed to, which is amazing, and almost as amazing as the fact that many of us have already moved on from the news given it was almost done late last week. This is the day to discuss Russell Martin or Jason Heyward or Shelby Miller. We already processed the Stanton stuff, but it feels like we should make a conscious effort to process a little more. This is a big deal. It’s also a big deal.
Fresh off of the Twitter, we have Buster Olney making a relevant guess:
Unofficial guess on industry opinion on the Stanton $325m deal:98 pct. think the Marlins are crazy. As you would expect w/ a deal that size.
— Buster Olney (@Buster_ESPN) November 17, 2014
Seems like the industry usually reacts with astonishment, early in offseasons, before going on to make similar decisions later in offseasons. It’s always startling to recognize how much money there is in this game. The Stanton deal, though, is obviously exceptional — this is a new level of commitment. You can’t not stare at the potential maximums. What does 13 years even mean? How many dollars is three hundred twenty-five million dollars? This contract would conceivably end in 2027. By then, current eighth-graders could be getting PhDs in microbiology. It’s crazy to think about the commitment because the future is overwhelming. None of us know what’ll happen tomorrow. 13 years is almost 5,000 tomorrows.
Something we can’t do easily with our own lives is compare ourselves to similar people in the recent past. I can’t develop a profile of my neighbor and analyze a bunch of other people to see what might be going on with my neighbor in four or five years. But we can do this with athletes, at least in terms of their athletic performances. So let’s follow through with this pretty basic concept. How crazy a contract is this, that the Marlins are giving out? We don’t know anything about Stanton’s next 13 years, but what about the next 13 years, for previous Giancarlo Stantons? How did those go?
I decided to set some pretty simple filters. For ages, I examined the window between 22 – 24, capturing Stanton’s last three years. I went back to 1950, set a plate-appearance minimum of 1,500, entered a wRC+ minimum of 140, and entered an ISO minimum of .200. The FanGraphs leaderboards spit out 19 names: Stanton’s, and 18 others. We’re going to play with those 18 others.
We’re going to assume that Stanton follows each individual career path. For example, let’s take Eddie Mathews. If Stanton followed the Mathews path, he’d be worth 7.3 WAR next season. He’d be worth 4.2 WAR in 2022, and 0 WAR in 2027. We’re taking what Mathews did between 25 and 37, and then plugging that in for Stanton.
The remaining step is figuring out value, in terms of money. Here, I’m running parallel calculations. One assumes a starting point of $6 million/WAR, today, and the other assumes $7 million/WAR. Reasonable people disagree on these, which is why I’m showing them both. I’m assuming 5% year-to-year inflation. This, also, is something we can’t know, but over the course of the past decade, payroll has increased an average of 5.4% each season. It actually jumped more than double that between 2013 – 2014, but we should assume that won’t continue.
With all the numbers in place, we can easily calculate the player value over the 13 seasons. So, let’s walk through the Eddie Mathews path, again, in all the detail:
| Year | Age | WAR | $/WAR, (A) | $/WAR, (B) | Value, (A) | Value, (B) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | 25 | 7.3 | 6.0 | 7.0 | 43.8 | 51.1 |
| 2016 | 26 | 5.8 | 6.3 | 7.4 | 36.5 | 42.6 |
| 2017 | 27 | 8.3 | 6.6 | 7.7 | 54.9 | 64.1 |
| 2018 | 28 | 7.7 | 6.9 | 8.1 | 53.5 | 62.4 |
| 2019 | 29 | 7.1 | 7.3 | 8.5 | 51.8 | 60.4 |
| 2020 | 30 | 5.7 | 7.7 | 8.9 | 43.6 | 50.9 |
| 2021 | 31 | 7.9 | 8.0 | 9.4 | 63.5 | 74.1 |
| 2022 | 32 | 4.2 | 8.4 | 9.8 | 35.5 | 41.4 |
| 2023 | 33 | 5.2 | 8.9 | 10.3 | 46.1 | 53.8 |
| 2024 | 34 | 3.1 | 9.3 | 10.9 | 28.9 | 33.7 |
| 2025 | 35 | 1.5 | 9.8 | 11.4 | 14.7 | 17.1 |
| 2026 | 36 | 0.3 | 10.3 | 12.0 | 3.1 | 3.6 |
| 2027 | 37 | 0.0 | 10.8 | 12.6 | 0.0 | 0.0 |
If we start at $6 million/WAR, then the Mathews path would have a value of $476 million. If we start at $7 million/WAR, then the Mathews path would have a value of $555 million. Stanton is being guaranteed $325 million. The opt-out, of course, complicates things some. We don’t know the precise structure of Stanton’s contract, but if Stanton went the way of the Mathews path, he would probably exercise the opt-out after the sixth year. So then we wouldn’t care about the final seven. I don’t know the best way to handle that, so here I’m just going to pretend like the opt-out doesn’t exist, save for occasional mentions, like this one.
So that’s the Eddie Mathews path. How do the numbers come out, for all of the individual paths? That’s what this table is for. For the players who are still active and haven’t yet reached age-37, I filled out the data with Steamer projections and a standard semi-aggressive aging curve.
| Name | Value, $6M/WAR | Value, $7M/WAR |
|---|---|---|
| Hank Aaron | 776 | 905 |
| Alex Rodriguez | 572 | 667 |
| Frank Robinson | 567 | 662 |
| Miguel Cabrera | 532 | 621 |
| Mickey Mantle | 527 | 615 |
| Albert Pujols | 507 | 591 |
| Eddie Mathews | 476 | 555 |
| Reggie Jackson | 410 | 478 |
| Frank Thomas | 385 | 450 |
| David Wright | 349 | 407 |
| Will Clark | 308 | 359 |
| Ken Griffey Jr. | 305 | 355 |
| Dick Allen | 286 | 334 |
| Jack Clark | 280 | 326 |
| Rocky Colavito | 255 | 298 |
| Boog Powell | 216 | 252 |
| Don Mattingly | 197 | 230 |
| Darryl Strawberry | 190 | 222 |
The literal worst-case scenario is that Stanton never plays again. Something terrible happens and his career is over. Maybe that terrible thing already happened, on account of Mike Fiers. But, no. You can’t let yourself be paralyzed by fear of the extremely unlikely. Next time you eat a sandwich, you could choke to death. You can’t not eat sandwiches. Next time you go jogging around the neighborhood, you could be killed by a falling fire-escape ladder. You can’t not exercise (or you’ll be killed by something else). There are actual worst-case scenarios and there are realistic worst-case scenarios, and I think the table includes some realistic worst-case scenarios. Strawberry’s career plummeted right off a cliff at 30. Mattingly lost his power as a result of a chronic back injury. Both paths would still be worth 60 – 70% of the Stanton terms.
And there’s the other end. Hank Aaron just never slowed down. Miguel Cabrera is particularly encouraging, if you’re not buying that Alex Rodriguez is also encouraging because of what he put in his body. Frank Robinson, Mathews, Albert Pujols…Mickey Mantle might’ve been too good to serve as a Stanton comp, but it’s not like he’s in here skewing all the numbers.
Based on the values in the first column, the average is $397 million, with a $367-million median. Based on the values in the second column, the average is $463 million, with a $429-million median. The point being, based on these comparisons, Stanton should be worth the money, if the assumptions hold somewhat true. It could be payroll goes up more than 5% on average. Balancing out a certain amount of this is that the opt-out has value for Stanton, and not so much for the team. The likelihood is that Stanton only stays around if he’s declined a fair amount. But based on where we are today, Stanton should offer a ton of value over the next six years, and every long-term contract has an iffy second half. I don’t know exactly how to value an opt-out clause, in terms of money, but nothing about this indicates “crazy” to me. I mean, the terms out of context are crazy — wow, $325 million, that’s an unimaginable amount of money! — but given what Stanton is, given how he should be expected to age, and given how much money there is right now in the sport, this looks a lot better than other, shorter contracts to older players from the recent past. Giancarlo Stanton isn’t even a week and a half removed from his 25th birthday.
The caveat is the obvious caveat: above, we used market rates for wins. Different teams have differing abilities to spend market rates, and while Stanton makes sense on a $150-million ballclub, he makes no sense at all on a $50-million ballclub. This all forces us to wonder how capable the Marlins are of change, under the leadership of Jeffrey Loria. For good reason, a lot of people see that name and their minds are made up. Loria has abused every shred of trust he’s ever had in his vicinity. But if the Marlins were to be genuinely turning over a new leaf, what might that look like? It might look like an unprecedented guarantee for the face of the team. It might look like extension negotiations with other young talent. You can even reflect on the trades from a few years ago that made Stanton upset, and see the good sense in them. Perhaps the Marlins didn’t mess up by tearing the team apart. Perhaps the Marlins messed up by spending to build the wrong kind of team. If you’re somehow willing to trust again, and I don’t blame you if you’re not, this is what it would look like if the Marlins were going to join the rest of Major League Baseball.
That’s the crazy thing to think about. It’s definitely crazy to think about making a 13-year commitment to a baseball player, but when they’re really young and really great and really averse to ever throwing pitches, baseball players are actually kind of predictable. A lot of those guys, predictably, go to the Hall of Fame.
Jeff made Lookout Landing a thing, but he does not still write there about the Mariners. He does write here, sometimes about the Mariners, but usually not.
What a preposterous article. Starting at age 21, Eddie Mathews had seasons worth 8.7 fWAR, 7.9 fWAR, and 7.5 fWAR. He was a plus defender at 3B and was routinely hitting 40+ HR with a .400+ OBP.
Meanwhile, Stanton’s career peak is 6.1 fWAR (last season), which was aided by a .353 BABIP pulling up his AVG/OBP from what appears to be his true talent level (mid-.200s AVG, mid-.300s OBP). He is not a great defender, and has never had a fully healthy season.
Need I expand on why it’s equally ridiculous to compare Stanton to players like Hank Aaron or Alex Rodriguez, or most of the other Hall of Famers you listed?
the point of the article is to compare Stanton to people in the class he has put himself in
By focusing on two arbitrarily chosen stats (wRC+/ISO) and ignoring the ways in which Stanton is a vastly inferior player to the vast majority of these comparators? This article would make more sense if it was based on WAR as a whole.
Stanton is NOT in the same class as Mathews, Aaron, A-Rod, etc. Not even close.
what was Hank Aaron or Daryl Strawberry’s UZR? We can’t realistically compare the three as RF so wRC+ is a pretty good start
wRC+ is arbitrary?
The question should be, what is the average RC+ of the group, and how does this compare to Stanton?
If the average is greater than Stanton, you have selected a bad comparison group. Try setting a minimum and maximum RC+.
Then you might want to restrict it based on position or WAR. If some comparable hitters (A-Rod) continued to rack up WAR partly based on fielding at shortstop, well, you know Stanton won’t be picking up any WAR that way.
Yes but this only compares Stanton with other players based on the things he does best (e.g. power). I could create a list of comparable players based on Stanton’s defensive value or his base running and get a very different set of comps. That set of players would also be misleading because it would only be based on Stanton’s (relative) weaknesses. A truly accurate comparison needs to include players who share Stanton’s strengths AND weaknesses.
I would love to read that article. When and where will it be posted?
Well a few things. The author provided 18 comps for the set parameters he chose, and he they weren’t chosen at random they met the qualifications, which Stanton did as well. You decided to choose Aaron, and Rodriguez, two outliers in the data. The author addressed outliers, and i see you didn’t choose to mention the careers of Strawberry and Mattingly while labeling this article as preposterous.
I chose Mathews because that’s who Jeff himself focused on, and Aaron/A-Rod because this article is presented as if Stanton is somehow on a similar career trajectory (he’s not). Yes, Strawberry and Mattingly are more in the ballpark of the type of player Stanton could end up being, but the rest of the article is misleading in my opinion.
Not to mention the fact that looking at WAR/Value as a net sum ignores a large part of the reason this is a bad contract for Miami. Maybe Stanton has some MVP-caliber season in his late 20s in which he is substantially underpaid relative to his WAR. But there’s also a risk (like with a Daryl Strawberry) that he falls off a cliff and thus will be crippling the Miami payroll for years to come. The Yankees can afford to take on those type of win-now, lose-latter contracts, but it’s doing to be some dark years in Miami if Stanton does *not* have a Hall of Fame type sustained greatness.
I’m really super interested in your time machine.
Well, duh. Any player who signs a megadeal needs to perform at a hall of fame greatness level or the contract will bring some dark years.
Anyhow, it’s not like awful contracts are unmoveable.
Yes, if you are going to set minimum performance filters like an wRC+ of at least 140 you should also set maximum performance filters like an wRC+ of less than 160. Right now this comparison removes all the players worse than Stanton but leaves the players who were clearly better than him.
A lot of snark above and below this comment — but I agree with you 100%. Sure, you get less comps … but there are other ways of selecting a peer group other than seeing a lower bound but no upper.
Yeah I learned nothing from comparing Stanton to other great players that started their career at a young age. It would have been much more accurate to clone Stanton, simulate his environment, and accelerate his life a few hundred times to establish his average career trajectory. Looking for historical approximations doesn’t give us an exact comparison so its useless.
I cloned him, but the clone kept breaking my basement window with dingers, so he had to be destroyed. Turns out that may have been a $300m mistake, plus the cost of a clone.
A lot here depends on what you do with Stanton’s 2013. To what extent does it reflect his talent, and to what extent was he bogged down by injury? Granted, having been hurt isn’t a *good* thing for Stanton, but he just completed what would’ve been a completely healthy season were it not for a baseball hitting him in the face, and the Stanton of 2012/2014 would be inarguably on an Aaron-like trajectory. The bat’s obviously there.
There are worse players in here than Stanton, and better players. We don’t have an exact picture of Stanton’s talent anyway, because of the confusing 2013. Absolutely, you can create a narrower pool, but you’re still basically guessing at talent, and sample size matters, and I think the fact that Hank Aaron kept hitting forever means something for Stanton. Not everything, but Darryl Strawberry doesn’t mean everything, either. The big thing is that great young hitters often remain great older hitters and Stanton isn’t a defensive zero.
Ultimately, we’re all going to be dead. Maybe some of us before this contract is over!
The average WAR of the comparison list over their age 22-24 seasons was 17.5. Stanton from 22-24 had 14 WAR. So the comparison list is solidly better than Stanton, and most of the better players are the ones who prop up the projection (e.g. Matthews, Aaron, Mantle) while the weaker players are the more worrisome comparisons (e.g. Strawberry, Powell, Mattingly). For this sort of comparison what you really want to do is create a comparison list that is, on average, equal to Stanton.
If you had only talked about offense in the post it would be fine to use wRC+ to come up with the list, but you shift from talking purely about offense to talking about overall WAR. So the end result is a list of comparable hitters that were better than Stanton on defense and running the bases.
Yeah, if I wrote this again, I’d select some slightly different filters. Although that 2013 is always going to muck things up. How much you make of what happened in there somewhat significantly affects one’s subsequent Stanton projection.
Is that a promise or a threat?
I think the issue is basically that you’ve selected the filters in such a way that the list comprises a players who match or exceed Stanton in his best attributes, without taking into consideration that:
A. He has a pretty frightening injury history; and
B. Most of his other skills aren’t nearly on the same level.
So we’re left with a comparison group that’s comprised of players who, for the most part, are demonstrably superior to Stanton in total value, if not necessarily as hitters.
I think it’s interesting to note that similar hitters have, in general, remained productive throughout their careers, but based on the limitations of the analysis many have notes I don’t think we can say that this contract looks to have any excess value.
It is basically the 300/300 club that tells us that Barry Bonds, Willie Mays and A-Rod are in the same group with Andre Dawson, Carlos Beltran, Bobby Bonds, Steve Finley and Reggie Sanders.
And that Ruth, Aaron, Williams, Hornsby, Musial, Gehrig and Mantle aren’t quite good enough to be mentioned along side.
It is kinda freaky to think that dozens of people currently reading this article will be dead before the (full length) deal expires.
Ok, so redo it with reasonable comps grouped around Stanton, not just comps as good as or better than him.
Then factor in the massive cost of the player option.
Then open your eyes and realize he’s not a free agent, and determine what a reasonable discount to free agent prices a player should give up to the team for taking the risk of the next 2 years.
Finally realize the odds of a career ender aren’t the same as being killed by a falling ladder, as HE ALREADY GOT HIT BY THE DAMN LADDER. No matter how good his eye test turns out, we have zero knowledge on how he will stand in the box against tough pitchers going forward. Doesn’t that deserve a discount or insurance? Wait: this contract is clearly uninsurable for any reasonable cost, so stick to the discount.
Even if Stanton didn’t have a full no trade clause, the option is a poison pill that makes him nearly untradable, so the good news is I won’t make you estimate the cost of the no trade clause.
Twould fray the ends of language
To condemn this article “preposterous”, yet
Exclude the physics in force in this universe.
In this same plane of mortality whereat
Young Stanton’s valued by scales
Onto which are meted stacks of coinage
Each totalling 6, or 7, MILLIONS per each,
With each so per’d translating into
A mere single “WAR” or ‘relative MLB win’,
None of it holding the least equivalent value
Onany of the other 4, or so, sextillion
Planets in this neighborhood and otherwise,
We are told that each finited moment
Diverts us to a future more distant from
All our other futures than from our Past.
Yet, this article is “preposterous”?
Nay, good sir: tis this pastime is so,
Or life itself.
$335m/$6mperWAR=breakeven of 55.8WAR
$335m/$7mperWAR=breakeven of 47.9WAR
55.8WAR/13seasons=4.3WAR/season
47.9WAR/13seasons=3.7WAR/season
CurrentWAR(thru 25)=21.2
HistoricalWARrate[5seasons]=4.2
…all with no account to “options”, and
No part of it considering the need to bury
The cement codpiece attached to the franchise
As left by Huizenga.
Mathews was considered a pretty bad fielder early in his career, improved mid-career.
An opt-out is an option that benefits the player, as such you need to discount the value of the contract to the Marlins (maybe discount the WAR?). At best, you can ignore it, at worst the Marlins get much less.
How is it that people have literally no idea how to talk about an opt-out?
Right.
Its more or less only two options:
A) He plays well in the first 6 years and takes the opt out.
B) He plays poorly in the first 6 years and he doesn’t take the opt out.
So if he turns into Pujols, you probably get some decent $/WAR years out of him, but then you have to pay him even more to stay longer or you lose him. If he turns into Strawberry, you’re on the hook while he rides the bench/DL.
So this becomes either a good 6-year deal or a terrible 13-year deal. The chances at a good 13-year deal essentially hinge on the possibility of getting some good value earlier, but then having just OK performance starting in years 4 or 5, making him want to decline the opt out and then having that OK to maybe good performance continue for a long time. Which is to say, its not likely.
Anyway, these opt outs simply magnify the pro and con sides of the deal for the team, though at the same time, probably save some $/year on the final figure since the player is reassured that if he keeps it up another huge pay day could still happen.
This assumes that because the opt-out is a win for the player, it is a loss for the team. It seems likely it’s win-win for those parties and a big lose for the team that next signs Stanton.
Exactly. In the case of the Yankees, they got great years from A-Rod and Sabbathia before they opted out, but came out on the short end when they re-signed them both after their opt-outs.
But if they didn’t have the opt-out, the Yankees would’ve still had him for 2008-2010 when he put up about 14 WAR and led them to a WS title. Sure, they got great years from 2004-2007, but that doesn’t mean the opt-out didn’t hurt them (even forgetting about the horrible contract they gave him after he opted out).
Best case for the Yankees is that he did not opt out, he gave them solid seasons through 2010, and then they let him go.
I don’t see how the opt out could really hurt the value of the deal in terms of these types of calculations. No matter what, the Marlins get what are likely the six most valuable years of the contract so in a sense it makes it better for the team in terms of likelihood to be a bad deal. There’s a decent chance he opts out and the Marlins don’t have to worry about the decline phase of the deal. I think it’s a solid deal for both sides actually
It seems like a win-win-win. Stanton is happy because more flexibility is always better for a player. Marlins are happy because he only leaves if he was worth his contract, and if he stays because he’s bad they’re paying him fewer dollars/for fewer years than they would be if they didn’t give him this opt-out (because you don’t give an opt-out without consideration). This deal makes a ton of sense, and I look forward to more deals emulating it in the future.
First, you need to look at the range of possible outcomes not averages. Assume Stanton is projected to produce 5 wins a year over the next 6 years, and that 25% of the time he produces 5-7 wins, 25% 7+ wins, 25% 3-5 wins, and 25% less than 3 wins a year.8 wins a year = 4*8 = 32 wins, cost $90M, $3M per win.
again we don’t count next two years because Marlins already control them, we start at 2 years into contract.
8 wins a year = 32 wins over 4 years before opt out, cost $90M, $3M per win
6 wins a year = 24 wins over 4 years before opt ou, cost $90M, $4M per win
4 wins a year = 16 wins over 4 years, then something like 2 wins/year last 7 years = 30 wins, cost $325M, $11M per win
2 wins a year = 8 wins over 4 years, maybe 1 win/year last 7 years = 15 wins, cost $325M, $22M per win
“blended average” $830M for 101 wins, $8.3M per win
You can quibble with what quartiles to use and whether 5 WAR a year should be the midpoint, but I also doubt his outcomes are so favorably symmetric, ie the percentage of times he’s more than 3 WAR below forecast has to be far more than the times he’s 3 WAR above forecast. It’s damn hard to put up 8+ WAR a year. It’s easy to get hurt, or lazy, and that means this model is being optimistic.
Either way, it’s clear when you factor in optionality the real average cost of WAR in this deal is significantly higher than a simple average cost model would have you believe.
I can not eat sandwiches
As luck would have it, I’m just popping round to the local sandwich shop now. I’ll order a Texas brisket sandwich with grilled onions, and onion rings on the side, and as I take my first bite, I’ll think, “This is for my poor friend Table, who can no longer eat sandwiches.”
I do that for Mrs. tz, who has a wheat/gluten allergy. That’s my excuse for the Bartolo-esque midsection.
You are a good man.
And I had a good sandwich.
I think part of the problem with these filter type studies is that they are potentially one sided distributions.
The filter is typically filtering out most of the people worse than the player in question but is filtering out none of the people better, even if they are substantially better. I think this can tend to skew the results especially if the filters are set close to the player in question. In this case at least Jeff widened it out a bit – 140wrC+ is significantly below Stanton’s 151 and the .200 ISO is well below his .338
Jeff: More of a theoretical question – would it be better to band the filter with an upper limit too (with the player in question roughly in the center)? Like say for wRC+ if you choose 140 cap it at 162? In this case for ISO it would be more difficult as you set that filter low. I realize you’d start getting into even smaller samples but by using only lower limits are you skewing the data a bit in one direction?
It probably skews it some, yeah, although you’re also balancing against sample-size issues, and the only easy removal from the pool above is Mickey Mantle. If you average out all the 18 players between 22 – 24, it’s pretty much dead-on for Stanton, aside from the strikeout rate, which has annoyingly changed over the years. Some players in there are worse than Stanton; some are better.
I don’t have too much problem with the cutoff based skew in general, but I have some quibbles on where you put them.
1) Why just 22-24? Is there any reason to exclude greatness at 21 or 25, for example? Like, if a player had amazing age 21-23 seasons, then fell of the cliff at 24, we’d miss them here. And I don’t think the the age being slightly different isn’t enough to override the lost information.
For instance if you make it age 21-25 and keep it to 1500 PAs, then rank by wRC+, Stanton is at 12th. And some pretty notable non-Stanton comps are easy to spot at the top for not being particularly good hitting comps (Mantle and Thomas).
2) .200 ISO excludes almost no one (at least in the 21-25 range I’m looking at). I’d like that to be moved a bit closer to Stanton. For example, Mattingly is well below Stanton at .207, but they have identical wRC+ in my range. What’s the point of that comp? Mattingly was also a better baserunner but a first baseman, even though maybe a good one. Is the point to find people that actually have a similar skill set to Stanton? Because a guy like Mattingly seems like an obvious exclusion.
3) Regarding positions and similar players, why not a positional filter then? Each position tends to be occupied by players with correlating skill sets. Even if we can’t use defensive metrics as a filter because we need data that goes back too far for that, position does seem useful. And with relaxed age filters we could add this and not lose numbers.
If we go by that and only take people +/- 10 wRC+ from Stanton the list is (I guess it would be nice to have a percent played in OF, because obviously Cabrera isn’t/wasn’t an OFer):
Hank Aaron
Willie McCovey
Frank Robinson
Reggie Jackson
Darryl Strawberry
Rocky Colavito
Mike Greenwell
Ryan Braun
Orlando Cepeda
Vladimir Guerrero
Miguel Cabrera*
Jim Rice
Danny Tartabull
Willie Horton
Manny Ramirez
That’s 15 other people, after I excluded Henderson and Cedeno due to dissimilarities in speed, also Mays and Griffey Jr. because of defense. Over all this list might actually be better than the one you have above, but its upside seems smaller without A-rod, Mantle, Pujols and Cabrera if we take him out due to switching to 3B at 23.
I like your list! I blame Russell Martin for signing unexpectedly and disrupting my thought process.
Cabrera played 348 games in the outfield from 2003-2005 including being the starting RF for a World Champion.
Thanks Jeff.
Migs, I’m working with ages 21-25, so Cabrera has 2 seasons in the OF (2004 and 2005), then 2 seasons at 3rd (2006 and 2007), then 1 season at 1st (2008).
If I wanted to put a cutoff of at least 50% of your innings in the OF, he wouldn’t have made it.
I think it’s fair to question just how much upside Stanton has. With the high k rate and the fact that he isn’t going to get any stronger there is a legitimate argument to be made that Stanton is what he is. He’s obviously tremendous and i think the contract is fair.
But the upside is: perfect health (bad bet for anyone), and a pretty significant drop in k rate (possible but not terribly likely. He simply doesn’t have the type of discipline and contact abilities of some of the players who we would consider comps based on top tier production as a result of prodigious power at a young age (manny, arod, bonds, mays, mantle etc.). I tend to think Reggie jackson, mccovey, parker, colavito are the best type comps for him.
There is always the possibility of adjustment that makes him take a major step forward in contact but it’s unlikely.
Good deal, fair, pretty low disaster possibility. But there isn’t much possibility of Stanton significantly improving. And with his body type i think the possibility of him losing all of his defensive and bsr value within five years is extremely high.
Do we know the annual rate of the contract? Seems like the marlins would be the type to totally backload a contract like this and stanton is awesome they get his best years and then cut bait when he hits 30, or they get totally screwed either way if he exercises the option. For the team, the first 6 years could minimize the damage to the budget.
If you backload it too much, you’re almost guaranteeing that Stanton doesn’t opt out, which sticks the team with the dead years on the end (at a premium, no less). Best case for the Marlins is that Stanton has six godly years, then opts out. Even if some of the remaining years would have been at below market value, the first six years have the best chance of producing surplus value for the team.
Both sides are probably hoping this is only a six-year deal. The Marlins want somebody else to pay for Stanton’s decline phase, and Stanton wants to get another huge contract. The 13/$325 is a combination of PR hype and the team assuming a lot of long-term risk in exchange for what should be a below-market contract for the next six years.
If they’re smart they would have just made it a level $25 million per year and be done with it.
Seriously, for the next 6 years they will have a real good core of young players under control and can use that as their window to contend. If we assume that the Marlins bought some injury insurance on Stanton to cover the worst case scenario, then the possibilities would look like this with a level contract:
1. Stanton injured before opt-out: he stays, Marlins collect the insurance and get back part of the $325 million.
2. Stanton healthy but in major decline at opt-out: worst case for Marlins, but unlikely.
3. Stanton in mild decline at opt-out: he’d still probably want to test the free-agency waters at age 31, so the Marlins do ok.
4. Stanton does great until opt-out, and opts out: Marlins make out great with his peak, and wish him well as the Yankees offer him $40 million a year for his decline years.
They’re unlikely to get back a whole lot if Stanton gets injured. Surely not enough to significantly alter the whole outlook of the contract. Insurance helps out some when a player is injured, but doesn’t recoup all of the loss a team suffers. It only helps out to a really significant degree if a player gets injured so badly that they can hardly play at all.
In what world is this contract insurable or tradable?
Hint: none.
It’s heavily backloaded. Looks like win-win if Stanton continues well and opts-out. Much bigger downside if he sucks to the Marlins, very little downside to him.
In fact by backloading it they made it less likely he’d opt out.
I think it’s an interesting adjustment to the opt-out trend we’ve seen.
I can’t blame Giancarlo for taking it, I just wish it wasn’t the Marlins :(. Ruins my dream of him in Colorado.
This contract will look good or bad based on health. Stanton’s performance will be between 4-7 wins the next 6 years. But he is very injury prone. We shall see.
I’d like to see the Marlins bring the fences in 50 feet once this deal goes through.
Do you know how many players in MLB history had compiled at least 125 HR’s prior to their age 25 season?
—Answer: 22
190 Eddie Matthews (HOF)
189 Alex Rodriguez
176 Mel Ott (HOF)
174 Jimmie Foxx (HOF)
173 Mickey Mantle (HOF)
172 Ken Griffey Jr.
165 Frank Robinson (HOF)
160 Albert Pujols
157 Orlando Cepeda (HOF)
154 Johnny Bench (HOF)
154 Giancarlo Stanton
150 Andruw Jones
140 Juan Gonzalez
140 Hank Aaron (HOF)
138 Miguel Cabrera
138 Bob Horner
137 Joe DiMaggio (HOF)
136 Hal Trosky
130 Boog Powell
128 Jose Canseco
127 Ted Williams (HOF)
125 Al Kaline (HOF)
I love those lists, always reminds me of how good Andruw Jones was.
I made a snarky comment about Jason Heyward’s Baseball Reference comps on another thread, because Jeff Francoeur showed up along with Barry Bonds.
And then I took a look at Stanton’s top 10 comps from Baseball Reference (through age 24):
1.Juan Gonzalez (957)
2.Jose Canseco (938)
3.Tony Conigliaro (937)
4.Boog Powell (919)
5.Bob Horner (908)
6.Andruw Jones (901)
7.Jack Clark (899)
8.Justin Upton (897)
9.Frank Robinson (896) *
10.Darryl Strawberry (896)
Let’s just pretend we didn’t see Conigliaro, and you’re still left with five all-time flameouts right at the top of the list…not to mention Strawberry at #10.
Wow.
Gonzalaz (the best match) had WAR of -0.1, 0.8, 1.9, 3.0, 5.7, and 0.7 from age 19 to 24. Ignore the -0.1 age 19 and that’s
12.1 WAR over 5 years. The next six years gave 17.4 additional WAR. That’s not a collapse, it’s a substantial improvement from 2.4 WAR/year to 2.9 WAR/year. He produced an additional 6.6 WAR over the rest of his career, which was short enough to treat as the rest of the contract.
Stanton’s early years were 2.3, 3.2, 5.6, 2.3, and 6.1. 19.5 WAR over 5 years or an average of 3.9 WAR/year. He’s been worth about 1.6 times as much as his “best” comp. Let’s have him “flame-out” like his best comp.
Stanton would then be expected to produce 28 WAR over the next six years, and be paid a bit more than $5.3 million/WAR for those six years. Continuing the proportionate extrapolation into his age 30+ seasons He’d produce about 10.4 more WAR over the remainder of the contract.
I’ll take that flame out. He probably opts out after 6 years, and if he doesn’t then with any reasonable inflation and present value discount rate he’s still worth the money because the surplus value in the early years covers most of the later costs.
This could be a horrible contract, but your list doesn’t make me think so.
You’re right. The “flameouts” didn’t hit their decline until their 30’s, which makes the list a lot less scary.
Not to mention the comps are based on an old Bill James formula, and doesn’t give any weight to defense except for the piece that’s within bbref’s WAR. Stanton has a more well-rounded game than Gonzalez and is likely to maintain his defensive skills longer than Gonzalez or Canseco.
Well, you can’t flame out unless you start off awesome, and that is just a list of players who started off awesome.
Unless Stanton plans on becoming an alcoholic and a cokehead, the fact that Strawberry is on Stanton’s comp list and flamed out at 30 is meaningless. And I think most people would agree that Stanton, while comparable to Powell and Horner, is better for reasons that don’t show up in a raw statistical analysis. When Bill James invented the similarity scores, he stressed that sometimes that happens, where two players are similar statistically, but one can still be distinctly better for reasons that don’t show up in stats. Stanton is a better athlete, better baserunner, and better defensive player than Powell or Horner, and has a better work ethic than Horner at the very least.
He’s better than Jones and Gonzalez due to greatly superior control of the strike zone, and less likely to flame out on that count.
That leaves (ignoring Conigliaro for other reasons) Canseco, Clark, the good Upton, and Frank Robinson. Which is interesting, because I’ve said before that Stanton reminds me of Canseco without Canseco’s off-the-field nonsense. Anyway, if his career path lies somewhere between Canseco and Clark on one end and Frank Robinson on the other, that’s not bad. We can’t draw any conclusions about Justin Upton, obviously.
Well see here is the thing. Strawberry ALSO didn’t plan on becoming an alcoholic or an addict so…. What are you trying to say? Between %8-14% of the population are addicts. Disaster as a result of lifestyle is a real risk. Of straw had signed this contract at 25 everyone would have said “GREAT!!” But then things changed.
Strawberry is absolutely one of the possible risks.
Stanton is Conigliero until he proves otherwise. Similarly devestating injury.
At the end of the day, let’s not forget the Marlins as a franchise is only valued at 500 MM by Forbes.
Giving a guy 3/5th of your franchise value in one contract, is beyond ridiculous.
Their ticket revenue is only 35 million per year. Think about that for a minute. More than 2/3 of their annual ticket revenue (before costs) goes to one guy.
Revenue sharing is over 30 million and the new MLB TV deal is worth 25 million a year over the life of the deal.
His contract is only 4% of the franchise valuation per year.
As pft basically says, usign the full contract value rather than AAV says that offering 13/$300M is much worse than 1/$200M.
It’s a good thing that the contract isn’t a link sum payment then!
This is one of the worst contracts ever handed out, but suits Laurias purpose.
They already controlled him for 2 years. They got 4 more years of Stanton but the player option ensures they get stuck with underperforming Stanton and lose Stanton if he plays well. They don’t even know if he can play now, given what happened to Conigliaro, which also makes this deal uninsurable. Back loading it creates a poison pill that will make him nearly untradable pretty quickly even if he’s good, no team wants to risk being forced to pay $210M for 7 crappy seasons if they can only get him for only 1-5 years.
But the genius of the deal is Stanton will actually make significantly less the next 2 years than he was going to win in arbitration, and will be affordable for 4 more years. Lauria increased the value of the team substantially when the suckers, er taxpayers in Miami gave him a shiny new stadium. Now he can buff it up hood the next two years, use the savings to improve the 2015/2016 teams to ensure they are competitive, sign Fernandez to a similar deal, and sell the Marlins at top dollar.
His pitch will be, “great new staduim, good young team with two of baseballs best young superstars locked up long term!” His next sucker won’t see the freight train of that poison pill coming until it’s right around the corner.
i would be willing to bet almost anything that loria & co. are absolutely praying with everything they have that he opts out
Already?
If he opts out it means they lose a superstar on a reasonable contract, and only got 4 years past arbitration of his services, that’s actually disappointing for them
If he doesn’t opt out, it means he’s a disappointment at age 30, which makes the rest of the contract somewhere between a bad and a horrific deal for them.
The argument that contracts go up 5% annually is not sound. Since average inflation is expectd to be closer to 2% over the next 30 years. Baseball contracts cannot keep growing faster than the overall inflation rate for other things like food, housing, etc. People will not keep spending more and more pct of their disposable income on watching baseball.
A more likely scenario is player contracts are cyclical and we are near the peak. For many years, contracts did not grow, then boomed in the past decade. Seems very much like a cyclical industry. It is very much like the housing boom/bust cycles. Not much growth in the 90s, huge boom in the 2000s. People who bought houses in 2007 no doubt believed “houses go up 10% a year” over the past decade and assumed the good days would last forever.
I wouldn’t say that it was “many” years that baseball salaries did not grow. There were a (very) few years in the mid-2000’s when salaries were more or less stagnant, but that didn’t mean they didn’t grow at all, and it was for a relatively short amount of time. If you look at historic rates of salary inflation since the start of free agency, it has been very much higher than the rate of inflation for the American economy as a whole. This recent trend hasn’t been anything extraordinary or out of the norm.
No one can know where baseball salaries are going to go in the future. Almost from the start of free agency, observers have been claiming that salaries couldn’t keep rising at the rate they had been, yet it took 40 years before there was a short period when salaries didn’t rise at dramatic rates year over year. Since then, we’ve seen salaries rise to similar degree as they had in the past, and now we’re hearing the same thing, that that kind of growth can’t be sustained.
If we see that baseball salaries have for decades risen at a rate greater than the economy as a whole, how can we say that they won’t continue that growth in the future? Until we see some kind of long-term trend that signals anything different, (or signs that we should expect something different in the future) the best expectation would be that salaries will continue to escalate beyond that of the general inflation rate.
Sorry, bad math on my part. It was 30 years, not 40, before baseball saw any stagnant period of salary growth since the advent of free agency.
Because math, that’s why.
For baseball salaries to outgrow inflation for long enough would require they eventually are larger than the entire economy. that’s umm, impossible?
In reality, they can’t keep growing as a percentage of fans discretionary income, fans will only have so much to spend on baseball and that’s the cap that will throttle baseball revenues/salaries back in line with everyone else’s incone gritty. The question is how much longer before they hit that cap.
Do keep in mind that inflation measures often ignore food and energy in their calculations. The reasoning on this is food and energy markets tend to be volatile, impacted by events that may be unrelated to what the rest of the economy is doing, and therefore skew the “true” inflation. A 2% inflationary rate is of little solace of a family that saw its food and energy expenses increase by 15%. A federal banking official learned this the hard way when he tried to explain that inflation was not so bad because iPads are cheaper than they were a year ago. The heckler responded, “I can’t eat an iPad.”
Of course, what food and energy prices have to do with million dollar sports contracts is another question. There are limits to how much one can eat, with the possible exception of John Kruk.
Anywho, 5% baseball contract inflation may be a more reasonable measure of the market than an official statistic produced by government bureaucrats. Just saying.
Of course, variation in food and energy market prices is much more due to short term factors like particularly dry summers or cold winters, which is why they are removed from price indices. That they rise 15% for 2 years is not much dependent on the money supply like everything else.
True. But the measures do include things like electronics which regularly get cheaper the longer they are on the market, a phenomenon which really has little to do with the money supply either. And just because food and energy fluctuate quite a bit does not mean that it is all short-term irrelevancies. This is very much a “we don’t understand how this works exactly so we’ll ignore it” kludge. Perhaps a necessary kludge, but nonetheless a kludge.
In any case, if I have to choose between a government number, often used to show how good of a job that the government is doing if the government says so itself, and what the market is bearing, I tend to go with the market until proven otherwise. If baseball salaries are rising at roughly 5% a year, then that’s the number.
Excuse the rant but:
You’re touching on the thing with excluding food/energy that always escaped me and that’s ignoring a huge portion of the cost of living for the “average-joe”.
If I want to know money supply, ok, maybe we need to find long term stable products. But there isn’t product that I can think of that was at some point long-term stable then didn’t go through some irregular inflation/deflation. Essentially all products are at the mercy of energy/food costs and other market effects, so if the government is going to constantly change the bin of good that goes into this measure, how can they ever escape the bias towards picking things that support what their assumptions were in the first place?
Meanwhile, the unemployment number is back below 6%, but the average-joe still feels broke as shit (if you look at things like gallup’s thriving/struggling number), the total employed percent has hardly moved since the recession ended and wages are essentially flat. Basically numbers from the government mean jack squat.
This holds true if the rest of the financial context is comparable. IE, can we compare baseball inflation rate to the US inflation rate?
I suggest not. Money has poured into the game through the TV deals, which are a reflection of the changing advertising landscape due to DVR, internet streaming, etc.
Some things may slow down (ticket costs, advertising rates), some revenue may increase (MLB.tv).
I’m OK with 5% annual inflation, as that’s what it’s been during the entire “supermodern” ERA of this millennium.
Arod and Manny’s 2001 deals were worth more in todays dollars (40-50 million AAV).
Mike Trout’s 2021 contract was worth $450 million in 2014 dollars.
Kris Bryant’s 2020 contract was worth $220 million in 2014 dollars.
Both deals were what we call “free agency deals”, there were multiple bidders, instead of a team that still had 2 years control left bidding against themselves. And those players were coming off seasons that did not end with a career threatening injury. Even if Stantons eyesight checks out, doesn’t mean he is certain to be the same aggressive hitter.
Both deals were far more team friendly in structure. A-Rod could only opt out of the last 3 years of his deal, and cost per year was basicky the same. So worst case career ending injury that triggers the player not opting out would comprise a cost of 30% of A-Rods deal, while its 65% of Stantons deal.
And lastly both deals killed future deals by showing how hard it is to make them work for the teams. A-Rod put together 3 HOF seasons in a row, yet Texas was still forced to trade him. If A-Rod was only a Stanton level 5 WAR player his deal would have been a disaster. It only succeeded because he was the best player in baseball for those 7 years.
Both those deals also showed how difficult it is to make those deaks work successfully.
A-Rod had 30 WAR the 5 years before his contract, including two 9 WAR seasons, Stanton has 20 WAR in his last 5 years. Stantons best season is 6 WAR.
A-Rod put up 55 WAR over 7 years to make his contract a reasonabke value. That’s almost 8 WAR a season. At even 6 WAR a year it would have awful.
If Stanton plays to a certain level over the length of his contract, he will be worth the dollar value. If not, he won’t. All the list shows is that some players would have been worth it, some not. Stanton doesn’t have to be Aaron or Mantle to be worth his contract, so why bother saying he’s not as good as they were?
He just needs to be nearly as good as David Wright at $6M/WAR or as good as Jack Clark at $7M/WAR.
Is this a no trade contract? Because if it isn’t, the Marlins may be simply calculating that there are twp teams out there which will give up young and major league ready talent for the right to get Stanton for 25 annually.
He’s got a full no-trade clause. If the Marlins trade him, he can only be traded to a team he wants to go to. My guess is that he’s in Miami for the next four years, until the guys like Yelich and Ozuna get too expensive, and then he gets traded to his choice of the Yankees, Red Sox, Dodgers, Angels, Rangers or Phillies for his last two years before the opt-out.
Also 6 or 7 mil/war may not be realistic comparable for the MARLINS. Remember only one team (the top bidder in free agency, which usually has serious $$) pays 6 or 7$/WAR, outbidding the 29 other teams.
A good deal for the Marlins now would be in the 3-4$/WAR range, since giancarlo is 2 years from free agency AND the marlins aren’t exactly rolling in $$. A small market team like this needs to extract value WARs from cheap sources , sort of like the Pirates and Rays, to have a shot. Preferably, a balanced roster of undervalued 3-4 mil/WAR guys. This one big albatross of paying 7mil/WAR (even if that’s market price in free agency for bigger teams) is just going to make it that much harder for them to compete.
If the marlins plan to get FA at $3-4 million per WAR, they’re probably not going to sign many players.
Right. This is a long standing issue
To have a high payroll you need fan interest.
To generate fan interest you need to be good.
To be good you need to invest resources.
If the owner will invest in all the young players they have the marlins can be a very good team for the next v six years.
Six good years creates fan interest. Anywhere.
Is this the longest contract in MLB history? (No Bobby Bonilla jokes please!)
The opt-out clause is actually not too hard to value, and it shouldn’t be ignored, since it is a uniformly positive value to the player. What to do is take the WAR-paths of the 18 best player comps, and determine how many of them would have take the opt-out after 6 years.
One portion of the value of the contract is the average value of the WAR of the opt-out guys over the first 6 years minus the cost of the first six years.
The other portion of the value of the contract is the average value of the WAR of the NON-opt-out guys over the 13 years, minus the cost of all 13 years.
Quick estimate, using David Wright as my borderline case (I assume he doesn’t opt out for these numbers), and assuming a flat $25m/year:
Opt-out value under $6m/WAR: $141.6m
Opt-out value under $7m/WAR: $190.3m
Non-opt-out value under $6m/WAR: -$59.9m
Non-opt-out value under $7m/WAR: -$15.8m
Since these are equally weighted (9 cases of opt-out and 9 cases of not), the average of the two numbers is correct:
$6m/WAR:~$40m excess value
$7m/WAR:~$85m excess value
We could compare this to the value of the contract with no opt-out clause:
$6m/WAR:~$70m excess value
$7m/WAR:$140m excess value
So the value of the opt-out, by a back-of-the envelope calculation, is $30 million assuming $6m/WAR and $60-70m assuming $7m/WAR.
Committing $325 million to one player is crazy because so many things can go wrong. I think no one is factoring in that there is no DH in the NL. If his glove becomes a liability way down the road, the marlins will have to deal
with it. The marlins don’t have the advantage of “resting” him by having the DH to prevent ware and tear on his body. ie. Nelson Cruz.
That being said, I think the marlins did the right thing. In order to get/keep a player of Stanton’s caliber you have to pay him. They key is that they are getting the prime of Stanton as opposed to a Cano or Pujols.
How about Harmon Killebrew as a comp? He falls just short on PA to make your list but his age 23-24-25 look pretty close to Stanton’s age 22-23-24. I ran
*I ran a similar set of parameters but expanded it to age 25 upper bound and Killebrew popped up.
Nice.
With no work at all. Stream of consciousness comps:
McCovey, killibrew, Dave Parker, Colavito, conigliaro, frank Howard, dick allen, George Foster, Jack Clark, Strawberry, Cepeda, Reggie Jackson.
Big powerful players with some degree of athleticism early on. Guys with some swing and miss.
That’s a pretty great group.
That’s a
Manny of course. Jim thome Juan gonzales, mcgwire, canseco all work also
A point that we need to consider, because you can be sure ownership considered this very carefully, is what does this contract do for the value of the franchise if it is to be sold?
A low revenue franchise looks pretty stupid to devote 40% or more of its salary to 1/25th of its roster. But if the franchise is relocated by a wealthier group to a better market, considering tickets, TV, and merchandise, the total payroll may increase a lot and the contract fits better.
Will the group wanting to buy the franchise see this contract as a liability or as an asset? If Stanton is unaffected by his beaning, if $$/WAR for free agents continues its upwards trend, and if Stanton follows the expected trajectory (more or less), it looks like a strong asset. Look for ownership to sell the team well before Stanton declines.
Is Miami truly a small market? As of right now, yes, it is a small market I grant, but could this be turned around? This is a franchise that has flipped the bird at its fanbase three times in its short existence, twice after World Series wins, which is hardly a good way to build loyalty. People generally don’t like spending their time and money on things that make them miserable.
I agree that it’s CRITICAL that the player has to be in the middle of the comparison group.
By setting only a minimum, then even Barry Bonds is part of Dewayne Wise’s comp group. His comp group would end up being every MLB player ever, which would presume Wise should have had an average MLB career.
This is the internet, and not a printed newspaper. A v2 should be done.
A V2 can never be done, because the title, tone and conclusion would have to be vastly changed.