Uehara Outdoes Crowd’s Expecations, Signs for Two Years

by
October 30, 2014

On Wednesday, FanGraphs published the results of its contract crowdsourcing effort, an attempt to harness the wisdom of the crowds to the end of better understanding the 2014-15 free-agent market. That post includes the top-55 free agents (more or less) and estimates of the length and size of the contracts those free agents will receive this offseason.

As of this afternoon, only 54 of the players included in that post remain free agents, after Koji Uehara re-signed with the Boston Red Sox. Alex Speier reports:

The deal is more robust than the crowd anticipated. Uehara’s mean estimate was 1 year and $8 million; his average, 1.4 years and $11.9 million (an $8.5 million average annual value). The crowd missed by either half a year or a full year, depending on how one calculates it, and about $0.5 to $1.0 million per season — or roughly 5-10%.

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Carson Cistulli has published a book of aphorisms called Spirited Ejaculations of a New Enthusiast.

8 Comments
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Matt
11 years ago

Decent deal for both sides. I think it bets on Koji giving something similar to a 2014 performance for 2015, with 2016 being added benefit. I think it is a market value deal is roughly Nathan’s 2Y/$20M. Bu I think Koji is a better and there is probably the whole “we don’t want to issue a QO, but we might thing” going on.

0
bmarkham
11 years ago

I like this deal from the Red Sox side. The Red Sox could have QO’d Koji, which would have made it hard for him to get a good deal elsewhere. The Red Sox now only spend $3 million more than it would have cost them to extend a QO to Uehara, but they now get him for two years.

0
Jason B
11 years ago
Reply to  bmarkham

He would have leapt on that QO as quickly as a __(adjective)__ __(noun)__ jumps on a __(adjective)__ __(noun)__.

3
Detroit Michael
11 years ago

You meant to wrote “median” instead of “mean.” I figured it out after clicking through to the top 55 crowdsourcing estimates article.

“Mean” is a synonym for “average,” so the blog post doesn’t really make sense unless you edit it.

Sorry to play the role of picky reader! You’re probably just suffering from post-NotGraphs depression syndrome.

6
shyamr2897
11 years ago
Reply to  Detroit Michael

Perhaps the mean estimate is the arithmetic mean of all contract predictions, with the number of years and AAV rounded to whole numbers.

-2
PackBob
11 years ago

In case this is a test by Carson to see if anyone is paying attention, I also had wait…what?…okay, he doesn’t mean mean there.

1
Noah Baron
11 years ago

This should have been obvious. Uehara was second in all of baseball in SwStr% last year and has been among the league leaders for his whole career. He is not going away any time soon.

1
james wilson
11 years ago

Uehara’s fastball command was superb even when he was being hammered, plus he lost not a single tick off it. It was his forkball that checked out, first on wobble much of the year and then leaving him altogether in August. Every last bomb I saw launched off him late in the year was a hanging forkball. So the team knows his arm is sound and feel that his out pitch will be back. Me, I have no idea how anyone manages that beast in the first place.

0