Why the Billy Butler Deal Probably is Crazy
I’ll give Eno Sarris points for trying, although I fully expect his attempt to find value in Billy Butler’s three year, $30 million deal with the A’s will fuel the fires of those who think Billy Beane gets a pass for every move he makes. Hopefully, this post will assuage some of that, because despite Eno’s best efforts, I still don’t see why the A’s decided that Butler was the guy to go after this winter.
Yep, they needed a right-handed hitter, and Butler is probably a decent bounce back candidate, given his youth and prior production. They’re buying low on a not-terribly-old free agent, and for an annual salary that is basically right in line with what the 2/$18M that the crowd expected Butler to sign for. But I guess I just don’t see why you need to give a guy like Billy Butler a three year deal.
Last year, Kendrys Morales got shunned by the market and eventually took a prorated version of 1/$12M. Nelson Cruz got shunned by the market, and took 1/$8M right before the season began. Michael Morse and Corey Hart both got 1/$6M. Right-handed good-not-great hitters with minimal defensive value went for one year and somewhere in the range of $10 million.
At the end of the season, the Royals had to choose between paying Billy Butler $12.5 million for 2015, or paying him $1 million to go away. They chose the latter, suggesting that they didn’t believe he was worth $11.5 million (the net cost after factoring in the buyout) on a one year deal. Apparently no one else thought he was either, or else they would have asked the Royals to pick up the option and trade him for something of marginal value, as the Blue Jays did with Adam Lind.
So how did we get from there to 3/$30M? I don’t know. This deal just doesn’t seem to fit with what we saw the market say to similar players last year, or what the Royals just said to Butler last month. This just feels like one year too much.
If the A’s wanted a right-handed DH, why not call the Padres about Carlos Quentin? Do we really think he would have cost a significant piece of talent in return? Is Butler that much more likely to produce value in 2015 that he’s worth using up a significant amount of the A’s budget, especially given their middle infield hole?
I’m sure the A’s have their reasons for making this deal, and maybe they’re even similar to the ones Eno listed. Maybe all the other okay hitting/bat-only guys are going to sign for far more than we’ve expected, and the market for below average talent is about to take off. Or maybe the A’s just spent too aggressively for a player who just isn’t that good. Until I see good reason to assume otherwise, I’m going with the latter.
Dave is the Managing Editor of FanGraphs.
Only reason this deal makes sense is if As thought they saw something fixable in him. I really like Butler and am sad to see him go, but not at this price.
they’d have to see something fixable AND think that someone else would outbid them if they offered 2/20.
We like Butler in KC and hope he does well for the A’s. However, he often seemed overpowered by insider hard stuff this year. The word was that he lost bat speed. It was perhaps illustrated in the 9th inning of game 7 or WS when Bumbgartner overpowered him with a 92 MPH fastball and he hit a foul pop to first baseman.
Also, you are going to hate how slow he is to first base.
If you believe Butler is worth ~$10 million per year, why not give him a three year deal instead of two? If the A’s really believe Butler can play 1B well, and he is somewhere between the hitter he was in 2012 and 2013, he’ll easily earn the contract and give the A’s a measure of cost control. Remember in an inflationary environment, cost control is a good thing if you have a reasonable basis for expecting relatively stable performance.
That depends on how you view the probability of him being worth a lot less than $10 million in the 3rd year – due to injury or simple decline – versus the odds of him being worth a lot more than $10 million – due to Butler overperforming his contract and/or market inflation. Those questioning this deal are saying, implicitly if not explicitly, that the former is a lot more likely than the latter.
From a team’s standpoint, I think that a contract like 2 years / $20 million with a $12 million team option for year 3 is always preferable to 3 years / $30 million guaranteed.
Whoa, writerfight! Gloves are off!
In seriousness though, we’re going to know who’s right in about a year. I’m not going to say this is a good deal or a terrible deal, but I do think it could have been better spent on someone else, like Morse for example. All these players are interchangeable to some degree, so what makes Butler better?
So, the results justify the decision making? People win the lottery every day, but it’s still stupid to buy tickets. The deal could prove to be justifiable if the market proves to be different then what we expect it to be and this is the true value of a player like Butler. I really don’t think this will happen. This is an overpay. If Butler has an awesome year, but they could have had him for less, it’s still an overpay.
No, but the results may justify us retroactively acknowledging the A’s knew something we didn’t, or saw something we didn’t, or thought they were able to fix something we didn’t know was fixable. Or maybe not; but since we don’t know exactly how the A’s are justifying this deal to themselves, we don’t necessarily know what we’re disagreeing with.
And lottery tickets aren’t stupid as long as you’re spending a trivial amount of your budget on that vanishingly-long-shot bet (with a life-changing payout). This deal isn’t like that. It’s more like taking the money you budgeted for a new car and putting it on the tables at Vegas. More painful if you lose it, possibly better chance at a return (assuming you’re playing a game where you think you might have an edge, like poker, or you’re a card counter at the blackjack tables).
Lottery tickets are stupid, regardless of what percentage of your budget it is. You’d be better off taking that trivial amount of your budget and playing blackjack with it.
Lottery tickets are smart if you know what the numbers are going to be.
Lottery tickets are dumb from a money standpoint.
I’m not sure if they’re dumb in terms of a personal wellbeing standpoint. Let’s say that the money you spend on them is trivial. Over time, it would probably add up, but let’s say that the thing it adds up to is trivial too, in terms of how it truly affects your life. A few thousand dollars isn’t a lot of money over a life time. Let’s say that instead of that lottery ticket, you would have just spent that money on a cup of coffee, or a pack of smokes or something, so it wasn’t going towards a better house or something of significant value.
Considering the magnitude of the positive outcome in the unlikely event you win, and how that financial security can be completely life changing, as opposed to the non-life changing things that the money spent on tickets would have otherwise bought, it sort of makes sense.
That said, I’m still not wasting my money on lottery tickets.
Doesn’t matter how Butler does retroactively, the A’s could have got him much cheaper. Even if he’s great, he could have been cheaper, I think that was the point of Dave’s post.
Yes, results justify the decision making.
Don’t blame the decision maker for the results. It’s not my fault that Cole Hamels only had 9 wins and Cliff Lee only had 5.
I agree, Butler is a good platoon candidate against LHP, but for $10M it’s way too expensive. Butler’s positive is his young age, but there can be cheaper platoon alternatives available through trades.
“Last year, Kendrys Morales got shunned by the market and eventually took a prorated version of 1/$12M. Nelson Cruz got shunned by the market, and took 1/$8M right before the season began. Michael Morse and Corey Hart both got 1/$6M.”
Morales and Cruz received QO’s and declined them. Morse and Hart were coming off of injuries last year that sapped their effectiveness, all of them were older than Butler is now. I’m not saying that this was a good deal, not by a long shot, but those other guys had serious issues. Butler had a down year, but if the A’s think that they can fix him, then based on age and health, they might have seen room for excess value here. I just can’t imagine that there will be a lot of it.
This. Morales and Cruz aren’t good comps. Both received QO’s, so the signing teams were losing a first-round pick and (presumably) the market was smaller. Also, Morales has his injury history (Butler had none); Cruz had his PED usage and his age (33, not 29); a Morse is a Morse, of course of course (and he’s always nicked up); and Corey Hart didn’t play in 2013 (slightly different situation). Using those four guys as comps for the conclusion this was an overpay seems pretty weak. Evaluate this deal at the end of the off-season, not at the start.
Both received the QO because they were better than Butler!
Except they’re not better. The from 2011-2013 Morales put up wRC+ of 0 (injured all year), 119, 119, Cruz put up wRC+ of 116, 106, 122, Butler put up wRC+ of 139, 117, 97. But you also have to remember other problems, Morales only played 51 games in 2010 and missed all of 2011 with injuries. Cruz had only topped 150 games played once in his career before he signed on with Baltimore, not to mention the PED supsension late in 2012. Butler has averaged 153 games played since 2008 and has had no serious injuries that we know of.
Health has been shown to be something of a skill, it’s a skill that Cruz has only shown twice, it’s a skill that Morales has struggled with on occasion, it’s a skill that Butler has in spades. If Butler’s decline last year wasn’t due to injuries, then it would seem that it might be fixable.
Except they kinda WERE better. Most contract offers will be heavily influenced by the most recent year, and it *should* receive a greater share of the weight in evaluating a player as it represents his most recent performance. So you’ve got:
Morales 119, no trend
Cruz 122, no real trend
Butler 97, trending down
I can tell you which of those three is the least appealing to me, strictly from an offensive standpoint. Yes, Butler is also the youngest of the trio but is that enough to overcome his downward trend and a 20-point wRC+ gap?
You mention Cruz’s contract at 1yr/$8M, but one thing to consider is that the Orioles right now are probably wishing they’d have given him a 3 year contract, after seeing his performance this year. Zach Links over at MLBTR predicts Cruz getting $70M this offseason. Is it likely Butler hits 40 HR in 2015? No, not at all. But maybe the A’s see Butler having a career resurgence like that rather than a Corey Hart/Kendrys Morales type season, in which case this contract will look pretty good.
True, but he also mentions the small deals Hart and Morse got. Do their teams wish they had doled out long term deals? I kind of don’t think so. If Doc Brown visited Duquette last year and told him of Cruz’s epic year, DD wouldn’t have given him an expensive long term deal, he would have given him a cheap long term deal. If Beane really believes he can make Butler great, he should offer just enough to get him. Anything else is still an overpay.
I think the point about the Orioles and Cruz is valid: the amount the A’s will pay is relatively small. Even if he’s awful, it isn’t much. They are not even paying him to be an average player (2 WAR). If things go well, great. If things go badly, what, maybe they overpaid by $10 million? That’s peanuts.
I’m not so sure that $10 million is peanuts for the A’s, though, especially if it’s a sunk $10 million in year 3.
$10 million is a decent chunk of the A’s payroll most years.
I think the A’s are kind of “locked in” in their pursuit of groundball hitters to offset their flyball-heavy lineup or to give them another platoon angle. This explains why they let go of Cespedes and snagged Fuld to partially replace him.
But it’s always dangerous to get so locked into a strategy that you overreach. The Red Sox went crazy trading for “buy low” types of guys last year, and now they have a surplus of them that they have to address by (ahem) selling low. I can see the A’s getting themselves into trouble if they get a similar fixation on groundball hitters.
I guess I’m still missing the point on why you want ground ball hitters on your team in the first place, unless they’re of the slash-and-burn Ichiro/Ben Revere/Nori Aoki sort of mold that can regularly beat out infield grounders. I suppose I buy the idea of stockpiling uppercut flyball hitters in an attempt to neutralize all the groundball specialists teams are throwing out there, but what sort of pitcher is Billy Butler is supposed to neutralize. (Except for LOOGYs, but there has to be better, cheaper ways to do that.)
I agree. A ground ball hitter with no speed turns into what Allen Craig was last year…a DP machine with no power.
“Last year, Kendrys Morales got shunned by the market and eventually took a prorated version of 1/$12M. Nelson Cruz got shunned by the market, and took 1/$8M right before the season began. Michael Morse and Corey Hart both got 1/$6M. Right-handed good-not-great hitters with minimal defensive value went for one year and somewhere in the range of $10 million. . . . If the A’s wanted a right-handed DH, why not call the Padres about Carlos Quentin?”
Butler is significantly younger and healthier than every single one of those players, plus it’s a year later and the market continues to go up. There is no mystery why he got more years.
So, you’re saying the Mariners should call the Padres? I’m in. They can have Denorfia back.
The Padres wouldn’t be calling the Mariners to get Denorfia back. They could just call his agent.
An A’s fan through and through, but as to this signing? Not a fan, not a fan…
The A’s might have looked at Russell Martin’s and Victor Martinez’ contracts and figured that prices for a servicable DH (which Martin will eventually be) are going to go through the roof? If so, this deal may not be so bad. A’s fans, you’ll enjoy having such an affable player, but brace yourself for lots of rally-killing groundballs.
Where would you rather have them spend this money? I feel as if the A’s might have fallen into the trap of “we’ve got money, let’s make sure to spend all of it.” At the same time though, they couldn’t pay any of the really good free agents out there. So, what was the opportunity cost?
Quentin made so much friggin sense. Even with the bad clubhouse vibes, he’d have fit perfectly in terms of positioning.
Quentin would make sense if he could actually play baseball.
A thought about the DH penalty – when a team already has several capable outfielders (and first basemen), they still need someone to DH. With the departures of Callaspo, Dunn and Gomes, and Jaso’s future uncertain, the A’s should have a lot of DH starts open in 2015.
The A’s have Fuld, Reddick, Gentry, and Crisp all under control for the next two years. Three of them are excellent defensive outfielders, and the fourth (Crisp) had a down year in 2014, but is a capable center fielder. Butler hurts their flexibility, but in terms of context, his inability to play the field appears to impact the A’s less than it might other teams. After all, someone has to DH, you might as well get the best hitter available (who won’t cost a draft pick or be super expensive).
I often feel like that last point is papered over by Dave — I mean, does he want teams to sign outstanding defenders to DH?
The flip side to that is, how many players are even willing to sign to be a full-time DH?
The acceptable-to-a-contending-team DH pool can really be a very small pool. There is always the option of just rotating 4 or 5 players through the DH, and perhaps that is the best option for most teams.
But if you’re going to sign a full-time DH, there aren’t a lot of good candidates out there if you want a history of good health and a consistently decent bat, not to mention youth that should increase expectations of both health and bat going forward. That may create scarcity at a position that one wouldn’t normally think should have scarcity issues.
Of course, Oakland has said Butler will play some 1B. I wonder if they think he’ll perform even better by playing the field semi-regularly.
His team option with the Royals was probably something more like $14 million or so. The net cost after factoring in the buyout would have been around $13 million.
Cot’s had the option at $12.5m, as stated in the article. What makes you think it was more than that?
Cot’s has it at $12.5 MM, with escalators that could push it up to 14.5. He almost certainly hit most, if not all, of those escalators, so the actual amount of the option was probably 14 million or so.
Thanks, good to know.
You’d think a site that’s concerned with conveying accurate information would include that sort of thing in its analysis. At least I can trust commenters to fill in important blanks like this.
Yuck. Did he somehow get escalators that said “Pay him extra if he is crappy”?
DL80, of course not. He got escalators that said “pay him extra if he plays almost every game”.
Good point, I missed that.
Unless you know what the escalators were (I can’t find them anywhere) then it’s just pure speculation and doesn’t really make sense to factor in.
But what possible escalators could there be in that contract that Butler wouldn’t have reached? He played in at least 150 games each year (twice 160), had at least 600 plate appearances every year, and never spent a day on the DL.
It’s possible that some of the escalators might have required 650 PA’s, or maybe even 700, so he may have not reached the levels needed. Or maybe even a certain number of starts at first base, where he played infrequently. But if the Royals had wanted to put in a requirement like that, they must have made some kind of assurance to him that they were planning to play him there. If I were Billy Butler, and found out that all they wanted to do with me was play me at DH, which would have eliminated all possibilities of triggering those incentives, I’d be plenty pissed.
You’re right, it is all speculation, but based on how incentives are usually structured (X amount for a certain amount of days on the roster, Y amount for 500 PA’s, Z amount for 550 PA’s, (I’m running out of letters) XX amount for 600, YY amount for 1100 PA’s in 2013 and 2014, etc., it’s likely that he met most of whatever was in there that could get triggered.
i dont disagree. It is entirely plausible that he reached some, if not all of his escalators. But we just dont know, so it would be a bit irresponsible to factor it in instead of his base salary which we do know for sure. You know what they say about assuming. 😉
Its also a bit weird that it doesnt specifically say what the escalators are. Usually they are pretty open about that.
It could also be that they were for things like All-Star appearances or winning a silver slugger, etc.
I dont know, just spitt balling.
Here’s what I found at BP… so the bottom line was, if KC had done what Dave suggested and Oakland wanted to pick up the option, that would have cost Oakland $14.5 million for 1 year.
15: $12.5M club option, $1M buyout). Option may increase by $2M to $14.5M if traded. Assignment bonus if traded.
A’s already have a cheaper, injury prone version of quentin in kyle blanks. Which is a reason why they signed butler. blanks never healthy, maybe 2015 he does but still an unknown, nate freiman’s swing is terrible
Who were the other comparable players on the market? Morse almost certainly will get a lot more money than last time around (though the crowd has him at $7 million for one year, so maybe I’m wrong on that). Beyond Morse, who are the other guys out there? I’d be more interesting in comparing Butler to those free agents than comparing him to last year’s.
I don’t see why this should be considered a real head-scratcher, as so many people have characterized it. The crowd sourcing had an average guess of 2/18, and as mentioned in those article, fans tend to slightly underestimate both the years and the dollars. That makes a 3/30 contract seem understandable.
Butler’s been a real good hitter over the whole of his career, he’s only 29, never missed time on the DL, and he doesn’t cost his signing team a draft pick. This is going to end up being on the lower end of contracts signed this off-season for a player expected to be a regular starter. I just can’t see this as being a huge surprise.
“Butler’s been a real good hitter over the whole of his career”
…except in his most recent year?
Carlos Quentin?
Quentin: 32, career .252/.347/.484, career OPS+ 120, has played more than 100 games only 3 times in a 9 year career (career high 138).
Butler, 29, career .295/.359/.449, career OPS+ 119, has played at least 151 games in the last six seasons, zero trips to the DL for his career.
To sum up, Butler > Quentin.
Quentin has better numbers, can play the field, and is cheaper than butler.
Maybe the A’s have decided that a mediocre player who can successfully avoid the DL is worth as much as an average player who can’t. That’s all I can come up with, really.
And this team was so injury-wracked it turned from the top run-producing team in MLB into an offensive nightmare the last two months. Plus, Butler is a great deal better than mediocre against lefties.
Your rebuttal is, “Why didn’t you get Carlos Quentin.”? Seriously? Thanks for putting in the time. How about the benefits of a batter that has demonstrated an ability to hit to all fields during a time when defenders are helping aid those that can’t towards extinction. I brought up lineup diversity in other places prior to Eno’s excellent grasp of this concept. The groundballs aren’t ideal, but if every other guy on the roster can be exploited by a certain type of pitcher wouldn’t it make sense to get a guy that thrives against that? Mesh is strongest when it moves it alternating directions.
I have Butler with an expected wRC+ against righties of 106 which goes to 117 against lefties. You’re looking at a good hitter coming in on a bit of a buy low who crushes lefties (an obvious need after being 20th in wRC+ against them last year) who won’t kill you against righties. It’s not sexy, and he need not bring glove, but there’s a ton of utility to a guy like Butler.
Butler’s 2009-2013 record justifies this kind of money. His 2014 record does not.
Clearly, the A’s think that his earlier record is more typical (or that their coaches can restore/improve it).
We’ll see.
Its not 3/30 its 3/25 with a 5 bonus that does not get added into team salary.
So Butler at $8.33M a year for age 29-31 years is actually nothing to care about. Oakland might end up using him only against lefties anyhow. Its well-known that free agents don’t like to come to Oakland so they have to overpay, but its also not very well-known that Lew Wolff has never at any point put any kind of financial restrictions on the team that the previous “Moneyball” ownership did.