To Add Insult To Injury
It’s performance review week at my day job, which means I get to find out how many WAR my manager thinks I accrued last year. Based on that, she’ll assign me into one of four buckets: poor, developing, strong, and top. It’s one of those systems where the top and bottom levers are rarely exercised but the road to a “strong” is traversable ground.
At my workplace, annual compensation adjustments are directly tied to which category an employee falls into. In the lowest bucket — I’m sure someone’s fallen into it but I’ve yet to see or hear about it — you won’t receive anything, but after that it’s smooth sailing. The next rung up gets a cost of living bump or a little more, and the raises only increase from there.
It’s not a perfect system, of course. A couple of the performance inputs feel a little BABIP-ey, subject to the whims of Google’s search algorithms and the ability of our teammates. Speaking of teammates, clubhouse chemistry undoubtedly matters here: The camaraderie of your team and your relationship with management are like park factors, invisible mechanisms adding or subtracting a thousand bucks from what our $/WAR suggests we should earn. Still, the criteria is reasonably clear and the process about as transparent as I could ask for.
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Poor: Performance often falls below the expectations of the role despite support, follow-up and feedback.
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Baseball operates a little differently. Throughout a player’s time in the minors, their salary won’t fluctuate much and will stay pretty lousy all the way up the chain. Young big leaguers generally make the minimum, maybe a little more depending on the generosity of their employer. Sometimes you get a small raise, sometimes Houston gets mad at you for not signing a team-friendly extension and pays you as little as they possibly can. To the extent that arbitration counts as a performance review, it’s a chaotic and painful one. Not until free agency does a player really get a shot to earn what his performance says he should.
Of course, it’s not really fair at all, for all the reasons that have been covered ad nauseum in recent years, plus a few more on top of that. It isn’t fair if your free agency pops up during a pandemic. It isn’t fair if you become a free agent the year after clubs go on a rare spending spree. It isn’t fair if you got hurt a couple months before you reach free agency and it’s doubly unfair if the injury wasn’t your fault. This leads us to José Álvarez, who finally hit the market this past winter, 15 years, one nasty injury, and half a lifetime after signing with the Red Sox out of Venezuela in 2005.
A quick word on that injury: You may remember that Álvarez got hit in the beans by a 105 mph line drive from Lourdes Guriel Jr. last summer:
Álvarez getting the out was one of the more impressive athletic feats of the year. He collapsed after tossing the ball to first and was ultimately carted off of the field. He didn’t suffer any long-term physical damage, fortunately, but he wound up missing the rest of the season.
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Developing: Developing with opportunity areas that exist to reach consistent, strong performance.
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It took Álvarez a while to find a suitor this winter, and it was only over this past weekend that he finally put pen to paper. He inked a one-year, $1.15 million deal with the Giants, with a $1.5 million club option for 2022 and a $100,000 buyout if the Giants don’t pick it up. For Álvarez, it’s a decent landing spot. He joins a bullpen flush with lefties, but as a southpaw with relatively muted platoon splits, he fits better than you might think. He also reunites with Gabe Kapler, who managed him for two years in Philadelphia.
Álvarez probably won’t be the last guy to sign a big league contract this winter, err, spring. There are a couple of pretty good players still out there: Cole Hamels, Rick Porcello, Shane Greene. I’m not really sure what to make of Yasiel Puig’s situation at this point, but he’s lurking around too. For the most part though, the big signings are all taken care of, and cumulatively the players took a bath this year, signing for less money and less per player than any class in recent memory.
| Year | Free Agents | Total Salary | Median Salary |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2018 | 147 | $1,512,622,300 | $2,500,000 |
| 2019 | 146 | $1,864,295,000 | $2,500,000 |
| 2020 | 144 | $2,161,077,000 | $3,000,000 |
| 2021 | 171 | $1,425,605,500 | $2,500,000 |
Per usual, the big free agents got their money. Topline figures are slightly muted by the unusual terms of Trevor Bauer’s deal, but the top six players in our offseason rankings actually beat most of our projections. But downstream, exceptions like James McCann and Liam Hendriks aside, the picture was grim, particularly among on the free agents who didn’t quite make our list. As mentioned above, there are a number of players still looking for work, and functional performers like Travis Shaw and Brian Goodwin could only find minor league deals.
And then there’s Jose Álvarez.
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Strong: Meets and sometimes exceeds performance goals.
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Álvarez came up as a starter in 2013, but has spent most of his career in the bullpen. He established himself as a reliable major-league reliever in 2015, when he posted a 3.49 ERA and 3.60 FIP in 67 innings. Since, his numbers have hardly deviated. Sometimes he’s been a little better, sometimes a little worse, but the delta has always been small.
His underlying skills have held steady as well. Neither his velocity nor his pitch mix has changed much in recent years. He pitched as something of a lefty specialist in Los Angeles but his four-pitch arsenal, headlined by a bat-missing changeup, is conducive to more regular work and he proved he could handle expanded duties in Philadelphia. Exciting? Not really. Useful? Absolutely: He’s racked up nearly 3.5 WAR in the last six years.
In that time, his salary has risen slowly but steadily. He didn’t earn much above the minimum until 2018, when his pay doubled. He crawled within a hair of $2 million in 2019 and would have eclipsed that in 2020 if not for a pesky pandemic. The going rate for one WAR on the open market is a moving target these days, but it’s hard to imagine Álvarez’s consistent production being worth much less than the approximately $3 million he was set to earn last season.
Of course, that’s not how things work these days.
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Top: Demonstrates exceptional performance.
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This both is and is not about José Álvarez, a player whose competency is outmuscled by his obscurity. When you google his name, the first Baseball Reference link will take you to a different Jose Alvarez’s page, a now 64-year-old righty who pitched a bit for the Braves in the 1980s. When you search eBay for his baseball card, you’ll find a couple — but also a far wider selection of Jose Altuve/Yordan Alvarez combo cards, and of course a few more for the elder Alvarez as well. Nobody is confusing him for a top performer.
On principle though, if we want the world to be as fair as we can make it, when someone does their job and does it well over a fairly long period of time, they deserve to be rewarded for it. If I’m having a good year, I expect to get a little something for the effort; if I’m having a good year and then I have to take time off because someone launched a projectile into my sensitive parts, I would expect the same. It didn’t work out that way for Álvarez, who wound up taking a 70% pay cut after six years of good work. Call it adding insult to injury.
Brendan covers prospects and the minor leagues for FanGraphs. Previously he worked as a Pro Scout for the Pittsburgh Pirates.
This is art
The going rate for one WAR on the open market is a moving target these days, but it’s hard to imagine Álvarez’s consistent production being worth much less than the approximately $3 million he was set to earn last season.
Doesn’t a fair look at this premise require comparing Alvarez’s salary to other 1-WAR middle relievers in their 30’s? It seems like the value of just-above-replacement relief pitchers has decreased over the last five years; doesn’t that play into the analysis? There are certainly things wrong with the salary structure (and particularly the pre-arb system) but I’m not sure a 31-year-old 1-WAR reliever is the poster case for those issues.
You’re not wrong TF, but this article does creatively drive home the illogic of the current CBA. For player after player, it’s underpaid, underpaid, underpaid — no questions asked, thanks for your service, sorry about your testicles — right up to the moment one is scheduled to get “overpaid,” at which point dude is promptly handed a list of reasons why no team is willing to overpay him (often including a “we’re not confident you will sufficiently recover from said testicle explosion” response to on-the-job injury).
Perhaps Brendan did pick an imperfect test case for what amounts to an already well-established truism (veterans no longer cash in on past performance in their 30s), but his analogy to an unfair labor compensation structure is apt.
The only way for this to change is for the Union to realize that it’s not the case that if younger players make less, the older players will make more, but rather if younger players make less, owners will keep more. I think that’s starting to set in.
What I’m saying is, while I too have concerns about the salary structure, I’m more concerned about the fact that guys like Maikel Franco are unsigned, and guys like Kyle Schwarber and Eddie Rosario could only get one-year deals, than I am with middle relievers getting double or triple the minimum salary. With all due respect to 1-WAR middle relievers, they are a pretty fungible lot and in relatively high supply, and we know how variable reliever performance is year-to-year.
It’s not just that veterans no longer cash in on past performance in their 30’s. It’s now that late-20’s-age corner OF bats who have consistently been 10-20% better than league average at the plate lack multi-year security and have to go year to year on deals. If I’m a young player that makes the majors, I have a better chance of being that profile than being Mike Trout, and while $10-$15M of career earnings is nothing to sneeze at, I think those players are being devalued the most compared to what their market would have been a decade or even five years ago… not fungible middle relievers.
I don’t know. Can we agree that Schwarber and Rosario are 1.5 to 2 WAR players? If ‘yes’ to that, then a one year contract works fine both ways. Teams not wanting to commit 16-20 million on a slightly below average player to cover two years makes sense, maybe if they did offer the extra year it would require shrinking the average annual payout by a couple mill. That then makes the flip side where the player would be wanting to maximize single year income and hopefully “prove” they are actually a next level player (say 3 WAR) for the next contract season go around.
I think the disconnect occurs when the idea of Kyle Schwarber is greater than the actuality of Kyle Schwarber. He’s definitely a major league ballplayer, but if you were running the team you would probably always be looking to upgrade his position.
I agree with everything you wrote and I agree that Schwarber’s situation pretty accurately reflects his value and supply/demand for his profile. But what I’m saying is that I think 5 years ago he would have gotten a 3yr/30m or so on the open market. Now he’s gonna have to go year to year. If part of the Union’s job is to look out for the long term economic benefit to players, that’s the point I would focus on. 2 WAR bats used to get paid. Now they may have to go year to year because the supply and cost of prospects who might also be 2 WAR players is so out of balance compared to the cost of veteran 2 WAR corner OF bats. That’s more emblematic of the economic concern of players than middle relievers in their early 30s getting a 1 year $1m deal.
Different, but nice!
I used to be a manager who had to write reviews in this kind of system, and the guidance for HR on the ‘poor’ was that any employee who was getting that assessment should expect it because there would be multiple written negative assessments to support it, ie typically someone who was on their way out the door.
Love this! I feel the need to pat myself on the back for seeing the title of this article and thinking, “I bet this is about Jose Alvarez” after seeing his unfortunate workplace accident on Twitter.
He’s a 31 year old reliever with a 3.59 career ERA. I’m not sure guys like that have the hottest market haha. He’s a nice guy to have around but also pretty easy to replace. Sure there are issues with the MLB pay structure but Jose Alvarez is not a victim of these issues.
“Not until free agency does a player really get a shot to earn what his performance says he should.”
Most day jobs don’t have six-figure signing bonuses.
Get in the top 0.0001% of any profession then come back and talk to us
misses the point. reward for athletes, celebrities, actors and actresses is obviously out of step with the best doctors, scientists, engineers, etc., just to name a few careers that require stratospheric levels of education and time and skill to attain (and likely provide far more tangible value to other human beings).
while it may be true that someone like Alvarez is paid less than some of his peers, or less than he is “worth”, it is very difficult for the average person to feel sorry for someone that has made multiple millions of dollars before their 35th birthday.
Personally I have a hard time feeling sorry for the billionaires who own the teams.
Nothing to do with the point Ice_hawk makes. Players reaching the major leagues earn a minimum salary of $565,000. That is about nine times the median income for families – not workers but FAMILIES – in the United States. Therefore, a guy who spends four years getting to the majors, and is in the majors for one year earning the MINIMUM, winds up with about $700,000 total and no student loans.
You want evidence as to how well-paid major league players are? If one player says, “I quit,” I guarantee you I can find at least 1,000 guys willing to take the job. If as you suggest major league players are in fact underpaid the first five years, then the number of people willing to do that job would be small.
ya, this is the thing i don’t get. saying “meuh!! but the owners are billionaires!” has nothing to do with whether athletes are massively overvalued compared to what they provide society. IMO you really have to have the blinders on to write an article about how we should all feel sorry for a 31 year old playing a game for, at minimum, hundreds of thousands of dollars, who already has multiple millions in career earnings, and will, unless he managed it all like a nincompoop, never have to work again once retired from the game in 3-5 years. pointing out the farce does not mean i like the fact that baseball’s owners take home far more.
the only people in baseball I maybe feel monetarily sorry for are the org guys making peanuts with a terrible lifestyle, who are also at the very very top of their profession, but compensated like part-time fast food workers. maybe interns in front offices too. but then you think a little more and realize that the vast majority of those interns are probably from relatively well-to-do backgrounds, highly educated, probably could easily get much better paying work, and even if they nominally have low salaries, they aren’t truly in any kind of financial stress in the same way that a high school-educated laborer or service worker with little to no support network is. even the org guys, most probably got at least a partial-ride to a college education, which is way more than can be said for nearly everyone else in society.
Nice piece, but he’s a middle reliever who, as you say, has never sniffed dominance. The most replaceable roster spot on a major league team.
When I go over to look at the Giants’ depth chart, I wonder why they would pay $1.25 million this year (in effect, counting the buyout against this year’s salary) and another $1.4 million next year for a guy who pencils out to be their fourth best LH reliever this year, ranked far below the three LH relievers ahead of him.
I’m a college professor who teaches HR, and that performance eval system is stuck in 1970s GE thinking. There are SOOOOOOOOOO many better ways to do this.
Your article, on the other hand, was awesome!
Could you expand on that? I used to manage software developers and our system wasn’t too different from that. Since we were in a profitable industry, upper management was almost always willing to pay up for guys doing good work. So I didn’t worry too much about it, but it always seemed a bit archaic.