Mike Trout and the Angels’ Bad Contracts: A Hypothetical
Let’s stop beating around the bush. No more playing games. You’ve been thinking about it forever. I’ve been thinking about it forever. It’s always there in conversation, lingering somewhere just underneath. When it’s on your mind, you’re not sure how it’s ever not on your mind. It’s maybe the greatest trade hypothetical in baseball today. So let’s just try to figure this out, before the actual offseason starts happening. Would it make sense for the Angels to package Mike Trout and Albert Pujols together for nothing?
The actual question that gets asked gets asked in varying forms, but that’s what’s always right at the core. Does Pujols’ negative value cancel out Trout’s positive value? It’s not even that difficult a question to address. Last March, Dave Cameron referred to Mike Trout as the king of trade value, now and forever. During the summer, Dave asserted that Albert Pujols has the lowest trade value in the majors. This is why Trout and Pujols have been selected: They represent the very best and the very worst of something. Let’s proceed so we can never have to talk about this again — for a week or two.
We can’t do anything unless we’re comfortable making some assumptions. If we can’t do that, we have no choice but to just sit here passively and allow the future to play itself out. Better to pretend we’re doing something other than gradually dying. We’ll have to guess at the future productivity of Trout and Pujols, and we’ll also have to guess at the market rate for wins. Projections help us with the former. Recent history helps us with the latter. And this is an important point to understand: We don’t need to worry that much about accuracy. This is all about just finding the right ballpark. This isn’t a science experiment.
There are also some things we just know. Trout, for example, is under contract for the next six years, for a total of $144.5 million. Pujols is under contract for the next seven years, for a total of $189 million. No guesswork here. Pujols’ contract includes some bonuses, but for the sake of simplicity, let’s pretend those bonuses don’t exist. They certainly shouldn’t do much to tip any scales. So this is what we’re trying to figure out: Trout’s projected value above $144.5 million, and Pujols’ projected value below $189 million.
What’s Steamer say about 2015? Steamer projects Trout for 8.7 WAR over a full season. He was just worth 7.8, over a full season, so let’s be conservative and start Trout at 8 WAR for next season. I know this undershoots the objective projection, but I’m trying to make Pujols look as good as is realistically possible, and with Trout you have to consider some regression to the mean for any extraordinary superstar. Meanwhile, Steamer projects Pujols for 3.1 WAR over most of a full season. He was just worth 3.3 in a full season, so let’s just make things easy and put him at 3. He’s coming up on his 35th birthday, and he’s developed a spotty record of health.
Those are projections for 2015. Trout’s under control through 2020; Pujols is under control through 2021. For Trout, let’s assume he’s peaked, and build in a very gradual decline. For Pujols, let’s chop off half a win each year, as is customary for aging players. I’m left with 45 projected wins from Trout over six seasons, and 10.5 projected wins from Pujols over seven. We’re almost there. Now we just need a simple dollar-WAR estimate.
I settled on $7.25 million. I talked to Dave and compromised, but this can certainly be argued in either direction. But let’s go with it for now. Trout, then, would “deserve” about $326 million for his projected wins. Pujols, about $76 million. Trout, therefore, would be left with a surplus value of about $182 million, while Pujols would have a surplus value of about -$113 million. Add those together and you still get nearly $70 million. In other words, by these estimates, Trout and Pujols together would still have positive value.
What if you used $8 million, instead of $7.25 million? The gap only grows. Trout would have a surplus value of about $216 million, while Pujols would have a surplus value of about -$105 million. By that estimate you’d need two Pujols contracts to cancel out the Trout contract. And obviously, things get even crazier if you think Trout sustains his 8 WAR to 10 WAR level of play, or if you give Pujols a more aggressive aging curve. After all, as recently as 2013, Trout was worth more than 10 wins, and Pujols was worth less than one. Pujols is almost 35; Trout is 23.
By surplus values, Trout’s contract more than makes up for Pujols’ contract. It’s not even particularly close. So we can make this even more spectacular and fold in Josh Hamilton, who’s due $90 million over the next three years. Steamer projects him to be worth about two wins, and he’s 33 and a half, so let’s say Hamilton is worth 4.5 WAR over the remainder of his deal. Going back to that $7.25 million per WAR estimate, we give Hamilton a surplus value of -$58 million. To summarize those numbers:
$7.25 million per WAR (estimate)
- Trout: +$182 million value
- Pujols: -$113 million value
- Hamilton: -$58 million value
- Total: +$11 million value
$8 million per WAR (estimate)
- Trout: +$216 million value
- Pujols: -$105 million value
- Hamilton: -$54 million value
- Total: +$56 million value
Everything — pretty much everything — has been estimated, but the point doesn’t really change no matter how you alter the numbers. Albert Pujols has a terrible contract. Josh Hamilton has a terrible contract. Mike Trout has an amazing contract. Based on the way that we understand these numbers, Trout’s contract makes up for Pujols’ contract and Hamilton’s contract, together. That’s how powerful it is, and if you bump up the dollars-per-WAR estimate, or if you give Trout a stronger projection, it’s all the more remarkable. The Angels have Trout signed to a steal of a deal. That undersells the reality by about 10 times.
Remember, though, the values are based on the free-agent market rates for a win, and no team tries to build an entire roster like that. No team could afford it. Every team, to some extent, depends on young players contributing a lot for a little, so that a roster can affordably generate between 35 WAR and 45 WAR. That’s how you get into the playoffs. The Angels are not making the most of their money.
Also understand the degree to which this is nothing but a super-hypothetical. Trout has full no-trade protection. Pujols has full no-trade protection. Hamilton has full no-trade protection. That can, in theory, be overcome, but in 2017, the three players will be due almost a combined $80 million. You’d be pricing out almost every team in baseball. The Yankees might be able to make space. Same with the Red Sox and the Dodgers. The Cubs, perhaps, with TV money on the way. But more than anything else, this is a thought experiment.
But it’s ever so much fun to think about. And it serves as a reminder of why the Angels aren’t totally screwed, despite having bad money on the books. Joining that bad money is some really good money. The Pujols contract looks like a disaster, and the Hamilton contract looks like a mess, but where those might sink a lesser franchise, Trout alone can keep this bloat floating. All together, Trout, Pujols and Hamilton make for a reasonable big-money investment. It’s one of those guys who’s doing all of the work, but then baseball’s a team sport, now isn’t it?
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.
I think Trout is going put up about a 6 WAR year simply because he will have more pressure to make up for the bad Pujols/Hamilton combo. Trout led the AL in srikeouts last year, not a good sign going forward. If Pujols/Hamilton did what they are paid for, Trout could hit lead off and add in more contact and speed value. Trout was more valuable being a speed guy hitting .325 than a power hitter knocking in a 100+ runs.
I performed well when necessary to impress scouts and be drafted; I performed well when necessary to impress talent evaluators and be aggressively promoted; I performed well when under the pressure of being a high-performing rookie; I performed well when my team was in a playoff run and I was its marquee player; I performed well when my team was bad and I “carried” them however far that went.
But oh no with the pressure of what teammates are getting paid lurking in the back of my head I will lose my ability! Someone get me Victor Conte’s phone number.
Trout has so much talent that as a young guy he just goes out and does what comes naturally. It takes time for players to realize that MLB is a business and there are huge pressures to be great all the time. As Pujols and Hamilton get worse, as they most assuredly will, Trout will have to carry even a greater load. The guy is human after all. (I think)
What Trout said.
But the strikeouts are a real concern. He went from a 136/100 K/uBB to a 184/77 K/uBB.
And by “concern”, I mean that he’s no longer projected to be the best player in baseball history through his age-24 season (he would need 18.2 WAR over the next two seasons). Instead, he’ll probably put up 12-18 WAR over the next two seasons, and only end up as the SECOND best player in baseball history through his age-24 season.
second best player through 24… which adds up to nothing… at least close to it. The downward trend is the issue.
High fastball baby! The poor guy can’t hit a high fastball!
Talented people correct their mistakes though. I think it’s more likely his WAR is closer to 12 than 6 once he figures out not to swing above his chest!
PM me @TheBobster29
This is actually spot on except for the pressure part. Trout no longer does what he is best at. Stealing bases and hitting well over .300 are very hard to do, to hit 30 HR all he has to do is wake up in the morning and swing hard.
Of course! That’s why there has been a drop-off in 30 HR hitters, they all just forgot to swing hard! I had planned on a pro career but instead I have a desk job; should have just swung harder!
Do you think the Angels have learned their lesson about long-term contracts to aging players yet?
That lesson simply cannot be under-emphasized.
The Angels organization is erected entirely on the single-minded philosophy of doing everything conceivable to impress upon itself the folly of rewarding player corps with ginormous meganames for their feats of amazingaucity, albeint elsewhere than with the Angels or for the general amusement of the Angels’ fan base, with supersaturated full-body massage endless happy endings for all time Angel money projected to run well into their Florida Villages assisted living years … while actually applying as little as possible of that philosophy to its operations.
It’s a magnificent accomplishment in the field of seeming to hold two utterly inconsistent, totally opposing ideas together at the same time within the same organizational hive brain.
God bless America’s
Pastime we love
Let us guide her
Once we’ve supplied her
With the promise of substance-free stuff
Let us greet her,
Seat and feed her
From the light of the over-flight
Up above
From Disney’s mountain
Thru dead valleys
Past farms of wind turbines
And solar panels
God bless America’s
Pastime we adore
May it outlive America
Which won’t last much more
What the hell
I get down voted all the time for my opinion, this guy is just wacky.
Usually he’s just not very knowledgeable about baseball, but yes, this screams “Wednesday Morning Bourbon.”
Upvoted for random insanity.
“albeint”?
Yeah, and the rest made total sense?
I’m trying to figure out whether Avattoir is saying that the Angels DO or DON’T have a philosophy of overpaying veterans. This is made harder by the contradiction in his opening line: “That lesson simply cannot be under-emphasized.”
I find the whole thing to be like a zen koan.
This is either lunacy worthy of commitment to an asylum, or pure unrecognized genius. I’m not sure which.
#LongLiveNotGraphs
You’re at the wrong place, Dan.
Here: http://www.footballoutsiders.com
Nice article, and an interesting hypothetical, but I’m surprised you didn’t add a sentence with the break-even dollar-WAR estimate. Especially since it’s almost exactly $6MM/WAR (which is a number that some people would use anyway). At the very least, you would have saved me about 30 seconds of my time from calculating it myself, and another 60-90 seconds in writing this comment.
Thanks for posting this. Just another offseason where DC and FG falsely claim that the cost per win has gone up another 30% before being able to read the market. And again make no mention how completely made up and arbitrary the figure being used is and how it does nothing but fit a narrative.
FG cost per win makes the rest of the site less credible. Please stop.
My assumption here was that the cost per win was a projected average of costs/win through 2020/21?
Let’s assume that for 2015, the cost per win is $5.5M. Let’s also assume 9.1% annual salary inflation. That gives us:
2015: $5.50M
2016: $6.00M
2017: $6.55M
2018: $7.14M
2019: $7.79M
2020: $8.50M
2021: $9.27M
Which takes us to the average of $7.25M over the 7 years we’re discussing here. Where do you see the error? 9.1% seems pretty high, but I haven’t looked at the numbers in a few years.
To reach a $6M/WAR average over the next 7 years (the break-even point according to vivalajeter), inflation would have to be only 2.9%. That’s definitely too low.
I thought that the dollar-per-year already included a discount factor for future inflation. So if we’re using $5MM/WAR (or whatever number you want to use), that’s the going rate for long-term contracts knowing that prices will rise in the future. I can be wrong about that, but that was always my understanding.
And just to be clear, I’m not saying that $6MM is the right number to use. I was just saying that I was surprised it wasn’t mentioned as a break-even point.
I think you are better off using 5%. There was actually a few years recently where it was basically 0.
Teams discount what they pay on LT deals to cover age related decline and injury risk, while also factoring in payroll inflation. They tend to offset each other to some extent.
Wasn’t the point of the comment you were replying to that “any” $ / WAR value is arbitrary? Has anyone actually working in baseball put a figure on 1 WAR?
All of these problems could be solved if mlb stopped guaranteeing all their contracts. It works in the NFL
That’s not grrrrrrrrrreat!
Let’s pretend there was no rule in the CBA that said that MLB contracts had to be guaranteed. Like the NFL, teams could offer guaranteed contracts, or non-guaranteed contracts, or a mixture.
Then in 2011, Albert Pujols would still have been offered $254 million guaranteed. Because, free market economics.
Disagree. First of all not every team can afford a $250M contract. Further some of those than can wouldn’t, either because they already have 1B/DH filled (e.g. DET) or simply didn’t think Pujols would perform up to that expense (e.g. StL).
How many suitors were there? IIRC it was the Angels in a bit of a surprise over the Marlins (!), but was anyone else seriously in the running? It is entirely likely that he could have gotten a bigger overall deal in terms of potential $$$, but with some large portion of it not actually being guaranteed.
See, the thing is we don’t need to play hypotheticals with what you’re saying. The Angels could have afforded a $250M contract, and were in the need of a 1B/DH, and made an offer of $254M. No one forced them to do that. If they did not think they needed to offer $254M guaranteed to secure the services of Pujols, they would not have. They would have offered less. They didn’t.
You do have to play hypotheticals. Pujols wasn’t going to sit at home, he was going to sign the best deal of those available. In a world of non-guaranteed contracts, EVERY offer changes. $254M guaranteed might not be a required bid.
If we’re playing with hypotheticals, I think the most likely scenario is that he signs a deal bigger than $254MM with more money up front, which benefits Pujols, but it’s offset by the non-guaranteed portion later in the deal.
It’s highly unlikely he would have made the same dollars as his current deal in the first few years though. Most signings are under the assumption that the first few years will be lower than market while the back end of the deal will be a loss to the team, and if contracts weren’t guaranteed then they would pay closer to market value in the first few years.
So the Angels offer could’ve changed to 10 years/$1 bajillion with a $254M signing bonus.
Simply allowing non-guarenteed contracts doesn’t reduce the value of a player to a team, so it might morph how a player gets payed, but doesn’t logically follow that it reduces the amount of money a player can earn. Teams now build in injury risk by reducing the total dollar per year value or by having performance/playing time incentives, vesting options and the like. Non-guarenteed contracts would just become a another option. A top performing player with injury history could then sign a high dollar value contract, but then have it non-guarenteed to off set the injury risk. Where as today, that player just signs a lower dollar value contract that is guaranteed and/or has playing time options.
Oligoposony market economics ? free market economics
(That was a “is not equal to” sign, but at least on my end it’s not now so rendered.)
It works fine either way.
@CJ it certainly wouldn’t be “because” something that doesn’t here exist.
I’m not really following your argument, JMK. An oligopsony doesn’t necessarily follow free market principles because there are few places for the seller to market his goods. So the buyers have more power, and there’s a strong potential for collusion to suppress prices.
There are only 30 MLB teams that are buying baseball players And they have in the past colluded to suppress prices.
But how is any of this an argument for how contract prices are artificially *higher* than they would be in a free market?
holy moly, what is happening here – Yirmiyahu makes the only 2 points that matter:
1. we know that LAA offered $54m / 10yrs
2. we know that removing the guarantee adds value for the team, so therefore we know that LAA would have offered a higher value in a non-guaranteed contract
That’s all we need to know.
*$254m / 10yrs…. 🙂
Not really making an argument here. Your comment ended “Because free market economics.” This is not a free market. Pretty simple, really, if slightly pedantic.
That ship sailed a long time ago. Plus, the only reason the NFL gets away with it is because we saw during the 1987 strike that big NFL fans will watch ANYBODY playing in the uniforms of their favorite teams. In 1995 spring training, we saw that MLB fans would only watch real MLB players play. (Which makes sense, since the Triple-A teams had to be better than the MLB replacement players. The NFL in 1987 had no such problem; even the replacements were better than college players, Arena football, the CFL, or any semi-pro league.)
there’s also some value in being more likely to resign/extend Trout after this contract runs out. I know some disagree whether thats true value but that would be worth a lot to me as a GM
good lord, there’s a few minutes I’ll never get back…
This also doesn’t account for the lack of linearity in the $/WAR equation at the high extreme. Nobody is paying $40-50 million a season for Trout, just using his expected total WAR times $7.25 million is grossly exaggerating his contract’s value in the real life market.
DC has studied the $/WAR equation and has, to the best of my knowledge, found scant evidence that it is non-linear at the higher end.
Additionally, the difference between his projected $ value and his contract is complicated by the fact that some of the seasons would have been team controlled, and as such his contract wasn’t actually a pure FA contract.
Another thing that weakens your point is the fact that players take a discount for long term risk reduction (e.g. multi year contracts).
There is no way that it can be linear at the max end. The highest contract in baseball history AAV is $31 million (Miggy) and most stick around $25 million. At $7.25 million/WAR these contracts would be paying for 4 wins when they are in reality paying for 6+ wins. At the high end the $/WAR is closer to $5 million.
I have one beef with calling Trout “clearly the king of trade value”. Andrew McCutchen is signed through 2018 for a total of 51.75M. Steamer projects him for 6.2 WAR next year, and his last three years were 6.8, 8.2, and 6.8 WAR, respectively. Let’s be conservative and give him 6 WAR per seaosn for the remainder of his deal. Using the 8 mil/WAR figure, Cutch will be worth $192M over the next four years, for a surplus of $140.25M. This equates to an average of $35.0625 M per year in surplus value. Using the values above, trout would be worth an average of $36M per year in surplus value. If you take the average of the last three years of WAR for Cutch,(which comes out to 7.2667 per year), and the 8M/WAR valuation,he will produce a value of $232.53M the next four years, for a surplus of $180.78M total. That would mean he would produce an average of $45.2M surplus value a year. Cutch’s contract is absolute highway robbery, and belongs in the same class as Trout’s, albeit slightly less of a robbery IMO.
Great points! Since you threw in that last McCutch calculation I did the same for Trout: average of 9.4667 WAR per year over last three, total production of 454.4M based on 8M/WAR over next 6 years, total of 309.6 surplus at 51.65/year.
I knew I forgot to do something! The one thing that really separates Trout is those two extra years, but even with the updated calculations you ran the Cutch contract is still in Trout’s stratosphere
At a much lower level, Jonathan Lucroy is owed just $12.25M by the Brewers for the next 3 years, which would include the first two years of his FA, had he not signed. Even if you assume he doesn’t repeat 2014, his 2012/13 returns of 3+ WAR each year suggest he’ll have ‘earned’ his $12.25M sometime around the end of July next year. Clearly he doesn’t hold anything like the trade value of Trout, or McCutchen for that matter, but his has to be one of the team-friendliest contracts out there.
Brewers Homer: Lucroy’s contract is NUTS! Don’t sell Lucroy short, he is an elite player who is probably undervalued because it’s tough to quanitfy all of the things a great catcher does for a team. As a big Pirates fans, I hate when Lucroy catches becasue he is so good at framing. He often makes pitches look like obvious strikes and then the ROOT Sports strike zone will show them as a few inches outside.
Ah, but Cutch is five years older than Mike Trout. Cutch is 28, and Trout is only 23.
I understand that Trout was so sensational so young that one may gain comfort in projecting that Trout can’t get any better. But if Trout follows a typical aging curve, he will get better. And then players like Mays, Aaron, and Bonds completely destroy the aging curve, which should remind us that it isn’t very sound to applytypical aging curves to players who are atypical by several orders of magnitude. Even Mantle, with the effects of osteomyelitis, booze, and a horrific knee injury, reached his peak during the years between his 23rd and 31st birthday. If Mantle is Trout’s model as many people have proposed, Mantle produced 65.3 WAR in the seven seasons after he turned 23, including 41.5 WAR in the first four after 23.
Given their ages and career paths, it is much safer to predict that we’ve seen the best of Cutch. It is not as safe to predict that we’ve seen the best of Trout.
Following your age guidelines(23-31) Cutch should still be giving prime production through the end of this contract. 2018 will be his contract year, and his age 31 season. Trout could get better, though, which also adds to the potential surplus value of his deal.
Except players aren’t getting better as they get into their late-20’s any more (http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/hitters-no-longer-peak-only-decline/). All we have left then is regression to the mean and age-related decline for ALL players, including Trout.
I’m aware of Jeff Zimmerman’s article. It’s probably not a good idea to compare the outlier of all outliers to the mean, especially since the mean involves a trend that was observed only between 2006 and 2013. If you want to believe that the physical act of hitting a baseball has so fundamentally changed in the last eight years that no one will ever improve as a hitter after his first year in the bigs, then go right ahead. But Miguel Cabrera between the ages of 27 and 31, with a body that was aging far beyond its years, laughs at you.
Hmm, curious that you think a particular individual will buck the normal trend, because, errr…well just because you do and you’ll ridicule those that don’t agree with you even though you, err, have no reason to believe it….
Even if it didn’t happen until 2006, certainly there are things that have changed that could explain it. The strike zone is changing, so maybe older players are having a hard time adjusting. Maybe it has to do with the league gaining more and better information about a batter as they get older compared to what kinds of data we were able to gather 20 years ago, making it easier to exploit older players weaknesses now. Who knows, maybe in another 10 years we’ll have some better guesses, but dismissing nearly whole-sale is frankly absurd.
Take a look at these guys, the best young players from 2006-2008, all in their early 20’s at the time. Almost all of that top list had already seen their best season: http://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=all&stats=bat&lg=all&qual=y&type=8&season=2008&month=0&season1=2006&ind=0&team=0&rost=0&age=14,24&filter=&players=0&sort=17,d
I went down that list to Pedroia and took the average of the offensive run production (since, ya know, playing time matters for the discussion we are having). That average peaked at age 24 and pretty steadily regressed through age 31 (Cano was the only age 32 player, so I skipped that age).
So, if you’re going to argue that really amazing young players won’t follow the typical trend that we’ve seen since 2006, then I pick out the best young players in 2006-2008 and we still see no late-20s peak in offensive run production, welp, forgive me if I don’t assume Trout will still get better.
This is the data:
Age: Average Off Runs
21: 14.067
22: 12.157
23: 19.911
24: 27.57
25: 25.59
26: 26.62
27: 22.913
28: 25.54
29: 22.75
30: 24.11
31: 9.722
Now, of course, I know that I’m biasing my pool by picking the best young players, who we should expect to regress to the mean just because and I’m not picking up those lesser players that might peak later, but that’s your problem too. You’re argument is that Trout is too good at a young age to age like most players. Well, these are the top 11 <25 year old players from 2006-2008 and they regressed. Trout might be better than all of them, but I don't see the logical leap in assuming because he's better he'll follow the old ageing curve rather than the new one.
@ Walter:
Miguel Cabrera, number one on your magic list, did not peak at 24. There is absolutely no basis for you to conclude that he peaked at 24 followed by a steady regression, unless you pretend that 2010 through 2013 never happened. Cabrera’s best year of his career so far was in 2013 when he was 30. In his first full season, at age 21, he produced a wRC+ of 129 and 2.5 WAR. For Jeff Zimmerman’s theory to hold water under your interpretation, Cabrera never got better after his 21st birthday. The last decade of Cabrera’s career has been apparently due to the greatest run of good luck in baseball history, because according to you and Jeff Zimmerman, Cabrera has been in a steady regression since his 2.5 WAR season at age 21.
I am not challenging averages based on a large sample of players with varying degrees of ability – even a sample of players who get called up to the bigs at an early age. I am challenging using averages to predict the aging curve of an individual player, especially an individual player who does not resemble any of the players in the sample, namely Mike Trout. I am challenging using Grady Sizemore or Starlin Castro or Dustin Pedroia as models for how Mike Trout will hit in the future. They have nothing in common with Mike Trout aside they are all Major League baseball players.
If you applied the average aging curve of the time right after the 1964 season to Hank Aaron, who would turn 31 before the start of the 1965 season, there is no way you would predict an average of 7 WAR per season for the next seven years. There is no way you would predict that at the age of 37, Aaron would produce a wRC+ of 191, which was by far his most productive season of his career.
And then your response would be Aaron actually peaked at 24, he just went into a steady regression – and by regression, you mean he became a better hitter – for 15 years. Or you would respond, never mind Aaron because he’s an outlier. Which was my point. Or you would simply deny that Aaron even played baseball from age 31 to 37, much like you did with Miguel Cabrera’s last four seasons.
So Mike Trout is going to age like Grady Sizemore because, well, the strike zone is larger than in the past (which is false). And if you don’t believe that, baseball front offices are just smarter at turning balls into play into outs (also false). And hitters apparently have collectively become stupid and can no longer make adjustments to pitchers (also false).
BRH
Miguel Cabrera, number one on your magic list, did not peak at 24. There is absolutely no basis for you to conclude that he peaked at 24 followed by a steady regression, unless you pretend that 2010 through 2013 never happened.
I never said that. I said of those 10 players I looked at, which were the top 10 in offensive run production from 2006-2005 under 25, the peak offensive run production age was 24. Not just Cabrera, but the average of all 10. You have one guy and you claim Trout will be like that one guy because they are both awesome players. I picked 10 awesome players, that whole study mentioned above just used everyone. Which do you think is better?
For Jeff Zimmerman’s theory to hold water under your interpretation, Cabrera never got better after his 21st birthday. The last decade of Cabrera’s career has been apparently due to the greatest run of good luck in baseball history, because according to you and Jeff Zimmerman, Cabrera has been in a steady regression since his 2.5 WAR season at age 21.
What the hell are you talking about? No one ever said that every player will follow this exact career trajectory. What we’re saying is that if you’re projecting future performance you have to assume this trajectory.
I am challenging using averages to predict the aging curve of an individual player, especially an individual player who does not resemble any of the players in the sample, namely Mike Trout.
So, you’d rather pick one guy out of hat for arbitrary reasons to model what we should project this one guy at? Uh, no. How many things as a hitter does Trout actually share with Cabrera? Is there any reason to assume that they should age similarly based on skill sets? If you got something meaningful, I’m happy to listen. So far though, all you got is “because I said so”. That doesn’t even work on my 4 year old….
They (Pedroia, et al) have nothing in common with Mike Trout aside they are all Major League baseball players.
So then what, what oh wise one, should we be using and why?
If you applied the average aging curve of the time right after the 1964 season to Hank Aaron, who would turn 31 before the start of the 1965 season, there is no way you would predict an average of 7 WAR per season for the next seven years.
Yeah, yeah, there will be outliers, na shit. But can you PREDICT the outliers before they happen?
And then your response would be Aaron actually peaked at 24, he just went into a steady regression – and by regression, you mean he became a better hitter – for 15 years.
Please sober up and reread what I wrote. Honestly, you must be drunk or high.
So Mike Trout is going to age like Grady Sizemore because, well, the strike zone is larger than in the past (which is false).
I said it was CHANGING, not increasing in size.
Reading comprehension isn’t your thing, is it?
And if you don’t believe that, baseball front offices are just smarter at turning balls into play into outs (also false).
Never said that either. I was talking about getting hitters out in general, not BABIP. OBP is down quite a lot over the last 15 years… Regardless, the point of that paragraph wasn’t to absolutely claim this is why the ageing curve has changed, but rather to point out some differences between what the league looked like 15 years ago and today.
And hitters apparently have collectively become stupid and can no longer make adjustments to pitchers (also false).
There is no reason why we should assume that the increase in information and analysis regarding baseball over the last 15 years should equally improve hitting and pitching. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t. I wasn’t claiming any of those things you said I was, and what ever I was saying, I wasn’t saying it with the clout of certainty you are. And if there ever was something you can’t claim for sure, its that hitter and pitchers are able to make “adjustments” equally, after all, offence is going down right?
I guess to quickly expand on that, I would guess we’ve probably seen the best of Trout. That 10.5 WAR in 2013 is nearly 3 WAR above what he did this last year and nearly 2 WAR better than the project for next year. If it’s not likely to happen next year and It isn’t going to get any easier after that, then it seems more likely than not he won’t get above 10.5 WAR.
I think we’ve seen the best of him, mainly because his defense and baserunning – a huge part of his value in his first two years – has already started to regress, and it should further regress as he gets older. I don’t know that he’ll be able to offset that with a comparable increase in hitting. Maybe he can – but I wouldn’t bet on it.
I think both the Yankees and the Cubs would do it in a heartbeat, plus kick in a low-level prospect for good measure. The Cubs would have to ship Pujols straight back to the AL at the league minimum for a different low-level prospect and just pay him. In that scenario, the Angels could even keep Pujols at league minimum and the Cubs would just take the money off their books. While it’s an exercise of hypothetical as Jeff states, it is nevertheless a deal that other teams out there (at least 2 of them) would take.
On the other hand, the Angels’ PR hit would probably result in them never, ever, ever considering this deal, even if the buyer took an IOU on a future bad contract they are planning on handing out.
I am sure every AL team would take Pujois for league min and low level prospect! Not being worth a quarter of a billion dollars and being worthless are not the same thing. Pujois was a 3 war player last year. A team friendly deal for Pujois would be the last 7 years of the deal for 10 per year.
The entire positive value of even the more aggressive $/WAR calculation is tied up in Trout’s surplus value in 2015 when he’s still cheap. This whole exercise will look MUCH different if repeated next year.
An 8-win player making $5.25m is a hell of a deal.
I agree. This averaging things out over a whole contract causes us to loose a lot of information. The main problem is that in 2018-2020 Trout will be making $33M/year. If we take off just 5% of Trout’s 8 WAR per year, he’s in the mid-low 6s by 2019/20. This means he’s still a decent deal, at around $5M/WAR, but our error bars in the projected WAR are getting pretty wide.
We can do the same for Pujols, but the basic point is the same. Just doing a quick sum of the projected WAR for Pujols and Trout and the contracts shows the expected $M/WAR to look like this per year. Format will be Year: Projected $M/WAR of Trout + Pujols: Adjusted Free Market $M/WAR (from above) : Surplus Value ($M)
2015: 2.6 : 5.5 : 31.5
2016: 3.9 : 6 : 20.6
2017: 4.9 : 6.55 : 15.4
2018: 7.2 : 7.14 : -0.3
2019: 8.1 : 7.29 : -2.4
2020: 9.3 : 8.5 : -5
2021: Infinite* : 9.27 : -30
*Pujols is expect to get 0 WAR while you pay him $30M and Trout is gone, so its 30/0.
Anyway, this is a good deal for the Angels while Trout isn’t making $33M/year, then it turns roughly neutral from 2018-2020 and is terrible for that least year you’re stuck with Pujols. My interpretation is that the 2018-2021 risk is very, very high because the down side is so much worse than the upside. Trout isn’t very likely to be better than his projections by very much, nor is Pujols. But geez, one decent injury to Trout that takes him out for significant time and/or greatly hinders his performance and these deals together would seriously handcuff any team for at least 3 years.
How do you know when MLB’s off-season begins?
When Jeff Sullivan starts posting two articles a day about Mike Trout.
Yea the lack of novelty can get a bit boring, but the greatness of Mike Trout really doesn’t get old.
I’d prefer it if they wrote articles about the bottom scrapers of the league. Give me Michael Martinez and Gerald Laird articles, please!
Where does this spotty record of health for Pujols come from? He’s been one of the very most durable players in baseball over his career, playing in at least 140 games in 13 of his 14 years in the majors. 10 years of at least 150 games, including 159 last year. His average number of games played per year is 151.
Playing time is one thing, but playing at less than 100% may still indicate future health issues. Besides, plantar fasciitis is notoriously difficult to completely overcome.
Maybe it’s not health, but something has contributed to his decline. Even ignoring his lost 2013, here are his last five full-season WAR totals: 8.7, 7.0, 4.4, 3.7, 3.3.
Granted, a trend is only a trend until it isn’t, but he’s not getting any younger.
Mike Trout click baits!
Would like to see a study on players performance after signing long multi-year deals/expansions in recent years. I just feel players have underperformed after signing such deals in the PED testing era. Young players don’t develop as expected or fall back, and older players age more quickly than the age related decline curves say they should.
I literally asked this in a few chats a few months ago.
YOU STOLE MY IDEA!!!
And… Thank you!
This honestly is the dumbest crap I have ever read.
Wow this is a crazy article that under values Albert. One of the games great players!!! I bet the Tigers would not only take Albert but also give you a CY Young award wining pitcher in return. 🙂
It’s how unions work. Young/new members get underpaid; old members get massively overpaid. This is entirely by design, and enabled by the lack of salary cap. No other structure in the world would allow for such massive salary inefficiencies. (And, yes, it sucks).