Mariners Reward Nelson Cruz’s Overconfidence
The winner’s curse can often be used to describe the free-agent market. Generally speaking, a free agent will sign with the team that offers the most, and the team that offers the most will generally be the team that most overrates the given free agent. After Pablo Sandoval signed with the Red Sox, I found myself wondering whether the winner’s curse would apply, since according to reports, the Giants and Padres more or less made the same offer. Sandoval didn’t necessarily go to the high bidder. Nelson Cruz? Nelson Cruz went to the high bidder.
That high bidder being the Seattle Mariners, who are giving Cruz four years and $57 million. The Orioles wanted Cruz back, but they weren’t willing to match the Mariners’ aggressiveness. The Orioles didn’t want to go from three to four years, and the Orioles are reportedly interested in giving four years to Nick Markakis. It’s the Mariners who most highly valued Cruz, making for a pretty significant immediate overpay. It’s never really fun to analyze contract terms, but that’s the natural starting point, as Cruz has landed the contract he’s wanted for more than a year.
Fifty-seven million dollars, four years. For the time being, let’s ignore the draft pick. (The Mariners are giving up the No. 19 draft pick.) What sort of overpay does that look like? We can’t, of course, know exactly how the future is going to play out, but we can make some assumptions to try to get in the ballpark. Let’s say an average win costs something like $6.5 million. Increase 5% a year. Steamer projects Cruz to be worth 1.5 wins. Decrease by half a win a year, because Cruz is 34 and five more months. Following those inputs, a four-year contract would be expected to be worth about $20 million.
How about ZiPS, instead of Steamer? ZiPS is a little more optimistic, at least in terms of overall WAR. Going through the same math, a four-year contract would be expected to be worth about $29 million.
What if we start at 2.5 WAR, instead of 2? That gets us up to $48 million. And if we change the cost of a win to $7 million flat, that gets us up to $52 million. If we start all the way up at 3 WAR, that gets us to $67 million, which is the rough equivalent of Cruz’s actual contract when you then factor in the cost of giving up the draft pick. You could say, then, that the Mariners are paying Cruz as if he’s an above-average player today. It’s not an unreasonable belief, given that Cruz just led baseball in dingers, but it’s a belief others clearly don’t share. Cruz, most simply, has one skill. He’s coming off by far his best season since 2010, and he’ll turn 35 before the next All-Star break. By generous estimates, the Mariners are paying Cruz fairly. By another objective estimate, the Mariners are paying Cruz twice as much as they should.
If you consider all the estimates and put them together, the Mariners are paying too much for this, by some millions of dollars. Even the Mariners, probably, would say the same thing, but they’d argue they needed a right-handed hitter, and there aren’t many good ones available. The Mariners tried to sign Victor Martinez before he stayed with Detroit. That contract is thought to be an overpay, with Martinez getting $68 million. But then, Martinez is projected for a 139 wRC+; Cruz, 119. Billy Butler is also projected for 119, and he signed a smaller contract. Yasmany Tomas signed for similar money, despite being a decade younger.
There were alternatives. There are always alternatives, and there are always alternatives who aren’t, say, Justin Upton or Evan Gattis or Matt Kemp, who would cost real, actual young talent. The Mariners don’t want to trade Taijuan Walker and that’s fine, but if all they needed was to get more right-handed, there are ways to do that, lower-tier ways to do that, that wouldn’t come at a long-term cost. If they figure they have trouble convincing free-agent righties to come to Seattle, then you look at trades for role players. I can’t speak to specifics without more inside information, but the general point here is it was never Nelson Cruz or bust. Or, it never should’ve been. Focusing on one player is precisely what causes teams to overpay.
All that, though — that’s worrying about millions of dollars down the road. And while the Mariners are technically giving away a prospect in making this move, it’s easier to stomach prospect disposal before they have names and statistics. Cruz should at least be worth the money he’s getting paid in 2015. So we should talk about what he brings to the Mariners.
Word is, he’s mostly going to DH. Before Cruz signed on, I had to fill the Mariners’ DH slot in the depth charts with Stefen Romero and Jesus Montero. There was no real internal option. Not for a team that’s supposed to be good. Cruz represents a massive upgrade over what the Mariners already had, and he represents an even more massive upgrade over what the Mariners used last season. You’ll see here the Mariners are projected as the best team in their division. It’s one projection, based off one set of depth charts and one projection system, but you can understand why the Mariners are prioritizing the immediate. Right now, they’re in that delicate win-curve position, where every improvement is worth more than your average given improvement. The Mariners just missed the playoffs by a game; they don’t want to repeat.
While Cruz is a single-skill player, it’s a good skill that he possesses. Over the last three years, he ranks in the top 10% in slugging percentage on contact, at .655. Last season, he finished at .680, and the season before, he finished at .687. There’s a belief that Cruz just spiked in Baltimore. In terms of value, it’s true, but he didn’t exactly do more damage when he hit the ball. Compared to 2013, Cruz’s power was the same. His BABIP was the same. His batted balls were the same. His walks were the same. What Cruz did was strike out less. We’re talking one fewer strikeout ever 30 plate appearances or so, but that was one more opportunity for Cruz to hit the ball fair, and that’s where he excels.
Between the last two years, 237 different players batted at least 250 times in both. Cruz saw the 29th-biggest improvement in strikeout rate, or if you prefer, in 2011, Cruz struck out 25% more often than the league average. The next year, 13%, and the next year, 21%. Last year, 5%. Cruz performed better because he hit the ball more often. It’s a simple explanation.
It’s also a tricky thing to bet on, because Cruz also significantly trimmed his strikeouts in 2010. Then they came right back, and his wRC+ dropped 31 points. So, it’s good that Cruz just struck out less often, but he’s done that before, and it reversed itself, so the safest assumption is that Cruz will look like his longer-term self. He wasn’t pitched any differently, indicating there wasn’t a change in Cruz’s scouting report. Once you adjust for ballpark, Cruz faced basically the same pitching patterns, and he simply did a little more damage.
How does this age? Let’s do something really simple. I examined the last 40 years, looking for players worth 3+ WAR, with an ISO of .200+. Here are the number of players meeting the criteria, by age:
- 31: 103 players
- 32: 72
- 33: 52
- 34: 41
- 35: 33
- 36: 21
- 37: 14
Cruz just finished his age-33 season. Above, you see that there were a quarter as many good 37-year-olds as good 33-year-olds, by the specific filters. And the steroid era changes this a little bit, since those players lasted unnaturally too long, so it should be clear the Mariners aren’t signing Cruz with 2017 and 2018 in mind. As powerful as he is today, things slow down. A little bit of slow-down makes a lot of difference.
It’s all about the next season or two, and the Mariners will just live with some dead money toward the back end. It’s possible they’ll be paying Cruz $15 million or so in 2018 to do nothing, and that’ll be at least, say, 10% of the payroll, but when you’re trying to win right away, it’s easier to tolerate losing money over players, and this is evidence of going for it. The Mariners see an opportunity, and while they’re surely smart enough to see the Cruz downside, they also understand that playoff revenue can cure a lot of budgetary ills. Forgive them, for it’s been a while.
One last thing: there’s a certain belief that Cruz is fragile. He’s been fragile in the past, but in 2012 and in 2014, he played in 159 games. In 2013, he was on pace for a full season until getting slapped with a suspension. The Mariners can be encouraged that Cruz might bat another 650 times in the season ahead. Especially if he spends most of his time at DH.
And the season ahead is the season we understand best. In the seasons beyond that, Cruz is probably going to be bad for the payroll. What I want is a word somewhere in between “probably” and “certainly”. This is an almost definite overpay. But to determine the extent, you need to figure out all the right conditions, including how much the Mariners ought to prioritize the immediate future over the more distant future. There were alternatives to this, but this also didn’t cost a young major-leaguer. It’s the young major-leaguers the Mariners need to be careful with, because their low salaries help to offset salaries guaranteed to players like Nelson Cruz.
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.
To say that Jack Zduriencik sees the downside of this deal is to give more credit to Zduriencik than he has earned.
VMart would have been a better bet for the money but he wasn’t going anywhere. Cuddyer would have been less money but even more risk. People lose their shit over the idea of trading young pitching for an offensive upgrade and then get snarky about obtaining the best FA bat available?
Cruz is the best DH option available, and he’s going to help the team over the next few years.
This is a good deal. And besides, the only thing at risk is the owners’ money. We lost nothing, and we certainly gained something. It remains to be seen how much we gained, but even with age/regression, Cruz is likely to produce enough value to justify this contract.
It’s important to care about money and the economics of baseball, but once a player is signed and they have at least the potential of talent, there’s no reason not to be happy. As I said last offseason, don’t worry about how much money the Mariners spend on individual moves. Worry about whether they upgrade. The money they spend on any one individual player may prevent them from upgrading elsewhere, but that doesn’t mean that the signing is bad, only that the planning and execution of the signing relative to the rest of the team is bad.
So even though Nelson Cruz is both risky and probably not that good, he’s got talent, and now he’s on the team. I’m happy – way to go Mariners.
Last year I would’ve hated giving Nelson Cruz 4-years for anything.
But this year, I keep hearing “Cespedes for Iwakuma” and “Upton for Taijuan Walker” and lord knows how much Matt Kemp is going for. Matt Kemp is my favorite target because for all the risk in his red flags and size of contract, at least he’s under team control for the next 5 years.
Nelson Cruz strikes me as “Matt Kemp lite” in that we’ve just “traded” for something that could remotely possibly at some point be another Taijuan Walker and a 4/57 contract (AAV $14.25M). Nelson Cruz isn’t my favorite target and he comes with his own red flags but as I’ve said before, like with Matt Kemp, the Mariners are in perfect position to absorb the risk involved with rolling the dice on Nelson Cruz. We already know that Robinson Cano likes the idea of acquiring Cruz since he was hoping for this last season.
Also, Mariners are now in a different spot on the win-curve. At +70 wins, throwing a bunch of money for Nelson Cruz to be the offseason savior would have been depressing. At +80 wins, any contributions from Nelson Cruz to compliment our offense NOW will be extremely important in the wake of coming fresh off relying on cardboard (Kendrys Morales) to hit cleanup.
So yeah, I’m surprisingly fine with this to the point where when I woke up to this news this morning, I was all like “Alrighty-then”and actually felt more comfortable than waking up to the team burning prospects for rentals.
Sweet. Thanks for posting that for me, Rippers!
Rippers stole that off Lookout Landing!
“The only thing at risk is the owner’s money.”
“We lost nothing…”
Someone has absolutely no grasp of the concept of opportunity cost.
giving up the 19th pick in the draft is “nothing?”
Please stop copy and pasting my comment section work from Lookout Landing. Thanks!
That’s nonsense. He sees the downside. But management has backed him to spend and as Jeff points out, marginal gains are worth more where the Mariners sit. To coax V-Mart away from Detroit was going to require an overpay also of a player considerably further along the age curve. Cruz is a classic example of satisficing where one of the criteria is minimization of risk in the immediate future. Plus, if they add a back-end starter like McCarthy, they’re better without subtracting anything through trade.
Yes, one good thing about signing free agents is that you don’t have to give up anyone to do it. (In this case, the Mariners give up a draft choice, but that’s not quite the same thing.) Clearly, the Mariners were not willing to give up any prospects to make something like an Upton or Gattis deal happen. There’s a downside to the out-year cost where it will eat into the Mariners payroll, but there’s also an upside where the Mariners retain a good and cost-controlled player that they otherwise would have had to trade away. As a Braves fan, I’m kind of disappointed that the Mariners didn’t go for the Upton deal, but I can see where this makes more sense for the Mariners.
Who would have thought Robbie Cano made the right decision on choosing SEA over NYY. Because SEA had the better future. Certainly not me…
That’s not really a fair thing to say. The Yankees would probably have a better future than the Mariners if you subtract Cano from the Mariners and add him to the Yankees.
Problem is, you can’t just subtract a player from one team and add him to another. You also have to deal with the money involved, which changes the overall makeup of the team. If the Yankees had signed Cano, for example, they would’ve had at least 24 million less to spend last year, which means they make different personnel decisions. Maybe they don’t sign Tanaka, or Elsbury, for example. And the M’s would have made other different personnel moves last year, using that $24 MM to add other talent that’s different from Robbie Cano.
We have no idea how the two teams would look now if Cano hadn’t signed with the M’s. Presumably, it wouldn’t matter, because the amount of talent you’re subtracting out is equal to the amount of talent you’re adding in.
Nonetheless, it’s an interesting thought considering the rumors that Cano’s agents were initially only courting Seattle to use as leverage with the Yankees, and that Cano only signed with the Mariners because his camp presented the Yankees with a take-it-or-leave-it ultimatum and the Yankees passed. How history would have been different… if you do a Cano contract and then you still have money to spend, you may as well go for it to get as much value out of that Cano contract as possible. Props to the Mariners front office for having the audacity to make those big bets.
Robbie Cano chose Seattle because they made him a better offer, not because he thought the M’s had a better future.
I’d question the -0.5 WAR/year for Cruz. That assumption seems like a middle-of-the-aging-curve guess and may be too aggressive for someone who is close to the floor already with a 1.5 WAR projection. Plus, since its already clear that he is very one-dimensional and offers little other than power, you could argue his other skills have already diminished. Playing exclusively as a DH, its not hard to imagine him maintaining his power to produce decent numbers for the term of the contract. Not great WAR totals, but decent power numbers… which is all he is being acquired to do.
With the way it seems that OK-ish 34-year old players turn into bench riding 36-year olds, I don’t think -0.5 WAR is wrong in the mid-30s.
Remember the -0.5 WAR essentially represents 3 forces:
1) Diminishing skills with age
2) Injury risk
3) Regression to the mean
One might argue that point 1 is in a flat-ish spot after already leaving your late-20s, but still being fairly far from 40, but point 2 might be increasing at Cruz’s age and point 3 is equal for all.
Walter, I’m pretty much sure that the aging adjustment doesn’t have anything to do with regression to the mean. If it did, dirk’s comment would actually be correct, that a 1.5 WAR player would expect to age at a slower rate than, say, a 4 WAR player. Regression is already built into a projection, then aging decline takes over from that point. So a 4 WAR player would expect to age at the same rate as a 1.5 WAR player.
Nathaniel, shouldn’t regression to the mean get more severe the further away in time you go from the data being used to make the projection?
Regression to the mean is only used to build the projection for the following year. After that, it’s only aging decline that adjusts the projection for any other years into the future.
The only difference between 2014 Nelson Cruz and career Nelson Cruz is plate appearances. If you gave him 675 PA’s every year starting with 2008, his HR totals look more like this: 36, 43, 33, 38, 25, 40, 40. His career avg/675 is 34.
This last year was a surprise, but it probably shouldn’t have been.
This last year was also the first time he ever got to 675 PA. Guess how many times he’s going to hit that mark through age 34~37?
Zero!
but staying in the lineup is a skill and Cruz has not demonstrated that as part of his skillset. Sure, his HR/AB ratio, coupled with 675 PA, predicts plenty of homers again. But why would anyone expect those plate appearances to actually happen?
Seems like a case of needing/wanting a guy for a short period of time but having to dish out extra years to get him to sign.
I guess it makes sense if he can help you win in the short term.
In a vaccuum, I agree that this is a bad to horrible contract. But, if overpaying Nelson Cruz to acquire RH power results in Jack Z being less likely to deal Walker away for 1 yr of Upton or a similar player, then I’m all for it. Teams with questionable GMs who feel they have to be in GFIN mode tend to make stupid trades that can cripple a team far worse than a bad contract.
Yeah, not like the Braves lost much when they dumped me because they tied up all that money on Uggla and B.J.
No mention of the crowd’s opinion in this article. I’d say we did pretty well (we predicted 3 years/$45 million). Yeah, we only offered three years and in that fourth year he’ll be pretty old, but still, we were pretty close on this one in my opinion.
Pretty much right in the range of what the contract crowd sourcing usually produces. Slightly low on the years, slightly low on the AAV.
Damn. Should have gone five years on that offer.
Well, on the bright side, this might increase our chance of getting Kendrys Morales.
You don’t want Morales, Ruby-boy. It’s pretty clear he doesn’t have enough grit after he got injured jumping on home plate.
Two things I think we should consider when regarding the whole of this deal are: a) if Cruz can be kept off the field mostly, does he continue to be a valuable hitter into his age 37 season. WAR penalizes both Cruz’s bad defense and his value via the DH positional penalty. Now for a somewhat crazy comp: I know Cruz is not the generational talent that Frank Thomas was, but I think Thomas is a decent example of a fairly one-dimensional player who became worse with age, but was a decent hitter into his age 38 season. It is cherry picking I realize (and there are 100 Richie Sexsons for every Big Hurt), but if he can post positive WRC+ scores (or whatever fielding/positional independent metric you choose) 2-3 years into the deal, I think the Mariners can feel good about the decision.
The M’s have some decent bats in their farm system that will arrive as Cruz becomes less productive, he’s the bridge to them that they required. They will also increase their revenue from all sources with him as opposed to what they would receive without him. He’s not cheap or perfect but he is adequate for their needs at this point in their revival.
Teams pretty much seem to be ignoring the position adjustment, and pay less for defense in general, which is why those position players at the low end of the defensive spectrum tend to get the most money because they can hit. Cruz and V-Mart both got pretty good paydays at DH despite age and injury history. Cruz held back a bit by PED history and and draft pick compensation, but I think he is happy.
The new market inefficiency is DH, took an awful offensive year for many teams to realize it
If, by “market inefficiency” you mean a deadweight loss caused by the M’s carrying Cruz’s dead weight on the roster for 3 years, you’re right — this signing is an example of market inefficiency.
If you mean that the M’s are shrewdly taking advantage of a market that’s undervalued by signing old, one-dimensional hitters to too – expensive contracts, I’ll respectfully disagree. This is a huge overpay.
At this price, the M’s should have looked for a truly undervalued asset (perhaps to one Saunders, M in their own outfield) rather than send an armored car to Nelson Cruz’s house.
Considering all the money flying around baseball right now, it’s hard to get too upset over a $57 million contract. Maybe it’s because a year ago the M’s committed more than four times that figure to Cano, and I’m desensitized. Who knows.
This doesn’t strike me as a particularly bright move, but it’s an understandable one that doesn’t upset me too much. If you’re ever going to be inefficient with your money and go all out, now is the time for the M’s. And if Cruz flops, his salary’s not going to hobble the franchise. A few more moves like this, though, and then you start to get really concerned.
Fan but know-nothing,
I think of Nelson Cruz having light tower power. Is there surplus value to the Mariners in signing a player more likely to have his power translate? As a long time fan, the biggest flame outs I remember were contact guys with not much or no power. Guys who’s home runs fled and whose flyballs became instant outs.
And the surprising successes, like Sexson and Beltre, having huge power, being home run in any ballpark power hitters.
That’s weird I can see heat waves in the light coming through the window.
Cruz isn’t best of the best<a href=http://www.hittrackeronline.com/top_sob.php but is among the best. Perhaps that and his launch angle …?
Any of that stuff factor?
Nice hyperlink, fella.
http://www.hittrackeronline.com/top_sob.php
Sounds like a fair deal if you ask me.
Headline of year
Cruz’s WAR should be considered against the M’s DH position for the last several years. I believe the difference is well worth the money we are paying him.
This assumes that the M’s only choice was to repeat 2014 or sign Cruz. In reality there were a hundred other options out there.
So basically you’re saying that WAR is more valuable if replacing a bad player than a good player? WAR may differ in value based on the number of wins and context of the team, but you don’t pay a 2 WAR player like a 4 WAR player (or a 0 WAR player like a 2 WAR player) just because the previous year you accumulated -2 WAR at the position. You still use the market to attain a 2 WAR player at the price of a 2 WAR player. Just because you fail in doing so doesn’t change the value of the WAR to the amount you overpay for it.
Steamer projects Nelson Cruz with a 2015 wRC+ of 119, which isn’t spectacular, but it represents a marked improvement over the wRC+ of 76 the Mariners got from the DH slot this year.
Sometimes a team needs to overpay.
Is there not one iota of fandom in your DNA, Jeff?
I truly get that this may be an overpay, and maybe a bad one at some point…
But your team just missed the playoffs by one game last year. You have an obvious upgrade in CF (though didn’t pan out last year). You have a young stud SP that will likely play a larger role. Everyone else of note is returning. And you just signed the MLB HR leader…
Really, no excitement over that?
If I was a Mariners fan, I’d be freakin’ pumped!
This is FanGraphs, not my personal baseball blog
Fair enough.
But we obviously know you are a M’s fan. And this deal, overpay or not, likely moves the needle for them this season… and they don’t need it to move much to have a terrific season.
Seems a bit disingenuous to ignore that.
So. As as fan… what do you think?
I come to Fangraphs to read Jeff Sullivan write as an analyst who is a fan of baseball in general but not of any one team in particular. If I want to read (or listen to a Podcast of) what Jeff thinks as a Mariners fan, I go to USSMariner.
Good for you joser… thanks for sharing! (but I don’t really care why you are here)
I come here to read honest forthright opinions of very intelligent baseball bloggers.
I understand what Jeff’s analytical brain thinks about this deal… I’d like to hear what the other half of his brain thinks.
That’s all.
Then go to ussmariner.com, because that’s where Jeff posted his Mariner take on the Cruz signing. Team blogs are where you’re going to find a fans version of events that impact their team.
Hi Nathaniel. I actually had already checked that website, and at the time of my postings here, Jeff had only posted a fan poll… requesting their reaction to the deal. There was no posting from him with his point of view about it. So, I felt it reasonable to request his. No?
I thank you for sharing also!
The place to request it would be at USSMariner. And that request has been granted.
This is no different from Jeff’s musing on volcanoes. He doesn’t do that here, and if you want to read them you have to go elsewhere.
How good does 4y/$53m for ages 31-35 of Jhonny Peralta, power-hitting RH shortstop, look now? Remember when everyone thought that was an overpay? Now people are throwing that kind of money at guys like Nelson Cruz, a guy with the same PED warts as Peralta, but who provides zero defensive value, and offensive value that could sputter to a halt at any moment due to age or infirmity, and is 3 years older than Peralta was when he signed his Cardinals deal.
Worse deals justify previous bad deals?
A deal is good or bad based on what else you could have done with the money. Worse deals being made imply that maybe there wasn’t actually anything better to do with the money.
And honestly I’m not sure just what the Cardinals were supposed to do that’s so much better with the Peralta money. Save it till this year where it looks like wins are going for more than the Peralta contract? Sign some other free agent SS last year? Who?
From last year at this time we have:
http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/jhonny-peralta-and-the-price-of-nerd-favorites/
http://www.sbnation.com/2013/11/25/5144268/jhonny-peralta-signed-free-agent-contract-stlouis-cardinals-johnny
Both suggesting that the contract was still a slight UNDERPAY based on most teams not using defensive stats.
And it looks even more like an underpay based on results. And front offices have data we don’t, their projections may well be better than ours, to a very limited extent it’s actually reasonable to judge by results and Peralta just produced 5.4 WAR and is projected for 2.7 WAR next year, he costs $53 million for 4 years. Assuming normal decay for 2016-17 the Cards get 12 WAR for $53 million, this is a bad deal?
Really?
Nelson Cruz and Seattle are a bad fit. Cruz does one thing well: his swing generates back spin which results in fly balls turning into homers. In every other aspect of hitting – drawing walks, hitting line drives, using the entire ball park to spray hits – Cruz is below average. And now he will play half his games at Safeco, and another 18 to 20 games each year in Anaheim and Oakland. Cruz has spent his entire career playing the brunt of his games in parks that reward fly ball hitters, and now he will play about two-thirds of his games in parks that punish fly ball hitters.
Jack Z doesn’t need more power hitters. He needs to construct a line-up that is the contemporary equivalent of Whitey Ball. Instead of pursuing the hitter who can break Safeco – there are probably less than five in all of baseball, and they certainly aren’t 34-year-olds with decreasing bat speed who have previously resorted to steroid use to compensate for declining skills – he should embrace his ball park and build his team around it.
Mariners’ DHs (all of them) hit 15 HRs last year. Home runs aren’t everything, but they’re something, and Cruz just has to do this half a dozen times at Safeco each year and he has already improved the team.
Also, the Zduriencik did “embrace his ballpark” several years ago, which is why most of the Mariners’ 2014 position players bat LH and why the rotation and bullpen has done so well. However, the standings suggest that maybe building the team around Safeco — however necessary — is not in itself sufficient to reach the postseason.
So the Mariners finally complete Dave Cameron’s “Full Nelson Plan… four and half years later. (They achieved the first half of it in 2009, when they signed the other Nelson to a minor-league deal that never panned out).
The deal is both an overpay and has a decent chance to be successful. If the M’s can surpass the rest of the division to take the title, their chances to work deep into the playoffs increases a good bit over having to play a one game take all wildcard game, because of their pitching. If they do go deep into the playoffs, any overpay to Cruz will be offset by playoff revenue and fan interest.
The rest of the team is probably pretty stoked to have Cruz in the lineup.
The Mariners give up the 20th pick if I’m not mistaken. They had the 20th best record in the league, moved down to 21 because of the Astros’ failure to sign Brady Aiken, and then moved back up to 20 because the Jays lost a pick due to signing Russell Martin.
A good chance that pick would have been even lower, as any team below them with an unprotected pick (which includes the Yankees) that signs a QO player would move that pick down.
The Mets lost their pick when they signed Cuddyer.
“It’s the young major-leaguers the Mariners need to be careful with, because their low salaries help to offset salaries guaranteed to players like Nelson Cruz.”
The urgency to bring up DJ Peterson just cooled off, thankfully. Maybe now he can turn into an MLB player rather than get thrown to the wolves. That’s a hidden plus to this move in my mind, because the Ms in these past few years have dumped all their prospects on to the 25 man roster and so far only one (Seager) has stuck. Yeah the jury is still out on Zunino and even Brad Miller, and I suppose there’s decent a chance Ackley and Saunders can put together a full solid year, but this signing helps restore some solidity to the organizational depth charts.
Beyond that, they have a good team heading into next year! They also have managed to NOT trade away Taijuan Walker or James Paxton, well so far at least. I like what they have done. They have committed to winning by going and getting FAs, and even seem to have developed a bit of shrewdness in their dealings with other teams (besides Walker and Paxton, they also cautiously traded Nick Franklin for a decent piece when he seemed destined to go a lot sooner than he did).
Looking forward to next year!
The guy thumped 40 homers. He deserves to be paid and this contract most likely works out.
Welp. That’s pretty good evidence!
It’s very nice of the M’s to pay him for those 40 homers. Geez, he only got like 8m at the time. Now he’s been paid extremely well for last year. Good on them for righting that wrong.
just woke up from a nightmare wherein the contracts of Cano and Cruz prevent the Mariners from resigning Walker and other young talent they were intent on keeping in free agency
Yup, no doubt about it. The Ms now got a 2-year window, 3 tops. After which things will be looking Ug-LEE.
This is an overpay for a declining player. Watch for this contract to be on the albatross list shortly.
A lot of these poor defense sluggers out perform their war/$. Time to revisit the fielding part of the war equation maybe?
…then again, sometimes, they don’t…
From a different economic perspective, emotional and behavioral, since there is no salary cap in baseball, and owners, in this case Ninetendo, may choose to treat this as an long term investment opportunity, and they are clearly able to absorb the costs of the depreciating yacht. I don’t see what difference it makes if Nelson Cruz makes $89 million for five years, and they bring in another DH next year to replace them.
This.
The M’s aren’t a small-market team, they’ve had a productive farm system for a while, and they have a first-ballot HOF pitcher in his prime. Why not throw some money around when they’re at the highest-leverage part of the win curve?
If the Ms miss the playoffs next year, Jack Z is gone. No reason for him to give a crap how many $$$ the Ms are on the hook for down the line.
I do understand and appreciate that lower WAR because of Cruz’s positional adjustment as DH will be felt in the future and I think that is true. I also appreciate those who say his relative health in 2014 was out of line with his career and the primary reason he was able to finally put up such a strong full season with the 40 HR. But note his 2014 was in line with his per AB performance in prior years.
These are not independent arguments. I think the year Cruz had in 2014 getting to 650 PA might be partially due to the fact that for the first time he spent more than a token number of games played at DH. Clearly, this is a much less stressful role on the body. So I certainly think it is very reasonable to expect that Cruz, barring getting a fastball to the head or something fluky like that, will be able to play a lot more as a DH for Seattle than his career durability would suggest. And that is important to the Mariners as protection for Cano et al even if his production does a slow decline overall.
Of course, paying any 35 year old DH $57M/4 is likely to be a silly waste of money in the end especially in the final 2 years. This would especially be true for a guy who might struggle adjusting to the DH job that doesnt include a glove as many have not handled that well before. But I think 2014 also shows that Cruz is not going to be subject to that problem. So a 4 year deal to DH seems smarter to me now than it did last year given his 2014 DH success.
Of course, the paramount value in this signing is the ripple effect on the Mariner lineup in 2015. Cano especially will appreciate not being pitched around so much and the effect up and down the line could also be important to their offense. This could be enough to make this a very smart move if indeed the Mariners are now able to have success in 2015. As Dave noted in his season end mea culpa on Kansas City, getting the Mariners over the hump and into the postseason as a winner at last is probably worth a lot to the value of the Seattle franchise.
It’s a very interesting case where the standard valuation of totaling a player’s projected WAR and multiplying it by present value each year doesn’t quite make sense. The Mariners are at a point on the win curve where adding just a couple wins is huge. They’re also built to win now and are doubling down on that by filling a replacement level hole.
We don’t have playoffs odds for 2015 yet, but it would be interesting to see how much this moved the needle in terms of winning the division/a wild card/the world series the next couple of years for the Mariners. It wouldn’t surprise me if it gave the Mariners more than a 10% improvement on making the ALDS, though I’m not sure how much that should be valued. If the deal did makes sense in terms of providing win-curve neutral WAR then this deal would be a slam dunk.
I think this “they overpaid for this player” thing is sort of a meaningless comment. There is zero chance that Cruz signs for what your fairly arbitrarily assigned figures ($ / win) and projections say.
There is no objective value for baseball players. They’re worth as much as someone is prepared to pay for them. If he gets anything like 2014’s level of homers in the next years of his contract, but provides exactly as much “value” as the prediction system says, do you think there’s a single Mariners fan who will be upset over the contract?
I love Fangraphs, but I do wish you’d stop banging on quite so much about dollar values and whether things are good deals or not.
It is simply wrong say the $ / per win calculations are arbitrary. These are provable calculations. Whether or not they are the be all / end all of the decision is certainly up for discussion, but not the mathematical basis.
Yeah, Mark, all this objective analysis stuff can be SUCH a buzzkill.
You’re right, we should know our place and stick to fannish admiration.
Not.
Try some fan sites, dude. You’ll feel better. Hakuna matata and all that.
Well.. while I understand and appreciate the “General Manager’s” viewpoint that permeates Fangraphs, Lookout Landing and such, I also understand how it can render the game less fun to watch. After all we go back to our childhood and the romance surrounding human beings that are our “extended family”… Constantly and blatantly bashing oh hell 90% or so of the players does at times make one wish one was using the baseball time to make money for themselves! Gods! Thanks to you all, I know better what to expect even as management blows smoke up my arse.
I do understand advanced stats to some extent… ha! I’m Not a staistician or a math whiz, but i know enough to know it’s an excellent way to talk about Reality. Still, I can’t imagine the Big thundering bat of Nelson Cruz won’t be worth several wins that I guess sabermetrics isn’t willing to err ah shall I say credit? Even 30, 35 HRs will be worth several wins with a top pitching staff. Keep him off the field is all! Just hope we have Michael Saunders in RF as 1)he’s my Fav Mariner and 2)he’s a top defender and baserunner and his hitting can be dynamic.
Just to note – with the DBacks signing Tomas, Mark Trumbo is almost certainly available and Trumbo basically projects as the same player as Cruz next year but is 5 years younger and likely to make well less than half what Cruz will make over the next 2 years before he becomes a FA. Apparently the current plan is to play trumbo in RF and Tomas in LF but one has to believe the DBacks would unload him for a decent prospect and remember, the Mariners are giving up a draft pick to sign Cruz.
Same player, younger, far less money, lose a prospect either way. . . . .