Maybe “Super Teams” Are Ruining the Offseason
It’s January, and the story of the offseason is that it’s actually lived up to its monicker. Outside of Giancarlo Stanton and Shohei Otani’s respective moves to new teams essentially on the same day, MLB clubs have been in hibernation this winter. And so instead of evaluating trades or free-agent contracts, we’re left instead to ponder what is causing the inaction.
The potential culprits are numerous. If you’re inclined to see owners as evil profiteers, it’s easy to talk yourself into a collusion theory. Or this is the consequence of the Players Association accepting a luxury tax that might be acting as a de facto salary cap. Or maybe it’s just that every team has figured out that prices go down as spring training draws closer, so now everyone is trying the same wait-it-out game plan. Or maybe these particular free agents just aren’t that good. Or maybe it’s that next year’s free agents are too good.
Each of those theories seem to have some validity, and I think there’s probably a bit of most of that going on. But I think there’s also an explanation that makes everyone’s passivity perfectly rational: a lack of sufficient divisional competition to create the sort of pressure that justifies high-risk free-agent signings.
If you look at our current forecasts, there are only two divisions that don’t look like runaways right now. The AL East, which features both the Red Sox and Yankees with 91-win projections, and the NL Central, which has the 92-win Cubs four games ahead of the 88-win Cardinals, are two divisions that don’t have a decisive favorite at the moment. And not coincidentally, those are the divisions where we’re seeing some activity.
The Yankees have already made the offseason’s biggest move, taking most of Giancarlo Stanton’s contract in a trade with the Marlins. It wasn’t technically a free-agent signing, but given what they sent back, it acted as one, as they got a star player for not much more than a big chunk of cash. The Red Sox, meanwhile, are believed to have a five-year standing offer to J.D. Martinez, who is holding out for six years, but is very likely to end up in Boston for something like $30 million a year. The two behemoths of the AL East are loading up on sluggers, because right now, each needs to be afraid of the other.
In the NL Central, the Cubs haven’t yet made their big move, but they have spent pretty aggressively on depth pieces, signing Tyler Chatwood, Steve Cishek, Brandon Morrow, and Drew Smyly. The Rockies are the only other team to have signed four big-league free agents thus far this winter. And the Cubs almost certainly aren’t done, as they continue to be linked to the top free-agent starters on the market, including Yu Darvish. On Chicago’s north side, this hasn’t really been a slow offseason.
And that’s because the Cardinals aren’t surrendering the division just yet. St. Louis has only signed Luke Gregerson and Miles Mikolas to free-agent deals, but they made the winter’s second-biggest trade so far, landing Marcell Ozuna from the Marlins to bolster their outfield. They’ve also been linked to Josh Donaldson, Manny Machado, and basically any reliever who could pitch the ninth inning, so they probably have another few moves coming. Like the Cubs, they haven’t really been slow playing this winter, and they aren’t done yet.
If everyone had behaved to this point like the Red Sox, Yankees, Cubs, and Cardinals, we probably wouldn’t be talking about a slow-moving offseason. It’s really the other 26 teams — and particularly the 20 teams in the other four divisions — that have taken a wait-and-see approach, because no one is around to apply any real pressure.
In the AL Central, we have the Indians with an 11-game advantage over the Twins right now. Normally, a mid-revenue club that lost a guy like Carlos Santana, had Andrew Miller and Cody Allen on expiring contracts, and knows it can’t count on Corey Kluber and Carlos Carrasco forever would be heavily incentivized to push their chips to the middle of the table and take advantage of a championship-caliber club while they had the chance. But without a strong challenger for the division title, the Indians don’t really need to spend big this winter. They can head into camp with something like their current roster, evaluate their team in the first half, and then make the necessary adjustments in July or August if need be.
Remember, it wasn’t that long ago that J.D. Martinez was traded for a package of nothing prospects, and the Indians grabbed Jay Bruce for nothing more than salary in a waiver trade. If a team just recently experienced almost-free midseason upgrades and thinks those conditions might exist again and they have the benefit of a huge lead in their division heading into the season, why take on the risk of a long-term contract?
The same perfectly rational inertia could be applied to the Nationals (also projected at 11 games better than the Mets, their next-closest competitor), the Dodgers (+10 wins over Arizona), and the Astros (+9 wins over Anaheim), who would need a lot of things to go wrong to miss the playoffs in 2018. There’s some desire to upgrade now simply to stay ahead of the other “super teams” currently floating around, but again, if you think the prices at the deadline are going to be anything like last year’s prices, then there’s no real need to build your October roster over the winter. Just put a good regular-season team on the field and adjust accordingly when the sellers start dumping free agents to be.
These big divisional gaps have a depressing effect on the challengers’ motivation to upgrade, as well. The market relies on having enough second-tier clubs who are trying to climb the ladder to bid up players with short-term value, but we don’t have a single team projected for 85, 86, or 87 wins. After the Cardinals and Angels, it’s a big drop down to the Diamondbacks (84 wins), Blue Jays (83 wins), and Twins (82 wins), each of which is incentivized to stay in the Wild Card race, but probably not enough to throw $30 million a year at a risk-heavy free agent on a long-term contract.
Arizona, Colorado, Pittsburgh, and Toronto all have one of their best players headed for free agency at the end of the season as it is, so signing a big acquisition to an expensive contract might preclude them from keeping their own better player — or at least render it more difficult to make a pivot to building for the future this summer if they fall out of the race in the first half. For these clubs with low-80s win projections, a midseason sell-off is a real possibility if things go south, and you don’t necessarily want to be dumping talent right after spending $100-plus million on a guy who probably isn’t going to provide that much long-term value.
Instead, in that situation, everyone has decided to try to keep their options open. The Rockies have spent a bunch of money signing relievers, but if things go badly in the first half, they probably are thinking they might be able to trade guys like Wade Davis, Jake McGee, and Bryan Shaw, so these might not really be long-term commitments. The Blue Jays are picking up depth guys like Yangervis Solarte who can help raise their floor for the time being but also serve as a big-league third baseman for the second half if they end up having to trade Donaldson.
Instead of passivity, perhaps the spending on relievers and useful role players suggests that many teams are willing to make deals, but only deals that don’t force them down a certain path in 2018. Like an unattached swiper chatting with 15 potential hookups on Tinder, these sorta-contenders seem to want options, not commitment.
The unsigned guys? They’re the commitment types. They’re the ones to whom you give no-trade clauses, or enough money that the contract they sign effectively becomes a no-trade clause in itself. The best teams don’t really need to take these risks right now: in four of the six divisions, we don’t have a real contender for the throne. And the teams hanging around the fringes of the Wild Card race don’t see moving the needle a bit on getting to a one-game play-in contest as a big enough reward to take on the risk of one of these free agents with warts.
The CBT, the impending free agency of some of the game’s best players, and the recent bargains we saw at the trade deadline are likely real variables in this outcome as well. But mostly, I think this may just be about a legitimate lack of competition. MLB has six highly valuable division titles, and four of them are already all but spoken four. Right now, it looks pretty easy to handicap nine of the 10 potential playoff teams, or at least the heavy favorites for those spots heading into the season.
The lack of in-season competition may also be driving the lack of offseason competition. The good news for MLB is that this is very likely cyclical, and a few of these “super teams” will be getting worse in the future, while big-market up-and-comers will present a more serious threat to the dominant division reigns we’re seeing now. While long-lasting league parity remains a problem, this looks like it could be a one-year issue, as we’re going to have some intense bidding wars for talent next year.
And if enough of these bubble teams decide to just take the risk and push in, it might cause a chain reaction that makes this whole story go away anyway. For instance, if the Twins get Yu Darvish, then maybe the Blue Jays get Lorenzo Cain and Alex Cobb, which pressures the Red Sox to cave and give J.D. Martinez that sixth year, which gives the Astros enough incentive to trade for both Gerrit Cole and Andrew McCutchen, and then we have ourselves a real offseason.
Right now, a bunch of teams are comfortable. Too comfortable. It only takes a couple of dominos to fall to change that, and I wouldn’t be surprised if just a few moves caused a winter’s worth of transactions to happen real fast.
Dave is the Managing Editor of FanGraphs.
One additional factor. With the rise of huge, long-term, cable deals, and MLBAM, team revenue is less linked to on field success then ever before.
And adding to this disconnect:
1. The disparity among cable deals across teams.
2. The legitimate concerns that teams would have about expiring cable deals not being able to be renewed at increasingly more lucrative terms.
Don’t both of these deals have to tie back to viewership in some way though? And viewership is probably tied toward team success, which is driven by on field performance?
TV deals are long enough in term that forecasting success (and therefore ad revenue) during middle and end stages of the deal would be difficult
I suspect a major factor in the recent wave of cable deals is the ability of cable companies to distribute the cost over their entire subscriber base. Even if they sign a bad deal, they can charge every subscriber a few dollars a month to cover the difference. The real reckoning is going to come years down the road when the notion of a cable company is obsolete and all programming is a la carte. Then, it’ll only be the people who actually watch the RSN who pay for it, and then the cost per month goes up dramatically. It’s a completely unsustainable business model. Worked when folks had limited choice due to being locked in to cable providers. Breaks down completely when that model ceases to be relevant.
Doesn’t MLB.tv show us the way for the a la carte future, at least as it’s relevant to our interests (baseball)?
I agree the cable providers’ model breaks down, but I don’t think the future looks that different.
I wonder how the subscriptions for MLB.tv look in 10 years. I think the base sub money gets equally distributed. I wonder if the “watch your local area team” experiment they did, if that money goes directly to the team or distributed to all teams.
MLB may be under the impression that in 30 years, all the “TV” money will flow into them through MLB.tv, and they can equally distribute it to the teams.
Using the data in the links, I’d get something like 12-14% of cable/sat subscribers would have to pick up MLB.TV [at double the price to get in market games as well], for the teams to roughly break-even.
I’m not sure that is very likely given that few teams get more than like a 5-8 share for their games.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/742184/mlbtv-subscription-adults-usa/
https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/estimated-tv-revenues-for-all-30-mlb-teams/
Once all the money is direct to MLB, it will be fascinating to see how it goes. Should Miami get the same cut as the Yankees? F the Yankees always, but *that* hardly seems fair.
And if team revenue becomes even less sensitive to team performance than it is does, what does that do to the financial motivation to win?
As of a bit less than 2 years ago, just over half of teams (16) had some ownership of their respective RSN’s, so that’s a direct tie to viewership and advertising revenue. https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/estimated-tv-revenues-for-all-30-mlb-teams/
Some other teams without RSN ownership have TV contracts up for renewal over the next few years, so that’s an incentive to keep viewership strong going into renewal negotiations. I’m not sure of the current status of extensions, but as of that April 2016 Fangraphs article it looks like another seven teams without RSN ownership (Tigers, Pirates, Brewers, Royals, Marlins, Rockies, and Rays) are due for local TV contract renewals no later than 2020.
Carriage revenue (monthly per subscriber from cable and satellite) is almost certainly more important to RSN’s than advertising, but the ads still matter. I haven’t seen a breakdown for RSN’s, but the estimate for ESPN as of three years ago was approximately a 65/35 split between carriage revenue and advertising revenue. And each incremental dollar of ad revenue drops essentially straight to the bottom line, though even a team with partial RSN ownership gets less than 100% of each incremental dollar of income, as its share should be in-line with its percent RSN ownership. And whether or not to think of carriage revenue as also partially “at risk” if there’s low viewership is complicated and specific to each RSN depending on the timing of contract renewals with major cable operators.
My TLDR summary: something like over 2/3 of teams have at least some revenue variability in their local TV deals, between RSN ownership and/or contract renewals upcoming over the next 2-3 years. That said, I do agree with the idea that these big, long-term local TV deals have a nice revenue floor in them for teams that are well-established in sizable markets, especially if the RSN’s are also well-established.
The Phillies are a great example of that dynamic: long-term local TV contract (reportedly through 2040) with NBC Sports Philadelphia, which also holds rights to the 76ers and Flyers and is therefore the clearly dominant RSN for that broadcast area. The Phillies have some revenue upside (and risk) because they own 25% of the RSN, but the variability should be far less than ticket revenue (Phillies’ attendance dropped to 1.9 million in 2017 from 3.6 million in 2012 after the team fully committed to a teardown/rebuild).
In the case of Toronto, the cable company owns the team so as a corporation they realize all the positives and negatives in the shortest time frame. TV advertising, cable subscriptions, tickets, beer/hotdogs. There’s been a pretty good boom the last few years for them.
Super Teams will make baseball a dull sport, imo.
Baseball already is a terribly dull sport. I mean, really, consider that for a good number of teams, all 162 games are pointless. We know going into the season some teams have a near-zero chance to make the playoffs. For even more, the second half – 81 games – is pointless. They’re out of the chase at that point and selling off assets to contenders. The only thing that would make these games interesting is the prospect of avoiding relegation, a la the EPL, but we don’t have that. Super teams are just adding on to an already boring and pointless regular season.
You’re exaggerating: Almost the entire AL was in competition for the playoffs as late as August.
“Not all 30 teams are competitive. baseball is so dull.”
The 2017 Twins say hello.
Serious, but rhetorical, question: why are you here?
Why do people come here to make dopey remarks like this?? Mindboggling.
It’s def a point worth exploring further. If I’m not mistaken there are a few minor league levels that have their season broken into 1st and 2nd half and that can sort of give new life to teams that fell too far back early on. I would like to see some sort of study done on the applicability of this.
MLB kinda/sorta tried this in 1981. It didn’t go well…
That wasn’t the case in 1981, when a midseason strike led to the cancelation of about eight weeks’ worth of games in June, July, and August. Instead of attempting to make up part of the schedule or treating the two halves of the season like one entity, MLB split the season in two, with the first-half champion of each division playing the second-half champion in a best-of-five divisional series, and the winner advancing to the previously scheduled league championship series.
In the National League, the Phillies and Dodgers won their respective divisions in the first half, while the Expos and Astros won their divisions in the second half. However, none of those four teams had the best record in the division overall. In 1981, the Cincinnati Reds had the best record in baseball by 2.5 games, but missed the playoffs entirely, while eight teams with worse records got in. The overall NL East champion Cardinals also missed the playoffs, despite finishing two games ahead of the Expos and 2.5 games ahead of the Phillies overall.
Five years ago the the top two teams in this years draft were in the world series
There is more to baseball than watching the standings.
Baseball is entertainment, spectacle and drama on a game by game, often pitch by pitch basis.
It is easy to get hung up on the macro issues of team performance and forget that those are the best players of the game in the world. That even journeymen and role players in MLB are better performers than top players in other leagues.
And it is easy to forget than on any given day anything can and often does happen. A journeyman pitcher on a “bad” team might have a career day and throw a perfect game or a AAAA slugger might launch four bombs in four at bats.
Even so called “super teams” will lose 40% of their games and not just to other top teams. And even “bad” teams will win 40% of their games.
That’s why they suit up and play the games. And why we watch. To see what magic the day will bring. To see a speedster score from second on a wildpitch or a slugger dent a scoreboard with a line drive homerun, to see the best players on the planet show just how good they are.
To a fan of the *game*, the whole point is *watching* the game.
That is why they play 162 games: it’s 162 chances for the players to show their stuff, to strive to be just a bit better than the other guys, better than they were the day before.
To some of us, it’s not just about the success or failure of the hometown nine but about the beauty of the game itself.
I agree with you on everything else, but Shohei Ohtani is SO much better than a random bench bat. He is now, and he was when he was in the Japanese league.
We’ll find out soon enough. He is forgoing a ton of money to find out how his prime stacks up. Plus he gets to play next to Trout. And face Altuve, Stanton, maybe Kluber and Kershaw.
Another reason to watch the Angels for 162 games even if they don’t make the playoffs.
It has been a unique off-season. The Yankee’s trying to get under the Salary Tax for the first time, the most sought after player being a international free-agent, and a 2018 free agent class that is completely over-shadowing the 2017 class.
This is really easy to demonstrate if you try to imagine what offseason activity would be needed to get the 2nd place teams in these divisions within a few games to create a potential division race.
Like, for the Angels, its ‘do everything they did, then sign Darvish, Arietta and Lynn’. That’d probably be what was necessary for the Angels to project within 2 or 3 games of the Astros.
That calculus for the Diamondbacks, Twins, Mets, Rockies, etc is is similarly unrealistic.
Why do you say that? Why do you think there isn’t enough incentive for the “2nd tier” teams (the teams who project about 10 games behind) to close the gap to about 5? Once the margin is that small, anything can and frequently does happen.
It is weird that teams like the Snakes, Twins, Mets, Bucs and Jays aren’t doing more right now. I don’t get how they can effectively punt an entire season by accepting mediocrity a full month before spring training has even begun when opportunities for improvement are so plentiful.
They’re not necessarily punting the season at all. Most of those midlevel teams can see a scenario that takes them to the playoffs.
It’s just not a scenario that involves throwing boatloads of money at Scott Boras clients.
What’re you talking about? I think you misunderstand just how hard it would be to add even 5 wins. You can’t just add a 5 win player, because that person is going to replace a non-zero on most decent rosters. And being 5 wins worse projected is still like an 85% chance of just competing for the wildcard; to make it a divisional race and get it within performance variance, you need to narrow it to 2-3 games, and even then you’re the underdog.
The Twins currently project 11 games worse than the Indians. The Pirates are 11 games worse than the Cubs (and also behind the Cardinals). The Diamondbacks are 10 games behind the Dodgers; the Rockies are 14 games behind.
The Rockies could sign JD Martinez to play OF, sign Lorenzo Cain to fill the other OF spot, sign Hosmer (or Moustakas, whod probably be better at Coors) to play first base, sign Yu Darvish, and they would still project to be worse than the Dodgers (!!).
Lets break it down for the Rocks:
They currently project to get basically 0 war from their corner outfield (Desmond is projected at 1b). JDM is projected as a 3 win outfielder, Cain as a 3.3 win CF. Let’s give Cain the benefit of the doubt that his defense would be so good in LF that he’d still be a 3 win player there. So we’ve upgraded by 6 wins.
Ian Desmond is projected to be a 1.2 win second baseman. Even if Hosmer is also a 3 win player, that’s only a 1.8 win upgrade. We’re now at 7.8 wins. Yu Darvish is projected as a 3.6 win starting pitcher. The 5th starter on the Rockies depth chart is Chad Bettis at 1.1 wins. So we’ve totaled up 10.3 wins worth of upgrade.
That would get the Rockies to a 91 win team .. 3 games worse than the Dodgers, and still 75% or more likely to simply be a wild card team and have to face the 50% coinflip to be an actual playoff team.
And that’s literally signing EVERY marquee free agent for a sum that’s likely to equal their current payroll.
It would take all 3 of those position player transactions JUST to get the Rockies projection equal to the Cardinals for the first wild card (!!).
So for a mere $80,000,00 per season, the Rockies could become co-favorites to win half a playoff spot, have their rotation all fucked up and play an away series at a better team (like the Diamondbacks got to this year). WHAT A PRIZE.
It makes a lot more sense for the Rockies to first play their lottery tickets: lets see if Dahl bounces back to be a good outfielder, if Desmond can hit well enough to be worth being a first baseman, and then if those things happen and they are in contention in July they can make an upgrade.
Going into the season outside the playoff picture (they’re currently projected to be worse than AZ and STL) and trying to spend 9 digits to moderately improve their odds is irrational.
The only teams who have a decent argument that they should spend more money because it would substantially improve their playoff odds are the Cardinals (already did a lot, now 3 games worse than the Cubs), the Yankees (were behind the Sox, now tied) and the Red Sox (tied with the Yankees, but the only player for JDM who fixes their main lineup hole, so their upgrade feels inevitable).
The angels are now shoulders ahead of the other wildcard contenders and equally far behind the cream of the crop in the AL. THey have little reason to spend more until its clear they have an opportunity (maybe Correa and Altuve will collide diving for a liner up the middle and both go on the DL all year or something).
The consideration that I think is missing from your analysis is the inherent variance and uncertainty around the projections. I took a very quick look at 2017 preseason projected wins vs. actual wins, and the standard deviation was over 9 wins. The R^2 was a promising, but unspectacular, 0.35.
So, there likely is a nontrivial amount of value in closing the projected win gap from 10 wins to 5. This would be an interesting topic for a more thorough analysis with more years of data. Especially looking specifically at projected win gaps within a division, as the team-level deviations within a division would certainly not be independent of each other.
Yeah,the Angels are a good example of a team that added a bunch of wins with Otani and Cozart. And they are likely to add more by signing a couple of pen arms.
Machado is out there and teams like the Twins, Mets and Bucs should be trying hard to get Machado. The guy is practically a difference maker by himself. I’m astounded that a few of these bubble teams haven’t aggressively pursued a deal for MM. What is really the downside?? He could always be re-flipped in July if need by and at worst he returns a sandwich pick to recoup some of what will be dealt away for him. At best, Machado helps a team into the playoffs.
How do you know the Twins, Mets, Bucs etc haven’t been aggressively pursuing Machado? There seems to be no reason for this assumption.
Reports are that the O’s want two young controllable arms. *that* is the best evidence we have of why Machado rumors are fairly tame: the extreme asking price.
Rockies and Cardinals are pretty even right now.
I agree with the premise here, for the most part. I think this year’s projections combined with the utter superiority of next year’s FA class have teams lukewarm on the prospect of signing any of this year’s free agents. Team moves are generally made not just for the short term but also with an eye towards the future. Why sign an okay player to a multi-year deal when that can impact your ability to sign a good/great player to a multi-year deal next year? You’re not reaping the benefit of having that player this year, so unless you see that player as fitting into the puzzle a year or two down the line then there’s not much of a reason to splurge this offseason.
Add the White Sox to the next up-and-coming super-team.
Winston Wolfe would like a word with you…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxuHYVmWlmU
I understand for luxury tax purposes it is the AAV of the entire contract that applies each year, but do opt out/in effect that calculation?
Say a team wants to stay under the tax in 2018, can they offer the Cespedes type contract that allows the player an opt out immediately but front load the money to game the cap number?
Let’s say the Red Sox won’t budge on a 6th year for JDM but are willing to pay him $35-40M in years 1-2 with a player opt out after that. A 5y $150M contract with an opt out after 2 seasons, but the actual dollars paid would go $40M, $35M, $25M, $25M, $25M. To the player it’s a 2y contract for $75M with a chance to dip into FA again or resign for 3y $75M. Would that hit 2018 at $30M or would the opt out move that number to $37.5M in 2018?
JDM and Red Sox might be a bad example. Maybe Dodgers/Yankees signing Yu or Frazier with opt outs to manipulate AAV
Those two high-priced years are also the last two years of Hanley’s contract, so I don’t see the Red Sox doing that.
Don’t we already know from the Stanton contract that this works to lower the AAV? As long as it’s not so over the top as to be blatantly obvious
It could help some, but there’s a “no free lunch” aspect to this idea due to true-ups. The detailed CBT calculations are on pages 106 to 125 of the CBA here – http://www.mlbplayers.com/pdf9/5450407.pdf
Long story short, there’s an incremental $15 million paid to Martinez in this example: $75 million paid to him total for 2018-19, less $60 million for two years of a $30 million AAV contract. If he opts out, that $15 million gets added to the Red Sox luxury tax calculation either in 2019 (which would mean a $45 million hit for that year) or in 2020 (which means a $15 million hit for a player no longer on the team).
I’m not sure reading the CBA which way it works, but neither alternative is terribly attractive for a team that projects to be at or over the CBT line if it remains a contender. The Red Sox will need to extend some of the several young arb year players who reach free agency no later than 2020 (Betts, Bogaerts, Bradley, Pomeranz) and also extend or replace other players who are free agents over the next couple years (Kimbrel and Sale) and currently cost less than free agent prices. The Red Sox could perhaps kick the can down the road some on Martinez’s CBT tax hit, but the problem with that idea is that their CBT tax situation doesn’t really project to improve much if any even as Ramirez rolls off after 2018 and Sandoval rolls off after 2019. Those dollars (and CBT payroll values) are pretty much already spoken for to pay other players (or to pay equivalent quality replacements in free agency).
This is essentially a split contract. The first two years is an AAV of $37.5M for 2018 and 2019. If the player opts out the contract is closed. If he stays he has a 3-year deal for an AAV of $25M per season.
In the case of JD, he is at an age where he will likely begin a decline phase in production so offering him an opt-out in 2 years may not be a gamble he would like to see added to his contract.
The reality is that this is probably his last big deal and getting as much guaranteed years and money is probably his primary goal (along with being with a competitive team to win a ring).
NHL Teams were being “creative” with their contracts 7-10 years ago to try to manipulate AAV for their salary cap, and things got out of hand. It culminated in a 17-year $102M contract for 27-year-old Ilya Kovalchuk that was rejected by the NHL. It was scheduled to pay him $95M for the first ten seasons (at a few different rates) before paying $7M over the final 7 seasons, with him making about the league minimum for the final five seasons, ages 40-44.
So, NJ tried to cut AAV from $9.5M to $6M to stay under the AAV-based hard cap. This led to changes in the CBA.
http://www.cbc.ca/sports/hockey/nhl-rejects-kovalchuk-contract-reports-1.925171
http://www.thehockeynews.com/news/article/devils-get-kovalchuk-nhl-and-union-reach-deal-on-long-term-contracts
A long enough time has elapsed that these deals are still ongoing even though the players are retired, with interesting cap consequences.
– 30-year old Marian Hossa 12 years @ 63.3M ($59.3M in first 8 years)
– 35-year old Chris Pronger 7 years @ 34M (only played 2 until retiring w concussion)
– 30-year-old Roberto Luongo 12 years @ 64M
http://theprovince.com/sports/hockey/nhl/vancouver-canucks/brace-yourselves-canucks-fans-the-club-is-facing-a-robert-luongo-salary-cap-nightmare
I think the evaluation of the Rockies is spot-on, with the money going to the relief corps (which can be easily flipped at the deadline).
They’ll be looking to lock up Arenado, if at all possible, and their local TV deal (one of the worst in MLB) is about up for renewal and renegotiation. Making the playoffs in ’17 will certainly help their cause, as would inking their current franchise player to a long-term deal.
There’s an easy solution: expand the playoffs to 8 teams in each league with a full 7 game series at each stage. Pare down the regular season to 152 games, monetize the additional playoff games in a TV package, and distribute that money to clubs to compensate for the 5 lost regular season home games. You’d see an immediate change. Virtually every club would have a significant incentive to get better so they could get into the playoffs and have a chance at a World Series.
What if MLB returned to the one wildcard team approach? Then those teams who finish a strong second in their division gain a 5-game series instead of a one-game crapshoot. They would be more incentivized to improve their rosters.
The idea is to give more non-Super Teams access to the post-season, not less. A 1 WC team approach removes the Angels and Rockies, and everyone vying for their spots, leaving only the Red Sox and Cardinals.
Going back to 1 WC makes it a full playoff spot; its the fact that you have to basically play a coinflip game to be in a real playoff series that is making teams discount the value of the wildcard, and making it not worth it to push for a competitive division if you are far out (because you aren’t also increasing your playoff odds via improving your chance to win the wildcard; if you are the favorite for WC1, you have almost nothing to gain until you can actually win the division, and that makes for a big gulf.
It basically means teams are treating something that would have previously increased their odds of making the playoffs via the wildcard by 5% as only 2.5% because it’s discounted by the playin game (it may be discounted more than half, since its clearly a huge disadvantage to play that game and then face the no 1 seed with your pitching all fucked; see Arizona)
Its not like the Rockies or Twins really got any substantial benefit from their WC game loss seasons over finishing a spot back. There’s still only 4 actual playoff teams per league, but only 3 reliable playoff spots. If you’re the NL where you have 3 divisional titans lined up for those 3 spots, your marginal gains in persuing the wildcard are lower.
Dave makes this point, albeit seemingly somewhat inadvertently, when he wrote, “teams hanging around the fringes of the Wild Card race don’t see moving the needle a bit on getting to a one-game play-in contest as a big enough reward”.
Earlier in this discussion you called baseball boring, and now you’re arguing for playoff baseball to extend well into November.
I do agree with Dave that there is no urgency to upgrade when you’re not likely going to contend this year. But the flip side of that is that there are a lot of teams who think they are about 1-3 years away. The Twins, White Sox, Athletics, Brewers, Reds, Braves, and Phillies aren’t exactly rebuilding–they just probably think that their real contention window opens in 2019 or 2020 (although for some of those teams that’s a tad optimistic). Even the Yankees, who are a real world series contender, are ahead of schedule.
With the exception of the Phillies, those teams aren’t interested in spending now for a declining player who might have lost value when it’s time to actually compete. And that’s key because the “premium” free agents out there right now aren’t that good or are old (or both). Why bother upgrading that much when 1-3 years down the line, the guy you sign isn’t good anymore?
Examples:
-JD Martinez can rake but is over 30, has had more injuries lately, and can’t seem to field anymore.
-Yu Darvish is great when he’s not tipping pitches but had some atrocious games last year when he was, and is over 30.
-Lorenzo Cain was a great player who relies heavily on his speed and is over 30, and has had lots of injuries.
-Eric Hosmer isn’t very good. Jake Arrieta was a true ace two years ago but now is over 30 and looks like a 4th starter.
These are your premium free agents, and agents think that because they’re the biggest names on the market they should get top deals, and the teams are thinking “naaaah, I’ll just wait.” There’s no urgency to spend that much money to improve for 2-4 years from now when the asset doesn’t hold value.
ESPN tallied the recent WAR performance of this year’s FA class and compared it to recent Classes and found the top 15 delivered half the WAR of the 2016 class and a third less than the 2017 class.
It also rated at half the projected WAR of the next class.
Some FA classes have a few high ceiling top performers and some are deep in good performers but this one has neither high value nor abundant good values.
Those guys are going to get deals…eventually…but they aren’t necessarily going to get the deals their agents are pining for.
I just don’t see the current crop of FAs as that attractive. Sure, JD can mash but he’s 30 and terrible at defense. I am sure he has a 5 year 100-120 mil deal on the table which is probably more than fair for him, he’s just holding out for more. Darvish is 31, I am sure he is getting offers but he may have trouble breaking $100mil. Arriet will be 32 and that FIP trend line in pretty weak NL doesn’t look great. Cobb doesn’t strike anyone out. If I’m some teams in the middle maybe I look at throwing some good 1 and 2 year money at players just to see if they take it. Does Cobb go for a 1 and 1 option @ 20mil each? Arrieta the same? Honestly I don’t think it’s the dollars but the YEARS that are throwing teams off and Boras always wants the years and guarantee.
Right, there simply appears to be a current disconnect between teams’ offers and agents’ asking prices for a few top FAs. If JD Martinez had already signed a 5-yr/$125MM offer from the Red Sox or Hosmer had re-signed for a 7-yr/$140MM deal with the Royals, then I don’t think an article like this gets written.
These FAs will get signed in the end.
Yep. And there’s a pretty steep ramp from “0 teams would pay that” to “30 teams would pay that.” Nobody will get a big discount, because lots of teams would buy Arrieta at 90% of what just one team would pay.
I personally think that the current “super team” era really has nothing to do with the cold stove. This year’s crop of available free agents is not that great, especially considering teams want to say AAV for next year’s class to get under the luxury tax. When teams like the Yankees and Dodgers are actively trying to limit spending, it suppresses spending league wide. According to the Fangraphs Free Agent Tracker, there isn’t a single free agent that is projected to be worth 4 wins next season. Add in the fact that almost all of them are on the wrong side of 30 and you’ve got the recipe for a slow offseason.
“Like an unattached swiper chatting with 15 potential hookups on Tinder, these sorta-contenders seem to want options, not commitment.”
Lol
Who had Dave making that analogy in Fangraphs Bingo?
I had squinting. Lots of squinting. 🙁
Is the second wc maybe bad for the game? I see that you want to give a bonus to Division winners and it is an extra spot but it seems like teams don’t appreciate a coinflip chance, it is only half a playoff spot to them and not worth pursuing.
Teams of course take the wc game but they don’t invest to get there, they either stay put and hope to get lucky or rebuild immediately. That means the ddivisions have one clear division winner and a lot of 500 teams that don’t care to improve (because 88 wins isn’t really much better than 83 wins as both gives you a chance to get a wc but no shot at the division) and tanking teams. Basically anything between like 84 and 90 wins is like the same now (in pre season planning, of course in reality the cutoff can be different).
Sure in theory that Increases the incentive for 76-80 win teams to get to 84 but in practice it seems they take it when it comes with no effort but they don’t invest for a chance for a conflip.
What the 79 win team will do is do nothing and if you beat your pejections a little you invest at the deadline and then try to get from 83 (if you beat your projections by two wins at the deadline it puts you on 4 win better pace) to 86. Makes the deadline a little more interesting but the offseason less so.
I would somewhat agree. I think that the MLB wc teams should run similar to NFL; give the 1-seed a bye, and make 2-3 each play the wc teams in a 3-game series before advancing to the division series.
This has been on my mind for a while. While I was initially enthusiastic about the second wild card, I didn’t consider how it would impact teams’ incentives when constructing their rosters.
I think if the second wild card gets more teams in the mix in the regular season at the expense of the offseason’s excitement, then it’s a good trade off.
One other thing I’ll throw out there–there are definitely some divisions where there aren’t real races in 2018 (AL Central, NL East). But I’ll push back on the idea that the Dodgers have the NL West or the Astros have the AL West locked down, even though they are the definite favorites. There are some decent teams in those divisions that can unexpectedly get hot, and if one of them does so while the favorite has a run of injuries it might get competitive.
I might even say the Mets have a decent chance to unseat the Nationals if they manage to get a functional infield (although I don’t entirely buy that argument).
The Mets have a real chance if they can keep all their good pitching healthy. So no chance at all.
I would add, though, that while Dave’s thesis may be right, it is a bit odd to be using the current projections as such a large crutch for this argument. There are a lot of good players out there. Especially if the prices start to come down, you could see some of these middling .500-ish teams decide that they have the financial flexibility to grab 2-3 players and all of the sudden they are definite wild card players and also have a puncher’s chance at the division. That could also create an upswing in demand as more teams have to counter the newer contenders.
As I mentioned they are one of the real head scratchers right now for not pushing at least some of their chips into the pot while their window is open. The situation with their ownership should be a pretty big cause for concern around the league and especially on Park Avenue.
They’re major league players. They’ll definitely get deals…
…when the price drops.
Not before, though.
It’s a game of chicken to see who caves first.
Of course they’ll get deals. I just think if the Mets or Diamondbacks are the first movers, it will create more demand for remaining players than if the only teams that are even willing to give a decent contract are still the top teams like the Nationals.
Pretty sure millennials are ruining the offseason.
I think Fangraphs authors are talking out of both sides of their mouths a little bit here.
In chats and articles, teams are constantly encouraged to ‘be realistic’ about their chances of competing, and if projections show they have little to no chance, they are called upon to sell. In the last six months or so I’ve seen this brought up on this site for the Orioles, Blue Jays, Rays, Rangers, Giants and Royals. This is on top of teams that are at some stage in a rebuild already anyway (Tigers, Phillies, Marlins, White Sox, Padres, Reds, Braves, Athletics). We’re told that because there’s realistically maybe one wild card spot unaccounted for in each league, teams that aren’t close should just stop pretending and they should sell off assets.
At the same time we get articles complaining about competitive balance in the league and ‘super teams’, particularly large market/payroll super teams, ruining everything.
Teams are encouraged to sell, and if they do, what’s the result? Other borderline teams are even further behind and the case becomes better that they too should sell. Example: the Stanton trade was used as reasoning for the Jays, Rays and Orioles just to concede 2018 right now.
I don’t think it’s intellectually honest to at one and the same time be advocating that borderline teams proactively punt seasons based on projections, and also lament the consequent consolidation of talent onto contending teams. One trend feeds the other, and sure there are other things going on (the Astros’ successful rebuild doesn’t help, and we’ve had some poor sequencing in that a bunch of large market teams put it all together at the same time), but frankly this problem is only going to get worse unless teams are willing to be irrational and just play out the season and see what happens. In short, baseball needs a middle class, stop encouraging teams to sell!
Of course various fangraphs writers are taking inconsistent positions. This is a “content-generation” business. It’s not a business predicated on consistency of thought.
To make an additional point, the viewpoints you describe are not necessarily inconsistent. What may be good for each individual team insofar as making it optimally competitive may not be good for baseball overall.
This would be a horribly boring website if all of the thoughtful voices here were mandated to think the same.
So here’s where I haven’t been keeping track of who said what (incidentally my list of teams being egged on to sell was one short because the Pirates should’ve been there). All I can say is that the calls for various teams to sell have been pervasive enough this offseason that I’m skeptical that they aren’t coming from the some of the same people who are also saying super teams are ruining baseball. Nor do I see at least an acknowledgement anywhere that teams that lean on projections and decide to punt a season are partially causing the consolidation of talent, and that consequently over-use of projections in decision making may be a bad thing for the game of baseball as a whole.
Agreed that each individual team can come to its own conclusions about what’s good for it. But how long do you think it’s going to be before we start hearing the media drumbeat of “the product on the field stinks! We’re tired of seeing super teams slaughtering AAAA rosters, look at the ratings!”. It’s fundamentally an entertainment industry, not a science in pursuit of optimal baseball truth.
Baseball needs a YOUNG middle class and that’s coming as the rebuilding teams come to fruition. When the rebuilders graduate their top prospects and become 75-win teams on the rise, they’ll use the FA market. The 2018 FA class is uniquely great, so I think rebuilders will join contenders in availing themselves of it. However, I think there’s a secular problem with FA along with it’s current cyclical one.
Fangraphs needs an article evaluating the FA classes of the last 5 years, how bad has it been, what types of players tend to work out better than others, etc. I think we all know in our heart-of-hearts that FA signings offer bad ROI’s and that’s why teams who aren’t already very high on the win curve avoid it. If you’re fairly sure you’re going to the playoffs like the Indians last year, then sign Encarnacion. Even if he loses it, you haven’t lost much since you’re already a damn good team.
Can anyone think of 80-ish win teams who add three free agents or equivalents through trades in the off-season and become playoff-contenders? Outside of the Cubs and Nationals, FA has been more of an anchor than an up-escalator.
I think it depends on perspective: are you looking at it from an analytical, team management standpoint or as a fan?
From an analytical standpoint, if you don’t stand much of a chance, it’s pretty smart not to spend. I don’t think anyone occupying this head space would advocate for the Reds to break the bank on JD Martinez.
But from a fan’s standpoint, half the league contently twiddling their thumbs makes for a boring hobby. If the Reds did in fact sign Martinez, and the Braves threw a bunch of money at Darvish and got him, and the White Sox randomly threw a bunch of money at Arrieta, well, that’s a whole lot of stupid, but at least we’d all be having fun.
Beauty and the beholder and all that, but even fans who actually go to 10+ games/year and hate tanking can’t like the long hangover the Royals are going to go through for their 2017 “going for it.”
That’s the whole point of the “window”: no one has infinite resources (particularly with the luxury tax), so you have to concentrate your talent and money in a finite period where your highly-touted young players hit their peaks around the same time.
Generally, I think teams should avoid the FA market except for relievers (is WAR better than WPA+ for measuring relievers?) and guys you can sign on 2-year or fewer deals. This seems to be team behavior these days as even the Yankees avoid FA now. 2018’s FA market will be the exception to the rule.
Go home-grown as much as possible!
Adding several 1 win upgrades to a team in FA will not be enough to catch any of the best teams and costs a fortune with massive risk. So we have seen investments in relievers which are largely for post-season success and for preserving the health of team-controlled starters (or trading for someone else’s post season).
I agree this is a cyclical situation, but I also expect that most years will be like this and the competitive years will be the exception, especially if small market teams continue to unload their superstars to the likes of the Yankees.
One other factor is the increasingly homogeneous player valuations and what seems like risk-aversion from the front offices. Everyone goofed on Verlander last July, perhaps because no one wanted to be “wrong” (not to pick on MLB – A Kamara in the 3rd round of the NFL draft? Insane)
Small market teams have to take risks when they have cost-controlled stars. Counting on slowly building a reliable advantage through cleverness is folly when everyone is doing roughly what you are doing. It is every more arrogant and ruinous when you have a smaller budget to work with than a few of your rivals. Until more of these teams resume taking shots on the likes of Verlander to leverage their Stanton (or their strong first half) we will have more years where everyone but the wild card hopefuls treats the season as a six month spring training.
But how often do you see a 6 win player being available? So how do the Twins, Bucs and Mets justify not aggressively pursuing Manny Machado right now if that one stroke could push those teams right into the contention range?
The title using “ruining” seems to take away from the overall point of the article that this off-season being slow was predictable based on teams rationally assessing where they stand and properly evaluating what was available on the free agent market. In addition it mentions the other obvious factors of teams trying to stay under luxury tax and also the stellar class of FA’s set for next off season.
As an aside, these projected win totals are currently only based off projected “WAR”, correct? If that is true, you would think the Twins projected win total is going to get bumped up a couple wins once simulations are done with schedule based on just how terrible it looks like the bottom three teams of the division project to be.
Those couple wins push them up the curve of where it makes sense to be going after FA’s. They also must feel this way because they have been linked to most of the top SP’s on the market
“As an aside, these projected win totals are currently only based off projected ‘WAR’, correct?”
I don’t think that’s correct: I think that the current projected win totals are also based on projected schedule.
Look at the Indians, for example, both projected 2018 record ( https://www.fangraphs.com/depthcharts.aspx?position=Standings ) and WAR ( https://www.fangraphs.com/depthcharts.aspx?position=ALL&teamid=1 ). The Indians project as a somewhat better record than the Cubs and Yankees despite fewer projected WAR than both of those teams. The Indians also project as only one less team win than the Dodgers despite a projection of 3.6 fewer WAR for the Indians.
Thanks for reply. I have always wondered whether the pre-season projections included schedule before depth charts combines ZIPS into them
honestly i’d rather the present state of affairs in the MLB to the artificial parity of the NFL or NHL.
Agreed. I think teams the quality of the Titans making playoff runs detracts from the sport, not adds to it.
there’s also what type of players are getting signed. relievers seem to go faster, as they are a fungible commodity. but teams seem to prefer developing position players on their own.
This is mostly right but Dave buries the lede here, or misdiagnoses this somewhat, by focusing on the “Super Team” idea. They key point isn’t that “Super Teams” make upgrading not worthwhile because lower-projected teams don’t think they can compete. The 2 wild card spots and significant error bars in the projections are enough to make this unconvincing for me, and last year’s surprise teams should reinforce this thinking.
Rather, the point is that that teams *are* willing to wait until midseason to figure out where they sit because 1) we’ve seen low prices for upgrades in recent years with clear sellers willing to take 90 cents on the dollar, and 2) the crop of free agents isn’t that appealing. I don’t think that the presence of the Astros or Dodgers or the like does much to impact this thinking.
Yeah, the mega-market teams all vying for players is boring. As a small market team fan, do I care if the Cubs or Red Sox land player X? I do not. That’s not saying I want my team to be in on it, but teams that already have an embarrassment of riches, it’s pretty boring whether they get another good player or not.
Players not the teams are actually driving the slow off season. This is an extremely elderly FA class with relative players with more than a 3 WAR forecast for 2018. They all expect 5+ years and the teams want to give 3 to 4 year contracts.Alex Cobb and the Cubs are a prefect example. The Cubs have 42M/3yrs on the table but Cobb wants 4-5 years. He’s pitching with a repaired elbow at 30 and is projected to produce about 2 WAR in 2018.
I agree with Dave Cameron’s points here, and I would add one other factor to the list: Scott Boras’ negotiating style. He represents a disproportionate number of this year’s top free agents (J.D. Martinez, Arrieta, Hosmer, Moustakas, and Greg Holland), and Boras is well-known for stretching out negotiations (and opening with high contract demands) with the view that he can build a market over time rather than by having his players sign early.
These players in turn have a direct and indirect impact on other free agent moves. The direct part is simply that some teams won’t seriously move on to other alternatives at starting pitcher, 1B, 3B, and outfield/DH until they determine the actual market for these Boras clients. The indirect part is that, even beyond direct substitutes, teams operate within the confines of overall payroll budgets so signing decisions on these players can also indirectly impact teams’ decision-making on players at different positions.
Agree that the Indians shouldn’t take on a long term contract. But a rental? Seems like just the thing. I’d be looking hard at Machado if I were them.
Pretty sure teams know these projections aren’t worth much. Even if accurate the standard error is +/- 6 wins. Look at the Yankees last year, the Red Sox and Royals a couple of years ago, etc. There is a reason you play the games and put the best team out there.
That said, teams dont seem to have the incentive to win. Playoff revenue doesnt seem enough to justify spending an extra 20-30 million on a top FA in the hope your playoff chances increase from 33% to 66%. Attendance revenue and RSN ratings/advertising are no longer the largest drivers of revenue with so much shared revenue and long term RSN deals. Success does not mattet as much. Its nice but not if you have to spend big to have a chance at it.
So if I am a MLB team, knowing this, it makes it much easier to jump on the collusion band wagon. Dont spend and be Manfreds friend forever for helping kill payroll inflation.
Basically saying all of these reasons, CBT, lack of competition/incentives, revenue structure, etc simply drive MLB and teams toward collusion.
How to fix it? Well first you need a strong MLBPA and for that Tony Clarke must be gone ASAP. Pronto.
Then you need to ensure teams are providing an agreed amount of revenue to the players at the league and team level. Make it harder to collude.
Lastly, you need incentives to win. Playoff teams get the 11th-20 pocks instead of 21-30. Perennial losers get suspended for a year with their players drafted by other MLB teams for that year . Then take some of those revenue sharing dollars and hand out big bonuses for team making the LCs and World Series. The bonus get adjusted for team revenue to make sure the the smaller teams make more than the larger market teams
Collusion does not happen in a vacuum. All the ingredients are there and have been for over a decade. MLBPA for some strange reason has had blinders on during the Weiner/Clarke era.
If super teams are going to sign the great players next year, are you saying the others should just give up now? Because the super teams will be even better, right? What chance do the other teams have, if they don’t add players this year, when the super teams are sitting out?
Three cheers for great young saber GMs,and staff.
They know the numbers,and what real value means.
Develop a point system based mainly around RS-RA (with wins and loses worked in there as + or – a number of points.)
You will always have your super-teams but this should allow (or tempt) teams, maybe those on the bubble or in 2nd/3rd tier markets, to sneak into the playoffs by being more one-dimensional and focusing on, say, slugging, over pitching or building a super staff and hoping your hitters can squeeze out enough runs.
This should incentivize the league to adopt more heterogeneous approaches to roster building.
You could also:
shorten the game to 8 innings
expand the league to 32 teams with 6 teams in each league making the playoffs.
Get the schedule down to, ideally 132 games. September into October could then be devoted to a mini-season/round robin for the teams which make the playoffs. The last team standing in the National and American Leagues would then face each other in a traditional style World Series.
The Luxury Tax is going to act as a nearly hard cap. This is going to have the greatest impact on the high revenue teams who have legacy bad contracts–like Ellsbury (who can still be a little useful), Hanley, Kemp, etc. Until those contracts run off, they won’t have enough room to pay top dollar to every bright object out there. You are going to get more contract dumping–because as high revenue teams approach the cap, they have to do everything possible to not breach it…$1 over is very bad. They have start the season with some room to fill in for injuries. Opportunistic small and mid-market teams will have opportunities for relative bargains.
I don’t see the tax line as a hard cap. It hasn’t been historically, as each of the last few years has seen 5 or 6 teams pay luxury tax. The Red Sox are almost certainly going to be over the luxury tax line in 2018, and some other teams (Giants, Nationals, Cubs) look pretty likely to be over the tax line also.
What I think might be a de facto hard cap is $40 million over the luxury tax, after which the surtax on each incremental dollar of salary reaches a really high level and a team’s 1st draft pick drops 10 spots.
The Yankees and Dodgers are in an unusual, perhaps unique, spot to reset their luxury tax penalties by getting under the tax in 2018. It’s not just looking ahead to the great free agent class after 2018, particularly relative to a pretty mediocre free agent class this year. Both teams also have some very good young players still earning minimum salaries – players such as Judge, Severino, Sanchez, Seager, Bellinger, and Barnes – which creates a rare window of opportunity to reset luxury tax penalties while still fielding really good teams.
Good points. The Yankees and Dodgers definitely need to reset. They should both do it, by whatever means necessary. Once you get to the playoffs (assuming they do) it’s a crapshoot anyway,
“Ruining” is unnecessarily hyperbolic.
And obviously some collusion going on.
Noooo Dave’s last baseball article!!