Odubel Herrera Underrated Himself

We can all agree that WAR does a pretty good job of sorting, right? Like, even if you can quibble with the numbers, it paints a pretty good general picture. Good players tend to have better WARs than worse players. Great, okay. Over the past couple seasons, 130 different players have batted at least 1,000 times. Recognize right away there’s selection bias here — it’s mostly just decent players, and better players, who would play that much. The sample is already skewed somewhat toward quality, toward talent. Within that pool, by WAR, Odubel Herrera ranks 38th. He’s statistical neighbors with Daniel Murphy, Dexter Fowler, Dustin Pedroia, and Kole Calhoun. Herrera turns 25 in a couple of weeks, and as a Rule 5 grab, he’s been fantastic.

It makes all the sense in the world that the Phillies would want to get Herrera locked up. And from Herrera’s side, of course he’d want guaranteed money. Two winters ago his old team left him unprotected. There’s vulnerability there, vulnerability no one wants to feel again and again. Herrera now has an extension, which isn’t strange. But it’s another extension that leaves a young player looking like he sold himself short.

Here’s Todd Zolecki with the terms:

Phillies sign Odubel Herrera to a five-year extension, carrying him through 2021. The deal includes club options for 2022 and 2023.

— Todd Zolecki (@ToddZolecki) December 15, 2016

Sources said the Herrera deal is worth $30.5 million. Herrera’s 2022 club option is worth $11.5 million. 2023 is worth $12.5 million.

— Todd Zolecki (@ToddZolecki) December 15, 2016

Obviously, Herrera wasn’t going to get free-agent money. He’s accrued exactly two years of service, so this buys out all his arbitration, plus an extra year. The club options make it all the more team-friendly, since those increase the potential benefits while coming with hardly any risk. Herrera jumped at the chance to guarantee himself $30.5 million, and, I mean, we’d all be tempted to do the same. But literally just earlier today, the Rockies gave three years and $19 million to Mike Dunn. There’s more money in the game than players might think.

There’s a convenient comparison here. Adam Eaton signed an extension in spring of 2015, when he was at the same point in his career as Herrera. Eaton signed for five years and $23.5 million, and there were two club options tacked onto the end, so the maximum value was $42 million over seven years. The Herrera contract is bigger, but it’s also been two years, so the “real” numbers are closer than they look. The contracts are remarkably similar in structure. Here are the statistical lines:

Eaton signed going into his age-26 season. Herrera is going into his age-25 season. That’s a point for him. By the numbers, there are similarities. Eaton looked like the better contact hitter. Herrera profiles for more power. The big question about Eaton was the actual quality of his defense. The big question about Herrera is the sustainability of the high BABIP. Herrera, no question, has overachieved. And maybe you’d still buy more into Eaton here. But they’re very close. Herrera doesn’t compare unfavorably to Eaton.

Now, maybe you want to say, “all right, it’s even!” Similar players, similar deals. That’s not untrue. The Eaton deal probably served as some precedent for today’s. But then recall last week, when Eaton was traded from the White Sox to the Nationals for a massive haul, in large part because his contract gave him substantial surplus value. Eaton isn’t a totally different player than he used to be. He still makes contact and runs and tracks down challenging fly balls sometimes. Adam Eaton is what they call a tremendous positive asset. He’s also a multi-millionaire, but he should probably have more millions.

Last March, Kolten Wong signed a similar contract, when he was a two-service-year player. His contract included just one club option, not two. To that point as a major-leaguer, Wong owned an 88 wRC+. Overall, he’d amassed 3.8 WAR. Just by performance, Wong wasn’t close to Herrera. Herrera didn’t get to sign anything better.

Certain concerns are absolutely valid. Scouts have never liked Herrera’s defense as much as the numbers have. And to this point he’s been a high-BABIP hitter without being a low-pop-up hitter. He has the potential to hit for power, but he hasn’t hit for a lot of it yet, so it’s not hard to see how Herrera could already be past his peak. That might’ve been part of his agent’s motivation — get the guarantee now, while the batting average is high, and $30-odd million is enough. Again: millionaires.

Chances are, Herrera won’t stay as good as Starling Marte. Marte is something of a freak. I feel like there’s an uncanny resemblance between Herrera and Austin Jackson, and Jackson is basically toast before his 30th birthday. Yet his WAR between 25 and 29 worked out to 11.5. Spread it out and that’s a quality return. Jackson hasn’t become what he could’ve, but his isn’t even that bad of a path.

Jon Singleton continues to stand out as the guy whose early extension didn’t work out well for the team. Singleton’s case stands out because teams know what they’re doing, here, and they come away almost universally pleased. Many of the players do, as well. Signing even a bargain long-term contract means you don’t have to think about money ever again. This is the old, familiar observation that the first million means a hell of a lot more than any of the individual millions after that. Players need only so much. Families need only so much. The players don’t need “fair” contracts in order to be satisfied.

But teams know they can take advantage of that. They know the desire for guaranteed money is powerful, and they know that most people tend to be risk-averse when they can have so much money right away. For a baseball team, $5 million means barely anything. For a baseball player, $5 million can be life-changing, and that imbalance sustains. It’s never going away, at least not until or unless young players are able to earn more right out of the gate than they do these days.

Individually, you can always make sense of all of these contracts. Baseball is a player’s job, and the main purpose of a job is to be able to provide. Herrera’s now equipped to do that for the rest of his life. What does he really care about another $10 – 20 million or so? Rich is rich. When you examine these extension together, though, it’s no accident teams keep on coming out in front. I’m not sure what players are realistically supposed to do, but doing the same thing over and over won’t help them make up any ground.