The 2016 Free Agents Who Could Have Been
You have a choice. I’ll give you $100 right now, or you can let me flip a coin. If it lands on heads, I’ll give you $250. But if it lands on tails, I’ll give you $20. I’m using a fair coin, so the expected value of flipping the coin is $135 based on the 50/50 odds it lands on heads or tails. If you like risk or are a risk-neutral person, it’s an easy decision to take your chances with the coin because the odds are strongly in your favor. If you’re a risk-averse person, however, you’re more likely to take the sure thing because $135 isn’t a whole lot more than $100, and $100 is a whole lot more than $20.
Let’s add another wrinkle. It’s the same choice, but if you choose the coin flip, you have to wait a month. The dollar amounts are the same, but now there’s a time component. To get the value of the coin flip, you need to apply a discount factor to the $135. For some people, that discount factor is pretty close to one, but it might be much lower if you’re strapped for cash and the $100 would dramatically improve your life in the present.
Major league players face a much higher stakes version of this decision when their club comes to them with a contract extension. Do they take a sure thing now, or do they wait and gamble on themselves? While we’re focusing a lot on the 2015-2016 free-agent class this month, there are eight players who could have been free agents for the first time this year but instead chose to cash out early by signing extensions. Did they make the right decision?
Before we go any further, we have to recognize we can’t actually determine if they made a good decision or a bad decision, we can only estimate about how much money they gained or lost by signing their deals. We have no way of knowing how risk averse players are or how large their discount factor is. Leaving $50 million on the table seems like a really bad call, but if locking in a big payday early and getting an influx of cash greatly improved a player’s family’s quality of life, it was probably a fine decision.
Using Baseball-Reference’s contract pages, I identified eight players who currently have between 6.000 and 7.000 years of service time who were not free agents this winter and have never been free agents (i.e. previous non-tenders are excluded). In other words, these are players who would have hit the market for the first time after 2015 had they not signed contract extensions earlier in their careers.
Our task is to consider how much they would have earned this winter and to compare that to what they will be paid over the rest of their current deal. We’ll also see if any of the players made more money during their arbitration window than we would have expected if they went year-to-year. Keep in mind my estimates are just that — estimates. I’m trying to fit the years and salaries into the context of the market so far, but there are a couple of players who would stand out as unique free agents.
I’ve broken the players down into two categories based on whether signing the extension was good/neutral or bad for their overall financial well-being. Obviously, as you’re reading this, remember that a dollar secured in 2013 has more valuable than one in 2016. But I won’t make any precise estimates for that because each player has their own ideas about risk and the time value of money. To the list!
Good/Neutral Extensions
Extension: $28.5 million (2012-2016), $11 million option for 2017, $11.5 million option for 2018
Coming off a three-win campaign in 2011, Holland gave the Rangers one pre-arbitration season, three arbitration seasons and one free-agent season for $28.5 million, prior to 2012. That works out to a slight raise in 2012 based on the league minimum, and $16 million during his three arbitration years. Given his very strong 2013 campaign, it’s probably safe to say he would have done slightly better in arbitration had gone on a year-to-year contract.
He’ll make $10 million in 2016 and has team options for $11 million and $11.5 million for 2017 and 2018, respectively, coming down the pike. This is a hard contract to judge given that options depend heavily on his health in the future. He’s only thrown 95 innings since the start of 2014, which makes it seem like he’d have been in line for a one-year deal to rebuild his value this winter. It would probably have come in around the value of his 2016 salary. If we assume that’s the case, the options have negative value because if he pitches poorly or is hurt they won’t get picked up. If he pitches well enough for those options to get exercised, it means he’d be in for a more lucrative deal going into 2017.
As a result, Holland probably lost a few million dollars by signing the deal, but he guaranteed himself life-changing money at 25 years old and didn’t cost himself very much by signing away his twenties to the Rangers.
Extension: $25.5 million (2012-2016), $10 million option for 2017, $11 million option for 2018
This is a fun one because it’s basically the same extension we just discussed for Holland. In terms of performance, Niese has been more reliable with less of a ceiling. He’s pretty consistently been a 2 WAR pitcher, but he’s coming off his worse season and has never looked like a potential No. 2 starter like Holland. I’d wager his arbitration years are largely a push, and if he were a free agent this winter I think that he’d sign something in the three-year, $36 million to three-year, $42 million range. It might seem like $12 million to $14 million is a lot to pay for Niese, but Mike Pelfrey got $8 million per year and J.A. Happ got $12 million per year, so this is the right neighborhood.
This puts Niese’s 2016 salary slightly below what he would have earned as a free agent with the same holding true for the options. If the options were guaranteed, he’d be looking at a three-year, $30 million deal for 2016 through 2018. That’s relatively close to his market value, so he essentially gave the Mets the decision over 2017 and 2018 for the upfront money. All told, this might be a slight loss for Niese in raw terms, but certainly not a large enough one to suggest it was foolish to sign the deal.
Extension: $25 million (2012-2016), $9 million option for 2017
Maybin is an interesting case because he cashed in at exactly the right time, but he only guaranteed himself a relatively small amount as far as baseball money is concerned. Maybin got his extension, covering one pre-arb year, three arb years and a free-agent year right after his 4.3 WAR season in 2011. He was worth 2.2 WAR in 2012 but he’s been less impressive for a variety of reasons since then.
Again, the arbitration seasons seem pretty fair and his $8 million salary seems in line with what he would earn as a free agent this winter. The only question is whether he’d get a multi-year deal or if he’d go for a one-year deal with a team that had plenty of at bats for him in order to rebuild his value. It wouldn’t be a shock for him to get two years and $16 million or three years and $24 million, given his natural ability and potential upside. No one is investing a ton of money in Maybin, but the Red Sox paid almost $7 million a year over two years to get Chris Young, and Maybin is in a similar tier.
Given that, it seems Maybin potentially cost himself a little money by signing the extension. Still, given that he would have been a non-tender candidate over the last couple years if it hadn’t been for the extension, the guaranteed money evens things out. This one could go either way, but it’s certainly close enough to put it in the neutral category.
Extension: $82.5 million (2016-2019)
This is a unique one because it bought out free-agent years exclusively. The Porcello contract was controversial last winter because it looked like a deal that rewarded one good ERA season with ace money. The reality is Porcello’s peripherals had been trending in a good direction, and his fielding independent numbers suggested he was an above-average starter. Additionally, Porcello is only entering his age-27 season, which is much younger than many free-agent pitchers so it’s likely the Sox were buying his peak rather than his decline. Finally, $20 million simply isn’t ace money anymore as shown by the contracts signed by Jordan Zimmermann and Jeff Samardzija this offseason.
In fact, those contracts appear to be rather informative. Zimmermann received five years and $110 million despite a previous Tommy John surgery. Porcello is three years younger and hasn’t gone under the knife. He hasn’t been as good, but he has three years to catch up, and he’s a somewhat similar pitcher. Samardzija is interesting because he got five years and $90 million despite having a very poor platform season. To me, these two deals suggest five years and $100 million would be entirely reasonable for Porcello this winter.
I know that’s going to send some people rushing to the comments section, but teams have moved beyond judging pitchers with ERA and clearly have the ability to put several bad first-half starts in perspective. If we say it’s a five-year, $100 million deal, Porcello left some cash on the table. But he insured himself against catastrophic injury and will reach free agency again when he’s very young, suggesting he could probably do just fine in 2020.
Bad Extensions
Extension: $10.5 million (2012-2015), $5.25 million option for 2016, $6.5 million option for 2017
For our purposes, we can go ahead and assume Escobar’s 2017 option gets picked up. At $6.5 million, the only way the Royals decline it is if he tears his ACL or something next October. Given that, Escobar gave the Royals his arbitration years for $9 million and then gave away his first two free-agent years for about $12 million.
Even if you don’t think much of Escobar and think arbitration wouldn’t net him full credit for his defense, the extension clearly went the Royals way. Let’s say he lost $5 million or so in arbitration. The real loss is that he’s effectively signed to a two-year, $12 million deal for 2016 and 2017 when he likely could have grabbed something between three years, $33 million and four years, $52 million if he were a free agent. Perhaps Porcello technically left more money on the table, but Escobar left a similar amount on the table and did so without guaranteeing himself a big payday.
Granted, it’s hard to fault Escobar for taking the deal given that he signed his contract before he had done much offensively. The dollars favor the Royals, but it’s a much clearer decision in hindsight than it was at the time.
Extension: $42 million (2012-2016), $12 million option for 2017, $12 million option for 2018
This one is a little simpler. Gonzalez earned some extra money up front but he’s essentially signed to a three-year, $36 million deal from 2016 through 2018 that is built on team options but could be declined if he has Tommy John surgery or another serious injury. Jordan Zimmermann seems like a good enough comparison here. Gonzalez isn’t quite at Johnny Cueto’s level but he’s been more durable, so somewhere in the five-year, $110 million range seems perfectly fine.
In raw dollars, that’s about a $75 million difference. Even if we tacked on two years at the market rate, he’s still more than $30 million short and none of the money beyond 2016 is guaranteed. Gonzalez has made plenty of money already in his career, but in terms of maximizing his earnings, his 2012 extension was a big mistake.
Extension: $12.6 million (2011-2014), $7 million option for 2015, $8 million option for 2016, $10 million option for 2017
Let’s get crazy. So arbitration was probably a wash given that Davis didn’t start earning saves until this past season. But if we pick it up in the present, Davis belongs to the Royals for two years and $18 million. Recall that Pelfrey got two years and $16 million and Darren O’Day got four years and$31 million. It’s pretty safe to say Davis would make a ton of money this winter as a free agent coming off two otherworldly relief seasons.
This is a hard one to figure given the way reliever valuations are changing, but I’ll put four years, $64 million out there as a guess. Consider what Craig Kimbrel makes and how much the Padres got for him in a trade and it doesn’t seem crazy that teams would pay Davis $16 million per season to anchor their pen. Maybe that’s way off and it’s more like four years, $50 million, but either way, that’s a lot of money left on the table for a guy who plays one of the most volatile positions in the game and could find himself on the shelf in short order.
Extension: $51.5 million (2012-2016), $10 million option for 2017, $11 million option for 2018
This could probably be an article on its own. Madison Bumgarner and Chris Sale are signed to some team-friendly deals but this one takes the entire bakery. McCutchen is one of the five or 10 best players in baseball, and the Pirates are getting his first three free agent seasons for $41 million. It wouldn’t be outrageous to suggest McCutchen is worth $41 million per season. In fact, if we ask the contract estimator to put together a 10-year deal for McCutchen, it gives us this!
| Year | Age | WAR | $/WAR | Est. Value |
| 2016 | 29 | 5.7 | $8.0 M | $45.6 M |
| 2017 | 30 | 5.7 | $8.4 M | $47.9 M |
| 2018 | 31 | 5.2 | $8.8 M | $45.9 M |
| 2019 | 32 | 4.7 | $9.3 M | $43.5 M |
| 2020 | 33 | 4.2 | $9.7 M | $40.8 M |
| 2021 | 34 | 3.7 | $10.2 M | $37.8 M |
| 2022 | 35 | 3.2 | $10.7 M | $34.3 M |
| 2023 | 36 | 2.7 | $11.3 M | $30.4 M |
| 2024 | 37 | 2.2 | $11.8 M | $26.0 M |
| 2025 | 38 | 1.5 | $12.4 M | $18.0 M |
| Totals | 38.8 | $370.2 M |
Assumptions
Value: $8M/WAR with 5.0% inflation
Aging Curve: +0.25 WAR/yr (18-27), 0 WAR/yr (28-30),-0.5 WAR/yr (31-37),-0.75 WAR/yr (> 37)
Ten years and $370 million. Think about that. Now he’d probably negotiate an opt-out and the total value would drop to $330 million or something, but no matter what, his current deal is a steal.
We can acknowledge he’ll be a free agent after 2018, so it makes sense to look at the first three years of any new deal for a more direct comparison. McCutchen would probably have earned somewhere around $100 million between 2016 and 2018 and that’s before you factor in the idea that he’s risking injury and decline by not being able to lock in years four through 10 today. McCutchen insured himself against serious injury or dramatic underperformance when signed the extension, but it came at a steep price. Maybe he wouldn’t get a team to offer $370 million, but it’s hard to imagine he’d get anything less than $30 million per season over nine or 10 years.
*****
In total, the lesson of this year’s would-be free agents is that it’s difficult for players to come out ahead on these deals. The players are taking guaranteed money to acquire security, but once you get to the point where a team is willing to offer you an extension, you’re probably beyond the point at which you’re not going to make tens of millions of dollars playing baseball, no matter what.
The other way to look at this is that teams should probably be more aggressive in offering these deals. If you look at these eight contracts together, the teams came out way ahead and none of the deals were massive losses for the clubs. Of course this is a single year and it may not be representative, but given that we have a nice sampling of player types it does lend some support to the idea.
Finally, it’s a good reminder that players with two or more years of service time are going to be offered contract extensions this spring. Six of the eight players on this list got their deals at two-plus, and only one of them was post-arb. If you’re looking to get a good return on your investment, extend a pre-arb player because they will take discounts in their free-agent years and offer team options to lock in several million dollars now. If you’re a good player, it might be a smart idea to resist that security if you’re looking to hit the jackpot.
Neil Weinberg is the Site Educator at FanGraphs and can be found writing enthusiastically about the Detroit Tigers at New English D. Follow and interact with him on Twitter @NeilWeinberg44.
I found it weird reading this list as viewed from the player’s perspective. I guess I’m still conditioned to view teams as the good guys in contract negotiations.
One thing to be taken into consideration with Niese is that he now has the potential of playing out his contract in Pittsburgh, where pitchers tend to overachieve. If he performs well there, his next contract could give him more money overall than had he been a FA this offseason and signed a 3 year deal.
Which doesn’t have anything to do with the extension he signed well before being traded there but is potentially a rather fortuitous outcome for him, I guess
One other benefit to consider, from the team’s perspective, is that these contracts usually are great trading chips, especial when they have one or more team options, even on the contracts that tend to be “Neutral”.
In most cases, even if the player doesn’t play as well as he was projected, and only plays at a 1 WAR level, the low salary will still makes them valuable to at least one other team even if only as a backup or a stopgap.
Even though Niese just had his worst year during the contract, the low salary that remains on the low-risk team options, made him a valuable asset. This allowed the Mets to trade him for some value instead of letting him walk away in free agency, which would have happened had they not signed the the extension.
They managed to get a valuable 2B in return in case Herrera doesn’t work out or to platoon him with and Walker may get them a draft pick next year if he walks away.
I think Maybin absolutely benefited from his extension. Not only did it prevent him from being non-tendered, which he 100% would have been, but having the investment in him pushed his team to try to get him to turn things around. Once non-tendered, he may have had trouble getting a job, especially one with fairly regular playing time. Even with a slight bounce back in 2015, I don’t think he’d get a higher AAV than what he has now. The Braves traded him for a couple marginal prospects and they threw in some dough, suggesting there was very little surplus value on his deal (the team option is nice in case he does maintain his recovery).
Neil this was really enjoyable to read, thank you.
If baseball had non-guaranteed contracts, then Porcello has a good chance of being cut.
“If baseball had non-guaranteed contracts, then Porcello would have a good chance of being cut.” or “If baseball had non-guaranteed contracts, then Porcello would have had a good chance of being cut.”
The downside for clubs is unlimited on these extensions. Sometime a player through injury or ineffectiveness becomes an absolute zero. Ricky Romero, Allen Craig, Chris Johnson, Jedd Gyorko are a few that come to mind. Not to mention a few 9 figure extensions like Ryan Howard, Elvis Andrus and Ryan Braun that have been crippling to their clubs. It’s easy to say Mccutchen was crazy to sign his deal but guaranteeing himself 50M when he did was life changing. We sometimes live in this fantasy world when evaluating these deals but 50M in the real world is generational life changing money. I remember when Jonathon Singleton signed that 10M extension last year and Mark Mulder and others ripped him. He was a bottom top 100 prospect w past substance abuse issues. He was guaranteeing himself and his family 10M. Good for him!
Well, the downside for clubs is limited to the guaranteed amount of the extension. That’s why the Pirates were able to shrug off Jose Tabata busting after signing his extension–the money they wasted on it was very small compared to a major-league payroll.
Not to take away from your main point; the money involved is life-changing and, from the point of view of buying the things you want, there may not be much difference between pulling down $50 million or $300 million (unless you’re planning to date Madonna or start a SuperPAC or fund development of a competitor to World of Warcraft or something like that). In that way these extensions can be good for the player and the team.
Matt Moore is a player who is probably happy for the security he got from his extension, even though it was very team-friendly and might still turn out to be less than he’d get if he hadn’t signed it. He can work through his injuries without worrying about how they’ll affect his finances, at least.
As you know, the Pirates swapped Tabata $4.5M / Morse $8.5M but will only pay the $4.5M.
That $4.5M is large to a bottom 5 payroll ball-club in contention. They have holes to fill and are having to work around that.
Andrus made $15M in 2015. That’s 10% of the Rangers payroll. I’m not sure he qualifies as crippling.
Braun is 20% and Howard is 18%. Those guys are worse.
… between 6.000 and 7.000 years of service time…
Pretty durable players though 😉
MLB service time convention is “years.days”. such that someone who has 2.035 years of service time has spent 2 years and 35 days in service.
In America, we use periods as decimal points. To the right of the decimal point, each digit signifies tenths, hundredths, thousandths, and so on.
Excuse the reply; it was intended to reply to mojito’s post without having seen ReuschelCakes’s helpful message about the actual convention that is in use in the article.
(Recovering from pedantry is not going well at all.)
Why does fangraphs obsess over player’s contracts, value, money, WAR values etc. so much?? I know it’s the offseason, but It seems that more and more articles just talk about money and not the game. Baseball has such a rich history of statistics, I’d love to see more articles about the game. (I get it, it’s a business, just don’t need to be reminded constantly.)
Because its Kind of hard to take about “the game” when we are months out from any real game action? And because its the off-season when players are signing contracts?
N/A
You answer your own question. It’s the offseason and the peak of free agency. During the season and likely once the FA’s are signed, I am sure they will go back to being 90% analysis of player stats and performance. But right now, despite what you may want to read, the $$$ is what people care about. Just look at the chats.
…and there is a many year archive of posts on this site, so one is certainly free to dig around in those if the type of off-season analysis is boring.
Hardball Times does alot of stuff involving history and more detailed “in-game” stuff sort of that might be more up your alley.
Go to Hardball Times stuff involving history or “the game” you’re talking about. Fangraphs is more oriented towards “what is happening now and recent” while HBT has a much broader perspective.
What if your rent is due and you are $100 short? In that case you take the safe bet because the value of the 80 that you are risking is higher than the 150 that you could stand to gain.
For guys that come from poverty and that didn’t get much of a signing bonus, the marginal benefit of that first contract that can lift your family out of poverty dwarfs the marginal benefit of the extra 10 or 15 million.
That is how the Royals were able to sign Salvador Perez to the contract he’s under. He had less than a year of service time. If he blows out a knee and doesn’t come back, he’s only made a couple hundred thousand. The deal he signed guaranteed him $7M, regardless of whatever might happen to him. That is literally life changing.
Escobar signed his deal almost immediately after Salvy did. He’d earned a bit more in his career to that point so the decision is probably a little harder, but the principal remains the same.
By looking at players who continue to play, you’re only looking at part of the bell curve. Sure, these players left money at the table, but I’m sure you can talk about players whose careers turned pear-shaped after signing extensions that help balance things out. I really like how you led into this discussion by talking about risk- if it’s my livelihood and I’m trying to look out 5 years from now, I would also be very risk averse considering these guys only have a few years to make a lifetime’s worth of money. I think you can also tie this analysis to the kind of early player option deal that Heyward signed- I’m sure agents have done similar analyses and the growing number of player options is probably their response. The other part that’s interesting is the economies of MLB as a whole and how it continues to grow at an amazing clip. Nobody predicted 3 years ago that revenues and values would grow at this rate, and salaries are a trailing indicator. One last thing I’d like you to consider as an interesting analysis related to this: the current CBA expires next December, and there certainly will be changes as player salaries have not grown apace with revenues and the latest publicity around teams playing with service time. I would think teams would be locking up players at a blistering pace the next several months. Or could current contracts be affected by a new CBA?
“If you’re a good player, it might be a smart idea to resist that security if you’re looking to hit the jackpot”
It’s hard to look seven years down the road when you’re 22 years old and you just spent three or more years in the minors or finished a college career. Seven years at that age is a long time, just as one year was an eternity when you were five.
Why do MLB players have to give their teams seven years of slavery/internship?
Seems to me that four years should be plenty. In fact the only way to defeat Jeffrey Loria, Peter Angelos and their kind is to reduce the seven years to four.
Absolutely agree at the individual player level. In particular, the standard of living for minor leaguers is unacceptable.
Ironically, though, Marvin Miller is somewhat culpable here. While owners were shortsightedly looking towards a shorter time frame until free agency, Miller recognized that a longer service time requirement would limit the supply of free agents and lead to regular inflation of their salaries.
Which ultimately has been the only way to blast out some semblance of a reasonable share of revenue from the oligarchy of MLB owners. Long-term gain for players, but at the expense of equitable value given to guys with lower service time.
“In particular the standard of living for minor leaguers is unacceptable”
I know it’s the comment section but can we drop the slave rhetoric? The plight of baseball players is nothing like slavery.
I freed a thousand slaves I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves.
This is backwards.
The problems are service time and the MLB Plantation Slave Auction held every June with the slaves dressed in suits and ties rather than loincloths streamed world wide over the MLB site. Here teenagers, some not legal to drink yet, are given to their new slave master who can stash them for as long as six injury free years in the minors before bringing them up and starting their clock that counts down seven years. The consequence of which is that you have talented players drafted out of high school reaching free agency near 30 years old. When their big moment arrives they have the joy of reading everywhere that they are “almost on the wrong side of thirty”.
Why are the Phillies with their filthy riches and their new six billion dollar TV deal not signing any of the big free agents? Why have they not previously signed Yoenis Cespedes, Jorge Soler, Jose Abreu, Yasiel Puig or Yoan Moncada? The Phillies had a crying need – as a baseball team – for each when they first became available.
J*hn Middlet*n looks at all of these players and says “Why should I sign Greinke and Price to $200 million plus deals when I can put their money into my bank account and sign Jason Groome for $6 million and own him as property for seven MLB seasons?”
If Jason Groome was going to cost J*hn Middlet*n $30 million or more to sign then he might have saw Greinke and Price as better deals. As it is the Phillies are going to sit in the bottom of a Porta Potty for the next several years and pick at the very top of the draft. For what Greinke and Price will make in the first year of their contracts the Phillies will likely come away with hundreds of millions of dollars in talent that can be exploited for tens of millions per year in increased profits as the attendance returns to Citizens Bank Park in the next decade when the Phillies begin to win again (think 2023 onward).
MLB players – for their good and for the good of the game – need to cut service time to four years and remove restrictions on paying players in the draft or just do away with the MLB draft entirely making every amateur world wide a free agent.
Let the market dictate where the money goes. Isn’t that how Capitalism is supposed to work? Shouldn’t socialism be for the poor and Capitalism for the rich? Why are billionaire MLB team owners the beneficiaries of socialism while Americans exist in blue tents?
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It’s hard to step into these guys shoes, since the money we’re talking about is so far out from the normal, everyday life that most of us live.
I understand that the players deserve their fair share of the huge amount of revenue coming into MLB.
But, even for them, doesn’t there come a point when it doesn’t really matter any more if you get the last possible nickel? Does the difference between being really really rich and really really really rich make that much of a difference?
One would think so. But the laws of human nature being what they are, most of us end up wanting just a little more than what we currently have, no matter how much that is.
That’s a pretty shitty website.
Does that point ever come for the billionaire owners? It doesn’t seem like it.
Really?
Yep. Look at his age (almost 27), his consistency (the fact that he’s never thrown fewer than 170 innings in a season), his injury history (unlike Zimmerman, he’s never had TJ), and his second half of last season and he would be in line for something similar to the contracts signed by the new Giants pitchers.
There are lots of reasons to believe his first half last year was an aberration — really high BABIP and HR/FB, for example. Steamer has Porcello projected as a 2.8 WAR pitcher next year. Zimmerman’s projected at 2.4 and Samardzija is at 2.7. Porcello is younger than both.
I suppose it’s possible that some team would be insane enough to give Porcello $100 million over five years, but that is in absolutely no way reasonable. Age isn’t as relevant for pitchers as hitters, and Porcello has only reached 185 innings once in his career. Remember that WAR is calculated based on FIP, whereas Porcello consistently underperforms his FIP. Some of that had to do with playing in front of bad defenses (2012-2014), but the pattern held true even when playing in front of above average defenses. He’s an anti-Cueto who regularly posts high BABIPs, in large part because he allows a very low percentage of soft contact and has a pathetic swinging strike rate. Even if you do go by WAR (which overrates Porcello), Zimmerman has been 50% more valuable over the last five seasons.
it only takes one fool per contract
I had somehow forgotten that Gio Gonzalez is still a pretty damn good pitcher. And a nice bargain for the Nats with that contract.
All this article really shows is $/WAR inflation. Had it dropped from $5M/WAR to $4M/WAR, all extensions would look great from a player perspective. Instead, it rose from $5M/WAR to $8M/WAR, and predictably, contracts signed in the past are worth less money to players.
Altuve doesn’t make this article because he wouldn’t be a free agent yet, but he’d almost certainly be making more in arbitration than his extension pays him next year (and every remaining year on the contract). Are you going to look at extensions for players that would still only be arb-eligible next?
one billion people don’t have access to clean drinking water and these A-HOLES are worrying about making tens of millions of dollars to PLAY A STUPID GAME. ITS JUST A GAME
PEOPLE GET OVER IT.
Are you really that shocked to find discussion of baseball on a baseball stats website?
In the case of mcCutcheon why doesn’t he just hold out. Players used to do this a lot – he’s too important to let sit , they’d have to bump him up
I certainly understand players taking a loss in expected value in order to raise the floor to life-altering levels.
They’re buying insurance. But they’re buying from their team on a take it or leave it basis, so it’s not a great deal. Would an insurance company be willing to put in a bid too?
Dude, I was looking at the Pirates contracts situations, and holy crap, Neal Huntington must be playing Jedi Mind Tricks with agents because the McCutchen contract is just unfair, the Starling Marte contract might end up being, and Jung-ho Kang is also a ridiculous bargain. And they all have club options. Along with the very reasonable deal for Josh Harrison and the Francisco Liriano contract that pays him 13 million for what people are getting 20 million for these days…. How the hell did they pull off locking up a relatively young core for that long?