The Best Bargains of 2015: Starting Pitching Version

Yesterday, I went into the best bargain position players for 2015, using projected WAR and salary figures to find out who is likely to give teams the least cost per win. Today, we’re going to go over starting pitching, and see where the bargains can be found in the groups of pitchers both pre-and-post arbitration. Thanks to our awesome, ever-active commenters chipping in on the piece from yesterday (you guys are awesome), we’re also going to hone the calculation a bit to look at the surplus WAR value and get some of the low-priced bias out of the sample.

First of all, it should be noted that this is just going to pertain to starting pitching. Relief pitching is something to tackle for another day, as I believe it should be grouped separately from the starters in a study like this. As I did yesterday, I’ve taken contract data for the 2015 season, merged it with ZiPS WAR projections, and then calculated each player’s cost, in dollar value, per win.

Again, the sample is separated into two groups, those who have reached above-league minimum deals (generally through free agency or arbitration) and those who haven’t. For those who haven’t, I’ve simply set their contract as the league minimum, $507,500. This can vary slightly — each team deals with pre-arbitration pay raises differently, and always in a clandestine manner – but it’s a small enough change to barely influence the data. There is one exception for pre-arbitration players: if a player has negotiated a contract with their team above the league minimum (so they actually show up on the contract reports we have), they will show up in the first group. This didn’t come up often, but it’s best we’re all on the same page.

Let’s begin. First we’re going to look at the first group of starting pitchers — these are mostly the players who have reached free agency or arbitration. I’ll present these findings in both graph and table form: here’s the graph comparing salary vs. projected 2015 WAR for our top 30 starting pitchers:

Now let’s look at this data in table form, with the cost per win column added and set to sort by. This should give us a better idea of players who represent a great value to their teams at their current pay grade:

NAME	TEAM	2015	WAR	$/WIN
Julio Teheran	Atlanta	$1,166,667.00	2.9	$402,298.97
Chris Archer	Tampa Bay	$1,166,667.00	2.0	$583,333.50
Jarrod Parker	Oakland	$850,000.00	1.0	$850,000.00
Tyler Chatwood	Colorado	$1,000,000.00	1.1	$909,090.91
Garrett Richards	Los Angeles (AL)	$3,200,000.00	3.2	$1,000,000.00
Jose Quintana	Chicago (AL)	$3,400,000.00	3.1	$1,096,774.19
Drew Smyly	Tampa Bay	$2,650,000.00	2.4	$1,104,166.67
Chris Sale	Chicago (AL)	$6,000,000.00	4.8	$1,250,000.00
Martin Perez	Texas	$1,250,000.00	1.0	$1,250,000.00
Carlos Carrasco	Cleveland	$2,337,000.00	1.7	$1,374,705.88
Trevor Bauer	Cleveland	$1,940,000.00	1.4	$1,385,714.29
Michael Pineda	New York (AL)	$2,100,000.00	1.5	$1,400,000.00
Wade Miley	Boston	$3,666,667.00	2.5	$1,466,666.80
Phil Hughes	Minnesota	$9,200,000.00	5.6	$1,642,857.14
Alex Cobb	Tampa Bay	$4,000,000.00	2.3	$1,739,130.43
Felix Doubront	Chicago (NL)	$1,925,000.00	1.1	$1,750,000.00
Yusmeiro Petit	San Francisco	$2,100,000.00	1.2	$1,750,000.00
David Phelps	Miami	$1,400,000.00	0.8	$1,750,000.00
Jordan Lyles	Colorado	$2,475,000.00	1.4	$1,767,857.14
Hyun-Jin Ryu	Los Angeles (Nl)	$4,833,333.00	2.6	$1,858,974.23
Stephen Strasburg	Washington	$7,400,000.00	3.7	$2,000,000.00
Vance Worley	Pittsburgh	$2,450,000.00	1.2	$2,041,666.67
Madison Bumgarner	San Francisco	$6,950,000.00	3.3	$2,106,060.61
Jake Arrieta	Chicago (Nl)	$3,630,000.00	1.7	$2,135,294.12
Tyson Ross	San Diego	$5,250,000.00	2.3	$2,282,608.70
Lance Lynn	St. Louis	$7,000,000.00	2.8	$2,500,000.00
Wei-Yin Chen	Baltimore	$4,750,000.00	1.9	$2,500,000.00
Ivan Nova	New York (AL)	$3,300,000.00	1.3	$2,538,461.54
Hector Santiago	Los Angeles (AL)	$2,290,000.00	0.9	$2,544,444.44
Henderson Alvarez	Miami	$4,000,000.00	1.5	$2,666,666.67

There are some names that we expect on here: Julio Teheran, Garrett Richards, Madison Bumgarner. Young, talented players with some established success at the major league level (or a lot, as is the case with Bumgarner) who might still be on team-friendly contracts. There are a lot of names we might not expect on this list, however, for a few reasons. First, some of our low-win players on this list might have the benefit of having a lofty ZiPS projection. That’s not the main reason, however, which is the way in which young pitchers are projected, especially coming back from injury. Looking at the list, a large sect of these pitchers are coming back from major elbow or shoulder surgeries: Ivan Nova, Michael Pineda, Martin Perez, and Jarrod Parker.

While that highlights the stark reality of the danger of pitching (I had to remove Yu Darvish and was viscerally reminded), it also points toward an issue with this type of study: young pitchers on early-career contracts (especially those coming back from injury in the middle of a season) are going to make this list quite often. This is due to the fact, simply, that their projections hover around one win and they aren’t getting paid much money. In truth, these pitchers are returning from major surgery, playing time is up in the air, and their WAR projections are inherently more shaky than others might be. Young players in general with small contracts and uncertain playing time are candidates to crash this party. How do we account for this?

We’ll do so by looking at surplus value: the projected WAR value of a player over what that player’s salary says they should be worth in terms of wins. This will give us the true “bargain” players by showing us who is projected to overperform their salary, while eliminating some of the high-risk, low WAR players. As we’ll see in our next chart and table, it’s a fairly simple, smart concept.

To calculate this, we’ll first establish the dollar value of a win, something that Dave has worked on quite a bit over the past few years. Though the figure has been debated at length, and should continue to be updated as inflation occurs and free agent contracts get bigger, a safe assumption is that a win costs in the ballpark of $7.5 million, updated to the contracts handed out this off season. With that figure, we can see how many wins the player’s salary assumes they should be worth, then we can look at the difference between that number and their projected 2015 WAR.

Let’s get to it. Our resident graphics expert Sean has helped me compile a chart showing the leaders of 2015 surplus WAR vs. projected WAR. We’ve also color-coded the chart to show how much service time a pitcher has accrued: whether they are pre-arbitration, have reached arbitration (or have a deal with their club to buy out arbitration years, as there are a few Super 2 players on this list who match this criteria), or have reached free agency. Also included is a color for international free agent signings. Please note that this is mainly a reflection of service time, unless a player has been bought out:

Here we have a much clearer view of which players may be responsible for production over what their salary dictates. Gone are most of the players coming back from injury (Kris Medlen is an obvious exception), leaving most of the expected top young arms in the game. For those inclined to tables instead, please see below, where you can view how this works very easily:

NAME	TEAM	2015	Salary WAR	WAR	Surplus WAR
Phil Hughes	Minnesota	$9,200,000	1.2	5.6	4.4
Chris Sale	Chicago (AL)	$6,000,000	0.8	4.8	4.0
Garrett Richards	Los Angeles (AL)	$3,200,000	0.4	3.2	2.8
Julio Teheran	Atlanta	$1,166,667	0.2	2.9	2.7
Stephen Strasburg	Washington	$7,400,000	1.0	3.7	2.7
Jose Quintana	Chicago (AL)	$3,400,000	0.5	3.1	2.6
Max Scherzer	Washington	$17,142,857	2.3	4.9	2.6
Madison Bumgarner	San Francisco	$6,950,000	0.9	3.3	2.4
James Shields	San Diego	$10,000,000	1.3	3.5	2.2
Felix Hernandez	Seattle	$24,857,143	3.3	5.4	2.1
Drew Smyly	Tampa Bay	$2,650,000	0.4	2.4	2.0
Wade Miley	Boston	$3,666,667	0.5	2.5	2.0
Hyun-Jin Ryu	Los Angeles (NL)	$4,833,333	0.6	2.6	2.0
Jeff Samardzija	Chicago (AL)	$9,800,000	1.3	3.2	1.9
Lance Lynn	St. Louis	$7,000,000	0.9	2.8	1.9
Mat Latos	Miami	$9,400,000	1.3	3.1	1.8
Chris Archer	Tampa Bay	$1,166,667	0.2	2.0	1.8
David Price	Detroit	$19,750,000	2.6	4.4	1.8
Alex Cobb	Tampa Bay	$4,000,000	0.5	2.3	1.8
Hisashi Iwakuma	Seattle	$7,000,000	0.9	2.6	1.7
Tyson Ross	San Diego	$5,250,000	0.7	2.3	1.6
Clayton Kershaw	Los Angeles (NL)	$32,571,429	4.3	5.9	1.6
Kris Medlen	Kansas City	$2,000,000	0.3	1.8	1.5
Jordan Zimmermann	Washington	$16,500,000	2.2	3.7	1.5
Carlos Carrasco	Cleveland	$2,337,000	0.3	1.7	1.4
Johnny Cueto	Cincinnati	$10,000,000	1.3	2.7	1.4
Jon Lester	Chicago (NL)	$20,000,000	2.7	4.0	1.3
Rick Porcello	Boston	$12,500,000	1.7	3.0	1.3
Adam Wainwright	St. Louis	$19,500,000	2.6	3.9	1.3
Wei-Yin Chen	Baltimore	$4,750,000	0.6	1.9	1.3

What’s great about looking at this table is viewing players with large contracts that are projected to overperform their salary WAR in 2015. We’ll look at AAV in a future post, but for 2015 encapsulated, Felix Hernandez and Max Scherzer are perhaps underpaid if they meet their projected production.

Now let’s move onto the pre-arbitration players. Since these players have a static salary, I’m not going to run the same surplus WAR, and will instead provide a table showing cost per win. Let’s take a look at the top 30:

NAME	TEAM	2015	WAR	$/WIN
Corey Kluber	Cleveland	$507,500	5.4	$93,981.48
Dallas Keuchel	Houston	$507,500	2.7	$187,962.96
Danny Salazar	Cleveland	$507,500	2.7	$187,962.96
Gerrit Cole	Pittsburgh	$507,500	2.6	$195,192.31
Sonny Gray	Oakland	$507,500	2.6	$195,192.31
Yordano Ventura	Kansas City	$507,500	2.4	$211,458.33
Alex Wood	Atlanta	$507,500	2.3	$220,652.17
Collin McHugh	Houston	$507,500	2.3	$220,652.17
Matt Harvey	New York (NL)	$507,500	2.3	$220,652.17
Matt Shoemaker	Los Angeles (AL)	$507,500	2.2	$230,681.82
Tanner Roark	Washington	$507,500	2.2	$230,681.82
Jose Fernandez	Miami	$507,500	2.1	$241,666.67
Noah Syndergaard	New York (NL)	$507,500	2.0	$253,750.00
Zach McAllister	Cleveland	$507,500	2.0	$253,750.00
John Lackey	St. Louis	$507,500	1.8	$281,944.44
Drew Hutchison	Toronto	$507,500	1.8	$281,944.44
Michael Wacha	St. Louis	$507,500	1.8	$281,944.44
Kevin Gausman	Baltimore	$507,500	1.7	$298,529.41
Patrick Corbin	Arizona	$507,500	1.7	$298,529.41
Zack Wheeler	New York (NL)	$507,500	1.7	$298,529.41
Brett Oberholtzer	Houston	$507,500	1.5	$338,333.33
Jimmy Nelson	Milwaukee	$507,500	1.3	$390,384.62
Liam Hendriks	Toronto	$507,500	1.3	$390,384.62
Shelby Miller	Atlanta	$507,500	1.3	$390,384.62
Tyler Skaggs	Los Angeles (AL)	$507,500	1.2	$422,916.67
Marco Gonzales	St. Louis	$507,500	1.1	$461,363.64
Taijuan Walker	Seattle	$507,500	1.1	$461,363.64
James Paxton	Seattle	$507,500	1.0	$507,500.00
Nick Tepesch	Texas	$507,500	1.0	$507,500.00
Brian Flynn	Kansas City	$507,500	0.9	$563,888.89

Much like yesterday, this is not the segment of the show when we’re too surprised. This is once again a list of the prospects we know and love, the ones we’re waiting on for true breakouts. Those at the very top have already had them and are waiting for their payday. Corey Kluber leads the charge, even though he signed a new contract yesterday, because he’s great at pitching and we don’t have any details about the contract yet. The society remains strong. Also heartening is Jose Fernandez, projected for 2.1 WAR even though he won’t pitch in a game until mid-season. Healthy, he might lead this list.

The surplus value angle certainly gives us a great window into which players may contribute above their pay grade, but it also gives us an idea of something different: that players who sign mega deals might still be undervalued when it comes to their salary WAR in the early years of their contracts. While the concrete dollar value of a win is anything but certain, and projections are just that — projections — it’s fun to think about.

Again, we’ll look into how surplus WAR relates to AAV in a future post, but this was meant to be a magnifying glass on 2015. Most of the contracts for the surplus WAR leaders are back-loaded, and age takes its toll on production, leading to the twilight years of a deal when color commentators lament for better times and the inverse of underpayment occurs. For now, when Felix Hernandez pitches a gem, we can jealously mumble to our TV screens, knowing he might be worth more than he’s making at that moment.

Thanks to Sean Dolinar for the surplus WAR graphic.