The Problem With Bryce Harper’s Contract Season
Bryce Harper is a (nearly) unrestricted free agent. He is newly 26 years old. He is projected, by Steamer, to be baseball’s second-best hitter next season. According to reports, he’s already turned down a contract offer worth $300 million. According to MLB Trade Rumors, he might end up with a contract worth more than $400 million. We’ve been anticipating this offseason for a while. Harper has been a household name for longer than I can remember, and as the cherry on top here, he’s represented by Scott Boras. Boras will push for some kind of contract record. I expect he’s going to be successful. Harper’s a core player in the prime of his life, and there’s more money in baseball than ever before.
Earlier this morning, almost by accident, I noticed that Harper was worse than Mitch Haniger in 2018, by 1.1 wins above replacement.
The point is not that Haniger is better than Harper is. Age is on Harper’s side. Talent is on Harper’s side. Track record is on Harper’s side. While I don’t know how much of a believer I am in the concept of measurable ceilings, we sort of know what Harper’s ceiling is, because we saw it in 2015. He was unbelievable. He hasn’t become as consistent as one would like, but Harper hits for power and he draws a boatload of walks. He just played in a career-high 159 games.
The Haniger thing got me looking closer, though. And in Harper’s otherwise good-enough contract season, he raised some questions about his defense. We still don’t focus that much on defense when we’re talking about sluggers. But teams don’t ignore it. Teams interested in Harper will have to figure out what happened.
Bryce Harper, this past season, played a bunch of right field. He also spent plenty of time covering ground in center field. You’re correct if you’re already saying in your head that playing center comes with a greater degree of difficulty. And it’s a good thing, just in general, that the Nationals considered Harper center-field capable. But according to Defensive Runs Saved, Harper finished the year an incredible 26 runs worse than average. According to Ultimate Zone Rating, he finished the year a slightly less incredible 14 runs worse than average. This after a perfectly fine 2017.
We have Statcast information now. This is the 2018 Outs Above Average leaderboard. Scroll all the way down and you find Harper at -12, somehow around names like Derek Dietrich and Trey Mancini. A year ago, Harper wound up at -5, meaning he got worse by seven outs. That’s tied for the fourth-biggest drop among outfielders. And this is only measuring positioning and range. Both DRS and UZR agree that Harper’s arm was considerably less valuable.
I’m going to show you some tables. I looked at every outfielder who played at least 500 innings in both 2017 and 2018. For each season, I calculated DRS per 1000 innings, UZR per 1000 innings, and a combo per 1000 innings, which is just the average of the two. First, here are the ten biggest drops in DRS/1000:
| Player | 2017 DRS/1000 | 2018 DRS/1000 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aaron Hicks | 22 | -3 | -24 |
| Bryce Harper | 4 | -19 | -24 |
| Guillermo Heredia | 6 | -12 | -18 |
| Charlie Blackmon | -4 | -21 | -18 |
| Austin Jackson | -3 | -20 | -17 |
| Joey Rickard | 17 | 2 | -15 |
| Stephen Piscotty | 10 | -5 | -14 |
| Trey Mancini | -1 | -16 | -14 |
| Kevin Pillar | 11 | -2 | -13 |
| Jay Bruce | 5 | -7 | -13 |
Harper’s right there by the bottom. Here are the ten biggest drops in UZR/1000:
| Player | 2017 UZR/1000 | 2018 UZR/1000 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Odubel Herrera | 7 | -9 | -15 |
| Bryce Harper | 3 | -11 | -14 |
| Yasiel Puig | 10 | -4 | -14 |
| Steven Souza Jr. | 3 | -9 | -12 |
| Aaron Hicks | 10 | 1 | -10 |
| Tommy Pham | 9 | 0 | -10 |
| Austin Jackson | -5 | -14 | -9 |
| Charlie Blackmon | -1 | -9 | -9 |
| Joey Rickard | 9 | 1 | -8 |
| Gerardo Parra | 10 | 2 | -8 |
So, unsurprisingly, this is what it looks like when you put the two together:
| Player | 2017 Combo/1000 | 2018 Combo/1000 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bryce Harper | 4 | -15 | -19 |
| Aaron Hicks | 16 | -1 | -17 |
| Odubel Herrera | 5 | -9 | -14 |
| Charlie Blackmon | -2 | -15 | -13 |
| Austin Jackson | -4 | -17 | -13 |
| Joey Rickard | 13 | 2 | -11 |
| Yasiel Puig | 12 | 1 | -11 |
| Tommy Pham | 10 | -1 | -11 |
| Guillermo Heredia | 2 | -9 | -11 |
| Stephen Piscotty | 7 | -2 | -9 |
All these are are numbers, and defensive numbers don’t work like offensive numbers do. When a batter hits a single, it’s easy to record. 1-for-1. Base hit. On the defensive side, you start talking about probabilities and estimates and it all gets complicated very quickly. It’s absolutely true that defensive numbers still have a ways to evolve. But metrics like DRS, and UZR, and Outs Above Average — they’re designed in the ways you’d want such metrics to be designed. They provide information, based on complex math. For one reason or another, the existing metrics agree that Bryce Harper’s outfield defense just tanked.
It’s not clear why! I mean, it’s clear he made fewer plays, but 2018 Harper didn’t land on the disabled list. He, again, only recently turned 26. He stole 13 bases, after stealing just four the previous season. And, importantly, Harper’s sprint speed didn’t budge. It would appear he can still move like he used to. Yet the results are the results. Here’s one Harper misplay where he comes off looking clumsy:
And here’s a play where he maybe just didn’t get a good read or first step:
A quick read of Statcast suggests Harper had some particular trouble with the easier plays, as opposed to the more difficult ones. Harper missed five of 23 so-called “1 Star” plays, which looks dreadful. That was one of the very worst marks in the league. Harper was nearly as good on “2 Star” plays. I’m not going to dig in too deeply because that would be a whole other project. Basically, I don’t know whether this is a good thing or a bad thing.
But what matters most now isn’t what Harper did — it’s what Harper could be expected to do. I’ve run some numbers to try to be helpful. In terms of Outs Above Average, I looked at the players who had the biggest declines from 2016 to 2017, and then I examined how they did in 2018. On average, the players gained back a third of the ground that they lost. That’s one data point.
I also looked at DRS and UZR going all the way back to 2003. I took all the players who played in the outfield enough in three consecutive seasons, and then I isolated the players with the biggest declines between year one and year two. In year three, the players who declined the most in terms of DRS gained back a little more than a third of the loss. The players who declined the most in terms of UZR gained back a little less than a third of the loss. It’s almost exactly a third if you average DRS and UZR. To put it simply, the numbers are in the same ballpark: On average, based on recent history, when an outfield defender has gotten significantly worse between seasons, then the following season, that defender has rebounded by about 33%. Two-thirds of the decline has been real.
That’s the average. That’s not the case for every individual player. So this is where the Harper sweepstakes gets more complicated. He’s still young, and he seems healthy, and he can still apparently sprint like he used to. You might be inclined to think his defense could rebound almost all the way. Perhaps in 2018 it was more just a problem of focus. But then, can you overcome a problem of focus, in that case? Was the problem something else? Has something meaningfully gotten worse about Harper’s throwing arm? If the average is that a declining outfield defender rebounds by a third or so, then with Harper, do you take the over or the under? All of this is far less important than the matter of Harper’s bat, but the defense counts. Especially when you’re thinking about signing a guy for at least the next decade.
Harper hadn’t rated as a terrible defender before. That’s good. That might suggest that 2018 was an anomaly. Heaven knows that’s how Boras will spin it. But teams want to know what the future will hold, and this is almost certain to be the biggest contract in baseball history, once it gets signed. Teams are going to try to figure out what on earth happened. Because whoever signs Harper will be signing more than just a hitter. Whether playing offense or defense, every out has value.
Jeff made Lookout Landing a thing, but he does not still write there about the Mariners. He does write here, sometimes about the Mariners, but usually not.
So, you’re saying he’s perfect for the Let’s-Punt-Defense Phillies?
He is making the case that Machado is far more valuable that Harper is because Machado can hit AND play decent defense.
That’s a more nebulous question if Machado insists on playing SS.
Machado has says he’ll do what’s best for the team that signs him (i.e. y’all can put me as 3rd base coach of you pay me enough), so he’s willing to play 3rd as well
As long as ‘what’s best’ is not ‘hustle’
I don’t have a fancy way to ask this question:
How the hell is Machado so good at 3B but so piss poor @ SS?
Like, he’s 2nd in UZR/150 since 2012 @ 3B and 31st in UZR/150 since 2015 @ SS (much smaller sample). Is it as simple as a really poor range factor?
3rd base is much more of a reaction position whereas SS has more of a speed and range component. There is a perfect example of this in Brooks Robinson who was a very slow runner but had a lightning-like first move and an amazing instinct to read the pitch location, Machado is very similar. He has slowed down considerably since he first arrived, check his SB’s, and I wonder how many people realize just how big a person he is.
There are many factors to consider. One is that stats like UZR and DRS are calculated by comparing a players performance to other players in the league at that same position. So, while playing third his UZR and DRS is derived from comparison to the defensive abilities of other Third Basemen.
Additionally, one may considered the coaching and team philosophy of positioning, as Machado’s defensive metrics improved dramatically after his trade to Los Angeles.
And finally, defensive metrics are noisy over small sample sizes and and we only have a small sample size of Machado at short stop.
Machado’s defense at SS got a lot better in LA. Really helps to have a team that knows what they are doing.
Also helps to play defense next to good defenders. Look at Semien of the A’s when he’s next to Chapman.
I can’t help but wonder if some of that wasn’t because he was a little more motivated playing for a contender I a pregnant race than he was for the 110-loss O’s.
I like “pregnant race” much more than “pennant race”. Good no-fix.
a pennant race lasts only two or three months while a pregnant race requires a helluva lot more endurance.
he was not really piss-poor at SS. he improved a good deal as the year went on and did much better at it in LA.
I wish I could see Scott Boras explain how Harper’s 2018 defensive numbers were a fluke but his 2015 batting numbers are proof he’s a once-in-a-generation talent. I’m not being cynical or anything– I think that’s a very valid argument, and with almost half a billion dollars on the line, the speech Boras will give is gonna put Demosthenes to shame.
One argument in his favor is steamer’s projections still expect him to be 2nd best hitter next season. I still think of Harper as once-in-a-generation talent but he needs to be more focused to be as good as his 2015 version.
It’s interesting how we evaluate a player with the obvious physical tools and corresponding skills to be an elite talent. What makes you so sure that it’s a lack of focus that hurt his 2018 performance?
Seems to me, it could be a huge number of possible factors. Is there evidence that he lacked focus, rather than, say, was focusing too intensely? Pretty easy to construct a narrative that his intensity meant he wasn’t able to stay loose and move fluidly on the field.
My point isn’t to suggest he should focus less, just there are several commenters on here who make an assumption about the root cause of his down year without much evidence that I’ve seen. We can do better than jumping at the first (vague) explanation that could explain the results; lots of possible explanations can be used, if we’re willing to jump to conclusions without evidence.
Whether you call it a lack of focus or pressing too intensely (in his case, it’s much more likely the latter), it’s clear from his batting metrics that there was an active change to his approach and that he was less inclined to take a walk after the first month wherein he posted a ridiculous BB%.
I get that narratives can be deceiving, but I think this is a safe one to buy into.
Murphy was hurt. Rendon got hurt. Eaton got hurt. Zimmerman wasn’t hitting how he had in 2017, and then got hurt. Soto wasn’t up yet. Opposing pitchers were quite content to walk him and move on to the next. For whatever reason, he became intent on not letting them, and this tactic was foreseeably unsuccessful. His frustration mounted, and his defense struggled as a byproduct.
Now, whether or not this is an argument for or against signing him can be debated. He’s clearly high maintenance and volatile, but if you find his sweet spot, the results at the plate are close to unparalleled.
I think the guy that is ahead of him (you note that he is 2nd) is the actual once-in-a-generation talent.
Harper didn’t try on defense in 2018 because he really wanted to help {INSERT YOUR TEAM HERE} all along
would love to see these numbers split out. both games referenced were in the first 1/3rd of the season. was he really bad 1H then avg 2H or just bad start to finish?
also just want to follow up and note that he got himself injured a few times running into walls and being reckless on defense. maybe he just toned it down a bunch on d knowing there was literally a fortune on the line if he got hurt running into a wall.
not saying i agree with him doing that, but it would make sense given the situation.
Was going to say the same thing. Looking at those clips, that looks like a guy trying not to get hurt (or losing the ball in the sun and trying not to get hurt).
I think this is it. He’s said he will need to tone it down and managers have said they would like for him to tone it down.
I actually was wondering when these example plays occurred. I recall that toward the end of April, he became frustrated with how frequently he was being pitched around and began to expand the strike zone a ton.
If you attribute his issues to focus and not declining physical ability, it would make sense that he may have graded out poorly more so in a first half (specifically May-June) wherein he struggled mightily at the plate.
If you buy that, to that point, whoever signs him better be able to protect his bat in the lineup!
Good point. I was wondering what the heck was up with Harper’s defense early in the season. IIRC, he was already at -25 runs or so before the all-star break, so it sounds like he played basically average D for the rest of the season. I’d have to dig up my email to the Effectively Wild crew to verify that…
I do not believe Harper will get a record contract. There are too many things against it: fielding, inconsistent hitting, loud mouth, and Boras. How many teams which can spend big money and have a shot at the playoffs need a corner outfielder?
More than one.
On the free agent market, just like every other market, there are commodities and luxury goods. A commodity is a Toyota Corolla. A luxury good is an Aston Martin DB. A commodity is valuable because it is useful. A luxury good is valuable because it is a status symbol. Team owners like luxury goods. It’s probably why they own a baseball team in the first place.
It’s worth noting that Boras has an outstanding track record with players in the “luxury good” category. He knows that eventually, someone will give in. It’s with guys who are just regular, functional players where his guys wind up settling for terrible one-year contracts or sitting out half the year.
It is also worth noting that I have purchased a Toyota Corolla in my lifetime, and I was very happy with it. I have not purchased an Aston Martin DB. I find it impossible, even if I had several million dollars just drop into my lap, that I would ever purchase an Aston Martin DB. So if you ask me whether I would rather spend $25M on Andrew McCutchen or $45M on Michael Brantley or $300M+ on Bryce Harper, I am going with McCutchen or Brantley and not Bryce Harper. Harper is definitely the better player, but I just don’t need to impress all my rich friends. So I’m not exactly the target audience for the Harper pitch either.
Well said. That’s exactly why most of us don’t understand why Boras keeps getting these massive overpays for his players. Even smart baseball ops guys are amazed at some of the deals Boras gets for his clients. Chris Davis, anyone? (Orioles Davis, not A’s.)
Pretty sure most teams that want Harper could make it happen. Guy is projected to be the 2nd best bat behind Trout. Even if a team doesn’t have a specific need, EVERY team has room in their lineup for Harper.
True that every team has room for Harper. But most teams should not pay $300M and sacrifice the rest of their roster for one very good players. Witness the contract A-Rod signed back in the day, and what it did to the rest of his team.
Doesn’t really seem like that contract’s fault that the Rangers could only field a small handful of above average players to complement Rodriguez, does it?
Maybe a team that is good at fielding lots of average/above-average guys on the cheap that has some payroll room should sign him and be just fine. And I can think of several of those.
A-Rod’s Texas contract was heavily team-friendly and gave Texas ton of surplus value to spend on the rest of his team.
Even if there is only one true bidder, Boras is excellent at making a team think they have competition. There will be several bidders, but there may not be any at $400 million reported asking price. But even if there aren’t, I guarantee Boras will tell the Phillies that he has a 400 million offer in hand.
I’m not saying this is THE answer, but Jeff, how can you not mention his 2017, late season knee injury? I know he came back after it that year, and played 159 games this year, but that doesn’t mean he had confidence in his knee all year or that he was still playing through pain. I recall back to the initial injury and a lot of people wondering how he didn’t need surgery, that it was the worst bone bruise ever. Anecdotally, I can recall plenty of players, across all sports, not returning to full strength until their second healthy season removed following a knee injury.
That’s a great point, but wouldn’t his sprint speed have suffered then?
Generally when players have knee injuries (myself included), a big struggle is the mental aspect of “Will my knee hold up to the twisting and sharp changes in direction and speed?”
Straight line speed is usually not affected as the ligaments that provide stability in the knee are not overly stressed when running up the line for example.
Conversely, playing defense is much more taxing for two reasons;
Firstly, the quick, instinctive first step to a fly in the OF isn’t repetitive in the same way as say hitting a ball and running up to 1B is. Secondly, due to the first point, it always sits in the back of your mind that a sharp twist will cause another injury. As such, players can be more timid when attacking a ball hit which requires full speed sprinting and a change of direction. This is possibly seen in the first video where Harper takes a pretty meek jump at the ball like is bracing for impact too early.
On that Outs Above Average leaderboard, on the opposite end from Harper (-12), you have Michael A Taylor (+10, despite not playing much once Eaton was back.) Watching Harper, Eaton (-5) and Soto (-4) kick it around in the outfield in the second half, I always wondered if they should have left Taylor out there and hoped he got his bat back to 2017 levels. I’ve always liked him, hope he gets regular playing time again sometime.
Robles will be playing a lot of CF in 2019. But when Eaton sustains his annual injury Taylor will get a shot.
When I heard that Harper turned down an extension of 10/$300M I just about gagged. It’s true that even when he’s struggling he’s still an above-average hitter, but it seems like he’s struggling a lot more these days.
All the people who were concerned about risking that much money on a streaky player with Stanton last year should be equally concerned about Harper, if not more so. And it’s hard to make the argument that Harper is actually going to produce more. It’s that one year where Harper was on one big hot streak, putting up over 9 WAR, but his next-best year was 4.8. Stanton had a really lousy year by his standards, and somehow managed to put up 4.2 fWAR.
There are places where Harper might make sense. The Cards could really use another lefty slugger. If the Phillies can’t get Machado, Harper would be a nice fallback. And at a cheaper price he’d be a good fit for about 20 teams. But the other teams who may jump in at that price like the Dodgers, Cubs, Nationals, Yankees…it’s hard to imagine this is the best way they could spend their money.
Yeah that 2015 season throws everything out of whack. Outside of that season he’s averaged 2.9 or 3.6 WAR per season, depending on whether you look at Baseball Reference or Fangraphs. Obviously Harper has value and would help every team. But there’s a very good chance that whoever signs him will be getting a player who produces 4 or less WAR a year. Meanwhile, they’ll be expecting/hoping for a player who produces 6+ WAR per season. And they’ll likely end up disappointed.
The 2015 season actually happened though. Also, Steamer projects him as a 5 win player, not a 4 or less WAR player.
“Also, Steamer projects him as a 5 win player, not a 4 or less WAR player.”
And how much WAR did Steamer project for Harper in 2016, 2017 and 2018?
This is why Steamer likes Harper. He’s entering his prime, he already put up an insane season, it seems impossible to believe that he’s going to fail to crack 5 WAR again. And yet, he’s not yet broken that barrier at any other point.
His future performance seems nearly impossible to predict. Will he start regularly producing 5 WAR? Will he continue to put up 3 WAR seasons with the occasional 8 WAR season, with nothing in between? Will he ascend to a superior plane of existence and emerge as the clear second-best player behind Trout? How much do you want to pay for a player whose production seems to defy any explanation except he gets hot and cold?
Since it’s almost a certainty that Harper is going to get paid like he’s a future hall of famer, but far (far!) less than a certainty that he’s going to perform like one, I would want to sit this one out.
“He’s entering his prime”
Is he? I thought the more recent calculations show that prime is ages 24-26. And that better players enter their prime at an earlier age.
Otherwise I agree with you. With Harper you’re paying for a lot of unknown. I’m trying to think of a comp for his career. The one name that came to mind is Adrian Beltre who had the one big offensive year at age 25 and then didn’t start hitting again until age 31. That’s not quite the same though. Harper has had other good offensive seasons but his WAR been held back by injury (2013, 2017) or defense (2018).
If Harper played most/all of 2017 and put up a 7 win season, would this change your analysis?
I don’t know. Actually, that pretty much my answer to a lot of things that are Harper-related: I don’t know.
I don’t want to give $400M or even more to a guy where the answer to a lot of big question is “I don’t know.”
And that is the issue with WAR, it’s weighting Defense, which we don’t know what happened to Harper’s. If you put in replacement player defense to this season’s offense, what do you get? Let’s say last year’s defense now? WAR changes a lot.
It’s more like a problem with Bryce Harper. Sometimes he’s a scratch defender in right, maybe even better. Sometimes he’s abysmal. Sometimes he hits like an MVP. Sometimes he hits like a half-decent outfielder. Sometimes it seems like he’s pressing, working too hard. Sometimes it looks like he could use a kick in the pants. Sometimes he’s healthy, a lot of times he’s not. We don’t have a good handle on why any of this happens with him, with any of this. Part of this is because he’s so good and so the sky is the limit for him, but it’s hard to remember any player with this range of outcomes coming off his first 6+ years in the league.
Presumably the $300 million deal will be there if he wants it. This close to free agency, why not hear what others have to offer?
Such a weird season. I wonder how much his absurdly low BABIP fed into his frustration levels. Phila317 also brought up a good point – does he take a more conservative approach defensively knowing that his big payday is right around the corner? Making a few less outs in 2018 will cost him far less than wrecking his shoulder going into a wall.
When I look at Harper I see a guy who I feel very comfortable penciling in at 4-6 WAR/season over the next decade. I’d also take the over on 50 WAR as I think he’ll have a couple monster seasons that are more in the 7-9 WAR range. Given the current cost/win on the FA market, value wise, 10/$400M isn’t some crazy number.
Of course, a team signing Harper will also need to consider that they may not be on the hook for the entire amount. If Harper is doing a 10+ year deal he’ll have 2 or more opt outs. That could reduce some of the risk to his next team. You might only have him for 3 years, but I’d bet that most teams would gladly do a 3/$120M deal for Harper’s 26-28 seasons. By then the high end market will most likely reset when either Trout signs an extension or becomes a FA.
Player Opt out only benefits player.
This part is mostly true, except it may help you land a player at a lower overall rate.
Wow. I didn’t realize how far Hicks’ defense had dropped last season.
This instantly struck me as another example of the deficiency of defensive metrics as they presently exist. Just how much are these defensive numbers opportunity influenced? Did his arm disintegrate overnight because the Hicks I watched live probably 50 times while he played in New Britain was something to behold when he let it go? I find it very difficult to imagine a scenario in which he isn’t a plus defender.
I think the Statcast one is by far the most reliable, because it is just a quantification of the eye test. It’s not a very complete picture, though, so I’ll have to glance at the other ones until something that at least takes throwing into account comes along
Watch it be something stupid like he’s not reading the ball of the bat very well, because hes got a vision problem. His new team gets him the Lasik and he has a total rebound on defense.
Oh. And adds 50 points of OBP.
Why is Harper “a nearly” unrestricted free agent? Is it because of the qualifying offer? Any team which signs him must give up a draft pick to Washington. Washington of course would not have to give up a draft pick.
Because we’re still in the exclusive negotiation period. Come Saturday all pending free agents who have not resigned with their previous teams will be truly free.
Yeah, that’s all I meant. The qualifying offer is a very minor restriction.
It’s not that he’s “a nearly unrestricted free agent,” it’s more that he is “nearly an unrestricted free agent.” I think that conveys the point better.
To me it is incredibly obvious that he knew he was in his contract year and was being extremely cautious to not risk injury. Harper always was diving in to bases, walls , etc. I watched nearly all their games this year and you see him always play the ball off the wall rather than catching it. It is nothing more than that. Caution because he is about to get 400 million dollars.
And can you blame him? I mean he is going to sign the biggest contract ever. His caution cost him, but it is unlikely it cost him more than a broken shoulder would of.
Also seems very possible management asked him to use better judgment, too. Would they have had a conversation with him as to the amount that going all out on a single play, then missing 20-40 games, would hurt the team, so he should think twice about the situation and risk/reward at a given time?
If this is his optimized “avoid injury” defensive play, well that’s what his new team will be getting, they have to figure, because they’re on the hook for ten years. A cartilage tear now could easily lose them hundreds of millions.
tl,dr the data pushes us toward thinking he has two modes, injured and shitty.
I get this isn’t a popular opinion around these parts, since numbers are supposed to explain everything, but they don’t always. You can see Harper was trying not to get hurt. You can see Machado is lazy. You can see that Machado is going to get drilled next year, likely by multiple teams. He is an injury risk (concussion, broken hand, etc). But that isn’t even the biggest thing. He is lazy. Eventually you have to call a spade a spade. If everyone says he is lazy, and he looks lazy, and he acts lazy…well …
Which reminds me, that would be a great article. The laziest MLB players based on average time running the bases vs top speed, etc. You can’t get by on talent alone forever.
Over $400MM?
I don’t care how good you are, that’s just a ridiculous amount of money to have tied up to ONE player. I mean good for him if he gets it, but goodness.
As a Braves fan, I hope Atlanta stays away. Theirs no way he can improve a team like Atlanta all by himself. He’s an excellent hitter and yes he’s young, but between his inconsistency at the plate and his drop in defense last season, I don’t get why anyone would give him over $30MM/year. But as long as teams like Boston/NYY/Dodgers are around, he’ll make bank no matter what.
Excellent point. Trout has proven over and over again that even a great player cannot make a team good by himself. And on the very same team Albert Pujols has pointed out to everyone exactly why long-term contracts are stupid.
This article is frustrating because it doesn’t use all of the available tools in making (or failing to) make its case.
– From Bradford Doolittle’s excellent recent article* on defensive stats at ESPN, another confirmation that defensive metrics are very inconsistent (FG’s own glossary of statistics- both on defensive metrics and sample size/stabilization are super-informative as well). Here’s Mike Trout’s DRS:
2012: +19
2013: -11
2014: -12
2015: +5
2016: +6
2017: -6
2018: +8
(so, is Trout a great, good, bad defender?)
Further, Doolittle’s article states that defensive metrics specifically have a “wall-effect problem” in that many batted balls are classified as easy outs (say a 370 foot sky-high flyball) but are not easy plays because of the outfield wall configuration (that ball on a trajectory to hit the middle of the OF wall makes it a far trickier play) so that a fielder can have 2 or 3 of these, leading to them missing a few 1 or 2 star plays, really hurting their numbers. Shifts also skew results.
The industry is working on these, but these issues lead to even our best defensive metrics to be potentially skewed and slow to stabilize.
*I’d post the article but whenever I try to put a link in a comment, the comment never posts
Why must inconsistency necessarily mean that the metric is flawed? Just as a player might have inconsistent seasons at the plate, can they not also have inconsistent seasons in the field?
I don’t doubt that defensive metrics are flawed, by the way, I just don’t agree that season to season numbers for the same player prove this.
It’s worth noting that DRS is more prone to these big jumps than UZR.
I wish you (generally speaking, all stats writers) wouldn’t do articles about defensive metrics that have “we know they’re flawed, but…” then writing a few thousand words that assumes those metrics are perfect. How long ago were they altered and changed the lifetime WARs of every single player? How can we be sure they won’t be altered again, or shown to be bunk by some far better statistic?
Jeff doesn’t insinuate that the metrics are perfect after pointing out their flaws. He drops caveats throughout, but cites that both UZR, DRS and OAA show pretty dramatic declines in effectiveness, and points out that teams will consider this. Defensive stats aren’t perfect – we all know this – but they are the best we have, and when UZR, DRS, and OAA all agree, it seems very likely that there is signal there. As far as how do we know these stats won’t be updated in the future: they will, and that will be good. These stats are evolving and improving over time. If Hank Aaron’s WAR total changes as a result, it just means we’re getting closer to an accurate picture. I see no reason to not use these stats now with restraint, as Jeff does in this analysis.
I am sure they don’t have the money for it, but I would love to see Harper go to the Braves (not a Braves or Nats fan, for what it’s worth).
Inciarte is excellent in center field and can help cover some of both Harper’s and Acuna’s defensive issues.
yikes, what the heck happened to aaron hicks defensively?
If you sign him for a decade, his defense is going to decline to nothing toward the end, no matter where you start. In fact, for defense (not hitting), Harper has most likely already started to decline. Not necessarily at the level we saw in 2018, but a downward trend from 2017 almost certainly.
Teams will pay him for his offense over the next few years, and pay a penalty for the back half of the contract, as well as any current or trending defensive liabilities.
Recently, teams seem to be less willing to overpay for decline. However, Harper is so special that the “winner” of the bidding war will probably come to regret the final few years of the contract. Same can be said for the team that lands Machado.
Problem with Harper is he’s going to be expensive as if he’s a special player, but he’s only been a special player one time in seven seasons (a season in which his team failed to make the playoffs). In his seven seasons, he’s only been the best player on his own team (according to fWAR) that one time. In five of his seven seasons, he wasn’t even the best position player on his team. And these have been his early years, when his tools haven’t yet begun to erode. Given Harper’s history of injury and inconsistency, it seems very likely that this long term contract will be Pujols 2.0. Except Pujols was actually amazing before he signed his current albatross deal. Harper, not so much. He’s just been massively overrated by the fawning baseball media. It’ll be interesting to see which team makes this huge mistake.
I still hope the Cardinals sign him. He can play next to Harrison Bader and we can pretend he doesn’t suck because he always runs really hard and plays his heart out. STL loves grinders, especially when they hit 30 HR.
It’s my opinion, based on watching him, that he was trying really hard not to get injured on defense last season. In previous seasons he would go all out much more frequently. You often saw him go feet first into the wall to scale it for a flyball. This season he went shoulder first into walls more often and did not seem to jump as high. He played hard, but more carefully, and that affected his defense.
Anytime you can pay $400 million for a player with one season above 5 WAR in their career, you have to do it