After a slow 2017-2018 offseason, the major free agents are finally going off the board. Players like J.D Martinez, Jake Arrieta, Eric Hosmer, and others have finally signed with teams for the 2018 season and beyond. One question that MLB teams have to ponder before making these moves is: are these players worth the asking price? This article will take a closer look at the major free agent contracts signed before the 2011-2013 seasons, and a look at how each of those players has performed since signing those deals.
For the purpose of this article, a “major contract” is defined as a contract of at least 5 years and at least $15 million in Average Annual Value (AAV). Contract information was retrieved from MLB Trade Rumors for 2011 and 2013. The 2012 season info was taken from SBNation. The contracts are shown below:
Jayson Werth – 7 years $126 million – $18 million AAV
Cliff Lee – 5 years $120 million – $24 million AAV
Carl Crawford – 7 years $142 million – $20.29 million AAV
Adrian Beltre – 5 years $80 million – $16 million AAV
Albert Pujols – 10 years $254 million – $25.4 million AAV
C.J. Wilson – 5 years $77.5 million – $15.5 million AAV
Jose Reyes – 6 years $106 million – $17.67 million AAV
Prince Fielder – 9 years $214 million – $23.78 million AAV
Zack Grienke – 6 years $147 million – $24.5 million AAV
Josh Hamilton – 5 years $125 million – $25 million AAV
B.J. (now Melvin Jr.) Upton – 5 years $75 million – $15 million AAV
Anibal Sanchez – 5 years $80 million – $16 million AAV
Now we’ll look at how these players performed over the life of their contracts (or if the contract is ongoing, how they’ve done so far). Also, making an approximation based on the dollars spent per WAR of each season calculated in article by Matt Swartz from FanGraphs, we can approximate that each win added was worth about $7 million between 2011-2013. For the purpose of this article, we’ll use that to guess whether each player was worth the money paid to them or not. The averages of major statistical categories for each season under these contracts is shown below, along with the amount of money each player is calculated to be worth using 1 WAR = $7 million:
Werth: .260 AVG, 16 HR, 56 RBI, 64 R, 1.86 WAR, worth $13.02 million/year
Lee*: 10-8, 186.2 IP, 2.96 ERA, 185 K, 4.80 WAR, worth $33.60 million/year
Crawford*: .270 AVG, 5 HR, 29 RBI, 38 R, 0.88 WAR, worth $6.16 million/year
Beltre: .310 AVG, 27 HR, 92 RBI, 85 R, 5.50 WAR, worth $38.5 million/year
Pujols: .260 AVG, 28 HR, 98 RBI, 72 R, 1.27 WAR, worth $8.89 million/year
Wilson*: 13-9, 180.2 IP, 3.87 ERA, 156 K, 1.90 WAR, worth $13.3 million/year
Reyes: .280 AVG, 10 HR, 47 RBI, 69 R, 2.28 WAR, worth $15.96 million/year
Fielder*: .280 AVG, 18 HR, 74 RBI, 58 R, 1.34 WAR, worth $9.38 million/year
Greinke**: 17-5, 201 IP, 2.30 ERA, 185 K, 4.50 WAR, worth $31.50 million/year
Hamilton*: .250 AVG, 13 HR, 49 RBI, 46 R, 1.13 WAR, worth $7.91 million/year
Upton*: .220 AVG, 12 HR, 35 RBI, 46 R, 0.63 WAR, worth $4.41 million/year
Sanchez: 8-9, 144.2 IP, 4.52 ERA, 136 K, 2.32 WAR, worth $16.24 million/year
*denotes player retired or was released before conclusion of contract
**denotes player opted out of contract before its conclusion
Finally, looking at these values we can determine which of these deals ended up being bargains, the ones that ended up being fair deals, and the ones that were bad deals. “Fair” deals were seen as deals where the AAV and the player worth per year were within $2 million of each other. The results are below:
Bargains: Beltre, Lee, Greinke
Fair deals: Sanchez, Reyes
Bad deals: Werth, Crawford, Pujols, Fielder, Hamilton, Upton, Wilson
So of the 12 major contracts accepted in this period, 7 of them didn’t pan out according to this analysis, with only 3 of them having a positive value. In fact, only 6 of the players were even in the league for the extent of the contract. This shaky history of long-term free agent signings could explain why teams were hesitant to pull the trigger on long term deals to free agents this past offseason. We’ll have to see how the free-agent signings from this offseason will turn out for the teams that gave the players their payday.
BaseballNerd 