Already a bad deal?

[metsmarathon]

Ceetar wrote: I could go into a long discussion on how dollar 'values' apply to actual baseball, but it's 4:55. Basically, I care about total value/WAR not $/per. If the Mets had paid say $50 million for a quality closer in 2007, that'd be a gross overpay but it probably would've gotten them into the playoffs.

i don't have any idea what you mean by "total value/WAR not $/per"

if he's a $106M over 6 years of his contract, then he's a $17M player each year of his contract, on average. if he's a 4-WAR per year player for the 6 years of his contract, then he's a 24WAR player for the duration of his contract.

24/106 ~ 4/17, give or take some noisy simplification.

it's easier to talk in per-year context because its a more readily understandable context. do you understand how good a player has to be to be worth 24 WAR over 6 years? i don't. but if i look at what a player has to do to be worth 4 WAR in a season, i can get a sense of what level of performance he would have to average to be worth 24 WAR over 6 years.

so, if 24 WAR over 6 years is the approximate value for reyes, based on a now-year WAR-to-dollar approximation, then how much worse than that would he need to perform for it to be considered a bad deal?

the marlins are paying him 106 million dollars. on the free market, when you pay 106 million dollars, you expect to get back 24 wins above replacement. sometimes you get more, sometimes less. that's what makes some deals great and some terrible. how much less than 24 WAR would jose reyes have to generate for you to feel that the deal was a bad one.

heck, for any player, how much would overpaying is enough to make a deal bad? if you pay a guy $33M, but only get $19M of production, was that a bad deal? if you pay a guy $6M but only get $3M of production out of him, is that a bad deal?

in 2011, teh world champion st louis cardinals paid jake westbrook $8M for essentially replacement-level performance over the course of 180+ innings. was that a bad contract? did they overpay him?

[Ceetar]

metsmarathon wrote: in 2011, teh world champion st louis cardinals paid jake westbrook $8M for essentially replacement-level performance over the course of 180+ innings. was that a bad contract? did they overpay him?

well, assume they cut Westbrook and called up the next guy from AAA and he gave them 1 win less. Not even factoring in the 8 figure windfall the Cardinals got by making the playoffs and having all those home games as a result of that 1 extra win.

But you can't separate out individual player, even if WAR was perfect, which it's not. It's still always a team game with the goal being to make the playoffs. Everyone* would rather have a 95 win team that spends 150 million to get to the playoffs than an 85 win team that misses it but only spends 75. Sure, they got a lot more bang for their buck, but that's not the point.

So if the team with Reyes makes the playoffs, wins a World Series, competes, does all those things you want in a ballclub, then it's worth it. If they fall short because the money they gave to Reyes kept them from spending it on other areas that would've put them over the top, then it's a disappointment, even if he's a 9 WAR player. (This is probably the A-Rod in Texas argument) Same if there's an available upgrade to Reyes that they're prevented from pursuing.

Sure, you probably can get more wins by spreading the 17 million around than by investing it in one player. But sometimes you don't. maximizing value at a position is important too, even if you have to overpay for it. There are only 8 positions. If you skimp on one position by signing a lesser player because he's cheaper, you need to reassign those wins elsewhere. In essence, you have to overpay some guys to get that high production, because a team of pretty good players with good contracts usually doesn't excel unless everything works out. Due to plummeting revenue and a couple of overpay contracts already in Santana, Bay and Wright, the Mets felt they couldn't afford to take that big risk/big reward move. the Marlins could. I disagree, but I also understand.

*speaking from a purely baseball/competitive standpoint. Obviously most owners would rather do whatever is profitable.

[Edgy MD]

You may wonder who is coming out ahead so far. It's a little bit complicated, because the deal is heavily backloaded, suggesting Reyes wants to run up an early lead if he's going to win this one for you, Ceetar.

According to Fangraphs, Reyes has so far checked in with $6.4 million in production. This year he's scheduled to make $10,000,000. Prorate to 68 games and he's been paid $4,197, 531.

That's the sound of Reyes and Ceetar ahead by $2,202,469.

[Ceetar]

Edgy DC wrote: You may wonder who is coming out ahead so far. It's a little bit complicated, because the deal is heavily backloaded, suggesting Reyes wants to run up an early lead if he's going to win this one for you, Ceetar. According to Fangraphs, Reyes has so far checked in with $6.4 million in production. This year he's scheduled to make $10,000,000. Prorate to 68 games and he's been paid $4,197, 531. That's the sound of Reyes and Ceetar ahead by $2,202,469.

can we track this for 6 months? we can get a whole crazy spreadsheet and graph going!

[Edgy MD]

Ashie62 wrote: Ashie62 wrote: Jose Reyes .270 2 hr 16 rbi Barf.. Are we really citing a leadoff hitter's RBI total to try and make a point about the quality of his play this year? Barf. It's all part of the package..At any rate.. he is not earning his salary by any metric other than the ability to sign the check.

Fangraphs suggests he is.

Keep in mind that his salary at the front end of this contract is actually lower than it was at the end of his Mets deal.

[Benjamin Grimm]

Yeah... the backendedness of the contract is what will make it a killer. Jose will be making the most money when he'll likely be well past his prime. And if that's the case, he'll be totally untradeable; a complete albatross.

[metsmarathon]

Ceetar wrote: metsmarathon wrote: in 2011, teh world champion st louis cardinals paid jake westbrook $8M for essentially replacement-level performance over the course of 180+ innings. was that a bad contract? did they overpay him? well, assume they cut Westbrook and called up the next guy from AAA and he gave them 1 win less. Not even factoring in the 8 figure windfall the Cardinals got by making the playoffs and having all those home games as a result of that 1 extra win.

so, that's a no, i take it?

let me try a different angle.

jason bay has a terrible contract, no? the mets are paying him a shit-ton of money, and getting almost no production out of him. when he's not injured, he's not hitting, and when he is injured, he's still not hitting. he's contributed, in his three seasons to date, only 2 WAR of production total. there's a possibility that he may not play another game this season, too.

now lets say that's true - that he doesn't play another game this season. and lets also extend out hypothetical to include a mets world series victory this season.

is hte jason bay contract suddenly a good one?

[Ceetar]

metsmarathon wrote: is hte jason bay contract suddenly a good one?

No, since Jason Bay didn't contribute and we have at least some inkling of an idea that it cost us Reyes. (which would affect next, and the season after..etc) The problem is that winning the World Series factors in a lot of luck and randomness too. The odds are probably lower with Bay than they would be with him, allocating that money to Reyes, or anyone else really.

but there's a difference between no use (or close enough) and under-performing it's total price.

Replacement players don't grow on trees. And often when you're forced to use a replacement player (say Freddy Galvis?) for more than a handful of starts here and there you get much less than replacement level.

There's a lot of 'hidden' value in simply putting up positive numbers. Bay gave them 1.3 WAR in 2010. If he'd stayed on the field the entire season, that'd be over 2. It's not much, but it's a positive impact and presumably would've driven in some runs with power that was otherwise lacking. Particularly because inthe Mets case that "replacement player" isn't 0, but the sub-0 that Frank Catalanotto, Gary Matthews, F-Mart, Nick Evans, Chris Carter, Jesus Feliciano that got playing time in his wake. Those are the replacement players the Mets chose, and they were bad. That year the Mets viewed Bay as probably the best way to add value, at a position they had a negative in. It wasn't a money question. They needed more wins. The extra wins they felt they'd get from Bay far exceeded what they felt they'd get from guessing at a lesser player in LF and spending a marginal upgrade elsewhere if they could find it.

What I'm trying to say is that the Mets were trying to field the 8 guys that would give them the most wins, money be damned. And what they, and I, care about is getting the most wins. Not whether each players value balances nicely with the amount they're being paid.

[Edgy MD]

I don't think we're adequately wrapping our head around the concept of "replacement player," but the idea is that they do, more or less, grow on trees.

[Ceetar]

Edgy DC wrote: I don't think we're adequately wrapping our head around the concept of "replacement player," but the idea is that they do, more or less, grow on trees.

Not really. Plenty of replacement players end up with serious negative value.

I wonder if it's easier or harder to find a replacement SS. Are there enough defensive guys out there that can't hit that mitigate the dropoff, or is 1B better due to the limited defensive value the position has meaning the actual value the player needs to add to be replacement is lower?

[Edgy MD]

We're not talking about a specific replacement player. When we measure relative value of one player against another --- Jose Reyes vs. Mark Teixiera vs. Zack Greineke --- we are measuring them all against a non-existent abstraction, a statistical meanpoint of countless replacements that have fallen off the figurative turnip truck.

Why do these things trip up such a simple question? Because the idea is to simplify the question.

[Ceetar]

yes, but it has little bearing to the real world, in which money exists. So when you try to equate this concept to actual $ worth to a team, it gets a little more tricky. WAR itself is abstract. A 4 win player does not actually make the team 4 games better in the win column than a 0 win player. There's all those lucky bounces and ball in play randomness and key moments thrown in there.

We're digressed into arguing valuation which is sort of beyond what I meant. Originally all I was trying to say is that I think the Marlins* will be happy they have Reyes in 2017, and won't be looking to upgrade at SS for production reasons. To me, that means it's not a 'bad deal'.



*barring trade/name change of course

[metsmarathon]

i think the theory of WAR is indeed that you expect that a 4 WAR player adds 4 wins to your total relative to 0 WAR player.

likewise replacing a 2 WAR player with a 6 WAR player should add 4 wins to your total.

balls bounce and odd things happen and sometimes you win a game by fifty runs and sometimes you win a game by one run after fifty innings. but in the grand scheme of things, 4 WAR means 4 wins. on average.

[metsmarathon]

Ceetar wrote: I think the Marlins* will be happy they have Reyes in 2017, and won't be looking to upgrade at SS for production reasons. To me, that means it's not a 'bad deal'.

upgrade.

that's a different kettle of fish, i think.

are the mets looking to upgrade left field? we have jason bay, and to my knowledge, there's been no effort to upgrade left field other than perhaps by throwing walls at him and hoping he cannot play.

how would we know if the marlins were looking to upgrade from jose reyes? how would we know if they wished they could upgrade from jose reyes? how would we know if they looked back on the reyes deal in hindsight and said, "we could have spent that money more wisely"?


...

i submit to you tha the answer ot the last question is to look at reye's WAR for the life of his contract, compare that to the level of production they should have expected to get for 106 million dollars, andif the former is significantly lesser than the latter, then its safe to say that the marlins could have spent the money more wisely. because htey have a budget, and by spending 106 million on one player, those 106 million dollars were not available to spend on other areas of need.

[Ceetar]

Well, it's different if a guy's injured. And I wasn't talking life of contract, merely that 6th year.

When they go into that season and they're thinking "What can we do to make this team better" I don't think they're going to say "We need to get more production from SS"

That's it. Money applied elsewhere is not always a positive transaction. could be. could not be. The value 'expected to get' from $17 million is very much not certain. And I'd rather have one player giving me $12 million worth of production on a $17 price tag than two players doing it.

besides The Marlins could suddenly be popular and sell out every game and have a $200 million payroll and Reyes' money isn't keeping them from spending what they feel they need elsewhere.

But I don't think the Marlins will be wishing they'd only given him a 5 year deal in the 6th year.

[metsmarathon]

so, to be clear, you're only looking at the value he returns in that final year?

he could go all babe ruth apeshit for the first five years, and turns in a stinker in teh sixth, and its a bad deal, or conversely, he goes all jason bay in the first five years, but turns in a respectable, even good final year, and suddenly its a good deal.

are those really the parameters you're talking about?

the rest of your post was all nonsense.

if a team has a $200 million payroll, and waste $20 million on a guy who gives them nothing, they still wasted that money, and they still got nothing, and they still could have been better.

i don't know why expected value is a difficult concept. if i go to a restaurant, and buy off the dollar menu, i expect to get about a dollar's worth of food, either in quality or quantity or both. if i go to a different restaurant, and spend thirty dollars on my dinner, i expect to get about thirty dollars worth of food, either in quantity or quality or both.

if i go to a restaurant and pay thirty dollars for a twenty-dollar meal, i got ripped off. if i go to a restaurant and spend twenty dollars on a thirty-dollar meal, i keep going back there.

whether or not i can afford a seventy dollar dinner has no bearing on how much of a good deal i got.

the florida marlins went to the jose reyes restaurant and bar. they spent thirty dollars on tehir meal. will they get the thirty dollars wotrh of food that they expect?

[Ceetar]

No, just going back to my original remark, and what prompted a wager, about whether he'll be worth it still in the 6th year. After watching him for 9 years, I'm pretty confident he'll be very good overall.

And again, not talking about guys that give nothing. Obviously having guys that give you nothing suck.

metsmarathon wrote: if i go to a restaurant and pay thirty dollars for a twenty-dollar meal, i got ripped off. if i go to a restaurant and spend twenty dollars on a thirty-dollar meal, i keep going back there.

Did you? why'd you go to the restaurant? To get the best valued meal? or to get food? I could go to Taco Bell in Wayne and get a burrito and eat it. it's yummy and i'm full. I could go to the Taco Bell in the Willowbrook mall and get a burrito for a little more money. It's the same burrito. It's yummy, and i'm full. The yummy and full is what I was trying to achieve.

You can go into NYC and get an ice meal. It'll cost you $30 for about $20 worth of food. But it'll be really good. The place down the block from you however, will give you $10 worth of food for $5. It'll taste okay, but will leave you wanting. And then you'll still have to buy dinner. (i.e. need to improve your team elsewhere) The NYC completely sates you and you have a doggie bag that you can reheat later for dinner. And if you can afford it or need to, you can buy something else more substantial and awesome for dinner still.


And now we're so far into the abstract i'm not even sure where to go.

[Edgy MD]

Mmmmm... Ice meal... .

Ceetar wrote: I'd still wager he'll be valuable through all 6 years of it.

We're just going to circle around this one all day and night.

[Ceetar]

Edgy DC wrote: Mmmmm... Ice meal... . Ceetar wrote: I'd still wager he'll be valuable through all 6 years of it. We're just going to circle around this one all day and night.

well yeah. we are.

[metsmarathon]

if i hire a software engineer for $60k a year and he only puts out the same level and quantity of work as a software engineer i could have hired for $40k a year, it was a bad hire, no?

if i paid $30 for a nice meal in new york city, and they gave me a bag with a burrito from taco bell, it was a bad deal, no?

if i paid $50k for a car and all i got was an old chevy cavalier, i made a terrible purchase.

...

if i run a baseball team, and i pay a guy $20 million dollars a year, and he only gives me, eh, league average production, i'm gonna have a stern talk with my general manager.

...

you pay for something. anything. burrito. ball player. bag of baseballs. you expect to get something in return which carries a value equivalent to what you paid to acquire it. if you get less value in return, you got a bad deal.

...

i don't think it's really all that abstract.

[Ceetar]

metsmarathon wrote: if i hire a software engineer for $60k a year and he only puts out the same level and quantity of work as a software engineer i could have hired for $40k a year, it was a bad hire, no?

Did the project get done on time? was the client happy?

That's not what I'm saying though. I'm saying that the more expensive guy gives you more value. just not more value per dollar.

The 40k a year engineer got the project done a week late and there were a number of bugs that needed to be addressed. The client is not thrilled. (the client being the fan? Competitive into September?)

The company saved 20k. That certainly got more value out of the cheaper programmer. But they didn't get the gold star and the client recommendation. When they try to sell their program to the next client (next year's season ticket holders) less of them are impressed with it than would've been had then invested the extra money.

In most cases more money gets you a better product. you pay exponentially for the extra value, but if you want that value, you gotta shell out for it.

The Mets purchased Jason Bay. Ignoring what he did and going back to what was expected based on his history, it's not a completely horrible deal. Matt Holliday cost a lot more, but he was probably the better player. If the Cardinals had gone the slightly more cost effective route and taken Bay instead of Holliday, would they have won the World Series?

[Guest LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr]

Ceetar wrote: metsmarathon wrote: if i hire a software engineer for $60k a year and he only puts out the same level and quantity of work as a software engineer i could have hired for $40k a year, it was a bad hire, no? Did the project get done on time? was the client happy?

If so, then you still made a bad deal; you just made one that ended with a good result.

That's not what I'm saying though. I'm saying that the more expensive guy gives you more value.

And what we're saying is that, no, that isn't always the case.

The 40k a year engineer got the project done a week late and there were a number of bugs that needed to be addressed. The client is not thrilled. (the client being the fan? Competitive into September?) The company saved 20k. That certainly got more value out of the cheaper programmer. But they didn't get the gold star and the client recommendation. When they try to sell their program to the next client (next year's season ticket holders) less of them are impressed with it than would've been had then invested the extra money.

Well, then, they did not get full value from the 40K guy, then. I REALLY don't see what's so hard to comprehend here.

[metsmarathon]

if i got $40k of work out of my $60k worker, but still met my deadlines and customer requirements, then i wasted $20k and my boss is gonna be a little miffed.

that $20k came out of profits, or perhaps prevented him from making capital improvements elsewhere in teh company, or kept him from giving another worker a deserved raise, or whatever. it doesn't matter. money isn't free. it has value. it's value is what you can reasonably expect to get for the money.

why is this so hard?

[Ceetar]

LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr wrote: And what we're saying is that, no, that isn't always the case.

Anything can happen, but when you make a deal you give more money to the guy that's better. Reyes is better. What's the alternative? crap. Greg Dobbs. Bonifacio. crap. Those guys are not Reyes.

I'm arguing under the condition that that _is_ the case. That Reyes is the best baseball player available to the particular situation. That he will still be that way in 6 years. That except in all but some crazy trade scenarios Reyes on the team wins more games than anything they could do to manipulate the situation so that Reyes' money is allocated elsewhere. Specifically, since we're talking in the abstract here, the percent chance that Reyes gives you ..say 4 WAR to pick an evaluation parameter.. is higher than the combined percent chance that the guys you replace him with give you that 4 WAR.

Reyes is better. he's more expensive, but he's better. The ultimate goal is always to accumulate as many wins as you can get. Always. If you plug in a 2 WAR SS, you've limited the cap at which you can accumulate WAR at that position and you raise the bar at every other position to compensate.

Furthermore, by spreading that money out you can raise costs later on. say you have 2 WAR at SS and 2 WAR at CF (a marlins crap position right now). Maybe you only pay $5 and $5 for that. That's $7 million less than Reyes for the same wins, except you've now used up an additional position. If you need to make your team better, you have to first discard $5million and 2 WAR. Whereas now you can upgrade CF for free, without losing anything.

In the first example if you wanted to sign a $10million 3 WAR player, it would cost you $15 and you'd only get 1 WAR. in the second, with Reyes, you spend $10 and get 3 WAR.

[metirish]

and second now..............

[metsmarathon]

lets say bay and holliday both got fairly reasonable contracts given their expected performance.

lets look at their performance over the first two and a half years.

[table:1bmkke34][tr:1bmkke34][td:1bmkke34][/td:1bmkke34][td:1bmkke34]bay[/td:1bmkke34][td:1bmkke34][/td:1bmkke34][td:1bmkke34][/td:1bmkke34][td:1bmkke34][/td:1bmkke34][td:1bmkke34]holliday[/td:1bmkke34][td:1bmkke34][/td:1bmkke34][td:1bmkke34][/td:1bmkke34][td:1bmkke34][/td:1bmkke34][/tr:1bmkke34][tr:1bmkke34][td:1bmkke34]year[/td:1bmkke34][td:1bmkke34]WAR[/td:1bmkke34][td:1bmkke34]value[/td:1bmkke34][td:1bmkke34]salary[/td:1bmkke34][td:1bmkke34]delta[/td:1bmkke34][td:1bmkke34]WAR[/td:1bmkke34][td:1bmkke34]value[/td:1bmkke34][td:1bmkke34]salary[/td:1bmkke34][td:1bmkke34]delta[/td:1bmkke34][/tr:1bmkke34][tr:1bmkke34][td:1bmkke34]2010[/td:1bmkke34][td:1bmkke34]1.5[/td:1bmkke34][td:1bmkke34]$6M[/td:1bmkke34][td:1bmkke34]$8.7M[/td:1bmkke34][td:1bmkke34]$-2.7M[/td:1bmkke34][td:1bmkke34]6.7[/td:1bmkke34][td:1bmkke34]$26.7M[/td:1bmkke34][td:1bmkke34]$16.3M[/td:1bmkke34][td:1bmkke34]$+10.4M[/td:1bmkke34][/tr:1bmkke34][tr:1bmkke34][td:1bmkke34]2011[/td:1bmkke34][td:1bmkke34]0.7[/td:1bmkke34][td:1bmkke34]$3.3M[/td:1bmkke34][td:1bmkke34]$18.1M[/td:1bmkke34][td:1bmkke34]$-14.8M[/td:1bmkke34][td:1bmkke34]5[/td:1bmkke34][td:1bmkke34]$22.7M[/td:1bmkke34][td:1bmkke34]$16.3M[/td:1bmkke34][td:1bmkke34]$+6.4M[/td:1bmkke34][/tr:1bmkke34][tr:1bmkke34][td:1bmkke34]2012[/td:1bmkke34][td:1bmkke34]-0.3[/td:1bmkke34][td:1bmkke34]$-1.4M[/td:1bmkke34][td:1bmkke34]$6.7M[/td:1bmkke34][td:1bmkke34]$-8.1M[/td:1bmkke34][td:1bmkke34]2.2[/td:1bmkke34][td:1bmkke34]$10.0M[/td:1bmkke34][td:1bmkke34]$7M[/td:1bmkke34][td:1bmkke34]$+3.0M[/td:1bmkke34][/tr:1bmkke34][/table:1bmkke34]

jason bay has given his team 2 wins' worth of value over its duration to date. matt holliday has beat that this year.

if the cards had jason bay instead of matt holliday in 2011, a reasonable person would expect them to have missed the playoffs by 3 or 4 games.

[Ceetar]

anything can happen. Bay sucked, but that was a low percentage result. You're generally paying a guy based on past production, hoping he repeats that. I was using the Bay/Holliday example at the time of signing.

Bay was worth 4.9 WAR in 2009. ($21.9) made $8.6 in 2010 (really roughly a $15/per deal)
Holliday was worth 5.6 ($25.3) made $16 in 2010

What you're saying is Bay is the better buy. whether you want to look at net money or $/WAR.

But Holliday is, and was, the better player. the extra win or so via Holliday is very expensive, but it's one more win. that's important.

the exact nature of it obviously matters and how close it gets you to the playoffs, but 86 win teams make more money than 85 win teams. but 1 WAR is probably understating it. an 89 win team draws fans throughout the season. an 86 win team might have it's fans lose interest as if they're 8 out in September. never mind the windfall if that extra win gets you INTO the playoffs. I used this earlier, but it still makes sense. If you could add a +1 win player to the 2007 Mets or the 2011 Braves, it's practically priceless. 8 figure income per playoff game, depending on how far they advance. increased ad revenue and exposure. attention. renewed season tickets. all of it.

Fangraphs $value is just another way to say WAR. it's just in a dollar amount. It's like trying to argue 63 dollars is different than 40 British pounds. it's not. it's just a different unit. If the money buys me MORE of what I'm desperately craving (hamburgers, software, wins) then I'm happy.

[metsmarathon]

bay is grossly underperforming relative to what he's being paid for. that makes it a bad deal.

holliday is overperforming relative to what he's being paid for. that makes it a great deal.

either is a bad or great deal regardless of how the team performs. either way a team is underpaying or overpaying. either way, a team is eating into its profitibility or building it. either way, a team has flexibility, or lacks it.

pay more to win more. yes. but pay more and win less, bad deal! pay more and get less, bad deal. pay a lot get a little, bad deal. why is this an argument?

[Edgy MD]

The greater question is: How many beers is marathon gonna down tonight?

[Ceetar]

metsmarathon wrote: pay a lot get a little, bad deal. why is this an argument?

Because you're wrong. the little bit extra puts the ball over the fence. A little more MPH puts it past the bat. a little more break is a swing and a miss versus solid contact. A step faster and you beat the throw.

Or more important, a little bit more winning gets you into the playoffs, versus not. it's ALL ABOUT how the team performs. If Matt Holliday was on the Padres, they're not selling enough extra tickets to cover his salary.

Because there is ALWAYS more money. there is no salary cap. There are only so many wins. they're the hotter commodity. There is no prize for efficiency. This is what gets the Yankees into the playoffs every year. The ability to spend that extra money wildly, for a couple more wins.