Money In The Bank Pt. 1

by Tommy Rancel on Dec 29, 2008 11:25 AM EST

Thanks to Fangraphs new WAR, Value in Dollars and Salary features, we can easily see how much a player made vs. how much he was worth. For the Rays, getting more value for less buck is essential if the team is going to continue it's recent success. We all know Andrew Friedman has made some excellent moves via trades and signings, but now we can actually see how good those moves have been in terms of dollars.

Today, I take a look at the signings/trades of 2006. A few ground rules here. The player must have been acquired by Friedman prior or during the 2006 season and must have had at least 150 PA's with the team during the year. This is why Ben Zobrist makes the 2006 list, but won't make the 2007 list. Also, this is strictly positional players until fangraphs provides the data for pitchers.

Here is the list:

2006 BA OBP SLG WAR Salary Worth Wiggington 0.275 0.330

0.498

1.4

$0.70 $5.10 Norton 0.296 0.374 0.520 1.2 $0.80 $4.60 Paul 0.260 0.327 0.342 0.4 $0.50 $1.70 Branyan 0.201

0.286

0.473 0.1 $0.80 $0.30 Perez 0.212 0.224 0.286 -0.6 $0.80 -$2.20 Navarro 0.244 0.316 0.342 0.4 $0.30 $1.30 Zobrist 0.224 0.260 0.311 -0.7 $0.40

-$2.70

Salary & Worth in terms of Millions

In total, Friedman paid $4.3 million for $8.10 million worth of production. That is almost a 2:1 dollar ratio. He really hit on Ty Wiggington and Greg Norton who produced a combined $9.7 million dollars of production for just $1.5 million dollars of salary. As you can see, shortstop in 2006 was a mess with Tomas Perez and Ben Zobrist combining for -$4.9 mil of "production". Luckily for us, 2006 was Friedman's worst year in terms of actual salary vs. worth.

The analysis for 2007 & 2008 will be posted later this week

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Comments

So what you're telling me is Tomas Perez sucks

by Erik Hahmann on Dec 29, 2008 11:53 AM EST reply actions

and that he owes the Rays some money.

by Tommy Rancel on Dec 29, 2008 11:57 AM EST up reply actions

So Paul was worth 1.70 mil where was I for that?

I have a hard time seeing how Paul was worth 1.7 mil and Branyan is 0.3 mil. Paul had a .670 OPS and Branyan was a .760 OPS

Other than that this is very interesting stuff, good work

by Rays4242 on Dec 29, 2008 11:53 AM EST reply actions

I kind of figured that

but still dont see how Paul was worth 1.7 mil by any measure. Unless 1.7 mil is considered the bare minimum of the market value for backup catchers

by Rays4242 on Dec 29, 2008 2:40 PM EST up reply actions

You don't seem to see, or agree with, any of the statistics we give you

by Erik Hahmann on Dec 29, 2008 3:00 PM EST up reply actions

Catching is the hardest position in baseball and has the lowest talent pool.

A win is worth ~4.84 million, Paul’s value is near replacement level.

by R.J. Anderson on Dec 29, 2008 7:07 PM EST up reply actions

perez earned his money when he hit 4 doubles against the yankees

by bluechairgreengrass on Dec 29, 2008 12:29 PM EST reply actions

also it doesn't take in to account the ability to hit people with shaving cream pies

by Tommy Rancel on Dec 29, 2008 12:42 PM EST up reply actions

They need to fix that then

by Erik Hahmann on Dec 29, 2008 1:16 PM EST up reply actions

Isn't this fromat inherently skewed towards success?

I speak particularly of the minor league contract signings.

If the definition includes only those who actually get more than a cup of coffee in the majors, and since most of these signings are at a relatively low speculative cost, then most of these will pan out. Or at least the HR’s (Pena, e.g.) will overshadow the failures. But the many who are signed to split contracts and never get promoted also never get mentioned.

I understand that you can’t get a FanGraphs figure on them, but couldn’t they be measured as purely a sunk cost at their minors salary – wouldn’t skew so negatively as the majors busts, even though they were in fact an even larger one in some sense. In essence, your methodology inherently overstates success.

As an example, the Rays signed Hee Sop Choi to compete for the 1B/DH spot along with Pena – clearly not assuming Pena’s ultimate success at the outset. Choi was released for termination pay I believe. There are numerous examples of these kind of transactions, particularly prior to 2008. That some worked out very well while others failed but never surface in your analysis means a somewhat skewed analytical result.

Not that I think the approach is a bad one for any org – low risk minors contracts make sense for these types of players and for depth purposes for any team. I’m just saying that only measuring the players that get a minimum of majors PT tends to skew the analysis in favor of success.

by nyyfaninlaaland on Dec 29, 2008 3:17 PM EST reply actions

If you added up all the failed minor league/split contracts

not just minor league deals because we need minor leaguers like Chris Richard for a reason, it still wouldn’t deminished the value of paying 800k to Pena and 800k in sunk cost to Choi for $24.6 million dollars worth of production in 2007. For every Pena or Hinske there are probably 2 to 3 of the same deals that don’t work out, but the ones that have worked out have been so amazingly good that you’ll take a few losses to get that kind of production.

by Tommy Rancel on Dec 29, 2008 3:54 PM EST up reply actions

Why not include them?

II don’t think one would argue that the sum of all the signings would be overwhelmingly positive, but this does appear to be incomplete information. For example, the Rays traded for Sean Burroughs prior to the 2006 season and got very little production for $1.5 million. The 150 PA cut-off would only skew favorably for the Ray. Also, what about a case like Travis Lee who was offered arbitration and then signed for $2.4 million?

Interesting stuff anyhow. Looking forward to the ’07 and ’08 wrapups.

by tallyray on Dec 29, 2008 7:37 PM EST up reply actions

The reason I left Lee off was he wasn't actually acquired by Friedman

If you want to include Burroughs as sunk cost thats fine because he was actually paid a major league salary, but it’s very hard to find the salaries of players who played the entire season or most in the minors.

by Tommy Rancel on Dec 29, 2008 7:46 PM EST up reply actions