Long Term Deal for Machado?

[Lucky Jim]

That's because almost nobody is in the MLB at age 20.

Just amazed at all of the levels on which this statement fails.

[TonySoprano]

That's because almost nobody is in the MLB at age 20. Age 20 or not, a 105 OPS+ needs work at 3B. Need more offense.

Why do you suppose that there are very few 20 year olds that make it to the majors? What does that tell you about the talent Manny has?

[calmunderfire]

Why do you suppose that there are very few 20 year olds that make it to the majors? What does that tell you about the talent Manny has?

Kid prodigies don't always end as great players and a lot of the times somehow on a normal development path emerges as the best of anybody.

[DrungoHazewood]

That's because almost nobody is in the MLB at age 20. Age 20 or not, a 105 OPS+ needs work at 3B. Need more offense.

Do you not understand that the pool of talent at any age is an iceberg, and that at age 20 only a few little ice cubes worth of players are good enough to stick up above the surface? You have to have amazing talent to even make the majors at 20. There are HOFers who were putting up a 105 OPS+ in the Florida State League at 20.

Your baseline assumption has to be that a guy who can play MLB at any level of competence at age 20 is likely to have a very long, very productive career because he's already good 6 or 8 years before he peaks. The number of MLB players who decline or hold steady at an age-20 performance level is vanishingly small. You really can't come up with a much better peer group than "solid MLB players at 20." Just by that, even factoring in the risk of injury (and I know I'm jinxing him) Manny has at least a 50% chance at a HOF career.

You need to read the '86 or '87 Bill James Baseball Abstract where he does a match-set comparison of rookies. I don't remember the exact details, but if you compare a 20-year-old rookie with a 105 OPS+ to a 24-year-old rookie with a 105 OPS+ the 20-year-old, on average, will literally have a career 2 or 3 times longer, with 3 or 4 times as many hits and homers and RBI. It's a no-brainer to take a 20-year-old with Manny's line over a 40-homer, 100-walk MVP who is 25. To trade Chris Davis for Manny you'd have to throw in a ton of value with Davis to start to approach even. Huge piles of evidence suggest youth is the primary determining factor in how much a player develops from where he starts.

[calmunderfire]

Sigh.

You don't wait until a guy is super good and then pay him. You make an educated guess, using a century+ of stats, to decide how good he will be.

Every indication is that Machado's offense will improve. You don't just twiddle your thumbs until his price tag skyrockets.

This makes no sense. Machado is under team control until 2019!!! That is 6 long years away. He's an Oriole for the next years at a cheap price. Let's just be happy with that. This whole thing is overblown.

[calmunderfire]

Another thing that makes all this too premature is Machado needs more AB's for his BABIP to stabilize. At the middle of this year his xBABIP was 40 points higher than his BABIP. xBABIP adjusts for the types of balls you hit like popups and line drives. His expected BABIP was 40 points higher than it was on July 8th. Then he went slumping after.

He was hitting .315 then, but was expected to hit .275

http://www.fangraphs.com/fantasy/the-luckiest-babipers-mid-season-update/

For a guy who is under team control for 6 more years people are getting awful aggressive with a potential contract extention.

[bpilktree]

Another thing that makes all this too premature is Machado needs more AB's for his BABIP to stabilize. At the middle of this year his xBABIP was 40 points higher than his BABIP. xBABIP adjusts for the types of balls you hit like popups and line drives. His expected BABIP was 40 points higher than it was on July 8th. Then he went slumping after.

He was hitting .315 then, but was expected to hit .275

http://www.fangraphs.com/fantasy/the-luckiest-babipers-mid-season-update/

For a guy who is under team control for 6 more years people are getting awful aggressive with a potential contract extention.

I completely disagree he is just hitting his stride and getting used to the majors. Remember this is the same kid that was in the low minors less then two years ago. So he will get better and though I liked him in the 2 hole at first for protection i think he moves out of their and his numbers start increasing.

I would get any long term deals done before the new TV money hits. I believe when that money comes out some teams are going to go crazy and pay guys much more then they are now. A guy worth 10 million now will be worth 15 million by the year 2016 or so.

[DrungoHazewood]

This makes no sense. Machado is under team control until 2019!!! That is 6 long years away. He's an Oriole for the next years at a cheap price. Let's just be happy with that. This whole thing is overblown.

And what you don't grasp is that the longer you wait the better the chance that he's going to be fantastically expensive and will eventually price himself out of the Orioles' capacity or willingness to pay. When your peer group is 50% or 75% Hall of Famers the chances are that even in your arb years you're going to be making $15M+ a year, and when he and Trout and Harper hit free agency in their mid-20s they're going to get 10/300 deals. The longer you wait, the more likely it is that the Orioles will not have Machado's services starting in his mid-to-late 20s.

It makes all the sense in the world to trade a small risk of injury or declining production (even flatlined production makes for an annual All Star) for cost certainty and discounts.

[DrungoHazewood]

Another thing that makes all this too premature is Machado needs more AB's for his BABIP to stabilize. At the middle of this year his xBABIP was 40 points higher than his BABIP. xBABIP adjusts for the types of balls you hit like popups and line drives. His expected BABIP was 40 points higher than it was on July 8th. Then he went slumping after.

He was hitting .315 then, but was expected to hit .275

http://www.fangraphs.com/fantasy/the-luckiest-babipers-mid-season-update/

For a guy who is under team control for 6 more years people are getting awful aggressive with a potential contract extention.

You are waaaaaaaaaaaay too hung up on the particulars of his age-20 performance. No matter if his BABIP is .315 or .280, doing that at age 20 projects to Monster at 24 or 26 or 28.

[isestrex]

Good grief guys....

[DrungoHazewood]

Good grief guys....

I don't think calmunderfire is a troll. He's just a younger guy who's pretty smart and on the right track, but could use a little more well-rounded view of baseball.

[Redskins Rick]

Machado right now is not comparable to MVP players. Those caliber of players are far better offensively. This whole thing is overblown. Need to see offense.

Are we talking about the same player, but clearly, he isn't overblown and is the real deal, and I suspect if you called the other 29 MLB teams, the GMs would be more than willing to trade for him?

[Barnaby Graves]

Machado's freeswinging nature worries me a little bit. With other very young stars, like Al Kaline and Alex Rodriguez (just two names I Googled feel free to provide your own examples), there was an early penchant for walks, or at least walking a bit more than Manny.

Most people probably get better at walking as their careers go on, right? I don't have research for that but it makes sense. But while even Manny with a 4.1 BB% (this year) is a great player, and it should go up at least a little, the degree to which I think he will develop patience is a major influence on what contract I think he should get. There's a lot of mentions in here of deals around 10 years and I am just not that confident yet.

It sounds really harsh to compare him to Jeff Francoeur but Frenchy was worth 3 WAR in 70 games at age 21, 0.9 and 3.4 the next two years in 162 games each. And then... you know. Now, Machado oozes athleticism, seems to have the perfect frame to hold a few more muscles, and let's be honest, his game and persona evokes a little Alex Rodriguez. But I dunno if I'm ready to sink 10 years into the kid. I'd probably do 8 and if his offensive profile maxes out at Adam Jones I'm a very happy camper. If he's Adam Jones playing shortstop we have an MVP candidate. But those 9th and 10 years could be really hairy... like locking up a catcher or something, you just don't want to be one of those teams overpaying a guy who's lost something and playing a corner infield/outfield position at below 2 WAR for 5 WAR money.

[DrungoHazewood]

Machado's freeswinging nature worries me a little bit. With other very young stars, like Al Kaline and Alex Rodriguez (just two names I Googled feel free to provide your own examples), there was an early penchant for walks, or at least walking a bit more than Manny.

Most people probably get better at walking as their careers go on, right? I don't have research for that but it makes sense. But while even Manny with a 4.1 BB% (this year) is a great player, and it should go up at least a little, the degree to which I think he will develop patience is a major influence on what contract I think he should get. There's a lot of mentions in here of deals around 10 years and I am just not that confident yet.

It sounds really harsh to compare him to Jeff Francoeur but Frenchy was worth 3 WAR in 70 games at age 21, 0.9 and 3.4 the next two years in 162 games each. And then... you know. Now, Machado oozes athleticism, seems to have the perfect frame to hold a few more muscles, and let's be honest, his game and persona evokes a little Alex Rodriguez. But I dunno if I'm ready to sink 10 years into the kid. I'd probably do 8 and if his offensive profile maxes out at Adam Jones I'm a very happy camper. If he's Adam Jones playing shortstop we have an MVP candidate. But those 9th and 10 years could be really hairy... like locking up a catcher or something, you just don't want to be one of those teams overpaying a guy who's lost something and playing a corner infield/outfield position at below 2 WAR for 5 WAR money.

So who is a bad-case comparable to Machado? I'd guess something like Ruben Sierra with plus defense. Sierra was a huge prospect with bad plate discipline at in his early 20s. He had a few plus years but never really progressed from the mid-700s OPS guy he was at 21. But despite being a poor corner outfielder he was still a 19-win player through age 29. My guess is that, barring a catastropic injury, Machado's floor for his 20s is 25-30 rWAR.

[Stotle]

I'm pretty confident that a guy who's put up about 8 rWAR in his first 190 games at his age will continue to play at a level far exceeding his salary for quite a long time. Extension or not.

With about a month left in his age-20 season he's already 9th in rWAR among all MLBs in history through age 20. If you look at the top 20 players on that list the disappointments are Tony Conigliaro, who suffered a terrible beaning, and Claudell Washington, who had a 17-year major league career. Almost everyone else is in the Hall or has a fairly strong case.

Manny has had a more valuable career through his age than Ted Williams or Frank Robinson or Mickey Mantle. Just his oWAR of 3.8 is as valuble as the through-20 total value of Willie Mays, and better than Cap Anson, Giancarlo Stanton, Orlando Cepeda, Pudge Rodriguez, Eddie Mathews, Robin Yount, etc, etc.

It's a small group of players, for sure. I wonder whether the proportion of WAR attributable to defense is relevant?