Harper to Phillies

[backwardsk]

1 hour ago, TonySoprano said:

At age 30, Harper couldn't get 9/$150M?

So I think that's wild.  Should this be viewed as a sign that the money may potentially not be as abundant in the next deal?

[Frobby]

7 minutes ago, backwardsk said:

So I think that's wild.  Should this be viewed as a sign that the money may potentially not be as abundant in the next deal?

No.    What if Harper suffers a terrible injury in the next 4 years?

[backwardsk]

30 minutes ago, Frobby said:

No.    What if Harper suffers a terrible injury in the next 4 years?

I guess only his great-great-great-great-great grandchildren would be set for life instead of his great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandchildren.

This isn't Evan Longoria locking in his arbitration years.  If he had taken the Dodgers offer he would have made $215M+ before his age 30 season.  Yes, he could get injured, lose a limb, and not make another dime.  But even if he has a major injury like a torn Achilles, he'd come back and make more than $150M for the rest of his career pretty easily, IMO.

[TonySoprano]

Quote

In fact, if you try to reverse-engineer Harper’s contract using FanGraphs’ contract estimation tool, you find that the Phillies are starting with an assumption of paying Harper less than $6 million per win.

Year	Age	WAR	$/WAR	Est. Contract
2018	26	5.0	$6.0 M	$30.0 M
2019	27	5.0	$6.3 M	$31.5 M
2020	28	5.0	$6.6 M	$33.1 M
2021	29	5.0	$6.9 M	$34.7 M
2022	30	5.0	$7.3 M	$36.5 M
2023	31	4.5	$7.7 M	$34.5 M
2024	32	4.0	$8.0 M	$32.2 M
2025	33	3.5	$8.5 M	$29.6 M
2026	34	3.0	$8.9 M	$26.6 M
2027	35	2.5	$9.3 M	$23.3 M
2028	36	2.0	$9.8 M	$19.6 M
2029	37	1.5	$10.3 M	$15.4 M
2030	38	0.8	$10.8 M	$8.6 M
Totals		46.8		$355.6 M

[Assumptions: Five win projection for next year from FanGraphs’ projections, 5% inflation year over year in $/win, aging Curve: +0.25 WAR/yr (18-24), 0 WAR/yr (25-30),-0.5 WAR/yr (31-37),-0.75 WAR/yr (> 37).]

Six million a win was the going rate for a win in … 2008.

 

 

[24fps]

Oh look, jackrabbit goalposts...

[Redskins Rick]

15 hours ago, esmd said:

Maybe not.....but if I was a Giants fan that got to watch my team win it all 3 times in 5 friggin years, I'd sure be willing to cut them a little slack.  I mean seriously....3 WS wins in 5 years, compared to 1983?  It's not even a comparison.

You missed the point, the main comparison was two teams that had fallen into total dysfunction in the front office, total chaos.

[DrungoHazewood]

15 hours ago, LookinUp said:

I don't believe the system is broken at all. I think it's changing based on advancing assessments of player value. I don't blame owners at all. They're not looking to dump money into depreciating assets anymore. 

With that said, I do expect that labor negotiations will be highly contentious. Owners are unlikely to sign onto a system under the old model, and players haven't historically tried to advance more money to younger players. In the end, they'll have to figure out a mutually acceptable formula that gets players to x% of the revenue. That part might be harder than deciding what x% is in this case.

Broken may not be the best word, but owners aren't putting money into depreciating assets AND they still reap the benefits of a system that gives them young talent at pennies on the dollar.  The end result is quite a bit less money (as a percentage of revenue) going to the players in salary.  Compared to the past and compared to other sports.

[Redskins Rick]

New system.

Each player will be paid XXXX per season, and assume they have replacement level WAR. Based on some magic calculation based on 25 man roster and 30 team pot.

So for every + WAR over that replacement level, the player will receive XXXXX bonus added to their paycheck.

Throw in other incentive money like XXXX for Cy Young, MVP, AS, etc.

 

[DrungoHazewood]

 

8 hours ago, TonySoprano said:

In fact, if you try to reverse-engineer Harper’s contract using FanGraphs’ contract estimation tool, you find that the Phillies are starting with an assumption of paying Harper less than $6 million per win.

I don't think it's that.  I think they believe that the performance in your numbers is too high.  Over the past four years, weighted 4-3-2-1, Harper has an established rWAR value of 3.2 wins/year.  If you change his starting established value (5-win seasons in your example) to 4 you get quite close to his contract value at $8M per win.   

They're paying Harper like the market is $8M a win, he's currently a 4-win player, and he'll age normally.

[DrungoHazewood]

25 minutes ago, Redskins Rick said:

New system.

Each player will be paid XXXX per season, and assume they have replacement level WAR. Based on some magic calculation based on 25 man roster and 30 team pot.

So for every + WAR over that replacement level, the player will receive XXXXX bonus added to their paycheck.

Throw in other incentive money like XXXX for Cy Young, MVP, AS, etc.

 

How does a team budget in a system like that?  How does a team compete in a world of wildly different revenues between franchises?  

How do you deal with, say, 2012, when the Orioles and Rays each had over 90 wins but revenues half or a third or a quarter of the Yanks and Sox?  In your system there is a fixed value for each number of wins.  The '12 Orioles would probably have budgeted for a slightly less than average payroll, being optimistic.  When they dramatically overachieved they suddenly would have to come up with an additional tens of $millions to pay the players.

Let's say you set your system up to have the same overall league salary as we have today, so that 81 wins is roughly $125M in overall payroll.  That means your 47-win floor is $73M.  Each additional win is about $1.5M in payroll.  So a 90-win team would pay out $139M (plus incentives).  A 100-win team is $154M.  Last year's Red Sox would be at $166M.

That all seems fairly reasonable, except that the Yanks and Sox and Dodgers in an average year would be saving $30M, 50M, in some cases $100M in payroll over today's system, and in a good year the Rays would see their payroll roughly double compared to today.

I suppose you could make this work with heavy revenue sharing based on market size.  Teams would also have to restructure how they deal with cashflow, and I don't know how you pay players in-season, because salary is based on final numbers at the end of the year.

Also... wouldn't a team like the 2018 Sox ownership/management have an incentive to tank the last few weeks of the season?  Each win over the minimum necessary to win the division or wildcard is just costing the team money.   Actually, wouldn't every team that was out of contention have a strong financial incentive to completely tank?  The only way to minimize payroll for rebuilding would be to have a 2018 Orioles season.

[Redskins Rick]

1 minute ago, DrungoHazewood said:

How does a team budget in a system like that?  How does a team compete in a world of wildly different revenues between franchises?  

How do you deal with, say, 2012, when the Orioles and Rays each had over 90 wins but revenues half or a third or a quarter of the Yanks and Sox?  In your system there is a fixed value for each number of wins.  The '12 Orioles would probably have budgeted for a slightly less than average payroll, being optimistic.  When they dramatically overachieved they suddenly would have to come up with an additional tens of $millions to pay the players.

Let's say you set your system up to have the same overall league salary as we have today, so that 81 wins is roughly $125M in overall payroll.  That means your 47-win floor is $73M.  Each additional win is about $1.5M in payroll.  So a 90-win team would pay out $139M (plus incentives).  A 100-win team is $154M.  Last year's Red Sox would be at $166M.

That all seems fairly reasonable, except that the Yanks and Sox and Dodgers in an average year would be saving $30-50M in payroll over today's system, and in a good year the Rays would see their payroll roughly double compared to today.

I suppose you could make this work with heavy revenue sharing based on market size.  Teams would also have to restructure how they deal with cashflow, and I don't know how you pay players in-season, because salary is based on final numbers at the end of the year.

I like it.

Pay for performance.

Never fly in the real world.

[webbrick2010]

The big winners in the Manny/Harper signings

1. Yankees

2. Red Sox

3. Dodgers

4. Cardinals

5. Astros

6. Giants

7. Cubs

8. Brewers

9. Nats

10. Mets

11. Everyone but the Phillies and Padres (even the O's are stronger now than before the signings)

 

Pretty much all the well run franchises who saw two of the best players in baseball buried on franchises that still won't compete with them.

[Frobby]

1 minute ago, webbrick2010 said:

The big winners in the Manny/Harper signings

1. Yankees

2. Red Sox

3. Dodgers

4. Cardinals

5. Astros

6. Giants

7. Cubs

8. Brewers

9. Nats

10. Mets

11. Everyone but the Phillies and Padres (even the O's are stronger now than before the signings)

 

Pretty much all the well run franchises who saw two of the best players in baseball buried on franchises that still won't compete with them.

I think there’s little doubt the Phillies will compete, based on the combination of their young talent and players they have acquired this winter.    Actually, I think the NL East will be the most competitive division in baseball this year, with all the teams but the Marlins having a shot.    The Mets are probably the weakest of the other four but the Braves, Nats and Phillies are very evenly matched.   

The Padres have a great farm system, but we’ll have to wait to see how many of their highly touted prospects become impact major leaguers.    I certainly could see them competing in a year or two.    

[makoman]

45 minutes ago, Redskins Rick said:

I like it.

Pay for performance.

Never fly in the real world.

Everyone loves pay for performance until you actually have to implement it. 

In addition to the problems Drungo mentioned, what system are we using? bWAR or fWAR? Something else? What about all the Aubrey Huffs still in the union who think wRC is for dorks and RBI and wins and saves are good enough? Are we convinced any of these systems accurately value defense?How about catcher defense? Or do we tweak it every year we learn something new? 

No one will want to play on bad teams. How are vets gonna like dealing with young players? Hey Mark Trumbo, I know you’re better than Austin Hays today, but we’d like you to mentor him to help us in the future and he’s gonna take your at bats, meaning he’s literally going to take money from your pocket. You think players don’t like managerial decisions now, what about when every pinch hitter costs you money. You asking me to bunt again? That doesn’t help my paycheck!

If you want to stop the Chris Davis type problems you just stop making contracts guaranteed. I don’t know what it would take for the players to give that up, but there must be a line somewhere. 

[Redskins Rick]

7 minutes ago, makoman said:

Everyone loves pay for performance until you actually have to implement it. 

In addition to the problems Drungo mentioned, what system are we using? bWAR or fWAR? Something else? What about all the Aubrey Huffs still in the union who think wRC is for dorks and RBI and wins and saves are good enough? Are we convinced any of these systems accurately value defense?How about catcher defense? Or do we tweak it every year we learn something new? 

No one will want to play on bad teams. How are vets gonna like dealing with young players? Hey Mark Trumbo, I know you’re better than Austin Hays today, but we’d like you to mentor him to help us in the future and he’s gonna take your at bats, meaning he’s literally going to take money from your pocket. You think players don’t like managerial decisions now, what about when every pinch hitter costs you money. You asking me to bunt again? That doesn’t help my paycheck!

If you want to stop the Chris Davis type problems you just stop making contracts guaranteed. I don’t know what it would take for the players to give that up, but there must be a line somewhere. 

Dont even talk Davis, when you are handing out 13 year, 330 million dollar deal to Harper, not to mention 325 to Stanton, and 300 to Manny. Who knows what Trout gets.