Harper to Phillies

[esmd]

15 hours ago, OsFanSinceThe80s said:

Davis gets paid until 2037.  

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.camdenchat.com/platform/amp/2016/1/16/10780406/orioles-news-chris-davis-contract-deferred-money

The money will come due eventually, with Davis structured to receive a $3.5 million payment each year from 2023-32, with an additional $1.4 million coming each year from 2033-37.

I knew this was coming when I posted what I did.  Still...you suck.  Lol....j/k.

[DrungoHazewood]

1 hour ago, Redskins Rick said:

I like it.

Pay for performance.

Never fly in the real world.

Yea, it's a beautiful system except for the very long list of intractable problems that make it totally irrelevant and impossible in this universe.

Imagine a system for your profession where you get paid $11 an hour all year, and then your Christmas bonus is somewhere in the range of minus-$10k to +$150k, all based on a formula Bill James came up with.  I'm sure you'd implement that today if you could.

[Redskins Rick]

1 minute ago, DrungoHazewood said:

Yea, it's a beautiful system except for the very long list of intractable problems that make it totally irrelevant and impossible in this universe.

Imagine a system for your profession where you get paid $11 an hour all year, and then your Christmas bonus is somewhere in the range of minus-$10k to +$150k, all based on a formula Bill James came up with.  I'm sure you'd implement that today if you could.

LOL, I like your post.

Reminds me of some crazy manager bonuses they get $$$$$ for being cheap and saving the company money. They get rewarded and the workers and customers get the shaft.

Dont fix the huge pot hole in the receiving area. Not going to spend $500 of my company budget. Doesn't matter that it broke 5 rims, 10 tires and 4 tie rod ends, that came out the maintenance budget and doesn't matter to me.

 

[Redskins Rick]

16 minutes ago, esmd said:

I knew this was coming when I posted what I did.  Still...you suck.  Lol....j/k.

The Mets finally finished paying off Bonila's contract.

[DrungoHazewood]

36 minutes ago, makoman said:

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. 

Yes, if the owners wanted to make guaranteed contracts their top issue I'm sure there would be a way to get the MLBPA to agree.  One way would be to set compensation at a fixed percentage of revenues somewhere north of where they are today.  Let's say it's 42% today, maybe the player's accept non-guaranteed contracts if they fix that at 50%. 

Or maybe the trade is that every deal in free agency includes an every-year player opt-out.  That would probably be the most fair trade - owners, you don't want guaranteed deals, fine.  Then I can opt out whenever I want, too.  During the offseason either party can terminate the contract for any reason.  

[TonySoprano]

1 hour ago, DrungoHazewood said:

 

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.

I agree that Harper's WAR projections were overstated.  Same article ran these numbers for Money Machadough

Quote

And it doesn’t get much better if you look through this lens at Machado’s deal.

Year	Age	WAR	$/WAR	Est. Contract
2018	26	5.4	$5.5 M	$29.7 M
2019	27	5.4	$5.8 M	$31.2 M
2020	28	5.4	$6.1 M	$32.7 M
2021	29	5.4	$6.4 M	$34.4 M
2022	30	5.4	$6.7 M	$36.1 M
2023	31	4.9	$7.0 M	$34.5 M
2024	32	4.4	$7.4 M	$32.5 M
2025	33	3.9	$7.8 M	$30.3 M
2026	34	3.4	$8.1 M	$27.7 M
2027	35	2.9	$8.6 M	$24.8 M
Totals		46.5		$313.8 M

Looks like the Padres paid even less per win than the Phillies did.

 

[DrungoHazewood]

13 minutes ago, TonySoprano said:

I agree that Harper's WAR projections were overstated.  Same article ran these numbers for Money Machadough

 

I don't know why they're fixating on $/win to make it seem like they're paying way less than $8M.  All you have to do is assume lower production over the life of the deal.  I think the way to look at this is not that they're pushing the value of $/win in free agency down, it's that they're being more aggressive on risk and decline.  

[OsFanSinceThe80s]

 

1 minute ago, makoman said:

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. 

Also don’t allow Scott Boras to directly negotiate with your team’s owner without having your GM involved.

Davis might have been a Detroit Tiger if their front office didn’t talk the owner from signing him.

[wildbillhiccup]

What's interesting about this signing to me is the recent history of the franchise. I thought the Phillies would have been a little more gun shy about handing out such a long contract after the Ryan Howard debacle. I'd say in the last decade they've made one good decision and one bad decision in terms of long term deals. Extending Howard was the bad decision and not resigning Werth was a good decision. It will be interesting to see how the Harper signing works out. If he's able to stay healthy I personally think he'll earn his pay for at least 6 - 7 years of the contract. I'm just not sure how his game will age in his 30s as he starts to lose some of his athleticism though. If that's enough to get them to a few World Series it might be worth it. 

[DrungoHazewood]

16 minutes ago, wildbillhiccup said:

I thought the Phillies would have been a little more gun shy about handing out such a long contract after the Ryan Howard debacle. 

Two entirely different risk profiles.  The Howard contract was abysmal from before day one - a $100M+ deal for a one-dimensional first baseman starting at the age of 32.  Based on reasonable assumptions Howard was worth maybe 4/50 or 60, he got what... 5/125?

Even being pessimistic on Harper I think he was always going to sign for $250M+.

[OsFanSinceThe80s]

1 hour ago, esmd said:

I knew this was coming when I posted what I did.  Still...you suck.  Lol....j/k.

Couldn’t help myself. 

[bobmc]

Humorous take on the upcoming season in the NL East:

 

[esmd]

YES!  We can still get VVM!  Go get it done Elias!!!!

 

[LookinUp]

4 hours 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 $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.

Without pure socialism (e.g., 100% revenue sharing), you won't get an even playing field for teams and thus you won't get owners to agree to real performance-based contracts. Without real extensive revenue sharing, there has to be another way where relatively poorer teams can extract value out of lower paid players. Performance-based contracts can't work. Thus continues the viscous cycle.

As you've mentioned many times, baseball is a closed system. Only 30 teams allowed. All always in the league. None dropping out. They've limited competition and set up a system where teams compete for the same talent pool with vastly different resources. It's a recipe for the rich cities, which makes sense because they pull in the most revenue from TV deals, etc. 

In the end, the theories about how to fix this are all fantastical because they won't happen. What will happen is some tweaks to the existing agreement so players income as a % revenues stops to regress, or hits some targeted amount through the institution of things like team salary floors. They're tweaking the margins because they will never agree to a system that puts all teams, and thus players, on a level playing field.

[TonySoprano]

Quote

“Bryce took less AAV. He took more years,” Boras said, comparing the deal to the Machado contract. “And we’re playing on a winning team. Bryce Harper wanted to play on a winning team now and one that has the revenues to sustain it. He got all those things. When Manny Machado is 35, let’s see if he gets those millions over the remaining three years. You’d better be a real good defensive player, too. I did it for [Adrian] Beltre.”

To surpass Stanton, what Boras and Harper did essentially was to use the last three years as the equivalent of deferred money to help the Phillies reduce the amount counted toward the Competitive Balance Tax, or luxury tax threshold. That AAV still leaves room for the Phillies to bid on Mike Trout if Trout becomes a free agent after the 2020 season. A club source said before this offseason began that the club had enough money to sign both Machado and Harper, but wanted just one of them in order to keep money in reserve for Trout.

 

Quote

Before the process even began he lost a huge bargaining chip when Harper’s incumbent team, the Washington Nationals, sent an offer on the last weekend of the regular season. It was reported to be $300 million over 10 years, but included so much deferred money over such a long period—Harper would be 60 years old when the last payments were made—that the net present value was $184 million. The Harper camp saw the offer as little more than a publicity gesture to appease fans

 

Quote

“Corner outfield is the easiest place to find a bat,” said one club president. “He doesn’t stand out as much as Machado, a righthanded-hitting third baseman who hits righthanded pitching.”

Said another club executive, “At best, he’s an average defensive player. At best.”

Some worried about how his violent swing would hold up.

“He’s Tiger Woods with that swing,” said one GM. “I’d take him for a few years, but it’s hard to see how that body is going to hold up when you swing like that. You saw how Tiger’s body broke down.”

As some suspected, until this week, the Phillies were the only player at the poker table - 

Quote

But Boras knew something was missing: competition.

 

Quote

The Dodgers had been playing a stealth game with Harper’s camp, staying out of the headlines but making their interest known to Harper and Boras. They “talked with them off and on again all throughout the winter,” said a source familiar with their strategy. But Los Angeles never discussed the kind of long-term deal Harper wanted

 

Quote

When the news broke that the Dodgers met with Boras and Harper, the Giants reacted. Owner Larry Baer and president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi were next to jet into McCarran, doing so two days after the Dodgers did. It was their second meeting with the Harper camp in two weeks.

It took four months and 20 trips to Las Vegas from his Orange County base, but now Boras had the auction atmosphere that creates market value in free agency. He had two rivals in the game, with the Dodgers willing to set a record for AAV and the Giants willing to go past 10 years. Now he could return to Middleton to get those last three years that would give Harper the all-time record for most money guaranteed to a player. The Phillies no longer were bidding against themselves.

 

Quote

The $330 million over 13 years works out to a net present value of about $241 million. That’s still about 31% greater than what the Nationals offered at the end of last season.

 

https://www.si.com/mlb/2019/03/01/bryce-harper-philadelphia-phillies-contract-scott-boras