Trout, 12/430

[Luke-OH]

4 minutes ago, esmd said:

Yeah I know what Fangraphs says.  We'll see how it shakes out in the real world.

Well MLB teams have hired away a bunch of Fangraphs talent, so I think the real world thinks there is plenty of value in the analysis done there. 

[Frobby]

6 minutes ago, Redskins Rick said:

I think its something like 67% were not worth the deal.

True.   But very few of them were signed when the player was going into his age 27 season, either.   Here is my breakdown of all the $100 mm+ contacts through 2018:  

 

[El Gordo]

5 minutes ago, Frobby said:

 

He doesn’t need to be as good as he’s been over the next 12 years to earn his deal.   Per Fangraphs, he’s been worth $494 mm in 7+ seasons.   He can slow down considerably and be worth $430 mm in the next 12.   

He's averaged 8 WAR per year the first 8 years. He needs to average 4.4 the next 12.

[waroriole]

25 minutes ago, Redskins Rick said:

The difference is, its their money that purchased the franchise.

So if the owners stop giving out big contracts, lowered ticket prices and player contracts, then the stadiums would be full of fans.

 

And it’s the abilities of players that give them the value in their franchise. 

[Just Regular]

9 minutes ago, Redskins Rick said:

pitchers like Price while good, amazes me how much money they can get, they scare me more than position players, as they already have a ton of innings on their arms, and 1 pitch way from TJ and 18 months time on the DL.

 

Dombrowski's gonna Dombrowski.  That's not all bad as WS rings sometimes come with it.

He's got a big year coming up - the Mookie benchmarks are now in place, but he's two years away and immediately Sale and Bogaerts are just below the Machado/Harper tier in their own right.  Certainly when I have hopes of being better than the Red Sox in 2022, it involves one or two of their current excellent players being somewhere else.

I'm probably overreading into it, but it's telling that they invested a high draft pick last year in Durbin Feltman, a Chris Ray type to contribute before the band starts to breakup.

[OsFanSinceThe80s]

50 minutes ago, Frobby said:

Mookie’s last 3 years: 9.7, 6.4, 10.9 rWAR.

Trout’s last 3 years: 10.5, 6.7, 10.2 rWAR.

Trout missed 39 games on the DL in 2017, and 19 in 2018.    Betts missed 14 games on the DL in 2018.

Slight edge to Trout over the last three years, but Betts has been pretty close.  

Didn’t realize Betts was that close to Trout in WAR. 

[Number5]

20 minutes ago, Redskins Rick said:

I think its something like 67% were not worth the deal.

Charlie Finley suggested 40-odd years ago that they should just go ahead and make every player a free agent every year.  One season at a time.  No albatross contracts.  Sounded crazy, but it is interesting to think what might have happened had they listened to him.

[Redskins Rick]

15 minutes ago, Frobby said:

True.   But very few of them were signed when the player was going into his age 27 season, either.   Here is my breakdown of all the $100 mm+ contacts through 2018:  

 

Trip down memory lane, kudos.

[mdbdotcom]

Forget the Angels needing insurance on Trout. Mike Trout needs marriage insurance. A California divorce with all that money in play would set a new record for MLB player divorces.

[theocean]

1 hour ago, Frobby said:

This reminds me of a point.    California has a law that limits the maximum length of employment contracts to 7 years.    As I understand it, that means that if Manny or Trout wanted to get out of their contacts after 7 years, the teams would be unable to enforce them.   I’m neither an employment lawyer nor licensed in California, so don’t take this as gospel.   I read it here: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/how-mike-trout-could-legally-become-a-free-agent/

I remember reading something about that when Pujols signed. I think the litigation involved in that would take longer than the player's remaining career.

 

[esmd]

47 minutes ago, Luke-OH said:

Well MLB teams have hired away a bunch of Fangraphs talent, so I think the real world thinks there is plenty of value in the analysis done there. 

I'm not trying to dispute the validity of analytics, or Fangraphs, for that matter.  But I think it's easy to lose context in number, and it's a pretty big risk to assume that Trout will be worth 4.4 WAR per year (on average) over the next 12 years.  12 years is an eternity in the lifespan of a professional athlete.  Tons of guys have entire careers that don't last 12 years.  I'm just saying that we'll have to wait and see what happens, but IMO, it's an unacceptable risk.  For me, it's not the AAV, it's the length of the deal (and Harper and Machado's deals, TBH) that I can't accept.

[esmd]

I'd like to also apologize if I came off snarky toward Frobby.  I didn't mean to sound like a @#*& there, but in print I could see how it could've come off like that.  It certainly wasn't my intent.

[esmd]

15 minutes ago, theocean said:

I remember reading something about that when Pujols signed. I think the litigation involved in that would take longer than the player's remaining career.

 

It would make the O's/Nats/MASN case look like a playground argument settled by a 3rd grade teacher, lol.....

[Frobby]

9 minutes ago, esmd said:

I'd like to also apologize if I came off snarky toward Frobby.  I didn't mean to sound like a @#*& there, but in print I could see how it could've come off like that.  It certainly wasn't my intent.

Don’t worry, I didn’t take it that way.    

I agree it’s a very long deal, I just think that if Trout has four more years at his current level and then tapers off the next four and then is just marginal the final four, his production will still justify the deal.    

[Frobby]

2 hours ago, Number5 said:

Could the teams get out of the contract after seven years for the same reason?

No, it’s a one sided law, as I understand it.