Markakis extension on hold

[osfan83]

Looks to me like Nick is telling the O's "show me this team can compete and I will sign for market prices. If the team is not going to compete, then you will have to pay above market prices for my services."

[ChaosLex]

Why do other clubs make things look so easy... ?

I know the grass is always greener on the other side, but this is ridiculous!

[ChaosLex]

If that story is true, we're screwed and I won't be here for another decade. I'm a patient guy, but I would hope we never have to deal with outright incompetence again.

You know things are going bad when vatech gets worked up in a thread before I do.

[TonySoprano]

There sure are some negative attitudes around here.

[Frobby]

Let's say the offer was 5/36..

1st year: 3 million

2nd year: 5 million

3rd year: 8 million

4th year: 10 million

5th year: 10 million

That is something AM may have felt he "should" sign.

I think it could be realistic that he offered it...Again, we heard that the offer was a low ball offer...To say it is a low ball offer, it would have to be something like that.

Well, that's a lot more than $5-6 mm a year, that Tony Soprano quoted. It's lower than I would have started with, but it is not so low as to be laughable as a starting position. The comparable years for the contract Pedroia just signed would be 5/$39 mm.

$5-6 mm per year, on the other hand, would just be so insanely low as to be insulting. Kind of like offering Carlos Delgado 3/$25-30 mm a few years ago. But that one wasn't MacPhail's doing.

[JTrea81]

Markakis doesn't seem ticked, nor does MacPhail. That's all that really matters here.

[Frobby]

Markakis doesn't seem ticked, nor does MacPhail. That's all that really matters here.

Nick, as usual, is showing good plate discipline, waiting for a pitch he likes. This is not an impatient guy.

[TonySoprano]

Nick, as usual, is showing good plate discipline, waiting for a pitch he likes. This is not an impatient guy.

The count is 2-0. Nick steps out of the batter's box. MacPhail, on the mound, looks toward the owner's box for a sign. And now there's a rain delay.

[Sports Guy]

Well, that's a lot more than $5-6 mm a year, that Tony Soprano quoted. It's lower than I would have started with, but it is not so low as to be laughable as a starting position. The comparable years for the contract Pedroia just signed would be 5/$39 mm.

$5-6 mm per year, on the other hand, would just be so insanely low as to be insulting. Kind of like offering Carlos Delgado 3/$25-30 mm a few years ago. But that one wasn't MacPhail's doing.

Well, I assume they are talking about the average year of the contract.

[Baltimoron]

One thing to point out is that Rios was in a slightly different situation, because he previously had been a super-two and was going into his second year of arbitration eligibility when he signed his deal. For that reason, it's probable that he would have made more money in his three remaining arbitration-eligible years than Nick would have made, due to seniority, even though Nick may be the better player. You also have to factor in that the two extra years on his deal are relatively cheap.

Frobby, I love your stuff but I think the little boost in Rios' arbitration awards because of his super-2 status is only de minimis and in the big picture a red herring. Nick's way better than Rios was and its not particularly close.

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We still have to consider baseball salaries have basically always been inflationary, even in real bad times, and we are a year later than the 2007/2008 dollars in which Rios was paid.

That said, on average the last three years of pre-free agency arbitration are 42%/54%/85% of a player's free market worth. link

So a super two is maybe 45/60/90? Maybe a 10% difference over non-super twos? But its still a percentage of the player's free agent worth.

And that leads to the bolded: there is no way anybody can reasonably dispute that Nick is way, way better now than Rios was when he signed his extension.

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Rios was coming into his age 27 season and in his 4 ML seasons he had put up batting runs* of -10.5, -11.9, 14, 20.2

Nick is coming into his age 25 season and has put up batting runs of 4.3, 19.5, 33.9.

Nick averages 19 batting runs; Rios had averaged 3. That's a 1.6 win edge, which is huge. And Nick was 1.3 wins better than the year Rios put up when he got his contract.

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Rios is a great fielder but Nick's pretty good too. Lets give Rios a half a win in the field and Nick is still over a win better. A win is worth just under 5 million dollars in today's market.

Throw in that Nick is also 2 years younger, Nick has shown major improvement each season and just had a MONSTER year at just 24 and we see nick also has a lot more upside.

Rios is a player but Nick is a much more valuable asset right now than Rios was last offseason when he signed his deal.

With all that said, if I have to give Nick slightly more than Rios got in order to close the deal, then that's what I'd do.

I'd go much, much higher than that to ensure Nick is an O.

It would be an egregious error if McPhail to only willing to go slightly above what Rios got.

Why do we want to give all this money to Teixeira or AJ, Nick's already more valuable than AJ and has a very good shot of being more valuable than Teix in 3 years.

How many other position players would you pick before Nick if everybody suddenly became a free agent, maybe 10 or so other position players?

*batting runs = "btRuns" available on a player's page at baseball reference page. You really want to use a linear weight measure like this to look at offense (although there are better linear weights measures than this one they are harder to find).

BR defines it in their glossary as "Adjusted Batting Runs - This is the linear weights method pioneered by Pete Palmer. It is a bit more accurate than Runs Created and also handles differing offensive environments more easily. It is adjusted to the park and league the player played in. It is also relative to league average, so negative values mean they were below average for the league. In my calculations, I consider league average without pitchers included. See the ESPN Baseball Encyclopedia for a full description."

[El Gordo]

Oh, I'm not worked up. Just telling it like it is. I don't have any plans at the moment. I'm in "wait and see" mode.

However, if this team continues to look for the banausic choices all the time and continues to fall short with even that effort, I'm not going to scream adjurations at them for another decade. Instead, I'll just defenestrate the team (figuratively, of course). To continue to root for them if they are so inept as to believe that Markakis would accept a 6 mil per deal would be about as intelligent as being autocoprophagous.

Wow I'm impressed. I rarely get sent to the dictionary here. Lets just hope their next offer is more Brobdingnagian than banausic. Are you an architect?

[Frobby]

Frobby, I love your stuff but I think the little boost in Rios' arbitration awards because of his super-2 status is only de minimis and in the big picture a red herring. Nick's way better than Rios was and its not particularly close.

This was a really good post and I can't really disagree strongly with anything you said. However, I do think that during the three arbitration-eligible years, Rios' extra 2/3 of a season of seniority probably would have netted him an extra $1 mm per year as compared to what a player with 3.000 years of service time would have gotten. Just look at what the O's paid Bruce Chen in 2006 compared to what they paid Rodrigo Lopez.

As to your batting runs comparsion, that's all legit but I don't think Rios' first two seasons were considered very indicative of his future performance when Rios signed his deal. He was coming off a very good season and I think the Jays expected him to either stay at or improve on that level. I also think his conventional stats were more comparable to Nick's that more sophisticated sabermetrics like batting runs. So while I believe you are, in fact, correct that Markakis is (and likely will be) much better than Rios, I'm not sure that within baseball the difference is considered that pronounced.

As to your point that you'd be willing to pay Nick "much more" than Rios, I've said (and did say in my long post) that I'd pay him 7/$80 mm if that's what it took to sign him. That's significantly more than Rios - isn't it?

[El Gordo]

I'd love to play this cool, but it wouldn't be right. Check out this thread and clarity will follow, my friend: http://forum.orioleshangout.com/forums/showthread.php?t=72858

FYI, I'd heard banausic in high school, but wouldn't have been able to use it properly at this point. The other words I knew and could use in a congruous fashion. I've never even heard of Brobdingnagian before.

BTW, I'm a Chemical Engineer by degree, but I'm the atypical math/science geek who did well on the verbal sections of the SAT. I love to read and write.

Sneaky.:laughlol: But Banausic was the only one I didn't know. Sadly, I've known about coprophragia for years. I won't say how. Brobdingnagian is from Gullivers Travels. It refers to the land of the giants.

[ChaosLex]

There sure are some negative attitudes around here.

Swap "negative" with "realistic" and I'll agree with you.

[Anonymous]

Sneaky.:laughlol: But Banausic was the only one I didn't know. Sadly, I've known about coprophragia for years. I won't say how. Brobdingnagian is from Gullivers Travels. It refers to the land of the giants.

Ironic, ain't it, that Brob is the land of the giants?