Orioles offer BRob 3yr 30 million

[Mackus]

Pedroia have a NTC?

The deal doesn't have a NTC. In fact if he's traded the option is voided.

[Mark Carver]

Pedroia have a NTC?

None listed with Cot's.

[Ruzious]

Yea, people need to realize that players spend a good chunk of their careers playing for the league minimum salary, and there's nothing they can do about it. Deals buying out pre-free agency years aren't remotely comparable to deals signed on the open (or as open as MLB gets) market.

...until they're arbitration eligible - and there have been some hefty arbitration settlements recently.

[DrungoHazewood]

...until they're arbitration eligible - and there have been some hefty arbitration settlements recently.

But almost all arbitration cases end up with lower salaries than a player would get on the open market. Ryan Howard may be an exception this year, but he's in a tiny minority.

[Mackus]

Arbitration figures do not include FA deals?

I'm confused by the question.

Players are compared to the other players in the same year of service time as they are. In their final year, they can be compared to FAs I believe.

[Fan4Life]

But almost all arbitration cases end up with lower salaries than a player would get on the open market. Ryan Howard may be an exception this year, but he's in a tiny minority.

Do arbitration numbers include salaries of players with similar MLB time that are locked up into long term deals?

[DrungoHazewood]

I agree with everything you wrote here IF I accepted the bolded lines at the top. I'd be quite surprised if he held his production this well based on the trends for 2B. I would project him to be more between

4.5 this year, 4.0 in 2010, 3.0 in 2011, and 2.0 in 2012

AND

4.0 this year, 3.0 in 2010, 2.0 in 2011, and 1.0 in 2012.

You could be right, of course. Or he could be Ray Durham. With the exception of 2007 Durham has been worth between 2.5 and 4.0 wins every year between age 31 and 37. Or he could be Jay Bell, or Bobby Grich, or Frank White, or Tony Fernandez, who were all valuable through their mid-30s.

Prior to 2008 PECOTA had Roberts as a .275/.360/.435 kind of hitter through 2012, just losing some value each year as his defense and baserunning decline.

It's all an educated guess. But I don't think Roberts is a bad guy to gamble on being worth having around in 2012.

[Leitch]

Do arbitration numbers include salaries of players with similar MLB time that are locked up into long term deals?

Were those salaries determined by an arbiter?

[mweb]

I'm still curious why flashbacks of the O's signing an older player than Brob, one who has been more than worth his contract so far, to an extension is viewed as a negative relating to Roberts?

[TommyD4207]

I'm still curious why flashbacks of the O's signing an older player than Brob, one who has been more than worth his contract so far, to an extension is viewed as a negative relating to Roberts?

Because it doesn't involve a trade and that's unacceptable!

[davearm]

Baltimoron posted 48 wins as being a RL team. Interesting in that to get to 82 wins, you'd need to average 1.36 WAR (34 wins) per player which would bring your payroll over $130M. which doesn't seem to correlate correctly.

I know others have touched on this already, but the key here is that it'd cost $130M to buy all 82 wins at free agency rates.

In reality, teams will get a good chunk of those wins at less than FA rates using younger pre-arb and arb-eligible players they've developed or acquired.

IMO it's not too farfetched to think hypothetically, a club might have to be at $130M to play .500 ball if it were getting nothing useful (ie, above replacement level) at all from its farm system.

[davearm]

Do arbitration numbers include salaries of players with similar MLB time that are locked up into long term deals?

The arbitration process is all about establishing salary figures based players that are comparable in two dimensions: production and service time.

It really doesn't matter if the comp's salary was determined by an arbitrator or was stipulated in a multiyear deal like the ones Longoria and Braun (amongst many others obviously) have.

Now having said that, if God forbid ( ) Ryan Braun were to slump to a .650 OPS in three years, I doubt other arb-eligible .650 hitters would make much hay arguing that they ought to be paid like Braun is scheduled to be (based upon a much different expectation at the time the deal was entered into).

[Lucky Jim]

I know others have touched on this already, but the key here is that it'd cost $130M to buy all 82 wins at free agency rates.

In reality, teams will get a good chunk of those wins at less than FA rates using younger pre-arb and arb-eligible players they've developed or acquired.

IMO it's not too farfetched to think hypothetically, a club might have to be at $130M to play .500 ball if it were getting nothing useful (ie, above replacement level) at all from its farm system.

Think: Orioles, from 1985 onward.

[RShack]

Anyway, here's a better explanation than what I can give.

According to that, a marginal W above replacement is worth $2.31M when you include everybody, and not just FA's and nobody else.

The other part I found interesting was this:

The data makes it fairly apparent that the premier free agents on the market don’t negotiate in terms of dollars per year nearly as much they do in total years. Alex Rodriguez was more concerned about a 10 year deal than he was about getting $30 million per season. Same with Sabathia and Teixeira this year.

Great free agents get long (7-10 year) contracts. Good free agents get multi-year (4-6 year) contracts. Average free agents get short-term (2-3 year) commitments. Below average players get one year deals.

They all get paid similarly in terms of $/win, but the length of the deal is where the premium free agents are getting their extra money.

Now, that makes perfect sense. I just never thought about it exactly like that before. Implicitly I did, but not explicitly.

This provides another way to think about BRob.

• Leaving his soft value to the team and city out of it, nobody is saying he's "great".
• While some may disagree, I think most don't think he's "average" either.
• This leaves the middle category of "good".

If so, then a 4-year contract is at the short end of the 4-6 year range mentioned.

[RShack]

I'm still curious why flashbacks of the O's signing an older player than Brob, one who has been more than worth his contract so far, to an extension is viewed as a negative relating to Roberts?

Because it doesn't involve a trade and that's unacceptable!

Really.

Reminds me of trends in how people buy cars.

Cars used to wear out and begin to have "issues" way, way sooner than they do now.

These days, 140,000 miles is like the old 60,000 miles.

Yet, before the economy started sucking eggs, the trend was away from long-term ownership in favor of 3-year leases.

Which, with rare exception, is about as long as some folks here wanna keep a ballplayer. Then, they want a new model.