High-End Free Agents: Do They Exist?

A common refrain during this point in baseball’s calendar is that the free agent market isn’t what it used to be. The underlying premise is that more and more teams place more and more focus on locking up their young, talented players to long-term contract extensions.  In turn, fewer and fewer young and talented players are reaching free agency. With the free agent market drying up, teams must pay a significant premium for the few players that do reach free agency that are both relatively young and relatively talented. Ken Rosenthal highlighted this line of thinking in an article last year:

One of the game’s rising young stars recently told me he was concerned about the flurry of contract extensions in baseball. The player didn’t want to be identified, but his thoughts intrigued me, in no small part because he is a candidate for an extension himself. The player’s point was this: Free agency helped make the players union into a powerhouse. But now, with fewer top players reaching free agency, who is going to drive the top of the market? Shouldn’t players feel a sense of responsibility to those who came before them and those who will follow? Fair questions, particularly if you look at the next two free-agent classes, which are almost devoid of stars. But when I expressed the player’s concerns to the head of the union, Michael Weiner, and a prominent agent, Scott Boras, I didn’t get the answers I expected. Neither views the trend as necessarily a problem.

But is this really a trend at all? Let’s look at that question more closely. Let’s begin by looking at the 2014-2015 crop of free agents.  Baseball Reference has a list that is published here. As of this writing, that list contains 306 players. These 306 players have an average age of 31.6 and a median age of 31.0. The average WAR is at 5.54, which reflects outliers at the high end (like Ichiro and Jason Giambi); the median WAR for these 306 players is only 1.90. Of these 306, there are only six players that both (a) are 30 years old or younger (using Baseball Reference’s midpoint method to calculate ages, this is the age the player will be on July 1 of the next season), and (b) have achieved 12 wins above replacement in their career. These six players, in order of descending career WAR, are (i) Pablo Sandoval, (ii) Billy Butler, (iii) Asdrubal Cabrera, (iv) Melky Cabrera, (v) Colby Rasmus, and (vi) Max Scherzer.

If you are general manager looking to fill multiple holes in your roster, this is not the most inspiring group, especially when considering the cost of doing so. This group does reflect the current narrative — there does appear to be a dearth of high-end talent available on the free agent market. But how does this group compare to prior free agent cohorts? Has the free agent market really dried up, or has it always been dry?

Again, Baseball Reference is helpful. On its site, it lists the free agent signings for each year. For example, its list of 2013-2014 free agents is published here. Using the same criteria as before (30 or younger, and 12 career WAR or better), the 2013-2014 free agent crop had seven relatively young and relatively talented players: (i) Josh Johnson, (ii) Brian McCann, (iii) Jacoby Ellsbury, (iv) Ubaldo Jimenez, (v) Scott Kazmir, (vi) Chris Young (the hitter), and (vii) Matt Garza. Perhaps a bit better than 2014-2015, in general, but not markedly different. Looking back further, in summary fashion, here is a look at the free agent market during the ten seasons leading up to this one:

Total Number of Signings/Free Agents* Average Age Median Age Average WAR Median WAR Relatively Young and Relatively Talented (30 and younger; 12 bWAR or better)
2004 493 31.5 31 5.27 0.3 12
2005 420 31.5 31 5.03 0.5 6
2006 411 31.4 31 6.06 0.4 10
2007 391 31.3 31 5.41 0.4 1
2008 433 31.1 30 5.44 0.4 6
2009 443 31.2 31 5.14 0.6 6
2010 445 31.2 31 5.76 0.6 4
2011 417 31.3 31 5.46 0.6 7
2012 426 31.3 30 4.74 0.7 8
2013 413 31.1 31 4.96 0.9 7
2014 306 31.6 31 5.54 1.9 6

As for a list of the remaining names of the relatively young and relatively talented players appearing in the table above, they are:

2012-13:  Zack Greinke, Russell Martin, Michael Bourn, B.J. Upton, Melky Cabrera, Anibal Sanchez, Edwin Jackson, Stephen Drew

2011-12:  Jose Reyes, Grady Seizemore, Dontrelle Willis, Francisco Rodriguez, Aaron Hill, Prince Fielder, Kelly Johnson

2010-11:  Carl Crawford, Dontrelle Willis, Mark Prior, Jhonny Peralta

2009-10:Matt Holliday, Jon Garland, Rich Harden, Coco Crisp, Hank Blalock, Austin Kearns

2008-09:  CC Sabathia, Mark Teixeira, Jon Garland, Mark Prior, Francisco Rodriguez, Adam Dunn

2007-08:  Aaron Rowand

2006-07:  Barry Zito, Kerry Wood, Mark Mulder, Marcus Giles, Jeff Weaver, Wade Miller, Randy Wolf, Juan Pierre, Aramis Ramirez, Aubrey Huff

2005-06:  Rafael Furcal, Jeff Weaver, Wade Miller, Ramon Hernandez, Paul Konerko, A.J. Burnett

2004-05:  Carlos Beltran, J.D. Drew, Adrian Beltre, Troy Glaus, Edgar Renteria, Matt Morris, Richard Hidalgo, Eric Milton, Kevin Milwood, Placido Polanco, Wade Miller, Richie Sexson

What can we learn from looking at information from the ten free agent classes before this year’s free agent class?

  1. The free agent classes have looked very similar, on average, for the past ten years.
  2. Over the past ten years, free agency has not yielded the bumper crop of talent that has been suggested.  The locking up of young talent prior to free agency does not appear to be a recent trend.
  3. The appearance of high-end talent, particularly high-end talent in the fat part of an aging curve, is at best sporadic (occasionally yielding a young high-end bat, such as Carlos Beltran, Adrian Beltre, Matt Holliday, or Prince Fielder, but almost never a pitcher with his best years ahead).

Based on this look, it has always been difficult to find players in their prime on the free-agent market. They exist, but they are rare. This does not appear to be a new trend.* The number of free agents in 2014 does not include the players that have not been tendered a contract for arbitration. Once this group of non-tendered players become free agents this winter, it will both inflate the number of available free agents and depress the average and median WAR figures shown in the table.





4 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Billy
9 years ago

Not to criticize, but I must ask a few questions.

First off, two of the years with the largest numbers were ’04 and ’06. What does the data look like if we go back a few more years? Second, some of those players you listed as top free agents were already recognizably bad by the time they hit free agency, namely pitchers that had been hurt or just got awful and put up most of their value in the first few years of their careers. I admire the objectivity of your selection process, but it may be able to be improved upon. Anybody who was a free agent two years in a row while under the age of 36 (much less 31) probably wasn’t very desirable. Maybe just go with 6 WAR in the 2 or 3 years leading up to free agency?

Also, could it be that with more fans becoming analytically inclined and more aware that players primes aren’t really in their 30’s, at all in most cases, we’ve simply become more aware of the fact that there are few talented, in-their-prime players out on the market. I’m not going to lie to you: there was a time when the prospect of a 33-year-old prominent slugger with little defensive value signing with my team would have seemed great to me. As I’ve become better educated in these things, I have come to see the value of players differently. I doubt I am the only one.

Anyhow, great work. I wish I could put together something like this. I have my idea, I just don’t know how to go about collecting and processing the data I need.

George
9 years ago
Reply to  Billy

Thanks for the comment. I think that 6 bWAR in the 2 or 3 years leading up to free agency would be a bit easier, but it would be a bit harder to sort on Baseball-Reference.

The question of why there is a dearth of talent could be more interesting. I have a theory that the “why” could be shifting. In the past, players could be getting traded from small market teams to large market teams prior to free agency, and then the large market team could sign them to an extension. Now, perhaps more and more teams, even the small market teams, are extending their players beyond age 30. That’s just a theory though.

JuicyBones-Phil
9 years ago

Writing an article about free agent values without discussing Adrian Beltre’s free agent deal with the Rangers is just wrong. Great piece, but he is proof that sometimes big deals can work out, though they often don’t. The Beltre deal is the high end of what teams want to see from a free agent deal.

http://www.fangraphs.com/statss.aspx?playerid=639&position=3B

George
9 years ago

I don’t disagree that the Beltre signing is an example of a good free agent contract. He just missed the 2010-2011 offseason list because he was 31 on July 1, 2011. I think the larger point holds that, over the last ten years, the number of young, talented players on the free agent market has been low.