Archive for Free Agents

Last week, Ben Clemens wrote a fantastic piece comparing how well he, the FanGraphs crowd, and a set of other baseball websites and analysts did at predicting the fates of 2025 MLB free agents. His conclusion is that we, the crowd, did an overall great job. I concur. Yay, us!

Unaware that Ben had a piece in the works, I also spent time over the past few weeks testing the wisdom of the FanGraphs crowd against what free agents actually received this offseason, and hoped to publish my work in the newly revived Community Blog. After Ben’s article was published, the editorial staff at FanGraphs noted that I took slightly different slices of the data and conducted different analyses. They encouraged me to refine and update some of my analysis so they could then run it as a companion piece.

“Wisdom of the crowd” is the idea that the collective opinion of a diverse, independent group of individuals will come to a better decision than that of even the most well-informed individual expert. While it doesn’t always bear out, where would we be without the wisdom of crowdsources like Reddit, Quora, Wikipedia… or FanGraphs?

Beyond just being a fun way to engage with readers, the FanGraphs free agent crowdsource predictions exercise represents a good test of the “wisdom of the crowd” theory. Let’s see how wise this crowd turned out to be.

To test our wisdom, on February 17 and then again on March 8, I downloaded the excel file of the 2025 Free Agent Tracker. I then selected for every free agent who signed for a total contract value of at least $2 million, resulting in 105 cases. (Jon Berti and Amed Rosario just made the cut with one-year, $2 million deals; Mike Tauchman and Michael A. Taylor just missed it at one year and $1.95 million.) I then sorted out the players who didn’t receive a crowdsource estimate, reducing the pool to 67 players.

These 67 players were predicted by us to receive a collective 153 years of contracts (an average of 2.28 years per player) for a collective total of $2,886,520,000 and an average contract of $43,082,388.

However, this was an overall good year for free agents — just ask Juan Soto (15 years, $765 million) or Max Fried (8 years, $218 million) — and they ended up collectively out-earning our expectations by 10.4%. These 67 free agents signed a collective 150 years of contracts (we were 98.7% accurate in cumulative contract length!) for a collective $3,186,325,000, with an average contract of $47,557,090 (an AAV of just over $19 million).

Our collective wisdom was pretty good, but we underestimated the market by 10.4%. Let’s take a more detailed look at what happened.

Analyzing the Widest Prediction Gaps
In my research, I looked at the differences between what the FanGraphs crowd predicted and the actual signings. Again, I compared total contract value to the median crowdsourced prediction. (I know this is an oversimplification. I couldn’t think of an elegant way to include things like the “value” of opt-outs, etc.)

The FanGraphs crowd was within $2 million of the actual contract value for 22 of the free agents and got two exactly right, the one-year deals that Justin Verlander ($15 million) and Caleb Ferguson ($3 million) signed.

Some free agents signed for considerably more than we expected. In terms of total amounts, Soto, Fried, Blake Snell (5 years, $182 million), Tanner Scott (4 years, $72 million), Willy Adames (7 years, $182 million), and Corbin Burnes (6 years, $210 million) all exceeded their contract predictions by at least $30 million, with Soto, Fried, and Snell earning over $60 million more than we predicted. No other player signed a deal worth more than $20 million above what we predicted for him. Five relief pitchers — A.J. Minter (2 years, $22 million), Andrew Kittredge (1 year, $10 million), Yimi García (2 years, $15 million), Blake Treinen (2 years, $22 million), and Scott — netted contracts worth more than double what we expected they’d get. Minter especially scored a bonanza, getting a total value that was more than four times higher than what we predicted. It was a very good year to be a high-upside relief arm.

On the flip side, there were other free agents who signed contracts below our predictions, with many of these players settling for short-term deals that curbed their total values. Pete Alonso (2 years, $54 million), Jack Flaherty (2 years, $35 million), Ha-Seong Kim (2 years, $29 million), Alex Bregman (3 years, $120 million), and Gleyber Torres (1 year, $15 million) all received contracts that were worth at least $30 million less than we expected, with only one other player, Andrew Heaney (1 year, $5.25 million), underperforming his predicted deal by more than $14 million. In terms of percentage, Alonso, Flaherty, Kim, Torres, Heaney, and Max Kepler (1 year, $10 million) received less than 50% of what the crowd predicted. It’s worth pointing out that Alonso and Bregman received higher average annual values than expected, owing to their shorter contract lengths. Bregman is set to make $4.7 million more per year than the $27 million AAV the crowd predicted for him, while Alonso’s $27 million AAV is $2 million per year more than expected.

Eyeballing the data, a pattern seemed to emerge in which the top of the market did as well or better than expected, while the middle-to-bottom of the market fared worse. (This would be consistent with many author and reader hypotheses of how the market would shake out.) So I ran a quick correlation between the rank of the size of the signed contract and the difference between prediction and actual total contract value. The correlation coefficient was -.52, indicating that indeed those who signed the smaller contracts signed for less than predicted more so than those who signed larger total contracts.

The Implications of Signing Late
Once again, Ben pre-empted some of my analyses with his own deeper dives. Specifically, back in January, he examined whether those who signed late in the offseason (a) signed for less, and (b) performed worse than those who signed earlier. In short, yes and yes.

When one of my favorite players, Alonso, signed late and for far less than we expected, I also hypothesized that those who sign late in free agency get less than expected relative to those who sign early. After all, late signees usually do so after their options have dwindled. However, the 2025 free agent tracker does not include date of signing, so I could not directly test this proposition. (I suppose if I’d really wanted to spend time researching this, I could have gone back and logged every signing date, but, you know, this is the Community Blog and not my full-time job.) That said, I did find the list of players who’ve signed since the start of February as opposed to earlier in the offseason and ran some quick comparisons.

Of the players in the main sample, nine signed between February 1 and March 8. Nick Pivetta, Enrique Hernández, and Tommy Pham all signed for more than expected, although Hernández and Pham signed one-year deals worth $1.5 million and $1 million above their modest one-year expectations. Pivetta signed for an additional year and $10 million over his predicted deal (5 years and $55 million, compared to the crowd’s prediction of 4 years and $45 million). Kanley Jansen (1 year, $12 million) and Justin Turner (1 year $6 million) signed one-year contracts worth $2 million less than we expected — not very far off expectations.

The remaining four deals since the start of February demonstrate the downside of signing near the end of the offseason. In fact, those four players (Bregman, Alonso, Flaherty, and Heaney) represent four of the six deals listed in the overestimated contracts sample included in the previous section.

Comparison to Six Years Ago
Back in 2019, I performed a similar analysis that was published here in the community notes. That year’s free agent class, led by Bryce Harper and Manny Machado, came in under our expectations. Recall 2019 was a very cold “hot stove,” with major signings not occurring until late in the offseason. (Harper wasn’t signed until February 28!)

We predicted that year’s sample of 47 free agents would receive a collective 123 years of contracts (an average of 2.61 years per player) for a collective total of $1,801,000,000 and an average contract of $38,320,000. However, they ultimately received 91.4% of what was expected – a collective 109 years of contracts (an average of 2.32 years per player) for a collective total of $1,619,500,000 and an average contract of $34,460,000.

Our collective wisdom back then was also pretty solid, except we overestimated the market for free agents by just about the same margin as we underestimated it this year.

Conclusions?
I don’t think we can take any major lessons from this analysis — perhaps just two small ones: 1) relief pitchers with upside did well, and 2) prominent free agents shouldn’t wait too long to sign. That said, running the numbers was fun, and I hope you enjoyed the article. I’ll be back next year at this time with another update. Until then, let the wisdom of crowds protect you from the madness of crowds.

While baseball fans wait for the free agent market to finally unthaw, J.D. Martinez waits for a contract offer enticing enough for him to sign. Early reports suggested that Martinez and his agent, Scott Boras, set an early asking price at seven years, $210 million. Clearly, nobody has taken the bait. Among Martinez’ likely suitors, many have moved onto other options; the Cardinals traded for Marcell Ozuna, and the Giants traded for Andrew McCutchen, seemingly leaving the Red Sox as Martinez’ lone serious suitor.

The latest report, from Buster Olney, is that Martinez has an offer on the table from the Red Sox worth five years, $100 million. Taking the reports at face value (although Boras himself has simply declared the report “inaccurate”), the offer obviously comes up short of Martinez’ demands, which is why this article is being written in late January to begin with. To that end, here’s an excerpt from Jeff Passan’s recent column at Yahoo Sports on baseball’s economic system:

“Recently, one of the best free agents available this offseason met with a friend, and he admitted something shocking: He was preparing to sit out until the middle of the season. The market for his services this winter was so thin, the offers so incompatible with his production, that he worried he was going to need an external force to compel teams to pay him what his numbers say he’s worth. Maybe it would take a playoff race.”

Can we assume that the hitter in question is Martinez? Of course not, but considering the discrepancy between his asking price and the reported Red Sox offer, it wouldn’t be an outlandish guess. While I understand that the Red Sox have leverage in that they presumably don’t have anyone to bid against, I will argue that Martinez will be well worth a contract in excess of 5/$100M.

From 2014-2017, his Age 26 through  Age 29 seasons, Martinez posted an astounding 149 OPS+ (my apologies for not using wRC+ in this column!), with a low of 139 and a high of 166. To that end, I researched players from the DH era (circa 1973) that posted an OPS+ between 140 and 160 in their Age 26 through Age 29 seasons. Presumably, these players would make for suitable Martinez comps as we attempt to project his offensive production over the next five to seven years. Of course, some of these players are still active and haven’t played enough to give me complete data, such as Ryan Braun, so they have been eliminated from the dataset. I was left with 38 comparable players, which is a large enough sample for our purposes today.

In this chart, I condensed the sample into averages because 40 rows and 9 columns doesn’t embed so cleanly. These are Martinez’s comps for their age-26 through age-29 seasons, their offensive production for the next five years (through age-34, which is Martinez’ floor value at this point) and then their production in the sixth and seventh following years (ages 35 and 36, which represent Martinez’ ceiling value at this point).

The average player from my sample posted a 147 OPS+ in their age-26 through 29 seasons, which matches up neatly with Martinez’ 149 mark. You’ll first notice the drop off in production for these players in their age-30 through 34 seasons. There are several reasons for this. Yes, natural decline was at work, but the original search for Martinez comps included a 2000 plate appearance minimum; this means I was guaranteed to be given players both as good and as healthy as Martinez in their Age 26-29 seasons without the same guarantee they would be healthy in the years that followed. This also means players like Mark McGwire (146 OPS+ in 1913 PA) were excluded from the sample because he was injured, despite the 189 OPS+ he would put up in 3462 plate appearances through Age 36.

Nevertheless, it’s a reasonable regression one can expect for players entering their 30s, and the good news is that they were, on average, very productive (134 OPS+) and very healthy (559 PA). This is what the Red Sox believe to be worth 5/$100M, but I would argue that this data shows they should be willing to tack on a sixth year without blinking. Of the original 38 player sample, 36 players played their age-35 seasons; they were still very productive (Khris Davis has been producing along these lines the past two years) and healthy enough to play a full season.

The real question surrounding Martinez is – or at least should be, if the market weren’t so cold – whether he should be given a seventh year or not. From his comps, the sample size drops significantly for the first time down to 33, the average playing time falls below the league qualifying minimum for the first time, and the production drops below what you’d want from your DH (the reference point here would be Miguel Sano from the last couple of seasons).

At face value, I would absolutely give Martinez the sixth year, and absolutely not give him the seventh. At the same time, we should dive into our sample a little deeper and discover why some players did well and why others tanked in their 30s; perhaps there is something we can correlate with Martinez so we can get an even better projection. From the original sample, here are the twenty best performers in their age-36 seasons (based on a combination of plate appearances and OPS+).

The reason I picked the twenty best rather than the top and bottom ten is that the bottom ten would be littered with folks such as Cliff Floyd or Dale Murphy, who only came to the plate 17 and 63 times respectively during their age-36 seasons. Using the ten best players captures those who were magnificent offensive performers with full playing time. Using the next ten players captures those who were mediocre in full playing time. This looks good to me.

This would be the time for me to explain why I haven’t mentioned WAR in this piece: J.D. Martinez has been horrible on defense!

He was best suited as a DH years ago, but being on a roster with Victor Martinez and then being traded to the National League forced him to play right field, which depressed his value. If Boston signs him, he’ll see absolutely no time in an outfield that will be covered by Jackie Bradley, Mookie Betts, and Andrew Benintendi for the foreseeable future. As a DH for the rest of his career, Martinez will be solely judged by his offensive production and ability to stay on the field.

Again, our question is whether Martinez receiving a seventh year is justified. More specifically, this boils down to “In seven years, will Martinez be in the left column or the right column?” Both sides of the list contain incredible players, but there’s a way to make a reasonable projection. Here’s the same list, but instead of rank, you’ll see the positions these players spent significant time. Those who had significant time at 1B/DH are highlighted in gold.

In this exercise, let’s consider 1B/DH to be significantly less stressful positions than the others. After all, there is a significant correlation between time spent in the field and sustaining an injury that leads to decline. While players like Brian Giles, Dave Parker, and Ken Griffey Jr. saw injuries and offensive decline catch up to them after years chasing down balls in the outfield, players like Rafael Palmeiro, Carlos Delgado, and Jim Thome aged extremely well by not exerting the same stress in the field.

Martinez is almost certain to spend no time in the field at Age 36. Hell, he might not spend much time in the field ever again. So I consider him a slam dunk to be placed in the group on the left. Referring to the averages from the first chart in this article, I’ll the over on Martinez when the time comes. To be clear, I donJD’t necessarily think he should be given the seventh year outright – an option would probably be most appropriate – but I think this data solidifies my comfort in giving him a sixth guaranteed year.

In a winter in which the market is changing in ways we have never seen before, it’s difficult to predict what  Martinez will earn. It’s important to remember that dollars are a construct; we can’t assume Martinez will get $150 million from the Red Sox because Adrian Gonzalez did after amassing similar numbers. Teams like the Red Sox are wary of contracts like the one given to Gonzalez, who will earn $21.5M from that deal this year. In this market (or lack thereof), it’s impossible for me to put dollars or years on Martinez, but I do know this: Martinez is a special hitter, and he’ll age especially well.

He will be a productive hitter for the next six or seven years, and there’s no dollar amount that can change that.

After the announcement of the Cy Young and MVP winners, the award season is officially over and the offseason is in full stride. Most, except perhaps Royals and Mets fans, have moved on from the 2015 season and are focused on the year ahead. However, before doing so, I wanted to answer one final question about the past season: Who were the league’s Least Valuable Players (LVPs)?

Inspired by Neil Paine’s piece on Bryce Harper and the MVP I define the LVPs as position players (with at least 400 plate appearances) that not only had a bad year in terms of performance, but had an even worse performance relative to the salary they were being paid.

Why the distinction?  First off, most teams, with a few apparent exceptions (I’m looking at you Dodgers) have some sort of payroll limitation. Therefore having an expensive player stink up the place limits the opportunity that teams have to replace them via free agency or trade.

Secondly, it is my initial assumption, that underperforming players with large contracts may get disproportionally more playing time than similarly underperforming players with cheap contracts. This might be because teams hope that by giving players a chance to work things out at the plate they may salvage their initial investment or even entice another team to take a flyer with them. This, in the end, might be compounding the issue in the long-term as it robs the team the opportunity to try out existing farm-level talent at the position for instance.

It should be noted that it is possible that unlike most replacement-level players, underperforming players with big contracts were at some point actually good players and might have some other intrinsic value for their teams (i.e.: leadership, tradition, marketing, etc.) that justifies playing time; think of Ken Griffey Jr during his last few seasons or Derek Jeter’s farewell tour. However, for the intents and purposes of this article we will not be discounting player’s terribleness by any of these measures.

As far as methodology goes we will be replicating Paine’s approach from the previously mentioned article. FanGraphs calculates the monetary value of a player by estimating how much teams spent during the preceding offseason per projected WAR and then multiplying this value by accrued WAR during the season to get a sense of how much those wins above replacement would’ve cost in the “open market”. Then, from this “open market” value we subtract the actual salary (or rather salary cap hit from spotrac) of the players to get a grasp for their relative value or net value. In the case of over performing players this would turn into a value surplus for the team, whilst for underperforming players this would represent an additional cost for the team.

For example, per FanGraphs, the cost of a win in the 2015 offseason was approximately $8 million. Mike Trout accumulated WAR of 9.0 during the year, which means that the value his 2015 season was around $72 million. Meanwhile, his salary was a “mere” $6.1 million, which makes the surplus for the Angels somewhere around $66 million. In other words, the Angels paid $6.1 million in salary to get $72 million worth in production, which is a bargain of historic proportions.  Conversely, during the 2015 season Ryan Howard accumulated a WAR of -0.4, which translates into a -$3.2 million value. Not only that, but Howard was paid a cool $25 million for his services, which means that the true cost to the Phillies was of $28.2 million. In other words Philadelphia invested $25 million to get -$3.2 million in production, which over time is the kind of decision that leads to this.

So without further ado here are our Top 50 LVPs from the 2015 season:

The American League LVP is a tight race between two teammates in which Hanley Ramirez narrowly beats out Pablo Sandoval, even after failing to accumulate enough plate appearances to qualify for the batting title. Meanwhile, Ryan Howard stands head and shoulders above the competition in the National League specially after considering that the Dodgers heavily subsidized Matt Kemp’s salary.

When considering teams most affected by this subset of underperforming stars we can highlight the Red Sox and White Sox leading the way with over $60 million of net value lost each seriously shooting themselves in the foot as both had aspired to contend in 2015.  This was particularly damning for Boston; had they not had these terrible contracts on hand, and holding all else constant, the Red Sox would have finished with the 6th best positional net value in the AL, ahead of playoff teams like the Astros, Rangers and Yankees and with sufficient cash to spend to shore up their well-documented starting rotation deficiencies.

Lastly, it’s worth noting the vast number of players on the list that were signed as free agents, extended or traded for during the past year. All in all roughly half of the players on this list fit that description, which is something to keep in mind when your team announces its next big move during the coming offseason (uh-oh).

Note: This analysis is also featured in our emerging blog www.theimperfectgame.com

Last week Miles Wray examined an emerging spending pattern of the New York Yankees, suggesting that the club’s approach to free agent spending varies, depending possibly on how many dollars had recently come off their books: They appear to spend each offseason either signing seemingly every premium free agent available (2008-9, 2013-4) or they limit themselves to the bargain bin, focusing on late-offseason signings, reclamation projects, and trades.

While this description is certainly accurate, at least since 2008-9 when this pattern began to emerge, there’s little discussion of why a team would choose to invest in free agency this way.  Presumably, teams like the Yankees, the Dodgers, or the Red Sox, which are capable of fielding significantly higher payrolls than any other team in the league, would prefer to do the opposite: Selecting from a much more limited subset of free agents would limit the advantage gained over other teams.  It’s also not inconceivable that a team with as much money as the Yankees might have concerns that they’d be driving up the entire market, increasing their own cost of acquiring talent.  This approach also has very real impacts on team age and roster flexibility as an entire free agent crop begins to enter their decline years together.

Moreover, the Yankees may very well not be the only team taking this approach.  An argument can be made that the Boston Red Sox are following a similar strategy, albeit at a pace accelerated by their shorter duration contracts they signed in the 2012-3 offseason and their salary-dump trade with the Dodgers four months earlier.  The team signed both Hanley Ramirez and Pablo Sandoval, arguably the two top hitters available in free agency, only a year after they signed precisely one free agent, Mike Napoli, who was their own.

So what does a team gain by going on spending sprees followed by (relative) austerity?  I submit they pursue this approach to gain one thing: draft picks.

Consider for the moment what happens in the case where the Yankees are not following this feast/famine strategy in free agency, and instead they sign a premium free agent each year.  In 2009-10 they might’ve signed Matt Holliday or Jason Bay.  2010-1, Carl Crawford or Jason Werth.  In 2011-2, Fielder/Pujols/Reyes.  In 2012-3 Upton/Hamilton/Bourne/Grienke.  All were free agents tied to compensation, meaning in addition to the dollar-cost of signing that player, the signing team also forfeited a draft pick.  (It’s probably also worth noting how godawful most of those signings look today, but that’s the nature of free agency – The last couple of years are almost always ugly.)  The mechanics of where those picks go have changed since the 2012-3 offseason but the cost to the signing team remains the same: A first round draft pick, or a later round pick if the first round pick is already spoken for.

Instead of signing those players, over that span the New York Yankees signed only a single draft-pick-compensation free agent, Rafael Soriano, 2010-11, and it was over the objections of Brian Cashman.  They kept their first-round draft picks in 2010, 2012, and 2013, and picked up a few compensation picks from departing free agents like Nick Swisher, Javier Vázquez and Soriano.

As Miles points out, however, the Yankees simply can’t stockpile picks and rebuild like a normal team.  This restraint is made possible by lavish spending in the 2008-9 offseason, where the Yankees signed pretty much everybody and then went out and won the World Series.  Signing Teixeira, Sabathia, and Burnett means the Yankees not only forfeited their first round draft pick, but their second and third round draft picks as well.

When viewed in the whole, however, this doesn’t appear to be that bad of a deal for the Yankees.  By moving their spending forward into the 2008-9 offseason instead of spreading it out over four years, they essentially traded their second and third round draft picks in 2009 for first-round draft picks in 2010, 2012, and 2013.  They repeated this approach 2013-4, signing Brian McCann, Jacoby Ellsbury, and Carlos Beltran, and while the early returns from those transactions are not promising, it should be noted that the McCann and Ellsbury deals, at least, were considered sound at the time they were signed.  Beltran?  Not so much.  With the last free agent with draft pick compensation attached off the board, they’re keeping their 2015 first round pick as well.

At a time when the aging curve for older players have suddenly become unforgiving, the value of young players is certainly up, and the Yankees appear to be maximizing their chances of acquiring young talent in the draft by minimizing the draft pick cost of signing free agents.  This approach is remarkably similar to their strategy in the international market, where they’ve determined the best way to acquire talent is not to stick to a limited bonus pool each year, but to sign ten or eleven of the top thirty international free agents, (and possibly one more.)  This approach costs them a great deal of money in luxury tax and international bonus pool “overage” tax, but may make sense given how much surplus value an above-average, cost-controlled young player generates.  Now, if only they could do something with all those draft picks…

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:

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.

This morning as I drove into work listening to MLB on XM a comment put a question into my head. The host made a comment that players that sign with the Yankees as free agents tend to have a bad season likely due to the pressure and glamor of being a Yankee. This made me wonder if some teams were “easier” to play for after signing a free-agent deal…. But then once I started researching things started to get interesting so I changed to just seeing how long-term deals with new teams affected players.

The Criteria

• Player must have signed a minimum 3 year deal with a new team and stayed with that team all of those 3 years. This established a perceived pressure of living up to a deal that this new team invested in the player.
• Year range 2006-2012 for contract signings. I could not find any good free agent signing lists from earlier than ’06.
• If a player was injured for the majority of a season that year was omitted, but it applied to very few players.

In the end I compiled a list of 31 players who had received 3 years or longer deals from a new ball club and had stayed with the club for at least 3 years. The results were not promising for any club looking to sign some free agents. I compared basic stats for simplicity, reviewed were Average, OBP, SLG, and wRC+. I mostly did the OBP and SLG for myself so will mostly focus on average and wRC+ here.

Key takeaways – Average

• In year 1 after signing with a new team only 8 players either matched or improved their average from the prior season.
• The only player to consistently outperform with his new team in each of the 3 years was Carlos Lee after signing with the Houston Astros. Technically his average dipped to match his average the year before he signed the contract but he never went in the red.
• Overall for the 3 year span only 3 players had a higher batting average over those 3 years than they did with the last season with their prior team. (Victor Martinez, Carlos Lee, Juan Pierre)

Key takeaways – wRC+

• 5 players improved their wRC+ in the first years with their new teams and 2 matched their prior year numbers.
• Out of the 25 players who have completed 3 years with their new team (2012 signees are heading into their 3^rd season), 5 finished those 3 years with a higher average wRC+ than they had the year they signed. (Victor Martinez, Torii Hunter, Carlos Lee, Juan Pierre, Mark DeRosa)

The overall numbers for the group though was not promising. Whether this is due to many of these players aging which could be highly likely, or just never getting settled with a new ballclub. It seems teams looking at signing Free Agents to deals of 3 years or longer should not expect much out of the players.

Overall #’s

A little bonus:

Worst 3+ year deal since 2006 : Chone Figgins in 2009 signed with the Seattle Mariners. Out of the group of players researched Figgins had the biggest overall drops in Average (-.089), OBP (-.114), and wRC+ (-56.33)

Best 3+ year deal since 2006: Victor Martinez (duh) in 2010 signed with the Tigers and had the best overall increases in Average (+.020), OBP (+.030) and wRC+ (+14.0). Side note – ALL players had decreases in slugging.

So you might ask how this compares to players that resign similar deals with their current teams? The numbers below illustrate the numbers for players in the same time frame that resigned deals with their teams as free agents (according to ESPN free agent trackers).

As you can see quite a bit of difference. There are many factors in play here but it seems that there is a major difference in proving to a new team that as a free agent you deserve the long term deal you got, and understanding that you performed well enough for you current team to give you a long term extension. Yes all numbers are negative still but they are much closer to the original numbers and likely chalked up to random variance year to year.

Best re-sign/extension – 2B Aaron Hill –  The Diamondbacks resigned Aaron Hill and were rewarded with an increase in OBP for 3 years (.035), Slugging (.094) and WRC+ (33.67)

Worst re-sign/extension – 1B/DH Paul Konerko – The White Sox understandably extended Konerko only to see average 3 year drops in Average (-.068), OBP (-.036), Slugging (-.098) and led all resignee’s in WRC+ drop at (-40.33 average). A close Second place was Jorge Posada’s extension in 2007.

After Matt Garza reportedly signed with the Brewers for $52 Million over 4 years today, the initial response was that it was a steal. Baseball writer Joe Sheehan tweeted that the signing was “Grand Theft Pitcher“. Sure, a day after the Yankees spent $175 Million on a big question mark, the price for Garza looks like a bargain. Upon closer analysis, however, the deal appears to be pretty close to what we should expect given what we know about the cost of a win, inflation, and aging curves. This can be seen by using the same model that Dave Cameron writes about so frequently.

This model assumes that in 2014, a win costs $6 million dollars, and that the cost of a win will increase by 5% each year. Steamer projects Garza for 2.8 WAR in 2014, and I subtracted 0.5 WAR each year to account for age-related decline. As with the Kershaw contract, the model pretty much nails the cost for four years of Garza. The deal appears to be slightly team-friendly, with the Brewers getting 0.13 wins of value over the course of the contract. Put in money terms, they saved about $800K for Garza’s expected production. His health concerns (he has totaled 259 innings in the past two seasons) mean extra risk for the team, making it tough for me to get really excited about the contract. According to the model, the Brewers pretty much paid market value for Matt Garza.

But despite the numbers in front of me (and you), the contract does feel like a bargain. Why is this the case? This brought me to the greater point of this article, which was to try to find out the real market value for the 2014 free agent class. To do this, I applied the same model explained above to the 14 major contracts that have been signed this offseason by MLB free agents. These contracts are all include at least 3 years and $20M guaranteed, and total nearly $1 Billion. This leaves out relievers (which never quite fit into the model), injury-prone bounce-back candidates like Josh Johnson, and of course Masahiro Tanaka (since he’s extremely difficult to project). Ten of the fourteen players are between the ages of 29 and 31. For 2014 WAR, I used an average of Steamer and ZiPS (where available), and in the few instances where there was a team option or buy-out, I included the cost of the buy-out in the final year of the contract, as players in their mid-30s are rarely worth the cost of the option year. Lastly, rather than projecting the money a player should have earned, I simply calculated the WAR that a player is being paid to be worth (Wins / Salary) and compared it to their projected WAR for the duration of the contract. Without further ado, the table:

While your first instinct may be to declare most of these contracts huge overpays, the fact of the matter is that if everything appears to be an overpay, we need to adjust our baseline. According to the model, teams have paid for 146 wins, but are only projected to get back 124. What could account for the difference between the model and reality? On one hand, we have to consider the fact that every team values a win slightly differently. The Yankees have a huge incentive to put together a competitive team or they risk alienating an impatient fanbase. A win is worth more to a team on the brink of contention than a team sitting at the bottom of its division. This could be driving much of the variation, but is impossible to fully account for.

This leaves us with four factors that could cause the discrepancy between the model and the market that we can adjust for. First is the initial evaluations of the players. For instance, Shin-Soo Choo is coming off of a 5.2 WAR season, but is projected for just 2.9 WAR by Steamer. If we pencil Choo in as a 3.5 WAR player in 2014 (Oliver has him at 5.4), then he is set to produce 14 WAR during his 7-year contract, and be worth “only” -4.55 wins relative to his contract. The second is player aging. Taking off half a win each year is a quick and relatively accurate way to calculate future WAR for players who are already around 30 years old. However, some research has suggested that elite players may peak later and/or decline slower, which could affect many of these high-priced free agents (at least for the first few years of the contract).

The third and fourth variables are the cost of a win in the present and in the future. We’re using $6 Million per win, but other research has suggested that a win may cost more like $7 Million. In addition, the model increases the cost of a win by 5% each year, and some teams might suspect that rate to be higher with all the additional money flowing into the league.

After fixing the biggest outlier of the table (by projecting Choo for 3.5 WAR in 2014), these are the adjustments that would have to be made to a single variable (with all others held constant) to give us a model that properly values this free agent class so far:

Player Evaluation: The team signing the contract expects the player to perform roughly 0.23 WAR better than the Steamer/ZiPS projects in 2014.

Player Aging: The team signing the contract expects the player to decline at roughly 0.37 WAR per season.

Present Cost of a Win: One win (+1 WAR from a player) is currently worth $6.9 Million on the open market.

Future Cost of a Win: The cost of a win is expected to increase by 11.5% each year for the life of the contracts.

As is usually the case, the truth probably lies somewhere in between, with a little bit of each. In some cases, the driving force may be different for each team and each contract. The Mets may have signed Granderson believing that he can be worth 2.6 WAR in 2014 (as opposed to 2.2 from the projection systems), while the Mariners may have agreed with Steamer and ZiPS that Robinson Cano will be worth 5.35 WAR in 2014, but might project him for a slightly slower decline.

Just for fun, I’ll take a shot at modifying the model with a few minor adjustments so that the expected wins purchased matches the expected production. For my updated model, I’ll use the following parameters: Steamer/Zips are accurate measures of current talent, the players signed will decline 0.45 WAR per season after 2014, a win currently costs $6.4 Million, and the cost of a win will rise by 6% in the foreseeable future. Here’s the adjusted table:

Reducing the rate of decline and increasing the cost of a win helps out the longer contracts quite a bit, so Robinson Cano’s contract starts to look a lot better. However, the net benefit is largely offset by committing such a massive amount of money to a single player who could get seriously injured or decline sooner than expected. With the new model, the Garza deal looks more like a bargain (although I would still hardly call it a steal), and a few contracts that looked like a market value or a slight overpay appear to be more team-friendly than initially anticipated (McCann, Peralta, Infante, Feldman, and Saltalamacchia). Carlos Ruiz looks like a downright steal. Keep in mind that even just netting half a win translates into an extra $3 Million of value, so we’re talking about a pretty significant savings here.

In closing, Cameron’s quick-and-dirty model works quite well, but given the contracts signed so far this season, appears to require some minor adjustment. It’s impossible to know which of the factors require adjusting and how they vary from one team to another, which is what makes projecting these contracts and determining whether a contract is a bargain or an overpay so difficult. As is always the case, only time will tell, and as more free agents sign we’ll be able to see if the new model checks out and make necessary adjustments.

All projections are from Steamer and ZiPS. Contract information is from Fangraphs and Baseball-Reference.