Looking at WAR and player salaries to determine which players helped and hurt the 2010 St. Louis Cardinals.
By Ian Walton
In our last article, we examined each National League team’s combined WAR (wins above replacement) for position players and pitchers in 2010. The St. Louis Cardinals were found to have received more production from their hitters than they paid for and slightly less production from their pitchers. In this article, we will examine each of the Cardinals’ major contributors in 2010 to determine which positively impacted the team’s results and whether or not their contribution exceeded or fell short of the money invested in them.
I have a few more disclaimers to note here. Player salaries may not be perfectly accurate, but this examination is not perfectly accurate to begin with, so we must be content with what is listed in Baseball Reference. Players called up during the season only received a prorated portion of the league minimum salary of $400,000, but they are counted as making a full season’s minimum here so as not to overvalue their production. I estimated that Jake Westbrook was paid one third of his $11M salary by the Cardinals, that Ryan Ludwick was paid two-thirds of his $5.45M salary by the Cardinals, and that Pedro Feliz was paid one fourth of his $4.5M salary by the Cardinals. All statistics listed encompass performance only while in a Cardinals uniform this past season.
Furthermore, it becomes abundantly clear that pre-arbitration players are exceedingly valuable to a team. Players who reach their free agent years will typically be paid more than the average player for their production, since those pre-arbitration players are also averaged in. This does not mean that a free agent signing is a poor one if a player’s performance doesn’t match the average league production for his salary. However, it also does not mean that a team can be successful while paying free agent prices for most of its players’ production unless it spends a very large amount of money. In addition, it should be noted that elite players are likely worth more than simply the average value of their WAR since their level of production could not likely otherwise be duplicated by one player. For example, Skip Schumaker can be easily replaced, but Albert Pujols’ level of production cannot be replaced by a single player.
With all of that said, here are the details of the Cardinals position players with at least 100 plate appearances in 2010:
Table 4: Cardinals Hitters WAR and Salary Comparison
| Name | PA | WAR | Salary | Paid WAR | WAR – Paid WAR |
| Colby Rasmus | 534 | 2.9 | $418,000 | 0.0 | 2.9 |
| David Freese | 270 | 1.7 | $400,000 | 0.0 | 1.7 |
| Yadier Molina | 521 | 3.1 | $4,312,500 | 1.6 | 1.5 |
| Albert Pujols | 700 | 7.2 | $14,595,953 | 5.9 | 1.3 |
| Brendan Ryan | 486 | 0.9 | $425,000 | 0.0 | 0.9 |
| Ryan Ludwick | 314 | 2.2 | $3,633,333 | 1.4 | 0.8 |
| Jon Jay | 323 | 0.8 | $400,000 | 0.0 | 0.8 |
| Tyler Greene | 122 | 0 | $400,000 | 0.0 | 0.0 |
| Allen Craig | 124 | -0.1 | $400,000 | 0.0 | -0.1 |
| Aaron Miles | 151 | -0.1 | $400,000 | 0.0 | -0.1 |
| Randy Winn | 162 | -0.2 | $400,000 | 0.0 | -0.2 |
| Skip Schumaker | 529 | 0.4 | $2,000,000 | 0.7 | -0.3 |
| Felipe Lopez | 425 | -0.1 | $1,000,000 | 0.3 | -0.4 |
| Nick Stavinoha | 126 | -0.5 | $400,000 | 0.0 | -0.5 |
| Pedro Feliz | 125 | -0.4 | $1,125,000 | 0.3 | -0.7 |
| Matt Holliday | 675 | 5.5 | $16,333,327 | 6.7 | -1.2 |
Paid WAR is the number of wins above replacement that the team should have expected, on average, to receive in exchange for the salary spent on the player beyond the major league minimum. Players are ordered by the final column which compares a player’s actual WAR to the WAR expected by his salary.
Of the players with a replacement level salary ($400,000) or slightly more, Nick Stavinoha was economical, but cost the team half a win more than an average replacement player would due to his poor performance, as measured by WAR. Late-season acquisition Pedro Feliz not only cost the team over a million dollars but also performed at a sub-replacement level. Oft-maligned Skip Schumaker only provided production at half of the rate of his salary. Interestingly enough, Tyler Greene was the very definition of a replacement level player in both salary and performance.
Inexpensive youngsters Rasmus, Freese, Jay, and Ryan all provided good value for the team, with Rasmus providing the best return for dollar spent among the position players by a considerable margin. Of the veterans, Pujols, Molina, and Ludwick all produced at levels beyond their pay grades. Holliday fell a bit short of his large contract, but given that he managed the sixth highest WAR of any batter in the NL, I doubt that anyone would complain. (Pujols was highest.)
The following table outlines the production and salary of all pitchers on the Cardinals with at least 30 innings pitched in 2010:
Table 5: Cardinals Pitchers WAR and Salary Comparison
| Name | IP | WAR | Salary | Paid WAR | WAR – Paid WAR |
| Adam Wainwright | 230.3 | 5.7 | $4,837,500 | 1.4 | 4.3 |
| Jaime Garcia | 163.3 | 2.8 | $400,000 | 0.0 | 2.8 |
| Kyle McClellan | 75.3 | 1.8 | $425,000 | 0.0 | 1.8 |
| Jason Motte | 52.3 | 1.5 | $411,000 | 0.0 | 1.5 |
| Jeff Suppan | 70.3 | 0.3 | $400,000 | 0.0 | 0.3 |
| Mitchell Boggs | 67.3 | 0.3 | $402,000 | 0.0 | 0.3 |
| Fernando Salas | 30.7 | 0.1 | $400,000 | 0.0 | 0.1 |
| Ryan Franklin | 65 | 0.8 | $3,050,000 | 0.8 | 0.0 |
| Dennys Reyes | 38 | 0.4 | $2,000,000 | 0.5 | -0.1 |
| Jake Westbrook | 75 | 0.9 | $3,666,667 | 1.0 | -0.1 |
| Trever Miller | 36 | 0.1 | $2,000,000 | 0.5 | -0.4 |
| PJ Walters | 30 | -0.5 | $400,000 | 0.0 | -0.5 |
| Blake Hawksworth | 90.3 | -1.1 | $402,000 | 0.0 | -1.1 |
| Brad Penny | 55.7 | 0.6 | $7,500,000 | 2.2 | -1.6 |
| Chris Carpenter | 235 | 3 | $15,840,971 | 4.8 | -1.8 |
| Kyle Lohse | 92 | -2.9 | $9,187,500 | 2.7 | -5.6 |
Cy Young Award runner up Adam Wainwright provided the best value of all of the Cardinals pitchers, yielding 5.7 WAR for an equivalent of 1.4 WAR of salary. Garcia, McClellan, and Motte all provided excellent value to the team at replacement level salaries.
Despite their low salaries, Walters and Hawksworth both did some damage to the team, performance wise. Brad Penny’s injury-shortened season clearly did not live up to the expectations provided by his salary. Even Chris Carpenter’s solid performance did not measure up to his compensation this past season, as he was the fourth-highest paid pitcher in the league yet only pitched like the twentieth best.
Despite some doubters at the time, midseason acquisition Jeff Suppan did provide more than replacement value to the Cardinals while Jake Westbrook more or less lived up to his salary, at least while pitching for St. Louis.
Unfortunately, the most influential player to the 2010 Cardinals’ fortunes was Kyle Lohse. Not only did he have the lowest WAR of any National League pitcher at nearly three fewer wins than replacement level during his injury-plagued year, but his salary could have on average gone to pay a player worth another 2.5 wins over replacement. Given that the Cardinals fell five games short of both the National League Central title and wild card, Kyle Lohse’s performance and contract alone might have been the difference between reaching the playoffs and not this past season.
In summation, the Cardinals outperformed their payroll due to a number of strong performances from their younger players and most of their stars, but were kept from exceeding expectations even further (as was needed for a playoff berth) by a few notable poor performances and bad contracts. In order to reach the postseason in 2011, St. Louis will quite obviously either need to spend more money or produce greater efficiency from the same level of spending.
Thanks again to Baseball Reference for providing the WAR and salary data used above.
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Gee, look who are in the top five, Molina and Ryan, both of whom I have burned monster calories defending from trash talk this year.
And then there’s Skip………..
the two columns on the far right don’t add up for me.
example: a win from skip cost 5mil, a win from matt cost less than 3mil., yet skip shows up as a -0.3 and matt a -1.2
Bip, Paid WAR represents how many wins one ought to expect from a player’s salary on average. They are at consistent values above minimum ($400k). The column on the far right subtracts their Paid WAR from their actual WAR.
I’m not directly dividing salary by WAR at any point. That would be inexact.
As folks can see above, I am testing a new polling function that if accepted by you all is a feature I will begin to use regularly.
I am also trying to figure out what WordPress calls threading (or what I would call nesting) of comments so replies to a specific comment will appear underneath it. I haven’t quite got it yet…
OK, I think I have figured out nesting of comments. Let’s try it out, folks…
In your two cases, Skip’s salary projects as being worth 0.7 WAR, yet he only produced 0.4, thus the difference is -0.3 WAR. The team paid for 0.3 WAR that it didn’t get.
Holliday’s salary projects as being worth 6.7 WAR, but he only yielded 5.5 WAR on the year. The difference is -1.2 WAR. The team paid for 1.2 WAR that it didn’t get.
However, in Holliday’s case, he is one of the top players in the NL. The team wouldn’t likely have been able to replace his production for less, or any, amount of money, so I’m less critical of that number. Overpaying an elite player tends to be necessary in order to put the best possible team on the field. Overpaying Schumaker, who is easily replaceable, makes a lot less sense to me.
if you are trying to determine bargains and busts, i disagree with your approach (two far right columns).
holliday produce more wins per dollar than skip, or any of the negative war players, but it’s your article, carry on.
Okay, bip. In your method, a player who earned 0.1 WAR but got paid $100 million would produce more wins per dollar than a player who earned -0.1 WAR for $400k. That doesn’t mean that the guy being paid $100 million is the better bargain.
colby is the bargain, matt is the bust, gotcha. good luck w/that.
It would be nice to explain what you are using as a value for 1 WAR and where you got that from.
Sure, CC. As explained in the other article, for hitters and pitchers each, I added up total salary in the NL, subtracted the minimum salary a team could pay for those players, then divided by total WAR.
So for hitters, I tallied a total NL salary of $703.8M. I subtracted the multiplication of 13 hitters by 16 teams by the minimum of $400k and got an expenditure of $620.6M spent over minimum upon hitters. I divided that value by the league total of 259.2 WAR and got a value of $2.394M spent over replacement per WAR for hitters.
Pitchers had a total salary of $650.8M. That dropped to $574M after subtracting minimum salary from 12 pitchers on 16 teams. There was a total of 179.2 WAR by pitchers in the NL, so I was left with $3.203M spent over replacement per WAR for pitchers.
Bip, that’s cool if you don’t like this method. No worries.
Let me try explaining the central concept using some different numbers that might line up with your preferred way of viewing things. Holliday was paid $16.3M for his 5.5 WAR. The Cardinals spent $45.7M on their hitters to produce 23.6 WAR. They spent 36% of their hitting payroll (16.3/45.7) on 23% of their production (5.5/23.6) in Holliday. If they spent all of their hitting payroll on free agent valued hitters, they would get a lot less production. A team like the Yankees can get away with paying free agent value or above for all of their players because they spend a lot more. If the Cardinals tried to do the same thing, they would fall very short.
Guys like Rasmus are invaluable for the Cardinals. They provide better than average results on the field without costing the team any more than they would pay any other player. Without pre-arbitration performers like Rasmus, the Cardinals would have to pay market value for average players and wouldn’t have money left over to spend on the elite guys like Holliday.
fascinating conjecture Nut………………………. can you do anything with it? Make a prediction for me, that I might see more of its utility………..
they did a comprehensive statistical evaluation of Mozart’s compositional tendencies……………. same guys that were doing the “chess programing to beat Spasky and Fisher”………..
they were competitive with the chess…………………..they sounded like Sh-t though…………take your pick. But WC………define sh-t for me…………………is it kind of like presenting your WAR synopsis at a meeting of GM’s?????????…………….but I’m guessing…………..
ref #4, Brian maybe you could rethink the threading. The muddle of overlapping conversations kind of creates an atmosphere like a crowd in a room.
I didn’t need to rethink it. I have been working on how to make the necessary changes to the site software off and on all day and now think I have it figured out. This is the first try…
Now it will be up to you users of the site to notice which comments to which you intend to respond. Hopefully this will work well for all of us!
Brian, to make this work, you need something that will identify all new posts when some one logs on or refreshes. I used to be able to click on the “all comments” link and at least there it showed me all comments (not just the last 5 or so). They also had the posting time. Now it wants me to do google reader and I’d prefer not to go that direction (been there done that) as that has its own set of problems.
The “Click for all comments” function at the bottom of the page still works as designed with Firefox, though it seems to have a problem with Internet Explorer. I will look into that. It shows the most recent 30 comments from the site in chronological order. It used to be 100, but I had to dial it down as it was causing problems elsewhere.
At the very far bottom of the page, there is the same function, called “Comments feed”. Next to it is a link to the “Blog feed” which are all my primary posts. They are also broken in IE.
When I click it or even the link you just posted here it takes me to this URL inviting me to view the comments on google reader.
http://www.google.com/ig/add?feedurl=http%3A%2F%2Fthecardinalnationblog.com%2Fcomments%2Ffeed%2F
And yes, I am using Firefox! It also seems the threaded replies stop about 3 threads in – is that by design?
To start, I set nesting at five comments deep. My worry was that doing it any farther would lead to a bunch of very short squished up comments on the right side of the page. I will bump it up to eight now.
I can’t explain the feed problem you describe, but I will look into it.
I tested the blog and comment feeds using feedvalidator and they check out. So the problem is with how the site interacts with the browsers.
With Firefox 3.5.15, I had a problem the first time I tried but then the comment feed displayed properly every time since. So does the blog feed. With IE 6.0, however, both feeds are not displayed properly.
If others see problems, please let me know which releases you are using. From your browser, Help>About… will show you the number. Thanks and sorry for any inconvenience.
After upgrading to IE 8.0, my problems with viewing the comments feed went away.
On an unrelated topic, IE users should also notice that I was able to fix the long-standing problem that only the second digit of comment numbers would display.
I don’t fully understand what you’re talking about, WC, but I don’t think that GMs need me to tell them that pre-arbitration (and pre-FA) players are exceedingly valuable for teams who can’t buy their way to championships alone. They probably also don’t need me to explain that if they could have taken money spent upon under performing players and used it on better ones that they would have won more games.
Mo probably doesn’t need me to tell him that he has Molina and Wainwright signed to team friendly contracts and that he has Schumaker, Lohse, and probably Carpenter signed to player friendly contracts.
Seems like everyone is trying to define friendship Nut……………………. I guess it “Pays” to know who your friends are………………………… that is the bottom line here right………….fantasy bankrolling.
Its seems like linear time is vexing the relevance of these theories.
if—- they – could- have taken money spent upon under performing players and used it on better ones (who became better as some became worse) that they would have won more games????????????
Nut — First off, let me say how deeply I disagree with your statement that Skip Schumaker can be ‘easily replaced’. If you were to limit that statement to ‘easily replaced as a second baseman’, then I might agree with you. Skip is a below-average second baseman in his 2nd year at the position.
But Skip’s worth is not measured by defense alone. As I’ve said before, there are three hitters on this team who’ve hit over .300 in at least two of the last three years: Albert, Matt and Skip. In ’08, Skip had the 28th best BA in all of MLB (among those with enough ABs to qualify for the leader board), one of only 34 such players to hit over .300. In ’09 he was 33rd best of 42 such players, and even in a down 2010, he was ranked 88th, a year in which only 23 players in MLB who had enough AB’s to qualify for the leader board and hit over .300.
Putting that accomplishment in context, at any one time in MLB there are 582 players who get a chance to hit (excluding AL pitchers & assuming 13 position player per team). Even if you exclude NL pitchers the number is 390, and if you only count starters (and the DH in the AL) the number is 254. Being ranked 28th, 33rd or even 88th in a pool of 582, 390, or 254 places one near the top, one of the best in the game.
Hitting is a key component of baseball and hitting for average is one of the 5 tools. In fact, Skip’s sub-average defense at 2B is tolerated because he is a high-average hitter, a valuable commodity in baseball and one that is NOT easily replaced.
I was wondering when you were going to show up HB. What would this blog be without one of the few members of the Skip Schumaker Admiration Society? I can always count on you to come up with some stat to use to defend Skip.
crdswmn — On Skip, I’m just trying to provide balance… I’ve got no problems recognizing his shortcomings, but I don’t think it’s fair to overlook or minimize his positives either.
Saw your invite re: the blog. My dance card has been rather full the last few days but I’ll find some time to mosey over there before long. Jury duty Monday… a cruel fate indeed, having to spend a whole day (or more) hanging around gol-danged lawyers!
People are responding to this article in numerous different places. Rather than try to hunt down all of the various locations, I’ll respond to the assertion that WAR shouldn’t scale linearly with salary:
Sure, one can say that Holliday at 5.5 WAR is worth more than twice the salary of a player with 2.25 WAR. I’ve stated numerous times here that I don’t have a problem with his contract and that I understand the value of elite players whose production can not be replaced.
To play the other side, however, is Holliday really worth $16M+ per year to the Cardinals? Given that they didn’t even manage to scrounge up 2 WAR for 2B, SS, or 3B could they maybe have spread that money around more efficiently? They got about 3 WAR or less combined from those three infield positions. If they had only spent half as much on a left fielder, could they have made up the difference in production by spending an extra $8M on their infield? I think that they could have.
That said, if the team is going to be successful in the playoffs, they need a lot of production out of their hitters. Pujols and Holliday can provide a lot of production from just two positions and the Cardinals can hope to get lucky with the other six.
Nut — Any system of measurement that ranks Holliday’s value (bargain or bust) to the Cardinals in 2010 as the most negative among those considered is deeply flawed. So is a system that ranks Carpenter’s value below that of Penny, Walters, Hawksworth, Miller, Reyes, or Salas. Any system that ranks Freese’s two months of healthy play (and 1 month playing injured) as having greater value to the team than Albert’s or Yadi’s is deeply flawed. And any system of measurement that shows Tyler Greene’s value as greater than any of the other player considered is also flawed, IMO.
The analysis does show that productive young players who are under team control and are underpaid are a better value than veterans who are paid in line with true market value. But you don’t need WAR to know that. And so far as Penny and Lohse are concerned, the analysis shows that injury has a deleterious effect on a player’s value. I’m surprised the equivalent effect wasn’t reflected among the position players, when Freese and Ludwick missed substantial time injured. That, I think, is also an indication of a flaw in the analysis.
If the intention was to show WAR’s value, I think what’s actually shown is WAR’s limitations. When an analysis using WAR yields results that defy common sense and reality, perhaps it follows that WAR does not adequately reflect reality.
Yesterday’s analysis was on much firmer ground. Of course, a measure of efficiency in spending doesn’t require WAR either. IMO, that is best accomplished by comparing actual wins, the ultimate goal of every team (during the regular season), with actual salary outlay. The result there is clear and uncomplicated, showing the most bang for the buck, the most wins per dollar, without muddying the water with theoretical concepts like the value of a replacement player and conversion of a disparate collection of real statistics into a single number, a process that must necessarily involve a great deal of assumption and approximation.
I prefer statistics that measure, count or relate actual events and express results in units that are meaningful and consistent in terms of what’s being measured. Whether it’s a modern or traditional method is less important to me than keeping it real by limiting assumptions, approximations, guesses, conversions, and theory… all of which present opportunities to introduce error.
I don’t know enough about how WAR is calculated to completely accept or reject it. Sample calculations of WAR for a position player and pitcher, showing all the intermediate steps, would be very useful if anyone cares to demonstrate that or can point me toward a source that does such a demonstration.
How many wins is a HR worth? How many wins is a .300 batting average worth compared to a .250 batting average? How many wins is a 2.00 ERA worth compared to a 4.00 ERA? How do you know what makes up the generic replacement player? Why do ten runs equal one win? How accurate is a statistic that assigns all catchers the same UZR because experts admit they don’t currently know a good way to measure UZR for catchers?
Until I can answer such questions with reasonable certainty, WAR will continue to remind me of a cartoon I used to keep on my desk when I was an engineering student. It depicted a professor at the chalkboard demonstrating a complex problem. Having filled up two boards with the most incredible set of impossible calculations… at the end, just as he gets to the answer, he says ‘and then a miracle happens…’
I used that line on a test or two, back in the day, out of pure desperation. But unfortunately it didn’t earn me much credit.
HBT – don’t give up on WAR just because Nut chooses to use it (at least the value portion of it) in a non traditional way in which is what not intended (I guess that is nice way of saying improperly using it!)
I’m not using WAR in any unusual way since I’m not adjusting those values whatsoever. I’m setting costs for WAR at league average values, rather than at free agent market values. My intent is not to demonstrate whether or not a contract is set above or below free agent market value, as people often use WAR. I’m using different methodology to illustrate different points. Sorry for not regurgitating the work of others – I know that that makes people uncomfortable.
Another question to me: Why aren’t you using $4.5M/WAR (or something like that) as your basis like everyone else? Well, because everyone else bases the monetary value of WAR on the free agent market. That’s great if you want to analyze whether or not your team paid above or below free agent value for your free agent signings.
Here’s the problem, however. Unless your team happens to be owned by a Steinbrenner or somesuch, chances are that if your team is paying free agent values for the majority of its production, your team is losing. Your team does not have enough money to pay free agent rates and still reach World Series champion production.
If the Cardinals have $45M to spend on hitters and only get 1 WAR for every $4.5M, the Cardinals only get 10 WAR. The Cardinals then end up as losers. Big losers. They can sign all of the free agents to market level deals that they want and someone will look at $4.5M/WAR and call each free agent a fine deal. The team will still lose.
So sure. The team can sign Holliday at market value and sign Westbrook at market value and sign Pujols at market value and then run out of money and crash and burn in the standings without enough of the high value pre-FA players to make up the difference. But hey, I guess as long as they are paying market rates for their players, everyone is happy, right? Just don’t come crying later when they lose against all of those other teams also paying market rates for their players who happen to have more money with which to purchase market value production.
Actually not really true. Under your scenario you get 20 WAR for $90 million. That’s 85 wins – just what the Cards got this year and just about what they spent. Add in a few WAR by players in their arb and pre-arb years and paying $4.5 WAR willl do you just fine with a $90 million + payroll.
So the Cardinals had a total of 36.1 WAR in 2010 and didn’t reach the playoffs (see the last article), but 20 WAR will be just fine to reach 85 wins?
HB, note that WAR measures a player’s production on the field. Carpenter had the second highest pitching WAR on the team. Pujols had the highest WAR in the NL. I’m not questioning that. I’m questioning the relative value of their contracts to other contracts on the team.
If the team cut Freese at the start of the year, could they replace his production with his meager $400k salary? Nope. In fact, they tried after he got hurt. They got AAAA production from guys like Lopez, Miles, and Greene or less production than that out of Feliz.
If the team traded away Carpenter, could they use the $16M/year saved to improve their pitching staff by more than the 3 WAR he provided last season? I think that yes, they could.
Does that mean that Carpenter is a bad player? No, of course not. He’s a great player. Does that mean that paying him one sixth of the team’s budget is a good idea? Heck no. They’d probably be a stronger team if they spent that money elsewhere.
In Carpenter’s case that may be true but how about Holiday. You have said he is a bad value but we could not likely replace his production by spreading the money around. That would only work if there were non FA players available who could provide production. Where do you suggest we find those players?
I actually didn’t say that he was a bad value. I’ve said at least four or five times that he is an elite player and that teams have to overpay for elite players in order to build winning teams. In 2010, however, the Cardinals probably could have gotten more production by spreading their money around. I hope that they can find better cost effective role players to fill around Pujols and Holliday, since those two can provide a heck of a lot of production.
How could the Cardinals have acquired other players to use their money instead of Holliday? Well, they couldn’t because they already have him signed to a long-term contract with a no-trade clause. Had they used their prospects to trade for someone other than the soon to be free agent Matt Holliday in the first place, they could have acquired more bang for the buck or developed their prospects instead. Sure, maybe those prospects didn’t pan out, but if the Cardinals had an inkling that they wouldn’t, they could have flipped them for someone else as they clearly had trade value.
Heck, they traded away future closer Chris Perez (2.7 WAR in 2010) as part of a deal for DeRosa that same season. It was a short term move. The old guys play worse with age and make a heck of a lot more money. The younger guys have yet to peak and won’t cost big bucks for years to come.
Furthermore, not all free agents are signed at market value. Bargains can be found. A frequent example of more cost effect middle infield help last off-season was Orlando Hudson, who was paid $5M for 2.0 WAR.
And many are signed above – can you tell the difference in advance?
Nutlaw, one of your assumptions seems to be that players are easy to trade, hence for instance Carpenter could have been traded and his salary readily redeployed in other players. But if his salary is so excessive, then you must further assume other teams are naive and will be happily willing to pay Carpenter and to offer up a stronger group of alternatives.
You do not factor the complexity of the baseball labor market and the factor of team control. For most of the first 6 years of a ML career, salary and performance (WAR) are little connected. And management control/free agency is a huge factor over salaries.
As a business, the Cards would probably love to have a $40MM annual payroll. However unless they were to have a strong upward flow of inexpensive young impact players, they have felt obliged to spend serious money on costly veterans (like Carpenter, Lohse, Penny, Holliday). This is simply the reality with which Mo must deal. Their high salaries are the necessary cost of aiming to be competitive.
No, it’s a lot more difficult to deal with a contract after the fact. Signing older players to very expensive, longer term deals in the first place can lead to problems.
Mo has a budget that he has to work within, I’m sure, more or less. If he can’t get creative enough to stock his team with an adequate number of bargain players, he most certainly can’t spend enough alone to make the team playoff bound.
Again, for emphasis: Signing players at average free agent market prices does not make your team good. It makes your team average, or below average. If you like seeing your team at .500, then applaud these deals to your heart’s content. If you expect your team to perform well enough to win a World Series, applaud deals that get more than average production out of its dollars. Applaud deals like the extensions made to Wainwright and Molina, which locked up productive players at well below market prices. Those are the deals that build championship teams.
Any system that tries to compare cost controlled players (arb and pre-arb) with FA’s is going to give skewed results and not necessarily show you a lot worthwhile.
Nut, why the different values for pitchers and hitters? A team can theoretically acquire WAR either way (they are equally valuable) so it doesn’t make sense to me to value them differeently (on the off chance I even buy into your lower WAR figure).
The worthwile nature of comparing all players together is in displaying that loading up on free agents is not a good use of money. As the Cardinals tend to avoid the free agent market like the plague, I’m assuming that they more or less agree.
Why the different values for pitchers and hitters? Because they appear to be paid differently for their contributions. Pitchers appear to be paid more. Why mesh them all together? Because that’s how it’s traditionally done, right? Well, that doesn’t seem more accurate to me. Can a team get more results by spending more money on position players than pitchers? Maybe, as position players contribute on both sides of the ball.
Ludwick’s 2010 salary was above $5MM. Maybe the table is a pro-rated amount that excludes Flubwick hitting for the Padres?
I agree with Carioca re the design of an analysis. There may be some merit in comparing veterans (who are full cost), but its less useful to combine veterans and cost-controlled athletes. Best to compare apples to apples.
I have to wonder how closely you read the article Jumbo, since the explanation of how Ludwick’s contact (and other partial year deals) was handled was explained right up front – in the second paragraph.
Good point. I just glanced at the table.
The table doesn’t diminish Holliday’s contribution to the team, it just shows he was overpaid, something we already knew.
Agree, bb. The bigger point to me was that the extent of the negative impact of Lohse was greater than I had perceived.
I do not think Holliday is overpaid. Why? There are economic classes of baseball players, most simply those who are cost controlled and those who are not. The two should not be lumped together within an analysis, because to do so is more confusing than enlightening. If one “backs out” this confusing mixing, recognizing that Holliday is in a separate economic class from say Freese, then the average cost per WAR for a veteran will be revealed to be higher. (It is now articificially lowered via inclusion the separate economic class of cost controlled players.)
Because Holliday was lucky to enter free agency at a good age and coming off a good season, he was well remunerated. He was likewise lucky to enjoy a solid season with the stick in 2010. Looked at within his economic context of post-6 year vets, my guess is he will have done about what the Cards paid for, maybe a little better.
When-ever the Cards remunerate post-control vets, they must pay high prices, often including multi-year deals. When injuries occur, as when Lohse got hit by a pitch in 2009, or Penny in 2010, the dollars will not look well spent.
Its hard for me to see Chris Carpenter, who had a fine year in 2010, as a poorer investment than Brad Penny. This must be an illusion born of Chris being very well paid, as he deserves to be.
I agree about Holliday, Jumbo. He’s only the 3rd highest paid LF in the NL Central. The Cubs are paying Sorry-I-Know $18M/year from now until 2014 and the Astros are on the hook to pay Carlos Lee $18.5M/year through 2012. Holliday costs the Cards $17M/year and is the cream of the crop, with a 5.5 WAR compared to Sorry-I-Know’s 1.4 and Lee’s -1.6. (WAR citations are for CC and Nut, just to show I’m not a complete apostate
).
If he stays healthy and continues to produce near his career averages, Holliday will be a bargain down the road… just as Albert is now a tremendous bargain at $16M/year. Matt is one of the elite players in baseball, a high average hitter with power, and the numbers to prove it.
Also, don’t forget that the Cardinals shipped out Ryan Ludwick, a player clearly outperforming his arbitration level salary in exchange for Jake Westbrook, a pitcher who at best equals his contract value. Ludwick provided the team with 2.2 WAR over two-thirds of a season for a cost of $3.6M.
Would the Cardinals be forced to give away valuable arbitration year offensive players in order to reduce their hitting budget if they weren’t paying Holliday over $16M/year?
I don’t have an opinion on sabermetrics one way or the other. Stats like WAR have their uses, but they can also be misleading. Traditional stats are also useful, but are often relied on too much. I prefer the crdswmn method—- a combination of stats, what I see on the field, and intangibles (instinct, gut, women’s intuition, whatever you want to call it). I rely more heavily on the latter two. I find this method to be more accurate.
Intuition is a good thing, but one must be careful to let the brain rule the heart. The heart can be deceptive, allowing us to see only what we want to rather than what we ought to. It’s a failing peculiar to the human condition… which is why it’s a good thing to have a look at the numbers occasionally. It gives us a way to check and validate our instincts and observations.
I believe I did state I consider stats HB. I have a logical brain and I tend to let it rule me in appropriate situations.
Plus I have never been good at blind loyalty.
crdswmn — I wasn’t trying to say otherwise… only pointing out that all of us (me included) sometimes let our hearts rule our minds… I’ve seen some evidence that it happens to you as well… regarding Brendan. That doesn’t make you evil… just human.
Oh it is not my heart that rules in regards to Brendan, HB. You just perceive it that way. I like Brendan, yes. I also like Skip. I see what I see on the field, and my gut tells me that Brendan is way more valuable to the Cards than Skip. You see stats, and loyalty to TLR and his way. That is my perception. Time will tell which of us is correct, if either.
Nut — I agree with what you’re saying about the obvious advantage of cost-controlled talent over free agents. I believe every team would prefer to get max value for minimal outlay, but it isn’t always possible. For the Cards, if they had impact talent in the pipeline they would certainly use it. But, the hard truth is, they don’t have it.
Having Baseball America rank our farm system 29 of 30 was one indication and the fact that Mozeliak is in the FA/trade market for most of the team’s needs also indicates that the farm isn’t producing well enough for the team to avoid taking a more expensive path.
Looking at the draft/farm since 2005, when Luhnow took charge, the production of impact players has been meager… Jaime and Colby are the only two that come to mind (that we still have) and you might consider guys we traded away like Perez, Wallace & Gregerson who are producing or might produce for other teams.
It’s a bit ironic that the draft and player development functions have been in the hands of a SABR guy who had no baseball background, while old Uncle Walter was voted MLB Executive of the Year in 2010, taking his Reds to post-season.
Walt had a knack for getting max value out of marginal players for minimal cost, something I’m not so sure our current leadership has been able to equal… as yet.
HBT: apt comparison of Holliday to Sorry-I-Know and Fatty Lee. Its sound to compare apples to apples or oranges to oranges.
Yet I can not agree Holliday is likely to look like a “bargain down the road.” He will only look like a bargain if the prices of elite free agents escalate. Given the overall state of the economy, I doubt there will be salary inflation. Holliday like Chris Carpenter is paid a lot, because he contributes a lot. Neither is a bargain. To field an elite team, you have to have some studs like Holliday. They are not cheap.
Jumbo — I think it’s likely we’ll see both salary inflation and currency inflation. Don’t want to get too political here, but the Fed is currently printing money to buy bonds to fund a large chunk of our massive federal debt, a move that is most certainly inflationary. Although they want to do it in small increments, things at times take on a life of their own and governments sometimes find they have less control over market forces than they think.
When I say bargain, of course it’s not like the bargain you get when a young player puts up serious production for $400K, but I do think (looking at Pujols) that paying him $16M/year is a bargain compared to what he could have demanded the past few years had he not already been under contract.
I expect the same to hold true for Matt, that is, if he remains healthy and productive. The big difference between his contract and Albert’s is the stage of career being covered. Albert’s spanned his most productive years while Matt’s will likely include some years when he is in decline due to age. We just have to hope that inevitable decline is late and gradual.
Either way… hope we’re both around to talk about it in 2016 or so.