from Amazon
Friday, December 04, 2009
Explaining the win to dollar translation
Dave has an excellent summary:
http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/the-dollar-value-of-a-win/
I’ll repost my favorite part:
Here is an example of how you should use the valuation. We have Chone Figgins’ 2009 value at $27.4 million, based on his +6.1 win season. No one is going to pay Figgins that much this winter, of course, nor should they. However, we can say that if the Angels wanted to replace what Figgins gave them last season, they should expect it to cost them about $27 million in free agent spending. Figgins produced at a very high level in 2009, creating a large surplus value for the Angels. The dollar to win valuation quantifies that surplus value, showing how much that performance would have cost if they could have expected to receive it and had to pay the going market rate for that performance.
That’s why we write that he was “worth” $27 million. It does not mean that we think the Angels should have paid him $27 million, or that they should pay him $27 million now, but he produced at a level equal to what you would expect if you had spent $27 million in free agency a year ago.
Perfect.
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In response to this excellent question:
Like you have Zobrist at 39 million dollars. How could it cost a team that much to replace him when the highest paid player in baseball is only like 25 million dollar? And that was signed after he(A-Rod) put up a season with a higher War than Zobrists. It just doesn’t make sense to say “This is what you would expect to pay in Free agency to get that kinda production” when there are no contracts even in the same ball park as that and nobody is gonna pay that even if they were guaranteed that kind of production as evident by the A-Rod contract. So basically I like the concept I just think the numbers are a bit inflated.
I added:
If ARod signed a one year deal, he’d have signed for 30-35MM$. If ARod would have GUARANTEED an MVP performance, AND also signed for 1 year, he would have signed close to 40MM$