THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

poor guy. well, not literally of course.

I am VERY curious how the market will pay DH’s this off-season.

One thing that MGL/Tango and other sabermetricians do very well, in my opinion, is to estimate free agent contracts.  Publicly available advanced metrics do a good job of estimating a player’s worth.

I wonder how DH’s will be paid in the future though.  There is more evidence than ever that this is perhaps a very unique skillset that some guys can do very well, and others cannot. 

Does it make David Ortiz more valuable on the open market that he is one of the very few players available with a.) thousands of at-bats in a DH role, b.) very good at it, and c.) very willing to do it?

There’s probably less than five guys in baseball who fit that description of all three criterion.  That scarcity might make Thome/Ortiz/Matsui more valuable on the open market this offseason than their WAR calculations suggest they should be.

I predict that we will need to re-evaluate the severity of the DH penalty eventually.