THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

For what it’s worth, I have no idea what happened in the Sizemore voting, but he’s clearly not getting $25 million.  The Indians declined a $9 million option for one year, and if his market value was above that, they simply would have traded him.  I’m pretty sure he’ll sign for one year in the $4-$7 million range. 

Overall, I think the contracts all tend to be on the low side, especially if you treat the Sizemore one as an error by the voters and throw it out of the pool.

I agree with Dave, overall the contracts seem rather low. Whether he’s worth it or not I think Fielder gets $150 mil or so. I still can never get over the fact that teams pay so much for closers. It’s crazy.

I could see Sizemore getting $25M.  He’s the one guy on the list who could receive drastically more money than what his perceived market value is AND still outperform that contract.

From Sizemore’s perspective, he probably wants the one-year deal in a hitter’s park to rebuild value by demonstrating health and performance, then re-enter the market next offseason at age 29-30.  If that happens, he’s a $4-7M guy.  That is, admittedly, the most likely scenario. 

But, what a rebuilding team with extra cash should do is try to buy an extra year or two, or the option of an extra year or two at the end of a 1-2 year guarantee, on the small chance that Sizemore returns to the level of a 5-6 WAR player. Obviously they would need to pay higher than Sizemore’s one-year-deal market rate to get him to give up his age 29-32 seasons. 

That’s the Anthopolous-style move, the Freidman move, the Epstein move:  acquire assets.  You give Sizemore a 3-4 year, $25M deal, he takes it. That’s good enough for him to give up the chance of hitting the market again next year coming off a good, healthy season. If he’s crap, well, flushing $6M a year doesn’t sink the Blue Jays or Cubs. But if he somehow returns to being a 5-6 WAR player at ANY TIME during the life of that 3-4 year contract while making only $6M a year, he’s an incredible trade chip even for a non-contending team.  He goes gangbusters for the last two years, he’s a Type A free agent.  He’d also have a greater opportunity to demonstrate health and performance. 

You sign him to a one year deal, and he’s still hindered by his crappy 2011 stats in the Elias calculations, and not far enough removed from his ‘11 struggles to garner anything of substance via trade. 

None of the other free agents on that list canconceivably outperform their perceived market value in the way that Sizemore could.  Pujols gets a $250M deal and, yes, he’s a great player...but he has zero chance of being a contractual asset (surplus value) over the life of the deal.

I have to believe that Sizemore is going the Beltre route: a one year discounted deal, to prove himself. 

If Sizemore really believes in himself, he’ll insist on a one year deal.

If Sizemore does NOT believe in himself, he’ll insist on at least a 3-yr deal (and the team will insist on a heavy discount).

Realistically, the Indians could have done a sign-and-trade by picking up his option.  They didn’t.  So, you gotta figure that the maximum a team is going to pay is 8MM$ for 1 year.  That means he’ll be offered at best 6-7MM$.

That means his offers are going to come as 1/7, 3/18 or something like that.

Reyes: boy did Fangraphs readers nail that one.