THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

What I would be interested in is a study correlating draft players bonuses with their production. Because I think what gets lost in the whole discussion of how much a player is worth is the cost of signing him originally. In fact if the draft market is efficient once you combine bonuses and adjust for real and salary inflation you should get the same dollars per marginal win as you get from free agents.

I definitely agree that bonuses (and recruiting and player development costs) need to be added in to a player’s expenses, not just salary.

While we like to believe that the minimum MLB payroll would be 10 million$ a year, we can’t also forget the 30 million$ (or whatever it is) in bonuses, recruiting, and minor league costs.  So, you really need 40 million$ to field a team every year of 18-22 yr olds (which may include some real quality players).  Maybe such a team would have a .400 record.

A team that existed without a minor league or drafting system at all (all players made up of discards of other teams, basically guys over 27) would cost 10-15 million$ a year, and would play at .300.

An average MLB team probably has 110 million$ in salary + bonus + minor league + recruiting.

So, to go from .300 to .400 costs about 30 million$.  To go from .400 to .500 costs about 70 million$.

That makes it a bit under 2 million a year for the young player wins, and a bit over 4 million a year for the old player wins.

Feel free to make up your own numbers (I did!).  I think you’ll still find that the young player costs are still much less than the old player costs.