THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Bay’s AAV is going to be really difficult to move, but I actually think Holliday’s is gonna be ugly by the end.  I chose Byrd as giving his team the best deal, simply because it’s short and cheap.  If he produces 2.5, 2, and 1.5 WAR, they’re paying him 2.5M per win max (assuming no inflation- with inflation its even less.)

I think that some of the deals are good, but once the market settled at around $3.5M, the Figgins and Polanco deals, which both looked very good (to me,anyway) at the time they were signed, now merely look to be about market value, maybe slightly above.  Sure, they probably “fit” the teams needs better than other contracts, but again the average market value in the abstract…

Fangraphs is running this concurrently (and separately… hope you like that Patriot!).

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/poll-best-and-worst-3-year-contracts

After almost 200 votes there:
Worst:
33% Lyon
18% Bay
15% Holliday

Same top 3 that we have at my blog, though Bay is alot closer to Lyon here than he is at Fangraphs.

***

Best:
58% Figgins
10% Polanco
10% Lackey

Same overwhelming vote for Figgins, while there’s alot of disagreement about 2nd best.

Being a Jays fan (suffering thru Wells’ contract), I have to say putting all of that money into Holliday is a mistake. Lyon and Bay are not good deals, but there’s twice the guaranteed money put on Holliday.

I don’t know how you can justify Lyon being the worst contract.  He projects for a little under 1 WAR next year (around a 3.8 ERA, 70 innings and 1.5 LI).  Wins are going for about 3.5 million this year, so that Astros are overpaying by, what, 2 million this year?  Maybe a little more in the next two years?

I think you easily have to go with Bay for the worst contract.  Maybe Lackey if you want to make a case that since pitchers are huge risks for injury, you should never sign them to big deals (especially, somewhat “meh” pitchers like Lackey) .