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Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Preliminary look at the 2010 arbitration market
I love it when people roll up their sleeves and do what I should have been doing. (Bill James had a great quote, along the lines of: I can’t do this alone. It’s been 25 years since he said that, and we’ve now got hundreds, if not thousands, of qualified people who can do this.) This time, it’s Jack Moore. Here’s the chart for the guys in their last year of arbitration who signed 1 year deals:
They are forecasted for 9.6 WAR, who signed for 10 years / 26.4MM$. Averaging 0.96 WAR, they signed 2.64MM$ per year, or 2.24MM$ above the minimum. That makes the $ per win as 2.24/.96 = 2.3MM$ per win. If we look at the 2nd year eligibles (who signed for 1 year): 18 years / 49MM$, 17 WAR. That makes it 2.2MM$ per win. And for the 1st time eligibles one-year contracts: 19 years / 35MM$, 26 WAR, or 1.1MM$ per win.
So, the simple average of these three groups is 1.9MM$ per win. If we go with the point-of-view that arb-eligible players get about 50% of the free agent dollars on average, that sets the free agent (FA) win at 3.8MM$ per win. If we take 60% as the average, that sets the FA win at 3.2MM$ per win.
As we’ve seen so far with the free agents, we’ve been experiencing around 3.5-4.0MM$ per win. This is just more evidence to add to the bucket.