THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Thursday, February 18, 2010

Rays Annual - PDF - for free, plus reliever valuation

By Tangotiger, 04:00 PM

I love, just love, how fans of a team come together, and put something like this. And, to do it for free is pretty crazy frankly. But, thank god for crazy people. There are plenty of PITCHf/x articles in there. Here’s one article I quite enjoyed, as we were just talking about the topic just minutes ago:

Really, you have to look at free agent signings to see how the open market values a late-inning reliever. And here’s the bad news for those that like the bauble of a late-inning stopper. Of the 33 relievers that were on free-agent contracts in 2009, only Mark Hendrickson, Jon Rauch, Jeremy Affeldt, Arthur Rhodes, Kiko Calero, Rafael Betancourt, Chan Ho Park, Darren Oliver and Trevor Hoffman were worth their contracts. That doesn’t seem like a good success rate, especially considering some of the salaries and years handed out to the likes of Francisco Cordero (-$5.53 million net value) and Francisco Rodriguez (-$7.67 million net value). It would take a comprehensive look at salaries and other position players to say any more than the vague “it seems like a bad idea to pay late-inning relievers a lot of money.”

I’d loved to have seen the full data, including the non-free agents. Eno Sarris: any chance you can post this somewhere?

• Sabermetrics • Books • Finances

#1 Mitch (see all posts) 2010/02/19 (Fri) @ 14:44

Matt Carruth at FanGraphs took a look at this a back in January, in regards to the 2006 free agent class. Results were similarly disastrous.

http://baltimorebirdsnest.blogspot.com/2010/01/relief-pitching.html

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/the-winter-of-pitching-discontent/

#2 eno (see all posts) 2010/02/19 (Fri) @ 21:12

Oh man, I’m a little out of my league here. It really as just simple grunt work. Exported relievers by WAR-based $value from FG, input salaries from Cot’s baseball contracts, subtracted salary from value, and then highlighted free agents in bold. (*= arb, **=late arb) There are 32 confirmed free agents, plus Villone, whom I counted despite not finding his contract value. 10 had positive value, and none were of the ‘high-priced’ type.

Nothing big here, just a little fun. But it looks like FG is right about on the money in terms of reliever value, though. Fine while they are young, but don’t sign them.

spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AiryD9oCy_AmdDdzRXVHd2xKSzN5Nm9udUI0OG9SeHc&hl=en

#3 Tangotiger (see all posts) 2010/02/19 (Fri) @ 21:42

Eno, you are in the right league. Anyone who rolls up his sleeves like you do always has a seat at the table.

#4 eno (see all posts) 2010/02/20 (Sat) @ 18:35

To make this more robust, perhaps I could do a multiplier for the arbitration players? So, according to service time, find a multiplier that would approximate their ‘free market’ contract number? Use the 20/40/60/80 scale?

That might give us an even clearer picture of the relationship between FG WAR-based $ value, actual free market value, and the ‘value’ of relievers.

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THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Thursday, February 18, 2010

Rays Annual - PDF - for free, plus reliever valuation

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