THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Tuesday, December 28, 2010

How much would Nolan Ryan make today?

Walt Davis goes through a scenario where Nolan Ryan hits free agency after his 6 years of service, and then signs various contracts throughout his life.  The dollars he mentions should all be treated as present day dollars.  And the kicker is in bold below:

Ryan’s career was a bit of a mess in those early days but b-r doesn’t list any minor-league data after age 20, so I’m going to assume that Ryan would have been FA-eligible for the first time after his age 26 season (barring a buyout).

At that point he had 1117 IP ... now that looks good now but, for the time, 185 innings a year wasn’t much. But he was coming off seasons of 280 and 320 which were impressive then. His ERA+ was a robust 112 and had been quite good at ages 25 and 26. With his unprecedented 9.7 K/9, he is indeed going to get a monster contract. So let’s say he’d get 7 years in the range of $140 to $161 depending on how much weight they assign to performance vs. potential. I can’t recall the last pitcher with this sort of track record who became an FA around age 27—maybe because I can’t recall the last pitcher to survive 6 years as a near fulltime SP from ages 21-26. Anyway, I think it’s fair to say the market would be pretty crazy. Talk about hitting the market at the right time.

Ages 27-33, he put up a 110 ERA+—that ain’t what we paid for! The K-rate is still massive but so is the walk rate. He’s had a sub-100 ERA+ 2 of the last 3 seasons. Durability still very good but IP totals aren’t particularly out there (225-235 the last 3 years). Depressingly enough, he looks like Bronson Arroyo with Ollie Perez’s K/BB. Arroyo just signed a seemingly ridiculous (and ridiculously backloaded) 3/$36 contract.

Ryan has an insanely good age 34 season (the weird 81 strike but a 195 ERA+ is a 195 ERA+) but he follows that up with a 105 and a 114 and his age 36 durability doesn’t look good. K-rate and walk-rate both still high but coming down. This is not as good, even in IP terms, as Derek Lowe 33-35, closer to Ted Lilly ages 32-34. Lilly got 3/$33 and I’m feeling generous so Ryan gets the same.

Ages 37-39 is more of the same. Still durable but nothing special (180-200 a year) with a 101 ERA+. Given he’s turning 40, he’s on reasonably priced 1-year contracts from this point.

Except the ############ at age 40 throws 211 IP with a 142 ERA+, 11.5 K/9 and a K/BB over 3. What is a GM supposed to do? Gotta be the roids, but there’s no testing yet so what do we care. We try to hold the line and beat him over the head with his 8-16 record but he is popular and has those 15 no-hitters and 7 million strikeouts and, oh hell, the owner’s getting antsy, we panic and it’s 2/$28.

Age 41 is meh but we’ll be damned if the guy doesn’t basically repeat his age 40 season at 42 and adds a 16-10 record to it. It’s a good thing I moved up to President of Baseball Operations and my old sabermetric sidekick Jack Z is the GM now, let’s see if he can #### this up. We give him a Roger Clemens type deal expecting he’ll only want to pitch half the season but the ornery SOB just won’t stop and pitches the whole season for us—that was $20 M Jack, I hope you’re happy.

You gave him that deal again? You stupid #Q#*%&#!#$—oh, 170 innings of 140 ERA+ with pretty much the same peripherals he had at 40 and 42.

We give him the owner’s 18-year-old twin daughters for his age 45 season and promise him the Governorship of Texas for age 46.

Including arb salaries that all works up to roughly $300 M, one pair of 18-year-old twins and a governorship. Timing is everything!

EDIT: Holy crap! Using WAR and roughly $4 M / win ... that all comes out about the same. He had 67 WAR after age 26, so $268 M and I put him about $285 for his FA years. Who needs computers and fancy formulas?

Note to Walt: Nolan Ryan would have qualified under current free agency rules following his 1973 season.