The Most Valuable Mariners

by 2012 on Aug 30, 2011 10:04 AM PDT

Hello! I'm new here, and sorry to jump right in with a fanpost, but here it goes.

The following is more of an idea for future analysis than a finished product. What got me thinking was Fangraphs' popular "#6org" series, which attempts to measure the values of each of the franchises. Fangraphs also does another popular series on the top 50 contracts in baseball.

I wonder if you could combine the two series into a mega-series. What if instead of just assigning a number to each of the franchises, you added up the worth of all the contracts on the team? For example, on the Mariners, Felix Hernandez clearly is a plus to the franchise, whereas Chone Figgins is a minus (they would dump him if they didn't have to pay his salary). So in my ranking of the value of the Mariners's system, I would add Felix's contract but subtract Chone's. What you get is kind of the baseball version of GDP.

I don't have enough knowledge of the Mariner's farm system to judge its total value, so I can't give a Mariner's "GDP." However, I did form a top ten contract value list.

	Player	Value (millions)
1	Dustin Ackley	$37
2	Felix Hernandez	$25
3	Justin Smoak	$24
4	Franklin Gutierrez	$19
5	James Paxton	$16
6	Taijuan Walker	$16
7	Danny Hultzen	$16
8	Michael Pineda	$15
9	Vincent Catricala	$13
10	Nick Franklin	$13

My method: I uses Cot's Contracts, a 40-60-80% arbitration estimate, Marcel-esque 3-4-5 projections (I didn't account for aging), and free agency compensation estimates for the major league players. For the minor league and first and second-year players, I used Victor Wang's research on the monetary value of prospects. For the first and second-year players, I tried to judge where they would be on prospect lists if they were still in the minors. I know this is very rough, but its more of a concept than a final product.

What this shows us about the Mariners: There are a lot of prospects and young players on this list, which bodes well for the future. Also, the gap in value between Pineda and Ackley is somewhat surprising. Teams do not value pitchers nearly as much as position players because of the risk of injury. We should not be surprised if the Mariners trade one of Danny Hultzen, Taijuan Walker, James Paxton, and Michael Pineda in the near future.

Some bonus values:

Player

Value (millions)

Brendan Ryan

$11

Miguel Olivo	$8
Jason Vargas	$7
Brandon League	$6

David Aardsma

Ichiro Suzuki

Chone Figgins

-$8

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Comments

I don't understand how you could rank Walker's contract as more valuable then Pineda's, when Pineda is producing well above average and we have no idea if Walker will make it to the majors.

Also, the fangraphs series is called Organizational Rankings, not “#6org.” That is just a meme created when people blew up over Dave Cameron unveiling the Mariners as the 6th ranked organization in those rankings going into 2010.

by Shmelix Shmernandez on Aug 30, 2011 11:14 AM PDT reply actions

It's based on Victor Wang's numbers.

He found that pitchers that are among the top 1-10 prospects in baseball are worth $15 million, and pitchers in the 10-50 range are worth $16. This difference is a probably just a fluke in the data, but I decided to go strictly by his numbers.

by 2012 on Aug 30, 2011 12:58 PM PDT up reply actions

That can't be right. Say those numbers again?

by Lanky on Aug 30, 2011 3:54 PM PDT up reply actions

So you're saying a number 50 prospect pitcher is worth more than a number 1 prospect pitcher?

Do you see the flaw in those numbers?

by Patrick Stites on Aug 30, 2011 6:05 PM PDT up reply actions

He's not saying that. Victor Wang is saying something similar to that, but also not that

which is pretty clearly stated in the comment which you replied to. Yeesh.

by Matthew on Aug 30, 2011 11:21 PM PDT up reply actions 1 recs

You're not sorry. You're not sorry at all.

by ThomasG on Aug 30, 2011 12:19 PM PDT reply actions

I'm not entirely sure what you're trying to get at here

what are these values being shown? Are they the value each player is expected to provide under their remaining team control? Their value over the next three years?

If it’s either of these, then of course this is going to be skewed heavily in the direction of the younger players because they have full team control remaining, but I am not sure how you came up with values for players like Dustin Ackley, Felix Hernandez and Justin Smoak. I can’t possibly justify Ackley as a $37M value – except maybe over two seasons, but then the rest of the numbers don’t make sense.

by seattlebruin on Aug 30, 2011 12:55 PM PDT reply actions

Yes, the first one.

It’s the surplus value each player is expected to provide.

by 2012 on Aug 30, 2011 1:03 PM PDT reply actions

How is Dustin Ackley worth $37M to the Mariners then?

that’s $6.2M/year.

I’m pretty sure Dustin Ackley is better than Adam Kennedy.

by seattlebruin on Aug 30, 2011 1:06 PM PDT up reply actions

If Ackley were to be traded, he would have $37M of value.

You have to subtract his contract. That’s important when he goes into arbitration.
Also, the $37M treats Ackley as a prospect, so there is a risk of him being a bust.

by 2012 on Aug 30, 2011 1:14 PM PDT up reply actions

Ackley isn't a prospect anymore, and I'm still unsure how you got $37M

extrapolated to 150 games, he’s been a 6-win player so far, but let’s be conservative and say that he’ll be worth 30 wins over his time as a Mariner, so 5 wins/season. Let’s also say that the value of a win will stay static, and be worth about $4M on the free agent market (a dubious assumption at best). This gives Ackley a value of $120M over the life of his team control, obviously before considering his contracts.

Now let’s assume that Ackley becomes a free agent after 2017, so he would go through the arbitration process every season. His salaries then become (if I am interpreting Cot’s correctly)
2012 – $1.5M
2013 – $.5M
2014 – $.7M
2015 – .4 * $20M = $8M
2016 – .6 * $20M = $12M
2017 – .8 * $20M = $16M

So we’ve paid Ackley $39M in salaries for $120M of value, making him an $80M asset over the life of his team control. Either your methodology is something different, or you’ve vastly undersold Ackley’s ability – either way, there is no way I can find where he would be just a +$40M asset.

by seattlebruin on Aug 30, 2011 1:29 PM PDT up reply actions 2 recs

But Ackley will get $20/$25/$30 million in his arb years!

Rooting for lovable losers since 1984.

by seattlecougar on Aug 30, 2011 2:05 PM PDT up reply actions

Is he really getting that big of a jump in his 3rd year? I thought before you hit arbitration you got bunk, even if you were a top pick.

follow @casetines

by Kenneth Arthur on Aug 30, 2011 2:22 PM PDT up reply actions

a $200k increase seems perfectly reasonable

by seattlebruin on Aug 30, 2011 2:26 PM PDT up reply actions

Yeah, it's a little hard to see the decimal signs. It goes from $500,000 to $700,000.

I wish 2012 would show a little more math for his valuations, since it’s not obvious to me. Thanks for showing your work, sb. Also, not all the baseline values for prospects are shown—I’ve heard of Wang’s work, but don’t know the values.
Also, how is David Aardsma worth $3 million? Is the assumption that he’ll pitch next year?

by yuniform on Aug 30, 2011 2:30 PM PDT up reply actions

Sure - the 2012 number is based off of Cot's, which says that of his $7.5M initial contract,

$6M was given in a signing bonus and he has $1.5M in guaranteed salaries. I just wasn’t sure how those “guaranteed salaries” were spread over the course of the deal, so I just assumed he got it as a lump sum up front in his first full season (which would be 2012).

For 2013 and 2014 I just assumed he would be treated as any other second/third year player and gave a modest increase, neither of which really affect the overall valuation much ($81M total value vs $82M, whatever)

by seattlebruin on Aug 30, 2011 2:41 PM PDT up reply actions

Basically Wang wentb through historical prospect lists and looked at how each prospect did during the life of their team control

and figured out what that was worth on average to their team – for example, a prospect of Nick Franklin’s caliber (low top 100) was worth about three to four wins on average over the course of their team control.

Obviously, very few players are actually worth that, as the vast majority easily outperform that level and continue playing in the Major Leagues or bust out of baseball in a few years

by seattlebruin on Aug 30, 2011 2:43 PM PDT up reply actions

Oh shit, yeah, I saw it was 1.5 to 5 to 7.

follow @casetines

by Kenneth Arthur on Aug 30, 2011 3:58 PM PDT up reply actions

Like I could easily see Felix being $25M, since a back of the napkin calculation says we owe him $58M over the next three years

and he’s probably a 6-7 win pitcher, so like $80M of total value

by seattlebruin on Aug 30, 2011 2:46 PM PDT up reply actions

I did undervalue Ackley.

However, I don’t think you can assume he will be worth 5 wins per season, either. Because I didn’t feel comfortable projecting Ackley and Pineda after less than a season of playing time in the majors, I used Wang’s prospect values and considered both Ackley and Pineda top ten prospects. Doing so, I likely undervalued each. Ackley might actually be worth $50-$80M, and Pineda $20-$40M.

by 2012 on Aug 30, 2011 5:41 PM PDT up reply actions

I am perfectly OK with projecting Ackley for five wins a season for the next six years

by seattlebruin on Aug 31, 2011 9:20 AM PDT up reply actions

That might be correct,

but I’d contend it’s not “being conservative”

by Matthew on Aug 31, 2011 9:34 AM PDT up reply actions

WOW

Out of curiosity, what would you project for Desmond Jennings or Brett Lawrie?

by marc w on Aug 31, 2011 10:42 AM PDT up reply actions

Depends if they get traded to us or not

like 1.5 WAR for Jennings on Tampa, 7-8 for Seattle. Pretty similar for Lawrie, though obviously Jennings makes more of his value through defense.

by seattlebruin on Aug 31, 2011 10:57 AM PDT up reply actions

I'm just... I don't understand what you're doing.

So, in a half a season, Ackley’s put up 2.5 WAR, and so you project him for 5/year for 6 years.
In about a quarter of a season, Jennings has put up 2.3 WAR, and you project him for 1.5 WAR in full season with his current team. And this becomes 7-8 for Seattle? How? Lawrie is also a 7-8 win player in Seattle, but below average with the Blue Jays?

by marc w on Aug 31, 2011 11:11 AM PDT up reply actions

I've seen the future and am trying to make subtle suggestions to Jack Z

by seattlebruin on Aug 31, 2011 11:25 AM PDT up reply actions

I wonder who the first poster will be to get uppity about this one and accuse me of copying Jeff

by seattlebruin on Aug 31, 2011 11:40 AM PDT up reply actions 1 recs

/raises hand meekly

"Satisfaction is the enemy of success." SanFranPreps Twitter: @d_quazzo

by perfectstrat on Aug 31, 2011 4:05 PM PDT up reply actions 1 recs

Zwut

by abender20 on Aug 31, 2011 2:39 PM PDT up reply actions

I'd like to think you're right that Ackley will be a consistent 4.5 win player.

Projecting something like that for a first year player, no matter his perceived ability and potential, is probably over-valuing him. Even players that have been around for a few years and have established that level of production are not likely to continue to do so in the future.

He certainly looks like he’s got a bright future, and could well be even better than that, but producing 4.5 WAR per year for 6 years is a lot to expect of him right now.

Victor Wang’s numbers are wonky, and I believe he said in his article for THT that it would probably be proper to assume that the higher ranked prospects will out-produce the others in the future. And having seen some success in the Major Leagues already (however limited), Pineda and Ackley should be looked at as having more value than what 2012 has listed. I can’t see treating them as if they’re still prospects in the minors, they’ve clearly established they have more value than that.

Interesting way to look at it from a team level.

by nathaniel dawson on Aug 30, 2011 9:31 PM PDT up reply actions