Baseball’s New Performance Bonus
January 17, 2005
A word heard from the New York Times
In Sunday’s New York Times, there was a short blurb in the Week in Review section called Baseball’s New Performance Bonus. I found the article interesting for a couple of reasons.
For one thing, the article claimed that both Carlos Beltran and Derek Lowe signed rich deals—more than Baseball Prospectus expected them to make—because of their fabulous play in the postseason. The article further claims that “most people” don’t consider Beltran to be among the game’s very best players, citing his .267 average as evidence.
Baseball Prospectus evidently expected Beltran to make $12.9 million a year in his new contract. They expected Lowe to make $5.7 million a year.
I had a few reactions to this article:
- Carlos Beltran is clearly among the game’s elite players; the more so considering his age. Even using Baseball Prospectus’s stats, Beltran ranked twelfth among all major league position players in VORP (Value Over Replacement Players). Which just shows what a misleading stat Batting Average can be.
- How do we know that these two players received more than expected because of their performance in the playoffs? Can you say the same for Jaret Wright? How about Eric Milton? Or Richie Sexson? Unless you adjust these salaries for the overall inflation we’ve witnessed this offseason, you may come to the wrong conclusion.
- I’m sure that Baseball Prospectus is going to roll out some major work in this year’s Annual regarding salaries. Jared Weiss and Ben Murphy have already put out one or two very good articles on the subject (actually, I believe their second one was yanked off the site after only a day or so, presumably to be saved for the book). This article was probably part of their Marketing campaign. Too bad the Times writer didn’t get it quite right.
- While I look forward to reading their analysis, I hope the Baseball Prospectus writers avoid making statements such as “we expected Beltran to make $12.9 million a year.” $12.9 million? Why not $12.8? Or $13.0? Assessing and projecting salaries is not such a science that you can make a claim of precision. I think the most you can say is that you expected Beltran to make between $12 million and $14 million. Putting more precise numbers on the table is extremely misleading.
And just to be clear, I expected him to make more, based on my own Win Shares analysis.
Having said all that, I’m certainly looking forward to getting my copy of this year’s BPro. You can order your own Baseball Prospectus here.
Howdy,
Thanks for your kinds words, I appreciate them, regardless of their validity. I just wanted to emphasize a point you made. I’m pretty sure I speak for Ben and BP by saying that we never intended to assert we could “know” or “expect” exactly what a free agent would be paid. Though our model has been fairly accurate, there’s no way it (or any model) could be accurate down to the hundreds of thousands.
Also, Beltran was one of the few players we didn’t expect to be a great fit with the model. As you say, he is clearly among the elite players. And this offseason wasn’t exactly loaded with elite hitters. In my mind, we didn’t have enough datapoints similar to Beltran to make much of a definitive statement on his salary.
Thanks again.
Jared
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 01/21 at 03:07 AM
Hi Jared,
Thanks so much for coming by. I appreciate your additional comments. All the positive kudos you guys get are very valid!
Good luck with the book.
Best,
dave
Posted by
studes on 01/21 at 12:53 PM
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