Cleaning Up Salaries
December 11, 2003
In which full, correct 2003 salary and Win Shares data are presented.
The salary data I’ve been using so far has not been perfect. For players who played on more than one team, the data was not prorated. And I had a very gross estimate for those players for whom there was no salary data (mostly minor leaguers up for a cup of coffee). It was throwing off my calculations a bit, so I decided to clean it up.
So let me present salary and Win Share data, by league and by position. All player salary data has been appropriately prorated to each team, and reasonable salary estimates have been made for those instances in which there was no data.
Total Salary by League and Position
| POS |
AL |
NL |
Total |
| 1B |
$64,601,855 |
$121,924,821 |
$186,526,677 |
| 2B |
$28,962,856 |
$58,392,944 |
$87,355,800 |
| 3B |
$47,440,010 |
$61,941,670 |
$109,381,680 |
| C |
$40,048,841 |
$94,039,082 |
$134,087,923 |
| DH |
$77,895,715 |
#NA |
$77,895,715 |
| OF |
$218,376,376 |
$308,207,341 |
$526,640,717 |
| P |
$361,959,544 |
$455,033,653 |
$816,993,197 |
| SS |
$91,041,686 |
$49,918,338 |
$140,960,024 |
| Total |
$930,326,883 |
$1,149,476,849 |
$2,079,860,732 |
Total Win Shares by League and Position
| POS |
AL |
NL |
Total |
| 1B |
234 |
320 |
554 |
| 2B |
234 |
317 |
551 |
| 3B |
211 |
268 |
479 |
| C |
219 |
297 |
516 |
| DH |
197 |
NA |
197 |
| OF |
803 |
1,056 |
1,860 |
| P |
1,209 |
1,403 |
2,612 |
| SS |
262 |
257 |
519 |
| Total |
3,369 |
3,918 |
7,288 |
Win Share Value by League and Position
| POS |
AL |
NL |
Total |
| 1B |
$2,177,427 |
$(30,602,726) |
$(28,425,298) |
| 2B |
$37,816,426 |
$32,073,007 |
$69,889,434 |
| 3B |
$12,775,497 |
$14,540,585 |
$27,316,083 |
| C |
$22,449,719 |
$(9,280,762) |
$13,168,956 |
| DH |
$(21,675,550) |
NA |
$(21,675,550) |
| OF |
$10,785,009 |
$(6,844,425) |
$4,168,965 |
| P |
$(16,933,251) |
$(54,643,339) |
$(71,576,590) |
| SS |
$(16,271,720) |
$23,424,720 |
$7,153,000 |
| Total |
$31,123,557 |
$(31,351,939) |
$- |
With the change in salary data, the Win Share Value formula is now WS * $285,000 minus salary.
There is so much information here, I don't know where to start. Any comments?
If it’s not a great deal of work on your part, it might be interesting to see what the data looks like from a few different angles:
- Throw out the bottom 10% or so in WS/$. Getting rid of the Mo Vaughns of the world might give us a better read on the last chart, which might be considered “The GMs pocket guide on where to spend your money.” Or, perhaps, which positions to bother developing on the farm.
- For similar reasons, it might be interesting to break out seperately guys who are playing for the minimum, guys who weren’t yet arbitration eligible, guys on arbitration contracts, and guys on free agent contracts. Or just break it down in to salary ranges to get similar info with less work.
- Lastly, I’d be particularly interested in the chart strictly for players who signed FA (or perhaps arb) contracts last winter. We all like to snipe GM moves as they happen, but this could be a useful tool in Monday morning quarterbacking. For instance, if you thought your favorite GM badly overpaid for that league-average starter, but everyone else did too, maybe he was just responding to the market instead of being stupid. 
Continued apologies for being a philosopher rather than a scientist,
-Dave
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 12/11 at 09:27 PM
No apologies necessary, David. Right now, I’m working on entering the status of each player in the database (that is, free agent, arbitration eligible, not, etc.). It’s taking a while, cause I don’t know any good source for this and so I’m researching each individual player. I’m guessing at a few of them, and there are some tough calls (for instance, how to classify Mark Prior, who signed a five-year major league deal right out of the draft).
Anyway, I think that’s the next place to go with this data. It will just take me a week or two to finish my extra research. I’m about a third of the way through right now, and Christmas season is here (a very tough season when you’ve got three kids, by the way).
In the meantime, there’s a lot to digest on these charts. For instance, second basemen seem to be great deals across the board. Why is that? And the pitcher data makes you wonder if:
1. GMs overpay for pitchers, or
2. Win Shares undervalues pitching.
Posted by
studes on 12/12 at 08:42 AM
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