Mets sign Matsui
December 08, 2003
A Win Shares look at the Kaz Matsui deal.
The Mets signed Kaz Matsui to a three-year $20.1 million deal today. He reportedly received a number of perks as well, including a no-trade clause, reimbursement for housing costs as well as two translators, and various incentives. But let’s just look at the $20.1 million right now.
That’s $6.7 million a year, or almost exactly $1 million more per year than Aaron Boone got. I’m picking on Aaron Boone because we reviewed his contract a few days ago.
Obviously, the key to this deal is Matsui’s performance for the next three years, which is very hard to project. Sabermetricians just don’t have enough data to build a reliable projection model for Japanese players who come to the States.
According to Clay Davenport, his most current model indicates that a reasonable comparison for Matsui is Orlando Cabrera. Last year, Cabrera had 20 Win Shares, while playing 162 games. His batting Win Shares were two above average, according to our (evolving) new Win Shares system. His adjusted OPS last year (his best full year so far) was 95. So Cabrera may be just the kind of player that Win Shares overvalues.
Enough about Cabrera. Let’s assume, for argument’s sake, that Matsui projects to achieve about 20 Win Shares next year. Let’s further assume that the relative realistic range of his performance could be anywhere between 15 and 25 (barring injury).
The raindrops has a fairly negative view of this deal, particularly compared to the various options the Mets have (or had): Scutaro, Aurilia, Victor Diaz and Danny Garcia.
I believe that Scutaro could be good for 15 to 20 Win Shares next year if he played on a regular basis (unfortunately, we may never know). There’s a decent chance Matsui will be in that range, but there’s also a chance that Matsui could perform five to ten Win Shares better, and here’s the thing: Major League GM’s paid $1 million for each incremental Win Share on the free market last year.
I’m not saying they should have paid that much, I’m just saying that they did (refer to our Money for Nothing article). The Matsui contract makes sense from that perspective. It’s hard to find players who contribute over twenty Win Shares in a year. So GMs pick their spots to add 20+ WS players, and they pay a hefty premium for them.
Now, the raindrops feels that shortstop was not the place for the Mets to add a 20+ player, particularly at this point in their overall team development. I can’t argue the point, though I give the Mets credit for picking up an interesting player, making the team more fun to watch.
Back to Boone. I’m guessing that Boone will also come in around twenty Win Shares next year, and I think his projection is more reliable. Let’s say the realistic range for Boone is between 18 and 22 Win Shares (barring injury). BTW, Matsui is two years younger than Boone, but then Boone only received a one-year contract while Matsui received a three-year deal.
As David Burden has pointed out on this site, Boone is a known quantity, which should help him net a better contract. However, Matsui has a higher upside than Boone (at least, we’re assuming that he does) and GMs value those incremental Win Shares highly. So two things are required to justify the Matsui contract, relative to the Boone contract:
- The Mets believe Matsui is more likely to come in above twenty Win Shares than below.
- GMs actually value incremental Win Shares at an increasing rate, instead of a steady rate.
If the market values the 21st Win Share more than the 20th, and the 22nd more than the 21st, then a player like Matsui, with a higher potential upside, will make more than a projectable Boone, even if their average projections are equal.
I believe this is the case, even if our data doesn’t yet bear it out. Over the next month, I hope to prove it.
I think that using Matsui as a data point in the WS/$ discussion may be a little misleading. Given the PR buzz that’s surrounded Ichiro and Big Matsui, I would assume a team would pay Little Matsui more than his talent would dictate, just to get a bunch of Japanese and other curious folks to take a new interest in the team.
-----
I’d argued previously that easily projectable talents would be more valuable on the market, since the rich teams would be the ones interested in these “proven veterans” to shore up their playoff hopes. However, the concept that people would pay more for a “lottery ticket” is probably more consistent with normal human behavior.
Luckily, I think both analyses can co-exist in the case of Little Matsui. It just so happens that the Mets are a rich team that’s *not* close to making the playoffs, so they need a few “lottery tickets” to pay off if they’re going to compete. And thus they would be expected to drive up the price of unknown quantities such as Matsui.
-----
A last thought on Boone v. Matsui: the historical WS article pointed out that certain positions were over represented in the top 100 WS/PA table. In particular, 3B seemed to produce more WS/PA than SS. If we take the leap to say that WS isn’t completely adjusting for the positional value of players, we could expect Matsui to get more $/WS than Boone given his position.
----
And a last thought on Matsui himself: if you make the broad assumption that 2B is easier to play than SS, Matsui’s arrival may increase the number of fielding WS Reyes can accumulate. If Cashman could have signed a SS and slid Jeter over to third without getting flogged, Boone might not have gotten his contract at all.
Sleepy,
-Dave
Posted by on 12/09 at 03:04 AM
Hi David:
Great points, as usual.
Regarding 3B and SS, I think the current situation is different than the historical one. As you pointed out, the Yankees didn’t have a lot of options at 3B (outside of moving Jeter) but the Mets already had a stud SS. So the law of supply and demand should have boosted Boone’s salary and dampened Matsui’s. In theory. 
Posted by
studes on 12/09 at 05:30 AM
I’ll conclude my comments on Matsui by agreeing that it’s unlikely Matsui will earn his contract relative to the minor league alternatives. However, if we assume the Mets had cash to burn, another question to ask is where else the money could have been spent. . . a topic that I’m sure is covered elsewhere, but might be fun to revisit once the rest of the free agent class settles out.
Speaking as a Giants fan, I certainly hope Aurilia ends up getting more than $2.5M per year, or the G’ints were crazy not to resign him.
Posted by on 12/09 at 03:08 PM
David, as a Giants fan, can you explain the Michael Tucker deal?????
Posted by
studes on 12/09 at 03:57 PM
Page 1 of 1 pages
