Since You Asked For It - Examining JP's Free Agent Signings
Tuesday, October 05 2004 @ 01:55 AM EDT
Contributed by: Pepper Moffatt
A number of you wanted to evaluate how well JPs free agent signings have performed. To help you out in doing this, here are some stats.
There's two key components to any free agent signing:
- How much that free agent earned
- How well that free agent performed
Measuring #1 is easy. Just look at his salary.
For #2, I decided to look at a Baseball Prospectus statistic called "Value Over Replacement Player" or VORP. BP defines VORP as:
Value Over Replacement Player. The number of runs contributed beyond what a replacement-level player would contribute if given the same percentage of team plate appearances.
To put that into context, it usually takes an extra 10-11 runs or so to produce an extra win for the team.
Thus to examine the tradeoff between price and performance, we look at the following things:
- 2002SAL, 2003SAL, 2004SAL. The salaries of the players in 2002, 2003, and 2004 if they were with the Jays in those years. Here we use units of $1,000.
- TOTSAL: The total salary earned while with the Jays.
- 02VORP, 03VORP, 04VORP. Points of VORP earned in each season with the Jays.
- TOTVORP: Total VORP earned while with Jays.
- V/M$: This is the amount of VORP collected per million dollar of salary. Here higher is better. A 10.0 would indicate the player collected 10 points of VORP for each million dollars earned.
- V/EX$: V/M$ is kind of misleading since a replacement level player should collect 0.0 points of VORP but collect $300,000 in salary. So V/EX$ compares VORP to "excess salary" or the salary collected above $300,000. Thus V/EX$ is higher than V/M$
Table I - Above Replacement Level Free Agent Signings
FIRST LAST TOTSAL SOVMIN TOLVORP V/M$ V/EX$ 2002Sal 2003Sal 2004Sal 02VORP 03VORP 04VORP
Greg Myers 1700 1100 30.5 17.9 27.7 800 900 30.7 -0.2
Mike Bordick 1000 700 15.3 15.3 21.9 1000 15.3
Chris Gomez 750 450 7.3 9.7 16.2 750 7.3
Frank Catalan 4500 3900 31.9 7.1 8.2 2200 2300 25.5 6.4
Miguel Batista 3600 3300 22.6 6.3 6.8 3600 22.6
Terry Adams 1700 1400 10.0 5.9 7.1 1700 10.0
Doug Creek 700 400 3.3 4.7 8.3 700 3.3
Dave Berg 1950 1150 6.1 3.1 5.3 450 700 800 10.2 1.4 -5.5
Jeff Tam 600 300 0.3 0.5 1.0 600 0.3
Kerry Ligtenb 2000 1700 -1.6 -0.8 -0.9 2000 -1.6
Pat Hentgen 2200 1900 -11.4 -5.2 -6.0 2200 -11.4
Tanyon Sturtze 1000 700 -6.4 -6.4 -9.1 1000 -6.4
TOTAL 21700 17000 107.9 5.0 6.3
Table II - Replacement Level Free Agent Signings
FIRST LAST TOTSAL SOVMIN TOLVORP V/M$ V/EX$ 2002Sal 2003Sal 2004Sal 02VORP 03VORP 04VORP
Frank Menechi 400 100 26.0 65.0 260.0 400 26.0
Gregg Zaun 300 0 17.6 58.7 300 17.6
Pete Walker 625 125 27.1 43.4 216.8 200 425 20.6 6.5
Josh Towers 640 40 20.1 31.4 502.5 300 340 9.6 10.5
Aquilin Lopez 618 18 18.7 30.3 1038.9 300 318 19.0 -0.3
Corey Thurman 500 0 10.5 21.0 200 300 11.1 -0.6
Jason Kershne 815 15 16.7 20.5 1113.3 200 300 315 1.5 15.7 -0.5
Trever Miller 305 5 5.8 19.0 1160.0 305 5.8
Ryan Glynn 300 0 4.9 16.3 300 4.9
Doug Davis 300 0 3.6 12.0 300 3.6
Scott Service 300 0 2.9 9.7 300 2.9
Doug Linton 350 50 3.1 8.9 62.0 350 3.1
Howie Clark 600 0 1.9 3.2 300 300 5.2 -3.3
Juan Acevedo 300 0 0.6 2.0 300 0.6
Valerio delosSa 700 0 0.1 0.1 300 0.1
Sean Douglas 300 0 -0.1 -0.3 300 -0.1
Dan Reicher 300 0 -0.9 -3.0 300 -0.9
Chad Hermans 300 0 -2.0 -6.7 300 -2.0
Ken Huckaby 513 13 -4.8 -9.4 -369.2 200 313 -3.9 -0.9
Mike Nakamur 300 0 -5.1 -17.0 300 -5.1
Dave Maurer 300 0 -7.1 -23.7 300 -7.1
TOTAL 9066 366 139.6 15.4 381.4
Note that many of the totals for Table II are very misleading, as many of these players only played a fraction of a season with the team, so they would not collect their full 300K.
Also note that in Table I, I assume that all contracts were not insured, so that a player collected his money even while on the DL. This makes some players, like Myers, look like poorer signings than they actually were.
So that's the data. Anyone care to comment on it?
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