The surprise signing of Yoenis Cespedes appears to have fundamentally changed the way the baseball world views the Mets in terms of their standing in the National League East as well as their ability to add significant payroll. The team had always stated that it would, in fact, have no problem spending money in the right deal. Well, they’ve held true to their word and added both a significant bat to the middle of their lineup as well as significant payroll with the 3/$75 million contract to the slugging outfielder. When all is said and done, the team will go into the 2016 season with a payroll on the cusp of $140 million. It’s a payroll more on par with what many would consider appropriate for a “big market team,” but is it money well spent?
Well, we won’t actually know that until the smoke clears on several of the larger contracts the team has doled out, including and especially the one they just gave to Cespedes. Still, we can take what we know and use projections to get an idea of what kind of bang the Mets can expect for their buck in the 2016 season. Obviously projections have their flaws and are certainly not the be-all and end-all, but it gives us a rough barometer of where the Mets have chosen to allocate their money and what value they are getting from their investments. Take all of this with a grain of salt, but it’s an interesting exercise nonetheless.
Below is a table of Mets players, their projected 2016 fWAR, their 2016 salary, their 2016 value, and the difference between their salary and actual value. The 2016 value is determined by multiplying their projected fWAR, pulled from FanGraphs’ Depth Charts listing, and the estimated cost of a win (we’re using $8 million per win in this case). The list of players contains those that are a lock for the 25-man roster as well as those that have a pretty good chance of spending some time on the roster due to injuries. This is not an authoritative list since we can’t know how the roster will shake out over the course of the season, but it’s as good a list as any for our purposes.
The 2016 salaries are pulled from Cot’s Baseball Contracts. For those players that did not yet have a salary for 2016 (namely pre-arb players that make slightly more than league minimum), their 2015 salary was used. All other pre-arb players with no 2015 salary listed were assigned the 2016 MLB league minimum $507,500. Additionally, keep in mind that the salaries could end up being slightly higher for reasons such as incentives being reached and other contract provisions. The table is ordered by highest projected fWAR.
| Name | WAR | 2016 Salary | 2016 Value | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Matt Harvey | 4.6 | $4,325,000 | $36,800,000 | $32,475,000 |
| Jacob deGrom | 4.4 | $556,875 | $35,200,000 | $34,643,125 |
| Noah Syndergaard | 4.1 | $507,500 | $32,800,000 | $32,292,500 |
| Yoenis Cespedes | 2.8 | $25,000,000 | $22,400,000 | -$2,600,000 |
| David Wright | 2.6 | $20,000,000 | $20,800,000 | $800,000 |
| Michael Conforto | 2.4 | $507,500 | $19,200,000 | $18,692,500 |
| Neil Walker | 2.3 | $10,700,000* | $18,400,000 | $7,700,000 |
| Steven Matz | 2.3 | $507,500 | $18,400,000 | $17,892,500 |
| Travis d’Arnaud | 2.3 | $525,424 | $18,400,000 | $17,874,576 |
| Lucas Duda | 2.2 | $6,725,000 | $17,600,000 | $10,875,000 |
| Curtis Granderson | 2.1 | $16,000,000 | $16,800,000 | $800,000 |
| Wilmer Flores | 1.9 | $513,543 | $15,200,000 | $14,686,457 |
| Bartolo Colon | 1.2 | $7,250,000 | $9,600,000 | $2,350,000 |
| Jeurys Familia | 1.2 | $3,300,000* | $9,600,000 | $6,300,000 |
| Asdrubal Cabrera | 1 | $8,250,000 | $8,000,000 | -$250,000 |
| Zack Wheeler | 1 | $546,250 | $8,000,000 | $7,453,750 |
| Juan Lagares | 0.8 | $2,500,000 | $6,400,000 | $3,900,000 |
| Kevin Plawecki | 0.7 | $507,500 | $5,600,000 | $5,092,500 |
| Addison Reed | 0.4 | $5,300,000 | $3,200,000 | -$2,100,000 |
| Antonio Bastardo | 0.4 | $5,250,000 | $3,200,000 | -$2,050,000 |
| Hansel Robles | 0.4 | $507,500 | $3,200,000 | $2,692,500 |
| Alejandro De Aza | 0.2 | $5,750,000 | $1,600,000 | -$4,150,000 |
| Carlos Torres | 0.2 | $1,050,000 | $1,600,000 | $550,000 |
| Ruben Tejada | 0.2 | $3,000,000 | $1,600,000 | -$1,400,000 |
| Sean Gilmartin | 0.2 | $507,500 | $1,600,000 | $1,092,500 |
| Johnny Monell | 0.1 | $507,500 | $800,000 | $292,500 |
| Logan Verrett | 0.1 | $507,500 | $800,000 | $292,500 |
| Erik Goeddel | 0 | $509,125 | $0 | -$509,125 |
| Jenrry Mejia | 0 | $2,470,000 | $0 | -$2,470,000 |
| Jerry Blevins | 0 | $4,000,000 | $0 | -$4,000,000 |
| Josh Edgin | 0 | $625,000 | $0 | -$625,000 |
| Total | $138,206,217 | $336,800,000 | $198,593,783 |
The first thing that pops out here is that Harvey, deGrom, and Syndergaard project to provide by far the highest value on the team. They’re all projected to provide more than $30 million in surplus value relative to their salaries. This should not come as a surprise to anyone. The first player projected to cost more than they are worth is the newly re-signed Cespedes. He’s projected to be worth $2.6 million less than he’ll be paid and $2.5 million more than that if he opts out after the first year. Don’t expect a performance on par with his 6.7 fWAR of 2015, but chances are good that he’ll outperform these projections since he’s done just that in three of the four years he’s been in the majors.
The other players with pretty high negative values include Reed, Bastardo, Torres (if he remains with the organization), and Tejada. In fairness, the projections for Reed, Bastardo, and especially Tejada may be a bit on the pessimistic side. It’s not unreasonable to think that they could all outperform their modest projections enough to bring their value up to a breakeven point. Blevins and Mejia could very well turn out to be poor investments when all is said and done, though their lack of value can be attributed to lack of playing time (for very different reasons). A big concern here would be De Aza, who is not projected to get much playing time with the outfield as currently constructed. He’s essentially been relegated to a relatively expensive 4th/5th outfielder. However, a 4th/5th outfielder that is above replacement level is a very nice luxury.
Taken as a whole, the numbers reaffirm how this team was constructed. Young, cheap pitching will provide a large surplus of value while the pieces brought in from outside of the organization cost a bit more than they will probably be worth. It’s a great example of how a well-constructed roster can lean heavily on internally developed and inexpensive resources and only need to expend cash on external resources to supplement rather than build. The team is projected to receive almost $200 million more in value than they are slated to shell out in payroll. That’s fantastic. Now let’s see how these numbers actually play out when these players take the field.
* Estimated arbitration salary
Interesting exercise. Although I place little value on projections, I think the story is clear: the team has a potential billion dollar starting pitching staff And capitalizing on them while they are cost controlled and still with this team is a must. There has been plenty of blood spilled in all forms of media over the ultra conservative moves of Alderson, and a cheap passionless ownership, but right now the layout of 27.5M$ for next year (make no mistake, this is essentially a 1 yr pillow contract and it quite unlikely Ces is a Met is 2017) is dirt cheap when considered in light of the pitching and that it’s a single year.
Projections are what they are, right? Expected performance based on past performance and an interesting discussion point before the season. But yeah this definitely highlights, at the very least, how pretty incredible it is to have such an elite staff at such a small cost for such a relatively large window.
An interesting exercise and I for one appreciate the work you put into compiling this. However this is one stat I don’t buy into at all. Perceived value based on projected WAR says that Wilmer Flores will be worth $15 million. I love hime but he wouldn’t get 5 on the open market. And the number for Wright is even more ridiculous because it assumes he’ll be healthy and productive all season.
WAR is a good catchall in determining how much value an individual player has for a team when compared to other players. That being said, it’s not without its issues. Would Flores get $15 mil on the open market? Certainly not, but Harvey would also not get $36 million per year either (I think…). But in the case of Wright, it’s sort of dead on. You could reduce the value of a win to $7 million and it may make the numbers a bit more palatable (the value of a win seems to be in debate and the common thinking is between $7 and $8 million, I believe FanGraphs is currently towards the higher end).
For what it’s worth, the projection for Wright includes roughly 115-125 games, which I think is possible.
“the common thinking is between $7 and $8 million”
There are so many issues i have with this article, but i wanted to point out that this value is WAR valuation for Free agents and free agents only. You can’t apply this value to non-free agent players.
If you want an average WAR value that can apply to all players (but is still useless), take the total amount of contracts paid to all players, which is ~3,500 million and divide by total WAR available, which is 1000. That means the average cost per WAR for all players is 3.5 million. But doing this would be stupid because non-free agents players don’t live in a free market for their services and are bound by certain limits and so there’s no point in assessing their “excess” value because every team captures this “excess” at some point.
Plus, who cares about excess anyways? Why should we care that a $20 million team is providing “value” worth $200 mil compared to a $100 million team providing “value” worth $200 mil? About the only thing it tells you is the average service time of your time.
The only reason we can afford to pay Free Agents as much as we do is because we have a system where players are severely undercompensated for their first years in the league, and the ridiculously overpaid in their latter years.
You’re absolutely correct on specific items, but I disagree with your overall point. Yes, the value itself ($8 million) is based on the price of a win as the market determines, and in this case that means the free agent market. Your formula is accurate (I’ll take your word on the total contract commitments for 2016) in determining the cost of team wins but you point out the flaw in it yourself in that it values players equally and doesn’t take into account pre-arb/arb players making peanuts.
The $8 million dollars, in the context of the assumption that all teams have varying numbers of pre-arb/arb players, is how much it costs in cash to acquire one of those 1,000 wins from the market. The more wins you need to acquire from the market rather than from your crop of pre-arb/arb players, the more cash you will need to spend. Harvey, as an arb eligible/non-FA player, is providing value in great excess of what he’s being paid based on what the market says he’s worth.
Why do we care about how much excess he and the entire roster provides? Because it give us perspective on roster construction and allocation of resources. The Mets, for example, have developed a home grown rotation full of pitchers with so much talent that, according to the market, no team would be able to afford collectively were they all individual free agents. The Mets have been incredibly and abnormally successful in constructing that part of their roster by exploiting a system that I agree severely underpays young players.
They’re getting so much excess value from their pre-arb/arb players that they can afford to dole out cash to players like Cespedes, Wright, Cabrera, etc to buy those extra wins they need. In some cases, again according to these projections, they have overpaid, underpaid, and been just about dead on in terms of how much cash they paid for each of those market-acquired wins. A team with bad pre-arb/arb players and no money to buy wins on the market is going to be a bad team. A team like the Yankees, as an example, can afford to buy more wins on the market because of such a high payroll (not that this is a particularly effective strategy).
This “free agent dollar scale” isn’t the be-all and end-all way to look at this, but its a decent way to gauge a player’s market value in terms of their performance against their actual salary. It’s why FanGraphs has this information listed for all players on their player page. It’s an interesting data point.
I still don’t get the point and I guess i don’t find it particularly interesting or useful. Oh well, that’s just me and to each their own.
Nothing you say is wrong, but in the end it just seems like a long-winded way of saying that the Mets are winning with a low payroll, which i could have told you that without doing all this research.
And it’s certainly not “abnormally unusual”. This isn’t the first time a low payroll team will be good, and it won’t be the last.
Hey Rob, can you provide a link to the Depth Charts projections? I looked on Cespedes’ page and it wasn’t there and I clicked on 2016 Projections and selected Depth Charts and it wasn’t there, either. Thanks!
Sure!
http://www.fangraphs.com/depthcharts.aspx?position=ALL&teamid=25
You can get directly to it from the “Teams” section on the top banner on the FanGraphs site.