Is the market out-of-whack?
| Name | Years | $ per year |
| Alfonso Soriano, LF | 8 | $17,000,000.00 |
| Carlos Lee, LF | 6 | $16,666,666.67 |
| Aramis Ramirez, 3B | 5 | $15,000,000.00 |
| J.D. Drew, RF | 5 | $14,000,000.00 |
| Mike Mussina, SP | 2 | $11,500,000.00 |
| Vicente Padilla, SP | 3 | $11,333,333.33 |
| Tom Glavine, SP | 1 | $10,500,000.00 |
| Greg Maddux, SP | 1 | $10,000,000.00 |
| Gary Matthews Jr., CF | 5 | $10,000,000.00 |
| Jim Edmonds, CF | 2 | $9,500,000.00 |
| Nomar Garciaparra, 1B | 2 | $9,250,000.00 |
| Frank Thomas, DH | 2 | $9,060,000.00 |
| Julio Lugo, SS | 4 | $9,000,000.00 |
| Juan Pierre, CF | 5 | $8,800,000.00 |
| Moises Alou, RF | 1 | $8,500,000.00 |
| Adam Eaton, SP | 3 | $8,166,666.67 |
| Randy Wolf, SP | 1 | $8,000,000.00 |
| Ray Durham, 2B | 2 | $7,000,000.00 |
| Danys Baez, RP | 3 | $6,333,333.33 |
| Woody Williams, SP | 2 | $6,250,000.00 |
| Dave Roberts, CF | 3 | $6,000,000.00 |
| Orlando Hernandez, SP | 2 | $6,000,000.00 |
| Jose Guillen, RF | 1 | $5,500,000.00 |
| Pedro Feliz, 3B | 1 | $5,100,000.00 |
That’s a list of players who got contracts of at least $5 million per year.
That’s a lot of players getting big money. But are they worth it?
As the free agent signings keep rolling in early this winter, I keep shaking my head at the escalating prices. I realize that, for the most part, teams have more money to spend this year. Revenue sharing, new TV deals, and the XM radio deal bring in money to everyone. But it seems to me that the market may be inflated beyond reason.
I’ll attempt to gauge that by comparing their production to the dollars they got. Since most contracts are based on past performance, it should correlate. Right?
For position players, I ranked the players by dollars per career Runs Created per 27. For pitchers, I tried a couple measurements, career ERA+, career average wins per year, and strikeouts per 162 games.
The spreadsheet I used is available via Google’s fantastic Docs and Spreadsheets tool, at this link.
Consider the following chart. The players are sorted from the left by how much money they make per year. It should show how much an effect 2006 had on a contract. If a player had a good season last year, and a poor career, it will show that he’s being paid for it because his RC/27 bar for 2006 will be higher than his career bar. (A lower bar means the RC/27 is costing the team less; it’s more efficient)
[click to enlarge to readable size, it’s big]
As you can see, Gary Matthews Jr. is being paid for last year, while Jose Guillen is making money off of his career numbers. For ease in deciphering what the chart tells you, just remember this: the lower bar tells you what numbers they’re being paid for.