Win Value Project

I am the first to admit that the game of baseball is not played on computers or in a spreadsheet. There are, without question, factors in the game that cannot be measured by statistics. There can be no value assigned to the way a catcher handles a pitching staff, or the way a certain player can lead his team.

But, with all that said, the facets of the game that can be measured have been assigned values by statisticians and fans alike that, I believe, are very accurate. The leader in this field of “assigning value to measurable facets of the game” is Baseball Prospectus.

Their revolutionary stat “VORP,” standing for Value Over Replacement Player, measures how many offensive runs a certain player created more than a “replacement level” player, in any one season, would have that played his same position assuming the same number of plate appearances.

While I believe many agree with the concept and accuracy of VORP, other stats created by Baseball Prospectus to measure non-offensive areas of the game, such as fielding and base running, aren’t so universally agreed upon.

But, while the arguments about the accuracy and validity of these metrics will rage forever, they are more accurate than anything I can come up with, so I will be using Baseball Prospectus’ fielding metric FRAR (Fielding Runs Above Replacement) and their base running statistic EqBRR (Equivalent Base running Runs), combined with VORP to come up with a total amount of runs a player created over a season for this project.

I’ve titled this little endeavor my “Win Value Project.” It’s really not that complicated. The goal was/is to figure how much each team in baseball currently pays its players for a marginal win, and then finding out how productive that player must be to “live up” to the contract/salary his team is paying him.

To do this I used a spreadsheet to figure out what each team paid for a marginal win in any given year. By using each teams total payroll, subtracting the league minimum and dividing that by the number of marginal wins they accrued (number of wins over 45) I was able to derive how valuable, in monetary terms, a marginal win was to each team.

I wasn’t that creative in coming up with a title for that final amount, thus I titled it “Price per Marginal Victory.” I believe no questions are left unanswered with that title.

On a separate page of my geeky spreadsheet I figured out, using VORP, FRAR, and EqBRR, the total amount of runs that a player produced in any given season.

All of the runs measured by the above metrics represent “marginal” runs—runs created beyond what a replacement player would have (except for EqBRR which represents how many base running runs a player created more than an average base runner. I decided to use this because I think defining a “replacement level” base runner is an impossible task, while defining an average base runner, while not easy, is not as hard), and therefore, correlate with each teams marginal wins.

Knowing this I could, theoretically, figure out what any team was expecting from a free agent it signed in an off-season. Using that teams previous season’s “Price per Marginal Win” and applying it to a free agents marginal salary (their yearly salary minus the league minimum), what they were expecting from “free agent X” became evident.

One advantage any team has when signing a free agent is that the money they agree to pay a free agent in, say 2005, always remains the same. Regardless of inflation, or the rise in price of a marginal win, if a team paid player X $10 million dollars for two years in the off-season of 2005, the only way they had of measuring what they were paying for was their previous seasons “Price per Marginal win.”

So, in the end, if team X paid $2 million per Marginal Win in 2004, that player signed in 2005 will be expected to produce about 4.8 wins over those two years—even if the price per marginal win goes up through the duration of his contract ($10 million minus the league minimum divided by the teams previous season Price per marginal win).

Wins are measured by the total number of marginal runs a player created divided by ten as the general concept of “ten runs equal one win” is one that is mostly agreed on.

Let’s plug a player in and see not only if he has, thus far, lived up to his contract, but what he must do in future seasons to live up to the remaining years of his deal.

Jason Varitek will be my example for this article.

Now, as stated in the beginning of the article, there are many things a player does to help his team win games that cannot be measured by statistics, and Varitek does this on a daily basis.

But, it will still be fun to see if a) Varitek has lived up to the first three seasons of the four-year, forty million contract he signed in the off-season of 2005, and b) what he must do in 2008 to “live up” to the last year of the contract.

First, we must know the essentials:

1) For the 2004 season the Red Sox paid $2,175,443.40 for each marginal victory (53). That number is what we will use to determine how many marginal wins they expect from Varitek over the length of his contract.
2) The structure of Varitek’s four year, $40 million contract pays him $9 million each season, plus a $4 million signing bonus in 2005—the first year of his contract. Knowing this we will use $13 million as Varitek’s base salary in 2005, and $9 million in each season thereafter.

Here is a chart showing Varitek’s offensive, defensive, and base running contributions, using the above-mentioned metrics, in each season of his current contract:

It’s just simple division now.

In 2005 Varitek’s marginal salary was $12,684,000.00 ($13 million minus major league minimum of $316,000). This means the Red Sox were paying him for 5.8 wins ($12,684,000.00 divided by $2,175,443.40). As you can see, Varitek was more than worth his salary in 2005.

Using the same method and adjusting for the changing league minimum salary, Varitek was/will be expected to produce 4 wins in each of the remaining three years of his contract.

In 2005 Varitek fell short of expectations due to injury, but in 2007 he rebounded nicely and rewarded the Red Sox by providing more than one full win over what was expected.

Now, the only question left would be, what does Varitek have to do in 2008 to “live up” to his contract? Knowing that he has been worth 13.19 wins thus far, and subtracting that from the 17.7 that the Red Sox are expecting him to produce based on his salary ($38,577,000.00 in marginal salary divided by $2,175,443.40 for the price of a marginal victory) throughout the contract, we know the answer to that question is that he needs to produce 4.5 wins.

It seems that if Varitek is healthy in 2008, he shouldn’t have a problem producing that number.

Based on his contributions in the catching game, his leadership, and steady presence though, I think it’d be fair to say that Varitek has already “lived up” to his contract.

That’s only my opinion though, I’m sure some out there don’t believe there is any inherent value in Varitek’s game-calling skills and truly believe that if he doesn’t post the numbers he is capable of in 2008 his contract will have been a bad one.

But, this is my article, and my place to vent and I believe the Red Sox made a very sound investment after their World Championship in 2004.

Will they give Varitek another contact after his current one expires after this season? And if so, how much will they be willing to pay a catcher in his late-thirties?

I hope this is just the first of a series of articles in my “Win Value Project.” I hope those who read this article will email me at frnkbndy@yahoo.com, or post a request for me on one of the message boards that I hope this article reaches and request that I figure out another players win value. I will be more than happy to do so.

Thank you