Comments on: Dollars Earned vs. Dollars Made

By: Eddie

Eddie — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 13:52:55 +0000

Cool. Thank you.

By: Rich

Rich — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 23:46:31 +0000

Thanks, Eric.

By: Eric Seidman

Eric Seidman — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 21:51:09 +0000

Steven, WY,

Of course there is no scenario where everyone would earn their dollar value per the numbers on this site. All the dollar values do is show, in a vacuum, what a player’s production could have earned him on the free agent market. In years 1-3, salaries are very low, and still low in years 4-6. Unless these years are bought out in a long-term deal, nobody will make their actual fair market value or come even close in these years.

As Dave mentioned, these values come from inflation on top of what teams actually spent in a given year. We’re not saying that Player X should be making Y Million/yr, hands down. We’re saying that, if this player were a free agent, and a team valued his production relative to production alone and not service time, his fee would be appropriate at Z mil.

By: WY

WY — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 21:44:23 +0000

This is very well put, and it’s the sort of thing that bothers me about these dollars-per-win values. You put it better than me by saying, “There’s no realistic scenario where ALL major leaguers could be gettng paid what FAs are.” I don’t think it fully makes sense to judge all players’ values by using the same dollars-per-win standard, since there is such a massive difference in the amount a free-agent and, say, a second-year player are even capable of making.

By: Steven

Steven — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 14:02:17 +0000

Here’s the problem though–free agent salaries are inflated because player salaries are depressed so significantly in years 1-3 and to a lesser extent 4-6. If players were paid closer to fair value in their pre-arb years, there would be less revenue laying around to lavish on veterans. There’s no realistic scenario where ALL major leaguers could be gettng paid what FAs are. If all MLB players were suddenly made eligible for FA, FA salaries would decline, by quite a bit I think.

So I think a better way to calculate this would be to look at the value of a win to the team in terms of marginal revenue, like the analysis in Baseball Between the Numbers, updated for inflation.

By: Dave Cameron

Dave Cameron — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 04:11:23 +0000

It’s a fair market assessment of a player’s value, based on how much he would be paid if he were free agent eligible. Almost every player with less than six years of service time is underpaid because they simply don’t have the leverage to sell themselves on the free market.

The dollar per win figures come from what teams actually spent on free agents in those years. We didn’t just make them up. Also, note that using these dollar per win figures and factoring in inflation, we were able to predict the contracts for almost all of the main free agents who have signed so far.

By: WY

WY — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 03:38:03 +0000

Interesting feature, but these calculations of players’ worth all depend on the assumption that a win is worth such-and-such amount of dollars. If you make that value high enough (say, 5 million per win), then most players turn out to be “worth” more than they are paid (which is already a lot). The question is, Where are you getting the dollars-per-win figure, and how do you justify this figure? What is the basis for it?

By: Eric Seidman

Eric Seidman — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 21:49:18 +0000

Rich, the batting runs above average are wRAA, and come from wOBA relative to league average wOBA. Defensive numbers are from UZR. Then we prorate +20 runs for every 600 PA to be above replacement, not average, and a positional adjustment per 162 games that varies for different positions.

After that, the runs are summed, converted to wins, and multiplied by the given dollar/yr rate.

By: Rich

Rich — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 21:34:10 +0000

How are these stats calculated?

By: Dave Cameron

Dave Cameron — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 17:06:34 +0000

Just hit the “show partial seasons” button up near the top of the page. That will break out all the seasons where a player played for multiple teams.