MLB Trade Value ‘08: #36 - #40
Continuing on in the week long series on the 50 most valuable assets in major league baseball. If you missed the introduction, it can be found here.
Ranking, Player, Position, Franchise, 2006-2008 WPA/LI
40. Alex Rodriguez, 3B, New York, 10.06 WPA/LI
39. John Lackey, RHP, Anaheim, 7.48 WPA/LI
38. Dan Uggla, 2B, Florida, 4.01 WPA/LI
37. Edinson Volquez, RHP, Cincinnati, 1.18 WPA/LI
36. Curtis Granderson, CF, Detroit, 4.14 WPA/LI
There wasn’t a harder player on this list to place than A-Rod. On talent, he’s still top ten, even at age 32. He’s one of the greatest players of all time, and he would be a first ballot Hall of Famer if he never played another day in his life. However, that contract he just signed with New York last winter - no other team in baseball even came calling when they had a shot to acquire him without giving up any talent, and at the price he’ll now command through 2017, there are a lot of teams that wouldn’t claim him even if he were placed on waivers. However, for those few teams that would be willing to take on that deal, he’s remarkably valuable, and we can’t overlook that he’s still among the league’s absolute best.
I talked about Lackey last week, and really, if he wasn’t a free agent after 2009, he’d rank quite a bit higher. He’s very good, very durable, and a bargain for the next year and a half. He’s going to get a huge paycheck whenever he signs his next extension, though, so his window as a significant financial asset is closing rapidly. Teams looking for an ace to make a run the next two years would pay a lot for Lackey, but his value is on the way down, and he almost certainly won’t be on this list next year.
Uggla probably swings the bat harder than anyone else alive, and he’s taken that grip-it-and-rip-it approach and turned it into the home run lead in the National League. The former Rule 5 pick has established that his power is for real, and since he makes just a bit more than nada, the Marlins are able to build a potent offense around players like him while keeping a shoestring payroll. However, for those who will argue that his ‘08 performance means that he should be higher up on this list, Uggla comes with some deficiencies, especially on the defensive end. He’s bad enough with the glove that his real position is probably third base, and the bat is a little less special over there than it is at an up the middle spot. He’s also 28 - not the spring chicken that you might expect for a guy in his third league.
Barring a second half collapse, Volquez is going to run away with the breakthrough performance of 2008. No, he’s not this good, but his stuff has always been there and the performance is built on sustainable skills. He isn’t second in the league in strikeouts by accident - his combination of velocity and movement is good for generating swings and misses, and he’s getting a ton of ground balls even when hitters do make contact. The command is a real problem, and he’s going to have to throw more strikes, but if the Reds put him on the trade market right now, Walt Jocketty’s phone wouldn’t stop ringing.
Granderson busted through a year ago, posting a ridiculously awesome season to raise his status from good player to top notch center fielder. He’s not quite as good as he was last year, but as a good center fielder with legitimate power and speed, he’s a legitimate two way weapon for the Tigers. They were smart enough to lock him up long term for a piddly $30 million through his prime years, and will be reaping the rewards of his goodness through 2012 at least.
Dave, it seems that you are trying to reconcile two things at once. Am I correct in trying to say that:
asset value = future cash flow minus debt
If so, then it seems hard to have ARod as some sort of “value” play. He seems perfectly well compensated, such that he will earn you what you paid for him.
To put in lay terms, what has more value: a 15K Civic that cost you 10K, or a 25K Accord that cost you 24K?
For some people, they absolutely need the bigger car, so to them, the 5K they saved on the Civic doesn’t help them out, since all they can do with that money is buy a sound system and spoiler. To, the Accord might be the better value.
Your list however, seems to be a merge of both these mindsets. To that end, it’s hard to tell what is going on here.
There’s not a strict numerical formula, mainly because I felt like it would be more work than it was worth to create a single number that tried to take all the factors into account.
The goal of what’s going on here is to try to figure out who teams would be willing to swap in a one for one deal with some of the best players in the game. A-Rod obviously has a lot of value to the Yankees, and there are a few teams that could absorb his salary and build a winning team around him. New York, for instance, wouldn’t swap Rodriguez for Zimmerman in a one for one deal right now, I don’t think - the cash savings doesn’t help them that much, and the production drop off is the difference between a contender and not.
Is A-Rod a bargain? No, but since he’s a scarce talent, he still has a good bit of value.
Dave, I’m actually been working my own piece like this for about a month or two now, totally oblivious that someone else out there was doing one too. I found a lot of similarities with my board, and personally, I had the same dilemna with placing A-Rod too. I found it justified to leave him off the board completely. I’d have to wonder whether a team could absorb his $30 million salary AND deal one of their top prospects. I guess it really depends on the financial flexibility. But anyway, this had made me re-consider where I put some players, such as Zimmerman and Peavy (I had them about 15 spots higher). But anyway, I’ll try to complete my piece (over 8 pages now) and I’ll be interested to see how it compares.
There’s an argument to be made for Rodriguez not being on the list. I made it to myself a lot, and there are some legitimate points in there. However, when it came down to it, there are 10 teams running payrolls north of $100 million this season, and the Cardinals, Phillies, and Blue Jays are all in the $97 to $99 million range. Essentially, 13 of 30 teams have significant financial resources to the point that Rodriguez’s salary, while large, would not prohibit them from building a contending team around him.
The contract is huge, but so is Rodriguez’s value.
I think the strongest argument for not ranking Alex Rodriguez is that his salary essentially doesn’t matter to the Yankees, while it would to most other teams. If you simply want to maximize production per roster spot, there aren’t many players it’d make sense to move Rodriguez for–perhaps not even any at all. And for other teams that do have to weigh a player’s contract in their player valuations, a guy like Rodriguez would still be nice to have, but much more limiting than a lesser player whose salary is a bargain. A-Rod might be the most untradeable non-sucky player in the league.
I think the arguments you make in the article against ranking ARod are stronger than those you make to rank him. We are looking at trade value - not the value to the Yankees, but how much they could get by trading him. In other words the expected value of the player’s production over the course of the contract minus the financial cost of the contract. For every team other than the Yankees, this value was negative (or at least non-positive) last winter or they would have signed him to a larger contract than the one he received from the Yankees. The financial commitment has not changed significantly since then, so any value that ARod has can only come from an increase in his expected production. I just don’t think that ARod’s expected production has had a dramatic increase over the first half of this season - it was high before, it is high now.
As you mentioned, I think there is a real question about whether any team would claim ARod if he was placed on waivers. In other words, there is a real question about whether he has any trade value at all. You cannot say that about many (any?) other players on this list.