The Allure of Club Control
Ryan Howard is overrated by the general public and media, one only has to look at the 2008 Most Valuable Player Award voting compared against his actual value and performance this past season to see that.
Much ruckus was raised last winter when Ryan Howard went from a club dictated salary of less than $1 million to an arbitration-awarded $10 million. There were calls that this was an insane leap and would do much to upset the balance of the market for future and current players.
Ryan Howard has a down year in 2008. He lost about ten runs off his offensive totals from 2007, which was down a little less than 30 runs from his peak in 2006. That would seem to be a recipe for an under performance on the whole.
If you buy the park adjustments and UZR as adequate measures, than Ryan Howard put forth about $15 million in value during the 2008 season, for which he was paid $10 million. In other words, Ryan Howard was the prototypical player to be over rated (heavy on power offense and short on position and defense), he was coming off a record arbitration award and he had a down season. All that and he was still only paid at about two-third of his worth.
This is not to say that a long-term contract for Howard would be a good idea; the Phillies have an incredible opportunity thanks to Howard’s advanced age at premier to squeeze most, if not all, of his fruitful years out while under team control and then let him become some poorly-run team’s mistake during his mid 30s. This is, however, to provide yet another illustration of just how valuable getting team-controlled players is.
Ryan Howard is about to embark on his second arbitration experience and buoyed not by performance, but by hype this time, he might engineer another extraordinary raise. But with his performance projected to return back to 2007 levels, there’s still a good chance that Howard will remain a net asset for the Phillies.
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Should it be more of a part of an organizational strategy to wait to bring players up until they are 26 or so (in order to ensure that the club has cost controlled players right through their peak years)? Do most teams lose value by bringing up players pre-peak?
No.
It’s not really to their advantage. AAA experience isn’t MLB experience and most players need at least a year or two experience in the majors before they play to their talent level.
Also, the rule 5 draft sort of prevents this: any player signed at age 19 or older is eligible after 3 years, or after 4 years if signed at 18 or younger. So if you try to keep Jay Bruce in the minors until he’s 23, you basically give away your first round draft pick from a few years ago. (A rule 5 draftee must remain on the teams 25 man roster all season or be offered back to his original team, so you can’t just grab away at other team’s youngsters.)
Howard had a horrible start last year and a down year overall, but he is not the oafish scrub that people make him out to be either. I think this year he will bring some of the nay-sayers back to the fold.
oafish scrub? I think its pretty widely accepted that overrated by the general public as Matt was saying (see MVP votes). I’m not sure I’ve ever heard him called a scrub, the man lead the league in several categories the past few seasons.
Yeah, I think this is an unintended straw man. Howard is about 1 win above the average MLB player. That’s a very good player. The point that people are tying to make about him is that he’s not in the same league as Berkman, Teixeira, or a couple of other Bs I can think of, nor is he as good as a Utley, Rollins or Hamels. I think you could make the his value is about that of Victorino or Werth, both of whom are good ball players.
In terms of calculating value, what sort of weight do you put on how opponents pitch to a player?
Just as an example, in the 2008 Playoffs, Howard likely had his best value during the World Series rather than the NLDS or NLCS.
In the NLDS the Brewers refused to pitch to him and were determined to make the other Phillies beat them. So, Howard wound up with a low average and high on base percent.
In the NLCS, the Dodgers gave him a combination. Probably the best strategy from the best manager he faced in Joe Torre. They didn’t outright avoid Howard like the Brewers, but, they also didn’t give him many fastballs or balls to hit out of the park. The results from that was that Howard hit for a higher average than in the NLDS (.300).
In the World Series, the Rays went after Howard and challenged him and he had his best Series with 3 homers, 6 RBI.
During the regular season, Howard would obviously see a combination of these three strategies.
While there’s certainly value to estimating a player’s worth on the free agent salary scale, I think we’re over-using that number as what players are worth. Being a “good deal” relative to other free agents is different from being a good deal overall.
Free agents get paid about $4.8MM per win (or whatever) while the league-wide average is more like $2.7MM. First year arbitration players earn about $2MM per marginal win.
If a team with league-average payroll pays free agent rates for players, they’ll stink (70ish wins). If a team with league-average payroll pays league-average rates for players, they’ll be exactly average. To be any good, most teams have to come in under that $2.7MM per marginal win number, which means signing free agents even a bit below the $4.8MM number isn’t something they want to do much of.
Getting back to Ryan Howard, sure, his $10MM salary was under the $16MM he was worth on the FA market. But that doesn’t mean he was necessarily a good deal. 3.4 WAR players, on average, would get paid $9.5MM. On the first-year arbitration pay scale, that’s worth about $7MM, meaning he’s overpaid.
What scale you pick is important. One isn’t necessarily right, but always comparing salaries to the FA scale is definitely wrong. Howard’s an asset compared to free agents, but he’s not an asset compared to other first-year arbitration players.
If you went to sell him, there would be buyers. That makes him an asset. How much those teams would be willing to give up to get him is his asset value.
I know you know this, so I’m not trying to state the obvious, but rather want to emphasize that a player who could be traded immediately for something of value is never “not an asset”. A baseline that returns the idea that Ryan Howard is not an asset isn’t a useful baseline.
I meant only compared to other first year web players. If you had to trade him only for them, you can do much better. Even a three million guy making one million is more valuable. We’re on the same page here. I just wanted to point out that simply making less than 4.8MM per win doesn’t make a player a great asset. It just means he has more than zero value.
I agree with both of you on this point to a degree. On the FA market Howard would be a bargain with his 10M. But he is not on the FA market, and if he was, he would be getting paid way more than the 15M he would be worth, and the 10M he is getting paid now. So to a degree, he is overpaid (1st year arb.), but to a degree he is underpaid (using the Value win scale).
It is all about the situation, just like in all aspects of life. So, since he was only a 1st year arb. and got 10M (seems like to big a jump), he is slightly overpaid for a 1st year arb player, but he was worth 15M, so they get him at a bargain using the 4.5M per win scale. Using the 2-2.5M a win for 1st year arb. guys, Skye is right, he is overpaid.
Now, using the 4.5M scale, and if we consider he was a FA, he is worth 15M, but we all know that he would get 20+M a year from some team, and he would be overpaid.
So, let us look at this without acknowledging the situation of arb, 10M is a bargain for him, which is what Dave is saying, and is looking at the POV if he was indeed a FA.
Now, looking at the situation and all aspects of it, he was overpaid for a 1st year arb. guy, and Dave is right, they are better off going year by year, because he will command an unworthy large contract (which Hendry will give him in a few years). So, he is an overpaid, yet underpaid player at the same time all considering which POV you look at it from.
I know this may sound confusing, but is my point coming across somewhat logically?
And of course he is an asset, but is he really that deserving? I mean do not get me wrong, 15M is a lot of worth to a team, but considering he lead the majors in HR and RBI’s, it seems a little low if you look at the entire field, which can only mean, his asset is a little inflated due to his HR and RBI’s credentials, which most teams and most fans care so dearly about (Jim Bowden and Dusty Baker). He may command many good prospects in return, but it does not mean he is deserving of this……Usually if a player leads the league in HR and RBI’s, the other sabermetric stats go with it to show that he is indeed a force and one of the top players, but with Howard, that is not the case at all………
The only scenario I could think of where comparing players against their service-time peers would be informative is if I was an arbiter deciding the salary of someone who was using Ryan Howard as a comparable player in their case. That scenario will never arrive, so, in reality, the idea of comparing a player to comparable service time players has no appeal to me whatsoever.
However, if we wanted to know what teams should pay to acquire Ryan Howard in trade, then his market value would be useful information. I can see lots of scenarios where I’d want to know that.
I guess I just don’t know why anyone should care if Howard is overpaid relative to first year arb players.
They should not……….everyone is just pointing it out
It is obvious why he is overpaid and overrated though
Yeah, but he’s still got a huge…
Again, Dave, I don’t think you and I really disagree here, nor are we talking against each other.
But I’ll just add that having “some value” isn’t the same as what’s usually implied when we say someone’s contract “is valuable”. In one sense, FA contracts at $4.8MM per win are “replacement-level contracts” — that’s the worst $$/win rate you should ever pay. So if someone’s earning $4.2MM per win, that has “some value”, but still not very much.
It’s like trying to label a 1 WAR player. Sure, he provides some value, but he’s still not very good. He’s better than a 0 WAR player, but a team of them will be below average. Just because someone signs for $4.2MM per win doesn’t mean a team has done something good. Spending at that rate often is still a bad idea, it’s just less bad. Spending at Howard’s rate of (say) $3MM per win is still more expensive than the average player. Not that the Phillies should cut him.