Orioles Wisely Lock Up Adam Jones
Last Friday, I wrote that if Adam Jones sustains his performance all year, he could be looking at a contract extension in the range of $120 to $140 million by selling himself as Matt Kemp Lite. Today, the Orioles are rumored to have come to an agreement with Jones on a deal for a reported $85 million over six years.
For the Orioles, getting Jones at this price is a slam dunk. Given what he’s already accomplished in the first several months of the season, Jones was going to get a significant raise in arbitration from the $6 million he’s making this year, likely putting him in line for a $10 or $11 million salary in 2013. Given that the Orioles clearly weren’t going to non-tender Jones under any scenario, we can essentially assume that part of the deal was already predetermined to a large extent, so the Orioles are essentially adding five years and $75 million or so onto their existing commitment.
Have you seen what 5/75 buys in free agency lately? Last winter, that was close to the amount C.J. Wilson signed for, but he took less money to stay on the west coast, and the Angels were buying his age 31-35 seasons. In 2010, 5/75 would have left you without enough cash to sign Adrian Beltre, but you could have won the bidding for Adam Dunn and had enough left over to sign Carl Pavano or John Buck. In 2009, that money could have gotten you really close to signing John Lackey or you could have had some leftovers if you signed Jason Bay instead. In 2008, you would have come up just shy for A.J. Burnett or outbid the Braves for Derek Lowe. In 2007, you’d have had enough for Aaron Rowand but not quite enough for Torii Hunter. I think you get the idea.
In reality, the price tag for Adam Jones was only going to go up the longer the Orioles waited. By signing him now, the Orioles take on some additional risk of injury and regression, but they got a pretty significant discount for absorbing that risk, making the decision to sign him now versus in December a pretty easy one. At this price, the question stopped being when they should sign Jones, but whether he was a guy they wanted to lock up long term at all. If the answer to that question was yes, than doing this deal at this time made a lot more sense than waiting until after the year and paying the higher cost associated with the closer proximity to free agency.
So, should Jones be the kind of guy that the Orioles wanted to lock up? After all, he’s a free swinger with a history of average offensive performances whose defensive metrics haven’t lived up to his physical abilities. To date, Jones has a career wRC+ of 103. Up until this year, he has not been a legitimate star player. The Orioles are betting on Jones being better going forward than he has been in the past. But, at this price, that’s a bet worth making.
Jones’ one fatal flaw right now is his walk rate, and it drives the one criticism of his game that people constantly bring up – the low on base percentage. However, walk rate is a skill that improves the most consistently as players get more experience in the big leagues. In this chart from Tom Tango on component aging peaks, you can see that walk rate from 21-37 is a continuously increasing line, with the BB% finally declining at age 38 for the first time. Walks are an old man’s game, and are almost certainly a byproduct of hitters learning to be more selective as they have larger amounts of history to pull from and get better at recognizing which pitches to swing at and which ones to lay off.
The fact that Jones hasn’t walked much from 21-26 does not mean that he’s going to continue not walking for the rest of his career. In fact, if his walk rate doesn’t improve as he ages, that would make him the exception, not the norm.
To show the magnitude of the expected improvement, I pulled all outfielders who have posted a wRC+ between 95 and 105 through age 26 (minimum 2,000 plate appearances) over the last 50 years. Since we’re essentially controlling for overall performance, we’re just looking at guys who were roughly league average hitters early in their careers, so they had some kind of offensive deficiency before they reached their physical prime.
There were 22 such outfielders whose careers had continued on with a large enough sample that would give us useful information about how these types of players would age from 27 on. 20 of those 22 outfielders posted a higher walk rate from age 27+ than they did through age 26 – only Alex Rios and Vince Coleman drew fewer walks during the latter portion of their career. Overall, the group’s BB% through age 26 was 6.9%, and their BB% after age 27 was 8.3%. The biggest gainers included Sammy Sosa (yes, I know, put an asterisk on that one if you want), Jose Cardenal, Torii Hunter, and Claudell Washington, who all went from being low walk guys in their early 20s to average walk guys later in their career.
So, the question isn’t whether Jones is going to start drawing more walks as he gets older – that’s almost certainly going to happen. The question is whether the improvement in walk rate will offset the decline in his physical skills enough to allow him to remain a highly productive player. And, based on what we know about how a player ages, that answer should be yes.
With his current skillset (and heavily regressing his 2012 performance), Jones is approximately a +4 win player over the course of a full season. Peak age for most Major League players is around 27, so there’s no reason to expect Jones to decline in value in 2013 – even if we don’t give him any credit for further improvement, we should project him as a +4 win guy for the next couple of years. So, a back-of-the-envelope assessment of Jones’ value during the years the contract covers would look something like this:
2013: +4.0 WAR
2014: +4.0 WAR
2015: +3.5 WAR
2016: +3.0 WAR
2017: +2.5 WAR
2018: +2.0 WAR
This assumes that Jones never becomes more than he is now, and his early season breakout is more of a fluke than any real step forward. Even in that scenario, Jones would be projected to post +19 WAR over the life of the deal, and for $85 million, that would come out to just under $4.5 million per WAR. Or, if we just looked at the five free agent years covered by the contract, that’d be +15 WAR for $75ish million, or $5 million per WAR over the actual extension. That’s pretty close to current market value, with the Orioles essentially accepting additional injury and performance risk in exchange for hedging against future inflation and the potential that Jones’ breakout season continues and his price goes through the roof.
If you’re an Orioles fan, you almost have to like this move. The team locked up a quality player who may be developing into a true star, and they did so without having to commit beyond his age 32 season. In a time when we’re seeing contracts regularly reach into a player’s late-30s, Baltimore was wise to get their center fielder locked up for his prime years at a salary that he should easily be able to justify.
Jones gets a deal that gives him long term security and makes him a very rich man. The Orioles lock up their franchise center fielder. This contract appears to be the definition of a win-win.
Carlos Gonzalez has the same fatal flaw — and he’s done alright.
you mean the carlos gonzalez who is currently walking 10% of the time, and striking out only 18% of the time?
His fatal flaw is that he can’t hit away from Coors.
He’s no Ken Phelps!
eh, he’s an average hitter on the road, which isn’t the same as not being able to hit.
I always knew Jones was a star. Good for him.
Jones is a star based on two months of stellar hitting and a big contract extension? Oh, my bad, didn’t see you there Bavasi.
Sadly, this prevents the hitting-starved Mariners from trading for Jones at the deadline in exchange for Taijuan Walker, Danny Hultzen, and Brandon League.
Thank you again for getting him and Shin-Soo Choo out of the AL West.
Why do you hate Asdrubal Cabrera?
On the extension deck, Matt Wieters.
They should have moved him for Erik Bedard.
His 2012 HR/FB rate sits at 25.9 %. His Career mark is 13.9%. Back of the envelope, to me he’s a 3.0 WAR player. But even as a 3.0 WAR player, this is a fair deal for both parties.
Yes, looking at his stats, his BB rate, K rate, LD, FB, and GB rates all look normal compared to his career numbers. He’s basically gotten an usual number of HR per fly ball and an unusual number of infield hits (11 so far; career high is 20).
However, I still think this is a good deal for the O’s. The third paragraph is telling.
god forbid a player take a step forward in his age 26 season
Just for fun I went from 2000-2012 to look at the player HR:FB rates. The only ones higher than 25% (ie what Jones is doing now) are Jim Thome, Ryan Howard, and Barry Bonds.
Most of the top HR hitters were around 20%.
Yeah, it’s possible the guy is better because he’s in his age 26 season. But do we really think he’s as good a HR hitter as Thome/Howard/Bonds? Not a chance. Even Jose Bautista, who has been the top HR guy over the past 2 years, is around 21-22%.
When you figure the only reason Jones is doing better than last year because of the HR;FB rate, and that the HR;FB basically has to drop…well it’s just hard to see this as a breakout year.
well obviously he’s not a true-talent 25% HR/FB hitter, but this is the 3rd year in a row he’s improved in that statistic, and given he jumped about 5% last year, another jump around that level isn’t that ridiculous, considering aging, park, etc
Can it really be considered a “jump” if in 2009 he was at 17.8%? He had a down year in 2010 power wise, but that doesn’t mean it’s reasonable to consider his 16% HR/FB a jump in power.
And suggesting he has two, 5% jumps in HR;FB is pretty much the definition of ridiculous. It’s much more likely he’s a true talent 16-17 HR:FB guy than he is 20-25%.
Was hoping that my favorite player might eventually make his way back to the Mariners, but I guess it wasn’t to be. Hope he has continued success for the O’s.
That career HR/FB mark includes his age 21-23 which I don’t think are relevant for projecting his future performance. A player’s power typically peaks age 26-30 so I think regressing this year’s rate down to 18-20% is more realistic. He’s obviously not going to continue to hit home runs at a 50 HR pace but 30-33 HR are reasonable.
It’s worth pointing out back in 09 Adam Jones had a 1.005 OPS through the end of May, only to end up with a 792 OPS on the season. So while he’s off to an impressive start, this doesn’t mean that he’s having a breakout year.
85/6 seems like a pretty big risk to me for a guy who’s only had 2 months of star-quality performance.
However, since the MLBPA, Bud Selig and the big money clubs have managed to outlaw the practices of building thru the draft or foreign free agents, maybe clubs like Baltimore are just going to have to man up and take those risks.
I wish them good luck.
“In this chart from Tom Tango on component aging peaks, you can see that walk rate from 21-37 is a continuously increasing line, with the BB% finally declining at age 38 for the first time.”
Don’t you think that this is just a selection bias and all the older players were good enough to stay in the league longer because they had better walk rates to begin with?
That’s a great point. The 1979-1999 numbers, in particular, see a drop off on the number of plate appearances in the sample for the players in their mid-thirties and up. Would seem that the players contributing those PAs are highly skilled if they’re holding onto roster spots at those ages.
Reading the first bit of the chart, I believe it is comparing player A’s 26 year old season, to his 27 old season, and not an aggregate of all players 26 years old to 27 years old. From the intro sentence, “the methodology of comparing players in adjacent seasons…and seeing how his stats change, and doing this for all players in MLB from 1919 to 1999.”
Thus, I believe that Tango already corrected for this bias.
Perhaps it was the increases in these players’ respective walk rates that helped enable them to stay in the league longer.
i wonder if they were losing, would Jones have taken this deal or tried to fit with a better team. good move by Orioles to strikes while they have a winning environment.
Forgive me for being a fan rather than taking my usual stat-head pose, but
YAHOO!
Adam Jones has always been my guy, sort of the embodiment of hope for the franchise since even before Wieters gathered all the plaudits. Yes, he needs to learn to be more selective, though he’s already doing a little bit of holding off the outside slider. Still, he’s extremely talented and shows signs of growing into his talent. He’s got swagger and skills and he’s been good if only on the verge of breaking out for like three years. As an O’s fan I am nothing but thrilled: thanks Dan Duquette!
Fangraphs is much too bullish on extensions for players in their twenties. In fact, every time a player in his twenties gets a 3 or more year extension, Fangraphs praises the move. I’m afraid it’s not so simple as that. I’m sure Dave and most other Fangraph writers, with a solid foundation in statistics and economics, believe in the efficient market theory. The most basic tenet of this theory is that there is no free lunch! But Fangraphs is implying there is a free lunch simply by extending players in their twenties to long-term deals, that this type of deal invariably leads to GM’s screwing over agents. The matter is not that simple, and agents are not that foolish.
Some extensions work out great and others don’t. Fangraphs said Matt Moore’s contract might be the best in MLB history before he’d even pitched a month in MLB. He wouldn’t be the first highly regarded pitcher to bust. Fangraphs praised the Padres signing of Corey Luebke long-term, only to see him immediately wreck his elbow and require Tommy John. Similar situation with Salvador Perez. The Twins were supposedly shrewd for locking up MPV-caliber Justin Morneau at a below market rate only to see his career ravaged by injuries. Even the “best contract ever” in Evan Longoria might lose some appeal if the third baseman’s injury problems continue.
Overall, I think extensions, in general, favor the GM over the agent, but when they go bad, they STRONGLY favor the agent over the GM. This is why agents have been so willing to sign extensions for their clients. Not because they are idiots, but because over many years and a range of clients, agents will profit greatly from these early extensions. It’s not a slam-dunk move to sign a good player in his twenties to a long term deal as Fangraphs implies. It can be a good signing, but it can also be a very bad signing. I would caution Fangraphs to consider the negatives implications of a long-term extension more carefully in these articles.
Two problems.
1. I reject your premise that baseball is an efficient market, which is the foundation of your argument. Baseball is a cabal of 30 teams where, through the draft and arbitration, prices are set for players for their first 5-6 years of service time. As a direct consequence, market inefficiencies arise. Fangraphs default position, thus, is that preventing players from reaching the open market–the same one that awards 30+ year old players 100 MM with alarming frequency–is advantageous to teams over time because the rates at which player skills deteriorate, players get hurt, or salary inflation in the FA market explodes or slows can be reasonably approximated and thus considered when extending the contracts of burgeoning stars.
2. You site individual instances where this is not the case…bringing up Justin Morneau and Evan Longoria as examples where longterm financial commitments have or could potentially turn negative from the team perspective. First, we can demonstrate equally compelling cases where that is not the case. Now, I get what you’re saying–when it goes bad, it really goes bad. But can’t you say the same thing about Longoria? Are the financially strapped Rays regarded as *that* brilliant without their 7 WAR player signed on such favorable terms? Do the Phillies have the financial flexibility to extend their window of success without gambling on an extension to Shane Victorino 3 years ago? Idk.
Arbitration initially created an inefficiency, but agents reacted to it in such a way to create an efficiency. It’s like that old economist saying, “if you get rid of 4th down to stop teams from punting, teams will start punting on 3rd down.” If all agents had to do was wait until their clients hit free agency to screw teams out of boatloads of money, no agent would ever let a team buy out his client’s arbitration years.
Agents are smarter than that. The reason they accept these “team-friendly” extensions on behalf of their clients is because the expected value of these extensions favors the players. Chances are, the player will stay healthy and would have made more money from hitting the open market, yes. But, if the player suffers a serious injury and hits the open market, his career is over. Whereas if he signs an extension and suffers a serious injury, he still gets paid boatloads of money. And serious injuries, while unlikely, are far from impossibilities.
Now let’s change perspectives and return to the GM. Odds are, not allowing a good player in his twenties to hit free agency is the right move. But it’s not a franchise game-changing move. But if it’s the wrong move? It will set a small-market franchise back years. The Justin Morneau extension, praised as a prudent by Frangraphs when signed, cost Bill Smith his job. The Eric Chavez extension, regarded by sabermetricians as a brilliant, cost-saving move when it was signed, sent the small-market A’s back to the AL West cellar. The Franklin Gutierez contract didn’t exactly help the Mariners either, and yes, the Evan Longoria contract will seriously hamper the Rays future if he can’t stay healthy, regardless of how much WAR he has already accumulated.
So in summary, there is a higher probability an extension leads to a good player sticking around at a below-market rate, a nice situation. But there if the lower, but far from impossible, probability outcome occurs, you’ve just set your franchise back several years. That’s why the expected value of these extensions do NOT favor GM’s and why rational, profit-maximizing agents continuously enter into these deals on behalf of their clients.
If the Fangraphs model were true, and these extensions always favored GM;s at the cost of agent profit, agents would never sign pre-arbitration extensions for their clients, period. The fact that agents do agree to this extension proves that the Fangraphs model is untrue.
I beg your pardon? The Morneau signing didn’t cost Smith his job. It was the terrible moves (Giving up Hardy for nothing, getting no value on the Japanese MI, sending Ramos for Capps and so many other things) that cost him his job, not the Morneau extension.
” the Evan Longoria contract will seriously hamper the Rays future if he can’t stay healthy,”
What? How? Instead of making 400K in his first 3 years he made 2 million – or 800K more than he would have during the pre arb years. His first arbitration year (2011) he made 2M, and in his second (2012) he’s making 4.5M. He’d be making a hell of a lot more if he wasn’t signed to the extension. As far as the arbitrators are concerned, a middle of the lineup GG third baseman who cranks out 20-30 HR and drives in 100 would make a boatload in arbitration. He’d probably make more in the second arb year had he gone year to year than he would have during the first two arb years. Without a doubt, a hell of a lot more than the 4.5M he’s making this year. His third arb year (2013) is 6M – you really think he’d get less year to year? Or you really think even if he misses time he won’t be worth $6M? Really?
And the FA years all have buyouts. So if he does become injury prone, and regresses to the point where he’s unplayable (in the most extreme situation) they can buy him out for under a million. How exactly will that “Hamper their future”?
You have no idea what you’re talking about if you think the Longoria contract was or will be bad for the Rays.
“That’s why the expected value of these extensions do NOT favor GM’s and why rational, profit-maximizing agents continuously enter into these deals on behalf of their clients.”
First, we clearly disagree on the efficiency of the baseball market. I simply don’t see the definitional support for this claim. But fine, let’s accept this premise for the moment that the pre-FA baseball market operates efficiently. Have you correctly identified the incentives that determine behavior here?
You use language that suggests you’re viewing this zero sum exhibition in a general sense, and your conclusion follows as such. But you actually need to delve further into the individual incentives as well. The individual actor here isn’t necessarily rational. The individual player sees compensation amounts that should be enough to set him and his family for life. This security offered in the form of these arbitration extensions provide a strong impetus for the player to leave some money on the table. Both teams and agents have this knowledge and, thus, negotiate GIVEN this player-imposed condition. You’re omitting a large, known incentive in your analysis.
Using Longoria to make this argument is like using Hitler to argue mustaches are cool.
I think a lot of these contracts are insured. If a player suffers a career ending injury, the insurance company pays up. So, basically the player get security against a career ending injury, the team gets a reduced price on their star and, should the player suffer a serious injury, their insurance company will cover the contract.
Kinda seems like Longoria could retire today and the deal still would be worth paying him just on the off chance he came back to play in two years.
The Efficient Market theory is, was and always will be ludicrous. It, in effect, states that large groups of people never make mistakes.
It was not based on facts and has never been true.
So you are contending that extensions invariably favor the GM and that the agents that agree to them are all a bunch of idiot who just never figured this out? That’s basically saying that you, and the writers here at Fangraphs, know more about what’s a good contract and what’s a bad contract than a professional sports agent does. That’s a very bold claim, and one that makes me wonder why you are posting on a message board instead of GM’ing for a team or making millions arranging your client’s next contract.
And Mark, I know it’s hard, but, can we please try to talk sans the name calling? We’re talking about a game here. I can’t see the need for anger or insults. Thanks.
I think people are looking at this the wrong way. It’s not a zero sum game with a definite winner and loser. The O’s lock up a young guy that has potential. That gives them predictability in payroll over the next few years. On the other hand, Jones has assured himself enough money for a life time if he were to get hurt.
These type of deals happen because they generally are win-win. It’s not one side taking the other to the cleaners. There is inherent risk for both sides in a deal. Probably more toward the team but at the same time they have to put someone out there and hitting FA would likely cost more.
The essence of your argument appears to be that contracts to young players that are favorable to the team are, necessarily, detrimental to the player and, therefore, to the agent. The problem, however, is that evaluating these contracts is not a zero-sum game. Just because a contract is favorable to the team doesn’t mean that the agent “got screwed over.” A contract for 6/85 is favorable to Jones (and, by extension, to his agent) b/c he gets the security of knowing he’s going to be paid very handsomely for the next 6 years regardless of injuries or production. He’s giving up some of his earning potential for the security that $85 M entails.
The point is that both parties can win in a contract such as this. It’s not as black-and-white as you make it appear. If 1 side wins, the other side doesn’t necessarily lose.
Based on $5million/WAR and 5% inflation, assuming he plays CF and gets 600 plate appearances per season, this contract looks like a solid assessment of his value moving forward.
3.44WAR–5.8%BB–16.7%K–.302BABIP–.353wOBA–(-9fld)–$17.2m
3.40WAR–6.5%BB–16.3%K–.302BABIP–.354wOBA–(-8fld)–$17.9m
2.84WAR–7.2%BB–16.0%K–.303BABIP–.352wOBA–(-7fld)–$15.6m
2.65WAR–7.5%BB–15.7%K–.302BABIP–.350wOBA–(-6fld)–$15.4m
2.23WAR–7.7%BB–15.3%K–.301BABIP–.346wOBA–(-5fld)–$13.6m
1.80WAR–7.7%BB–15.0%K–.299BABIP–.339wOBA–(-4fld)–$11.5m
Those are relatively conservative assumptions, but only in the light of his fantastic first ~40 games in 2012. I’m not sure he’s made that big of a leap from his ~2.5WAR ways of the previous seasons.
Knowing the Orioles, that 15 mil a year likely would have gone to some aging veteran or overpriced reliever if it wasn’t going to Adam Jones, so I’m very happy with this signing.
2009: wOBA’s in Apr/May over .400, >20% HR/FB rate, OPS in the 1.000 range…. rest of the year he didn’t top .340wOBA in any month – and ended up under 3 WAR.
His defense in the past has been a UZR/150 in the ~ -5 range, this year it is plus +18. that alone is a 2 win swing; was this part of the “heavy” regression that was done?
Not saying the 4 WAR assumption is a bad one… but to make it sound like a slam dunk based on conservative and “heavily regressed” estimates? I must have missed the “regression” that was done, as it looks like something tossed out to strengthen the conclusion of the article. Other than a look at walk rates, I would be curious to see the actual regression that got him to a 4 WAR baseline. (especially when prior to this year he has never even topped 3 WAR)
I hate Bill Bavasi
I like this for the O’s. Sure there are risks involved but for the sweet spot of a talented players career it makes sense. Why let him go? That’s the real question for me. The team would have to trade for another building piece and play the waiting game again.
Thanks Bill Bavasi.
- Seattle.
Offensively the real comp is absolutely Tori Hunter. Can he play D like Tori. Maybe. Hunter’s defensive stats spiked around age 25. I like the deal. Jones is already better then league average and has the toolset to improve. Looking back giving Hunter this deal at age 26 would have been brilliant and I expect this Jones deal to be similiar. I’m not expecting a normal aging curve for Jones either. I see a player who will be around a 3 WAR player year in and out over the next 6-8 years.
Why would you not expect a normal aging curve for Jones?
This is the height of irrationality.
Because he is in excellent physical condition, has a sturdy frame, a wide based skill set, is athletic and relatively fast. He also has flaws in his game that can be improved such as walk rate and the jumps he gets on fly balls. I do not think it’s irrational at all. Kevin Youkils and Tory Hunter age differently. I do no think its irrational at all. Nolan Ryan, Tom Seaver and Bert Blyleven age better then Pedro Martinez and Sandy Koufax. I think Adam Jones much like Tori Hunter is the exact type of rawish player that age better. Sometimes we need to look beyond WAR totals at different ages to see why some people age better. Perhaps I should refrase myself. Adam Jones is exactly the type of ballplayer I expect can trump aging curves and I do not see him regressing before his age 32 season provided he takes care of himself and stays injury free. Mark Reynolds on the other hand I expect has peaked and is not getting better from here on out. This is a much better deal in my eyes then the NATS gave Zimmerman.
Because he is in excellent physical condition, – This describes the majority of MLB players.
has a sturdy frame, – again, most MLB players have this
a wide based skill set – multiple tool players are the rule, not teh exception.
is athletic and relatively fast. – pretty much every CF in baseball, along with many middle infielders and corner OFers, meet this description.
He also has flaws in his game that can be improved such as walk rate and the jumps he gets on fly balls. – Walk rate, sure, but the general MLB population improves on that too. Jumps on flyballs – why would he get better at this now?
There’s nothing there to say he’s likely to age better than most, because most players fit this general description. Jones happens to be better than average now, but that doesn’t mean he’ll age better.
To me, the years they’ve locked him up are very important. They don’t owe him a dollar after his age-32 season. Contrast that with the Angels, who owe/owed Vernon Wells $63M for his age 33, 34 & 35 seasons and Torii Hunter $73M for his age 33, 34, 35 & 36 seasons. The Red Sox still owe Carl Crawford more than $100M and he hasn’t played a single game yet; even if he does return and start playing at a high level again, they owe him $60M+ after his age-32 season. And the Orioles’ beltway buddies, the Natinals (sic), owe Jayson Werth’s scattered ashes $112M after his age-32 season.
I realize I’ve arbitrarily picked the end of the age-32 season as a magic line, but I just like the fact that the Orioles are paying a guy for what should be the absolute prime of his career.
How good does the Andrew McCutchen extension look right now?
Comp deal: the Alex Rios extension.
Don’t believe me?
Alex Rios prior to his extension: (age: just turned 27)
.287/.330/.453/.783, 308 runs, 52 HRs, 254 RBIs, and 61 SBs in 2000 ABs
Deal: $69.7 million over seven years
Adam Jones prior to his extension: (age: 26)
.278/.322/.449/.771, 344 runs, 89 HRs, 322 RBIs, and 52 SBs in 2428 ABs
Deal: $85.5 million over six years
The Orioles may live to regret this. Especially since, you know, the number of seasons Jones has had an OPS over .800 is one, being, this one. Would like to see Jones keep this up for an entire year before giving him lots of money.
If you wait to see him do it for a whole year, you’ll have to give him lots more money. I’m frankly perplexed by the skepticism of this deal. If Adam Jones just makes small, less than typical progression for a player his age, this deal is simply appropriate value. If he takes a large step forward, then it’s an absolute steal. That seems like a pretty good deal for the team.
The idea that they should have waited until he put up a monster year simply makes no sense. If he puts up the monster year, he sits down and asks for 7/$150 million. If he regresses, he asks for…exactly what he got.
Seems a little strange to see signing a 3WAR player for $85M as a “wise move”
I mean, you could get 3WAR players for a couple million this offseason (like Cody Ross)
Because Cody Ross was a 3+ WAR player once in 2008, you feel comfortable referring to him that way generally? Don’t forget that WAR is an approximation of value, not a definitively accurate assessment. After all, would you trade Justin Upton (9.4 WAR ’10-’11) for Brett Gardner (11.3 WAR ’10-’11)? Many of you are also making the mistake of treating human beings as you would a computer game where players will sign with perpetually losing teams for an extra 100k per year. It is extremely likely that a player like Adam Jones would not be available to the Orioles at 5/75 if he was coming from somewhere else. As an Orioles fan I’m thrilled with this deal even if he only averages his 2011 numbers over the life of the contract. A lineup of 9 Cody Rosses isn’t sufficient to compete in the A.L. East regardless of whether or not you think it’s most cost-effective. Talent comes at a premium, especially for teams that aren’t preferred destinations for free agents.
Surely you don’t really believe that Cody Ross is a 3 WAR player, do you? Your point could be a valid one if you weren’t so disingenuous about the examples you use to support it.