Fire Gardy

I know people only read this site on weekdays between 9 and 5 (which is interesting, of course), but I thought today would be a good time to look at value.

I want to compare the monetary value a team actually received from their players, and compare it to the dollars paid out. For now, I’ll just do this for the AL Central. I’m getting my value-received numbers from FanGraphs, and my dollars-paid numbers from Cot’s Contracts (for payroll) and Baseball-Reference (for calculating individual salaries — turns out Cot’s has already updated some things and they no longer have some of the players; for example, Adam Everett is with the Tigers instead of the Twins, Edgar Renteria, Joe Crede, and Orlando Cabrera are gone, etc).

I first just checked the total team payroll … but the FanGraphs win value projection doesn’t include pitchers right now. It’s just for hitting and fielding. So the total team payroll isn’t accurate — I have to remove the cost of the pitchers, and include only the hitters. It’s not the best, but we’ll just have to wait until FanGraphs calculates pitcher win values and adds them to their site.

Twins:

Value received: $72.2 million Team payroll: $56.9 million Hitters payroll: $37.6 million Value gap: +34.6 million

White Sox:

Value received: $86.7 million Team payroll:$121.2 million Hitters payroll: $79.6 million Value gap: +7.1 million

Tigers:

Value received: $76.0 million Team payroll: $137.7 million Hitters payroll: $95.8 million Value gap: -19.8 million

Indians

Value received: $95.8 million Team payroll: $79 million Hitters payroll: $34.8 million Value gap: +61 million

Royals

Value received: $66.7 million Team payroll: $58.2 million Hitters payroll: $30.7 million Value gap: +36 million

I don’t know how valuable these numbers are. One thing is obvious — the Tigers didn’t get what they paid for last year. They paid the most for their hitters, and they got barely more than the Twins and Royals. The Indians got by far the best value, paying as much as the Twins and Royals but getting far more than all the other teams in the division.

It’s a small sample size (just one year, just five teams), but I wonder if this can tell us anything about how valuable it is to the team to raise payroll. It seems easy for teams to get great value from their hitters if they don’t spend very much — because a higher percentage of their players are making the minimum. And presuming all your free agent contracts work out as planned, the value gap diminishes until all your players are free agents and the gap is zero; of course, if the contracts don’t work, you’re the Tigers and you’re overpaying for old veterans who can’t provide the production you’re paying them for. Oops.

Another thing to look at, value-wise, is the offensive and defensive contributions to total value.

Twins

Offense: -2.9 Defense: -25.5

White Sox

Offense: 22.7 Defense: -18.0

Tigers

Offense: 18.1 Defense: -38.0

Indians

Offense: 18.8 Defense: 6.2

Royals

Offense: -55.2 Defense: 19.2

This paints a slightly different picture, and gets to what the teams are actually trying to do to build their team. The Twins’ defense was the worst it’s been in a long, long time; this indicates the team’s intent to sacrifice a little bit of defense to improve their offense, which was the cry of the fans for the past few offseasons. The problem is that they sacrificed a lot more defense than they should have, and they didn’t get any offense back. Their offense was quite a bit worse than the White Sox, Indians, and Tigers. The Twins were the only team to be bad on both offense and defense — if it weren’t for their unusual “ability” to hit with runners in scoring position, we would have been a pretty weak team. (Of course, this isn’t taking pitching into account; it’s possible that the Twins’ pitching made up the difference.)

Meanwhile, the Indians were the only team to be good on both offense and defense. If it weren’t for their rough start to the season, they would have run away with the division. Consider us lucky … and don’t expect it to happen again. They’ll be dangerous in 2009, especially if Hafner and Martinez get healthy and remember how to hit.

The White Sox and Tigers have similarly built teams — “Just get me a bunch of sluggers, I don’t care what position they play!” As a result, they both have a slew of expensive, 1B/DH types who smash the ball but don’t wield their gloves that well. It’s not a great way to build a team, since it tends to be the most expensive way; sluggers demand the biggest, longest contracts despite being unable to field their position and aging faster than anyone. But if you have the money, it can work.

I don’t know if this taught us much. The Tigers and White Sox want sluggers, the Indians are a well balanced team that gets great value given its payroll, the Royals have no idea how to construct a team, and the Twins need to drastically improve either their offense or their defense without sacrificing the other (which should be possible given that not many teams are below average both offensively and defensively).

If I were to make some guesses for 2009, I’d say that the Indians will probably have production about the same, maybe a bit better, and it’ll actually be reflected in their record this time around. The Tigers may have some rebound from some players, but continued decline from others, and will probably be a non-factor again. The White Sox will be good again; their sluggers have suffered their decline and are now sitting at a lower, still-effective plateau while their young players are improving and their pitching is solid. The Royals are going nowhere, given their expenditures this offseason and the fact that they’re acquiring cheap/ineffective 1B/DH types to combat the Tigers’ expensive ones, rather than building from the center like you’re supposed to. The Twins need to rely on improvements from their young players (pretty likely), including a drastic jump in production from Delmon Young both offensively and defensively, offensive improvement from Gomez and Casilla, and Buscher/Harris solidifying their defense while contributing a little at the plate.

Unless the Twins shock the world and upgrade at 3B or DH, I’d expect the 2009 AL Central to look about like this:

Indians Twins White Sox Tigers Royals

And since it’s the Twins, it’ll probably go right down to the wire and be another exciting summer. I can’t wait.

(35 days until pitchers and catchers!)

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