AL Central Starters: Value/Salary Ratio
I know nobody reads the internet when they’re not at work … but remember this weekend when I evaluated the AL Central teams’ value vs salary for their hitters? I do. I also remember saying that as soon as FanGraphs released Win Values for pitchers, I’d do the same for AL Central pitching staffs. Well, today, they did.
Today I’ll just start with the starting rotations.
Twins
Salary: $7M Value: $60.7M
White Sox
Salary: $36.7M Value: $98.8M
Indians
Salary (with CC): $34.5M Value (with CC): $98.9M Salary (without CC): $23.5M Value (without CC): $64.7M
Tigers
Salary: $29.7M Value: $58.8M
Royals
Salary: $17.6M Value: $62M
The Twins have a remarkably cheap starting rotation. That $7M figure is one of the numbers that really stands out on here. When you consider that $5M of that went to Livan Hernandez, it gets even more ridiculous. This is part of the value of being able to produce young pitchers — an inexpensive but effective starting rotation is extremely valuable to a team, especially one on a budget*.
I think it’s time to start worrying about these guys hitting arbitration. Especially Baker and Slowey. And Liriano. The nexy couple of offseasons will be rough, and the payroll will skyrocket without adding anything to the team. I hope all the “spend money now for the sake of spending money now” people realize this.
The other striking number is the value the White Sox got. Sure they’re paying a lot of money for their rotation, the most in the division by a considerable margin (well, considerable once you take CC out of Cleveland). However, they’re getting a ridiculous amount of value out of that rotation, far and away the most in the division (again, once you take CC out of Cleveland).
The White Sox built that success mostly on the arms of three pitchers — Mark Buehrle, Jon Danks, and Javier Vazquez — who each contributed over $20M of value. Vazquez is gone, and Danks isn’t as good as Floyd; his numbers will probably come back down. But you can’t take anything away from what the White Sox starters did in 2008. They were simply brilliant, and the front office did a good job of putting that together on the cheap.
Oh, and the Indians probably would have made the playoffs if they’d kept Sabathia (though nobody could have known that at the time). Lee produced $34.9M and Sabathia contributed $34.2M (overall, split between the Indians and Brewers … with most of it actually going to Milwaukee). Without going further in depth, I’m going to go ahead and say that it’s extremely rare to have two pitchers that effective on the same team*.
To give you an idea, they both produced nearly as many wins above replacement as Santana did in the 2004-2006 years, when he was at his peak. Wins weren’t worth as much on the free agent market back then … but Johan was incredible. Probably even more incredible than my rose-colored memory tells me.
The Detroit Tigers have money, yes, but they don’t know how to spend it. For all the money they gave Dontrelle Willis, he contributed negative value to them in 2008. As in, they would have been better off paying him and keeping him in the minors while they have an average AA pitcher in the majors instead. They had only one good pitcher (Verlander) on their staff. They paid Bonderman double what they should have. And even given all that, they still got twice as much value as they paid for.
The Royals got all their positive contributions from Meche and Greinke; both of them were good, and the rest of the rotation was close to nothing. Even with that, though, they outperformed the Twins’ pitchers. Part of that, obviously, is that they used more starters: remove any one of their starters, even the worst one (Duckworth), and the Twins got more value from their rotation. In addition, the Royals used 7 starters last year, while the Twins only used 6.
Part of me says “The higher the Value number is, the better your pitching was.” In some sense, I think that’s true. But if we’re actually talking about Value, then it’s not just what you get; it’s also what you paid for it. So another thing I want to look at is the Value/Salary Ratio:
Twins: 8.66 Royals: 3.53 Indians: 2.75 White Sox: 2.69 Tigers: 1.98
Obviously, that makes the Twins look a lot better. A ratio like that indicates that the Twins are able to put together a quality rotation without spending much (any) money.
The problem, of course, is that it’s not high quality. It’s just quality. And a ratio like that simply doesn’t scale. It could go down in 2009, if any of Baker/Slowey/Blackburn regresses, if Liriano doesn’t continue to show improvement, or if anyone gets injured. (On the other hand, it could go up significantly given that Livan is gone and the rotation will cost under $3m in 2009.)*
Without Livan Hernandez, the Twins spent $2.01M on the rotation and got $53.7M in value, for a truly absurd 26.75 Value/Salary Ratio. Is that the number we should be shooting for in 2009? Is it in any way reasonable to expect this?
Still, building a rotation this way does not scale. There are only so many rotation spots, and pitchers can only add so much value. It’s not reasonable to expect your 4/5 starters to be as effective as your 1/2 starters, and without spending money you’re not going to improve the group. The only way this system can scale is if there’s a constant flow of talented new pitchers coming out of the farm system to replace the guys who got expensive. That flow of pitchers can never dry up, or else your rotation falls apart. That means you can’t sign Type A free agents, because you need draft picks. That means you can’t trade from your strength to fill your holes*. When you don’t have money to spend, you need to focus on the pitching pipeline.
I think this explains everything about the way the Twins are operated, why they value pitching so much, why they don’t chase good free agents, and why they avoid trading pitchers like the plague. Note that Ryan never traded a pitcher until he was done with him and there was a new guy ready to step in. Smith sent Garza packing when Ryan wouldn’t have, and thus far it looks like it didn’t work out. Smith will probably be a bit gunshy on those trades from now on.
The White Sox found that balance in 2008. Between veterans Buehrle, Vazquez and Contreras, as well as talented rookies Danks and Floyd, they put together a high quality rotation using a model that scales. As in, you can spend more money and, if done right, expect that your Value/Salary Ratio will stay the same and you’ll simply have a better team.
I’d like to see these numbers for all the teams in the league. Maybe even go back and do it for previous years. I want to see what the common ratio is. I’d guess that it’s somewhere between 2 and 3; that’s why teams spend a lot of money on pitching, and that’s why the national media thinks it matters what the team’s payroll is. Spending more money leads to better players, therefore the team spending more money will have a better team. (That’s probably also a reason they don’t understand the Twins. How can a V/S ratio of 8 (or 26) even be possible?)
I’d like to see the Twins able to spend more money on their rotation. If they could sign one or two good pitchers to head the rotation, they could keep the pipeline going to fill three spots instead of five, and they’d be able to deal pitchers for hitters. That’s a more balanced system, with more upside than just hoping you get 3-5 good years out of the young pitchers before they’re too expensive and leave for greener pastures. It just requires that we have a bit more money to spend. And it’s getting more and more expensive just to stay where we are.
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Strange that every single team got more production out of their pitchers than they paid for. I wonder if this is mostly true for all the teams. If so, conventional wisdom that “pitchers only go every fifth day- a position player is more valuable for the cost” might be wrong.
Does this include the bullpen value?
This only looked at the starting rotation. I might do bullpens later.
I think every team would, overall, get more production than they’re “paying” for.
The reason for that is that these are “fair market value” based on the number of dollars a win over replacement was “worth” to teams in that year. People are surprised by this, but even A-Rod’s ridiculous contract has the same $/Win ratio as the other free agents who signed last year. It’s not the same every year, but it’s the same within a year. (Of course, that’s for their “projected” win value, not for actual. Andruw Jones, for example, was paid as if he was expected to be really good. He wasn’t.)
But I think every team will have a Salary/Value Ratio of over 1. Because, for one, I think these value figures are pretty inflated, especially for pitchers. If Sabathia had wanted a one year contract for 2009, is there any chance it would have approached $30M? Probably not.
Secondly, most teams get at least SOMETHING from pre-arbitration players. Say a win is worth $5M (which is what it was worth in 2008), and you’re paying your pre-arbitration player $0.4M, which is right around what everyone pays them. That means you’re paying for a little less than 0.1 wins … and what if that player produces 3 wins above replacement? Then for that player, you’ve got a Salary/Value Ratio of 30. (Slowey and Baker both fall under this category for 2008. Blackburn was close.)
Nobody pays their pre-arbitration players market value; if they did, then most of the teams in the league would simply have to fold. But once they hit arbitration, players that have been producing a lot of value start to get paid for it.
This is all part of the reason I said I expected every team to have a ratio in the 2-3 range. Every team gets a contribution from pre-arbitration players, and from guys late in their career who are injury/retirement risks, so they take a $1M contract but contribute $5M value or something. Also, players with long term contracts take lower average annual value in return for security, which of course helps the team’s S/V ratio when they get full value from that player but aren’t paying them full salary.
There are a lot of things that go into it, and a high S/V ratio is definitely a good thing. But the Twins’ is unsustainably high, unless the pitching pipeline simply never dries up.