Fire Gardy

Jack Moore over at FanGraphs took a look at Span’s contract this morning, and came to a similar conclusion that I did: it makes some sense for Span to take the security of the long term deal, but the Twins are getting themselves a real bargain.

He notes that the Twins are paying for a 2.5 win player and Span seems to be better than that; he notes that Span has skills that could pay him well in arbitration (high batting average and stolen bases); he notes that Span’s switch to CF could drive his value further; he notes that Span is only 26 and could still see his performance improve.

But his take on the timing of the deal with regards to the economy is what I find perhaps most interesting, and is something I feel I didn’t articulate well enough in my own post:

What particularly makes this deal great from a team perspective for me is the timing of the deal. Many economists say that we are starting to move out of the recession, and that suggests that the marginal value of a win will likely start climbing in 2012 if not before that. By the time 2014 rolls around, $6.5 million may only buy one win instead nearly two. Even more than that, the likely inflation of the win market could make the non-guaranteed 2015 team option look fantastic if Span is still a productive player at the time.

Precisely. These contracts for Blackburn and (especially) Span may be most valuable in that they’re effectively locking in not only the players’ apparently undervalued status, but also the deflated cost of a win on the market. That $9M option for a 2.5-3.3 WAR player in 2015 would be an absolute no-brainer if the market rebounds and a win costs $5M or more by then.

Moore predicts we’ll see teams follow the Twins’ lead and lock in the currently deflated market rates for their pre-arbitration players. I think he’s right, and I think it’s mighty interesting that the Twins seem to be on the forefront of exploiting a new trend in baseball economics.

And as you may have guessed, I remain extremely interested in how this trend effects Mauer’s contract; ie, whether the Twins can lock in a mega-deal at today’s deeply discounted rates.