Earlier this month, I ranked some of the highest paid players in baseball based on how much they'd be worth to their teams, relative to their contracts. With that in mind, I thought I'd take a look at how Ryan Zimmerman's extension measures up. The contract will keep him in Washington through the 2019 season, and includes a $18M team option for 2020, or a $2M buyout if that option is not exercised. In total, Zimmerman is owed $116M over the next eight years. A lot of money, yes, but is Zimmerman worth it?
My analysis says yes. Sure, Zimmerman's 2011 season, where he played only 101 games, is a concern. However, I can't think anyone would have more information on his health than the Nationals do. And since the Nats seem to have moved, in a general sense, toward knowing what they're doing, I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt. In both 2009 and 2010, Zimmerman was a 5+ WAR player. That's easily worth what the Nationals are paying him.
I have Zimmerman estimated at about 31.1 WAR over the next 8 years, a number that would be worth about $156M, $40M more than he's actually scheduled to earn. That would rate him the fourth best of the megacontracts, behind only Braun, Tulowitzki and Kemp. Over the course of his contracted term with the Nationals, they're getting a great value.
Of course, Zimmerman was already under contract for the first two years, so I suppose the better question is whether he'll be worth the $100M from 2014 to 2019. My system has him worth 9 WAR over the next two years, and about 22.1 over the next six (covered by his extension). So obviously a big chunk of his value is coming now. However, think about eight years ago. Back in 2004, $20M a year was a massive contract, and $14M was considered extensive. Miguel Tejada's contract with the Orioles was 6 years, for $72M, an average annual value of only $12M - this, for a player regarded (correctly) as elite. While Zimmerman might not be worth quite the $18M he's due in 2019, at age 34, it's possible that he will. What's more likely is that he's worth so much more than the $14M he's due in most of the years before that nobody will care. Running his numbers, I estimate Zimmerman to be worth $113.3M over the six years covered by his extension - meaning the Nationals are taking a sensible gamble.
I suppose this means it's time to adjust our expectations of what a ONEHUNDREDMILLION player is. Certainly, this story got more press than it would have if Zimmerman's extension had been for merely $95M. The fact is, a non-elite-but-still-very-good player can be worth $15M-$18M a year now. With each win being worth something between four and five million, that's the new math. Be careful though - if signing non-elite players inhibits your chances to add an elite one, you've made a mistake. Bryce Harper is likely under team control until 2017, at which point the Nationals will have only two years and $34M committed to Zimmerman. A significant amount, but nothing that should smother them.
All in all, Zimmerman's contract rates as a smart risk for the Nationals.
Showing posts with label Bryce Harper. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bryce Harper. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Tuesday, July 05, 2011
Two Prospects have Dominated in Nationals' System
You know about Bryce Harper. You may not know about Tom Milone.
We'll start with Harper. After spending the first three months of the season dominating in Single A Hagerstown to the tune of .318/.423/.554, Harper was promoted to Double A Harrisburg, skipping High A Potomac. In his double A debut, he went two for three with a walk and a run scored. Remember, Harper doesn't turn 19 until October. For a reference part, an 18 year old hasn't appeared in a major league game was in 1994. His name was Alex Rodriguez.
At this point, unless he completely flunks AA ball, I'd be shocked if Harper doesn't debut in September. He's likely to begin next season in the minors, though if he dominates in AA and hits either in his call up or next year in spring training, that could change.
You probably know all of that already, though. Who's this Milone guy?
Tom Milone (statistics)was just named the International League pitcher of the week. In his two starts, he pitched 14.1 innings, allowing 1 run, 8 hits, striking out 12 and walking nobody, extending a pattern of dominance that could fly under the radar because of some bad luck. Through 15 starts this season, Milone has what may seem like a pedestrian 6-5 record and 3.38 ERA. It doesn't take much digging though to find some truly mind boggling numbers:
Check that again. 101 strikeouts. FIVE walks. His strikout to walk ratio is 20.2. For a point of reference, the career record for K/BB ratio was in the strike shortened 1994 (is this a theme today?) when Bret Saberhagen had 143 strikeouts to 13 walks. Since he surpassed the full-season 162 IP standard, I'm willing to accept this as the record even though the strike shortened the year. If you're not, last season Cliff Lee had 185 strikeouts and 18 walks. The active career leader (min 1000 IP) is Mariano Rivera, at a tick under 4 strikeouts for every guy he walks.
Milone's stuff is considered middling, which is why we don't see him on prospect lists. His fastball is in the mid 80's, reaching 89 on rare occasion. His changeup seems to be regarded as his best pitch, and he also throws a cutter and curveball. He doesn't generate a ton of ground balls, so, considering the rest of his arsenal, I would guess it is likely that his home run rate in the major leagues would approach 1 per every 9 innings.
Still, while the walk number is impressive, it is the International League leading strikeout number that stands out to me. Walking too many hitters is bad, but simply avoiding walks isn't, on it's own, good. The active leader for lowest career walk rate is Carlos Silva, who has an ERA+ of 93, because he doesn't strike anybody out and gives up too many home runs. Combining such a low walk rate with such a high strikeout total though? It's almost impossible not to succeed while doing that. Zack Greinke has been hit hard this year doing it, but he's also a former Cy Young winner. There are 12 active pitchers with 1000 career innings and a K/BB ratio of over 3 to 1 (courtesy of baseball-reference):
Nobody on the list lower than a 104 ERA+, ten of the twelve over 112.
So why is Milone's performance so outpacing his stuff? One theory is that minor league hitters do not deal with pitchers, particularly left handed ones, who can locate and mix their pitches well, but major league hitters do. While there is some evidence to this, I'm having trouble finding an example of someone with such an extreme K/BB ratio in AAA. Milone performance is such an outlier that I'm not sure what we can extrapolate from other data sets.
My guess is that Milone will get a chance with the Nationals at some point this season. His performance has been too good to ignore, despite what the radar gun says. If the Nationals aren't interested in giving him a chance, somebody else certainly will. Once in the majors, it's anybody's guess what kind of success he'll have. I'm rooting for him though. One of the things I love about baseball is the fact there are many, many ways one can succeed at it. Maybe Milone can't - maybe he gets hit hard and falls out of the major leagues, and I find this post 10 years from now and laugh. Who knows? Even it's rare for someone with stuff like Tom Milone to excel, perhaps it's simply because there's never been another like Tom Milone.
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We'll start with Harper. After spending the first three months of the season dominating in Single A Hagerstown to the tune of .318/.423/.554, Harper was promoted to Double A Harrisburg, skipping High A Potomac. In his double A debut, he went two for three with a walk and a run scored. Remember, Harper doesn't turn 19 until October. For a reference part, an 18 year old hasn't appeared in a major league game was in 1994. His name was Alex Rodriguez.
At this point, unless he completely flunks AA ball, I'd be shocked if Harper doesn't debut in September. He's likely to begin next season in the minors, though if he dominates in AA and hits either in his call up or next year in spring training, that could change.
You probably know all of that already, though. Who's this Milone guy?
Tom Milone (statistics)was just named the International League pitcher of the week. In his two starts, he pitched 14.1 innings, allowing 1 run, 8 hits, striking out 12 and walking nobody, extending a pattern of dominance that could fly under the radar because of some bad luck. Through 15 starts this season, Milone has what may seem like a pedestrian 6-5 record and 3.38 ERA. It doesn't take much digging though to find some truly mind boggling numbers:
| Team | IP | H | ER | HR | BB | SO | ERA | WHIP | H/9 | HR/9 | BB/9 | SO/9 | FIP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Syracuse | 96 | 90 | 36 | 6 | 5 | 101 | 3.38 | 0.99 | 8.4 | 0.6 | 0.5 | 9.5 | 2.10 |
Check that again. 101 strikeouts. FIVE walks. His strikout to walk ratio is 20.2. For a point of reference, the career record for K/BB ratio was in the strike shortened 1994 (is this a theme today?) when Bret Saberhagen had 143 strikeouts to 13 walks. Since he surpassed the full-season 162 IP standard, I'm willing to accept this as the record even though the strike shortened the year. If you're not, last season Cliff Lee had 185 strikeouts and 18 walks. The active career leader (min 1000 IP) is Mariano Rivera, at a tick under 4 strikeouts for every guy he walks.
Milone's stuff is considered middling, which is why we don't see him on prospect lists. His fastball is in the mid 80's, reaching 89 on rare occasion. His changeup seems to be regarded as his best pitch, and he also throws a cutter and curveball. He doesn't generate a ton of ground balls, so, considering the rest of his arsenal, I would guess it is likely that his home run rate in the major leagues would approach 1 per every 9 innings.
Still, while the walk number is impressive, it is the International League leading strikeout number that stands out to me. Walking too many hitters is bad, but simply avoiding walks isn't, on it's own, good. The active leader for lowest career walk rate is Carlos Silva, who has an ERA+ of 93, because he doesn't strike anybody out and gives up too many home runs. Combining such a low walk rate with such a high strikeout total though? It's almost impossible not to succeed while doing that. Zack Greinke has been hit hard this year doing it, but he's also a former Cy Young winner. There are 12 active pitchers with 1000 career innings and a K/BB ratio of over 3 to 1 (courtesy of baseball-reference):
| Player (age) | K/BB | ERA+ |
|---|---|---|
| Mariano Rivera (41) | 3.9669 | 205 |
| Dan Haren (30) | 3.9444 | 120 |
| James Shields (29) | 3.7611 | 105 |
| Cole Hamels (27) | 3.7435 | 126 |
| Roy Halladay (34) | 3.6753 | 137 |
| Roy Oswalt (33) | 3.5216 | 134 |
| Zack Greinke (27) | 3.4694 | 112 |
| Javier Vazquez (34) | 3.261 | 104 |
| Cliff Lee (32) | 3.2175 | 113 |
| Jered Weaver (28) | 3.1667 | 128 |
| Jake Peavy (30) | 3.0888 | 116 |
| Josh Beckett (31) | 3.0618 | 115 |
Nobody on the list lower than a 104 ERA+, ten of the twelve over 112.
So why is Milone's performance so outpacing his stuff? One theory is that minor league hitters do not deal with pitchers, particularly left handed ones, who can locate and mix their pitches well, but major league hitters do. While there is some evidence to this, I'm having trouble finding an example of someone with such an extreme K/BB ratio in AAA. Milone performance is such an outlier that I'm not sure what we can extrapolate from other data sets.
My guess is that Milone will get a chance with the Nationals at some point this season. His performance has been too good to ignore, despite what the radar gun says. If the Nationals aren't interested in giving him a chance, somebody else certainly will. Once in the majors, it's anybody's guess what kind of success he'll have. I'm rooting for him though. One of the things I love about baseball is the fact there are many, many ways one can succeed at it. Maybe Milone can't - maybe he gets hit hard and falls out of the major leagues, and I find this post 10 years from now and laugh. Who knows? Even it's rare for someone with stuff like Tom Milone to excel, perhaps it's simply because there's never been another like Tom Milone.
Tables made with TABLEIZER!
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Saturday Morning Musings
Some random thoughts around the baseball universe.
Top prospect Bryce Harper is heating up. Playing for the Single-A Hagerstown Suns, Harper last night went 3 for 3 with a double, homer, 6 RBI and two walks. That brings him to a .306/.414/.551 line for the season, against competition generally three to four years older than he. He's spent the past three days abusing the poor Hickory Crawdads, going 6 for 10 with two walks, two doubles, two homers, 7 runs scored and 7 RBI.
Jed Lowrie, through 630 career plate appearances, has a .267/.346/.447 slash line, with 44 2B, 16 homers and 93 RBI. In a league with a very weak pool of shortstops, the Red Sox will be thrilled to get that sort of production. In 2010, only three shortstops had an OPS over Lowrie's career .793 - Troy Tulowitzki, Hanley Ramirez and Stephen Drew. Marco Scutaro has been mentioned in trade rumors, but I expect him to remain on the roster all season, getting spots starts and acting as a serviceable injury replacement if any of the infielders go down.
Remember the rookie of the year race in 2007 between Ryan Braun and Troy Tulowitzki? Braun's slugging beat out Tulowitzki's balanced game in the eyes of the voters in an extremely close 128-126 vote. So far this year, they've been the two best players in the National League (with apologies to Matt Kemp). Braun has a .382/.494/.691 line, while Tulowitzki is not only hitting .329/.435/.729, but is also supplying what may be the majors' best defense.
It's nice to see that Alex Gordon may finally be having that breakout season that everyone hoped he would, but keep in mind that his BABIP right now is .439. Bring that down to a still-above-average .333, and his overall line drops from .361/.404/.542 down to .277/.326/.458 - much closer to his career .244/.328/.405 entering the season. In other words, if you have him on your fantasy team, ride the hot streak--but don't trade Carlos Quentin.
Jose Bautista has been doing everything in his power to prove that 2010 wasn't a fluke, leading the AL in OBP and ranking 3rd in SLG early on.
With the help of Petco Park, Aaron Harang has looked good early on. Harang was one of the most underrated players in the league from 2005-2007, actually leading the NL in both strikeouts and wins (though with only 16 in a kind of fluky year) in '06. Then, with some of the zip seemingly lost from his fastball, Harang went through three years marked by mediocrity and injury. There's no way of knowing how his arm will hold up, but the pitching quality seems to have returned - through 4 starts, he's thrown 24 innings with a 1.88 ERA, 21 strikeouts and only 5 walks. Again, it's very early, but it's a story to watch.
Top prospect Bryce Harper is heating up. Playing for the Single-A Hagerstown Suns, Harper last night went 3 for 3 with a double, homer, 6 RBI and two walks. That brings him to a .306/.414/.551 line for the season, against competition generally three to four years older than he. He's spent the past three days abusing the poor Hickory Crawdads, going 6 for 10 with two walks, two doubles, two homers, 7 runs scored and 7 RBI.
Jed Lowrie, through 630 career plate appearances, has a .267/.346/.447 slash line, with 44 2B, 16 homers and 93 RBI. In a league with a very weak pool of shortstops, the Red Sox will be thrilled to get that sort of production. In 2010, only three shortstops had an OPS over Lowrie's career .793 - Troy Tulowitzki, Hanley Ramirez and Stephen Drew. Marco Scutaro has been mentioned in trade rumors, but I expect him to remain on the roster all season, getting spots starts and acting as a serviceable injury replacement if any of the infielders go down.
Remember the rookie of the year race in 2007 between Ryan Braun and Troy Tulowitzki? Braun's slugging beat out Tulowitzki's balanced game in the eyes of the voters in an extremely close 128-126 vote. So far this year, they've been the two best players in the National League (with apologies to Matt Kemp). Braun has a .382/.494/.691 line, while Tulowitzki is not only hitting .329/.435/.729, but is also supplying what may be the majors' best defense.
It's nice to see that Alex Gordon may finally be having that breakout season that everyone hoped he would, but keep in mind that his BABIP right now is .439. Bring that down to a still-above-average .333, and his overall line drops from .361/.404/.542 down to .277/.326/.458 - much closer to his career .244/.328/.405 entering the season. In other words, if you have him on your fantasy team, ride the hot streak--but don't trade Carlos Quentin.
Jose Bautista has been doing everything in his power to prove that 2010 wasn't a fluke, leading the AL in OBP and ranking 3rd in SLG early on.
With the help of Petco Park, Aaron Harang has looked good early on. Harang was one of the most underrated players in the league from 2005-2007, actually leading the NL in both strikeouts and wins (though with only 16 in a kind of fluky year) in '06. Then, with some of the zip seemingly lost from his fastball, Harang went through three years marked by mediocrity and injury. There's no way of knowing how his arm will hold up, but the pitching quality seems to have returned - through 4 starts, he's thrown 24 innings with a 1.88 ERA, 21 strikeouts and only 5 walks. Again, it's very early, but it's a story to watch.
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