Mike Trout - What would he command on today's FA market?

ivanvamp

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Reading Jonah Keri's MLB trade value article on Grantland (http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/10080878/mlb-trade-value-rankings-part-2), got to the #1 player on his list:  Mike Trout.  He suggests that the FA bidding for Trout today would be around $400 million.
 
He's 22.  He's put up these two seasons at ages 20 and 21:
 
Age 20:  .326/.399/.564/.963, 168 ops+, 49 sb, 10.9 bWAR
Age 21:  .323/.432/.557/.988, 179 ops+, 33 sb, 9.2 bWAR
 
He can literally do everything on a baseball field - he has a great eye, he hits for average, he hits for serious power, he runs like the wind, he is a great defensive player, he's durable.  
 
Let's say he was a FA right now.  What kind of contract do you think he would end up with?  10/300?  12/360?  Would a team seriously consider a 15-year, $450 deal?  
 
To put it into context, the past two seasons he's been worth more WAR (by b-ref) than Miguel (two-straight MVP) Cabrera by nearly SIX.  Assume one WAR is worth about $5 million, and it means that Trout is playing at a value of about $45-50 million a year.  It's insane.  Jacoby Ellsbury just got a contract worth, what, $22 million a year (give or take a little)?  And he is about a 5 WAR guy.  Trout is so much better than Jacoby it's scary.  And, again, he's just 22 years old.  He hasn't even reached the beginning of his prime yet.
 

Kliq

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There is a difference between what he could get and what he is worth. I'm not going to delve that deep into this one, but I will put this out there: Trout has been so good at such a young age, I think some teams might think that he is already at his peak. Even though he is still a youngster, it is possible that he is really not going to improve on his numbers that much over the next 5-8 years or so. Maybe he will crack 40 HRs once or twice, but I question how logical it is to predict that he is only going to get better.
 

Hendu for Kutch

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I'd drop a 10y/$350M contract in front of him without thinking twice.  We're going to be talking about this kid like older generations talked about Ruth, Williams, Mantle, and Mays.
 
There is simply no hole in his game, and I don't know of any other active player you can say that about.  He is all things to all people. 
 
Like old-school stats?  He's your guy: 3rd in BA, 1st in R, 4th in H, 7th in 2B, 2nd in 3B, 9th in RBI, 8th in SB, plus 27 HR
 
Like new-school stats?  He's your guy: 1st in fWAR, 1st in offensive fWAR, 2nd in OBP, 4th in SLG, 1st in BB, 1st in RC, 3rd in SB%, 2nd in OPS+, 1st in RC
 
Like fantasy stats?  He's your guy:  .323/27 HR/97 RBI/109 R/33 SB and 1st in Power-Speed rankings
 
Like pure hitting ability?  He's your guy:  3rd in Total Bases, 2nd in XBH, 1st in RC, 3rd in OPS, 2nd in OPS+
 
Like baserunning, defense, and productive outs?  He's your guy: 1st in Base-Out Wins Added, .996 FP, 2nd in OF putouts, 5th in SF, 6th in HBP,
 
Like clutch performance?  He's your guy: 4th in WPA, 1st in situational WPA
 
 
I think it's a good bet that he'll get better, given his age and how he has already improved from 20 to 21.  However, even if he didn't improve one iota, he's far and away the best player in baseball as is.
 

bowiac

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Just as a baseline, THT's Oliver projection system puts him as being a ~10 win player in each of the next 5 seasons. No real improvement, but no real decline. I think that makes sense - regression to the mean is a strong effect, but he's also so young that the two may largely balance out. At the going rate for a win on the free agent market, of about $5M/win, that means he's worth about $50M/year.
 
10 years $350M may be light for what he should expect to get given that.
 

glennhoffmania

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He's already in decline. His bWAR tanked this year. Pass.
 
I kid.
 
But even if using the $5m per win calculation shows that he's worth it how many teams would really be willing to commit $350m+ to one guy? There are so many things that could go wrong and while it's certainly possible that he'll earn every penny it could also end up crippling a team for years.
 

Hendu for Kutch

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bowiac said:
Just as a baseline, THT's Oliver projection system puts him as being a ~10 win player in each of the next 5 seasons. No real improvement, but no real decline. I think that makes sense - regression to the mean is a strong effect, but he's also so young that the two may largely balance out. At the going rate for a win on the free agent market, of about $5M/win, that means he's worth about $50M/year.
 
10 years $350M may be light for what he should expect to get given that.
 
I'd probably be willing to go higher, 10/$350 would be my starting point.  I'm also curious if any team would so thoroughly blow the top off the upper end of the salary scale by signing a $400M deal with anyone, regardless of how good he is.  I could see the Yankees or Dodgers doing so, but I doubt anyone else would.
 

mauf

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The linear $$/WAR relationship would break down at these levels -- too much risk tied up in a single player having a serious injury, cocaine problem, or whatever.
 
I suspect Trout would "only" get 10/350, even though you can make an excellent case that he's worth nearly twice that.
 

johnnywayback

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maufman said:
The linear $$/WAR relationship would break down at these levels -- too much risk tied up in a single player having a serious injury, cocaine problem, or whatever.
 
I suspect Trout would "only" get 10/350, even though you can make an excellent case that he's worth nearly twice that.
 
Completely agree, and the bolded is a great way of putting it.  He is the best-available single basket into which a team might put all its eggs, but he's still one basket.  
 
Another interesting question would be: Is there any trade -- literally any trade -- that you'd consider for him if you were the Angels?  Say the Marlins offered Giancarlo Stanton, Jose Fernandez, Christian Yelich, and Jake Marisnick.  Or the Twins offered Joe Mauer, Miguel Sano, Byron Buxton, and their entire AAA rotation.  Or the Tigers offered Miguel Cabrera, Max Scherzer, and Nick Castellanos.  Et cetera.
 

BoSox Rule

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If he magically became a FA tomorrow I think he signs for something like $400m/14 unless he wants to sign like an 8 year deal so he can hit the market again at 30.
 

ivanvamp

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Part of what I'm thinking is that if he truly is a 10-win player, just take the salaries of two 5-win players and see what they typically come out to.  Looking at espn's WAR leader board, here are two guys around 5:
 
Ian Kinsler (4.96) and Hanley Ramirez (5.42)
 
Kinsler will make $16m in 2014.  Hanley will also make $16 million in 2014.  So essentially, for $32 million, you could buy about 10 wins.  Given that, I'd say the starting point for Trout would be over $30 million, but given his age, I suspect it would end up being much higher than that when the contract's t's are crossed and i's are dotted. 
 

finnVT

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ivanvamp said:
Part of what I'm thinking is that if he truly is a 10-win player, just take the salaries of two 5-win players and see what they typically come out to.  Looking at espn's WAR leader board, here are two guys around 5:
 
Ian Kinsler (4.96) and Hanley Ramirez (5.42)
 
Kinsler will make $16m in 2014.  Hanley will also make $16 million in 2014.  So essentially, for $32 million, you could buy about 10 wins.  Given that, I'd say the starting point for Trout would be over $30 million, but given his age, I suspect it would end up being much higher than that when the contract's t's are crossed and i's are dotted. 
Except that's the lower bound, because by having those two values in a single player, you then get to have another player in the lineup.
 

Lose Remerswaal

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So then, what are the Angels waiting for?  Don't they have a better shot of signing him now for 10 years $300 million instead of waiting through next year (renew) and a couple years of Arbitration ($15 Mil? $20 Mill?) and then either losing him or having to pay $35 million/year then for a player going into his mid 30s at the end of the deal, instead of in his early 30s?
 

Yaz4Ever

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Lose Remerswaal said:
So then, what are the Angels waiting for?  Don't they have a better shot of signing him now for 10 years $300 million instead of waiting through next year (renew) and a couple years of Arbitration ($15 Mil? $20 Mill?) and then either losing him or having to pay $35 million/year then for a player going into his mid 30s at the end of the deal, instead of in his early 30s?
No, they're in the drivers seat right now, imho.  If they pay him as-is and a couple of years of arbitration, they not only make certain he's as durable as you think he is now and then sign him for 10 years bringing him only to his age 35 season.  Let someone else overpay for his 36-40 years <cough>NYY</cough>
 
Also, if it becomes apparent that you can't re-sign him at that point, you trade him to someone for a boatload of prospects at the deadline.  Someone will be willing to roll the dice that they can trade for him and then negotiate a deal.
 

radsoxfan

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johnnywayback said:
 
Completely agree, and the bolded is a great way of putting it.  He is the best-available single basket into which a team might put all its eggs, but he's still one basket.  
 
Another interesting question would be: Is there any trade -- literally any trade -- that you'd consider for him if you were the Angels?  Say the Marlins offered Giancarlo Stanton, Jose Fernandez, Christian Yelich, and Jake Marisnick.  Or the Twins offered Joe Mauer, Miguel Sano, Byron Buxton, and their entire AAA rotation.  Or the Tigers offered Miguel Cabrera, Max Scherzer, and Nick Castellanos.  Et cetera.
 
 
The first thing the Angels would do is beg any team to take the 218M left of Pujols' backloaded deal, and the 98M thats still owed to Hamilton.  After they find someone to dump that 316 million on, they could.... maybe get a couple C prospects?
 
I joke, but not really.... Trout is only under team control for 4 more years, right? I wonder if any team would take 4 years of Trout for free (plus his underpaid salary) if they had to take the Pujols/Hamilton duo.
 
How overpaid are those two relative to their expected production? 150M? More? Feels like Hamilton could easily be 50M overpaid (4/48 might be fair?), and Pujols easily 100M overpaid (8/118 might be fair?).  And that could be conservative.  
 
Would teams take that on for 4 years of cheap Trout? The Angles are so dumb they have basically made 2 decisions that combined are worse than Trout is good. 
 
Without giving the FA thing a ton of thought, I'd probably be willing to go to 12/420 as a FA.  It's so ridiculously long, that even with a couple complete years lost due to injury, you are still likely to get a ton of value. If he puts up 6 years like he just did at some point in the next 12 years, he doesn't have to do much over those other 6 years to make that a reasonable deal.  And even 12 years from now avoids most of his expected decline years.
 

Mighty Joe Young

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radsoxfan said:
The first thing the Angels would do is beg any team to take the 218M left of Pujols' backloaded deal, and the 98M thats still owed to Hamilton.  After they find someone to dump that 316 million on, they could.... maybe get a couple C prospects?
 
I joke, but not really.... Trout is only under team control for 4 more years, right? I wonder if any team would take 4 years of Trout for free (plus his underpaid salary) if they had to take the Pujols/Hamilton duo.
 
How overpaid are those two relative to their expected production? 150M? More? Feels like Hamilton could easily be 50M overpaid (4/48 might be fair?), and Pujols easily 100M overpaid (8/118 might be fair?).  And that could be conservative.  
 
Would teams take that on for 4 years of cheap Trout? The Angles are so dumb they have basically made 2 decisions that combined are worse than Trout is good. 
 
Without giving the FA thing a ton of thought, I'd probably be willing to go to 12/420 as a FA.  It's so ridiculously long, that even with a couple complete years lost due to injury, you are still likely to get a ton of value. If he puts up 6 years like he just did at some point in the next 12 years, he doesn't have to do much over those other 6 years to make that a reasonable deal.  And even 12 years from now avoids most of his expected decline years.
Here's a good one .. Would the Angels trade Pujols , Hamilton and Trout to the Red Sox for nothing?

[edit: nevermind .. I can't read]
 

snowmanny

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An eight year $200 Million contract would make a lot more sense for the Angels.  In the speculated deal they would basically be paying $80 Million-plus for two free agent years.
 

BoSox Rule

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So he could become a FA after his age 27 season, possibly as the best FA ever and at a time when teams might be paying $9 or 10 million for a win.
 

JakeRae

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snowmanny said:
An eight year $200 Million contract would make a lot more sense for the Angels.  In the speculated deal they would basically be paying $80 Million-plus for two free agent years.
But makes no sense for Trout. At current values, he is worth $60 million a season. Why would he add two years for less than his one year value? Selling his FA years at over $10 million below his FA value is a pretty big discount already and seems fair to both sides.
 

Curll

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If Trout makes it to FA, it would not be a complete shock to me if someone offered $1B. He still has four seasons and some loony billionaire might buy a franchise and try to make a splash. He shouldn't consider anything under $400M
 

Lose Remerswaal

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Curll said:
If Trout makes it to FA, it would not be a complete shock to me if someone offered $1B. He still has four seasons and some loony billionaire might buy a franchise and try to make a splash. He shouldn't consider anything under $400M
It might not be a complete shock to you, but it would to everybody else. Even a fifteen year deal would be $66 million /year.
 

MakMan44

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Curll said:
If Trout makes it to FA, it would not be a complete shock to me if someone offered $1B. He still has four seasons and some loony billionaire might buy a franchise and try to make a splash. He shouldn't consider anything under $400M
I was thinking a little about this and building a contending team, even around Trout, seems nearly impossible when you're tying up $40 million dollars a year into one player. 
 

radsoxfan

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MakMan44 said:
I was thinking a little about this and building a contending team, even around Trout, seems nearly impossible when you're tying up $40 million dollars a year into one player. 
 
Why? Just depends on your payroll.  If you want a 60M payroll, then sure, 40M for one guy is probably crazy.
 
But if you have a 100M payroll, it's totally reasonable.  Tampa was at 57M this year, Pittsburgh at 66M, and Oakland at 68M. 
 
If you can build a contender with a payroll in the 60M range without Trout, you can certainly build one with Trout at 40M, and the rest of your team making 60M. At least half the league would be falling over themselves for the right to pay Trout 40M/season as a FA, and rightly so.
 

MakMan44

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It doesn't really work like that though. I was probably exaggerating a little but it's not because of the point you're trying to make. 
 
M

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MakMan44 said:
I was thinking a little about this and building a contending team, even around Trout, seems nearly impossible when you're tying up $40 million dollars a year into one player. 
 
Suppose it's 6 years from now, Trout is an FA, the salary tax hits at $225M and the Red Sox payroll is around $200M.  I think those are reasonable assumptions.  Suppose further that we have an opening at CF and Trout has continued to be an above-average defender at that position.
 
Would $40M out of a $240M payroll really be more ridiculous than paying Manny a $20M AAV in 2001, with our payroll of $110M?  The former is 16.6% of the payroll, and the latter, over 18%.  And even Manny was only worth 5.2 WAR that year.  I think that price tag would make sense for many teams - and of course, it only has to make sense for one.
 

MakMan44

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That's a better argument than the radsox's one, I'll give you that. 
 
No I guess not, though you also have to account for the rest of the player's salaries as well. It's possible though.
 

MakMan44

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Radsox, you can't just ignore that there are tons of factors that go into lower payrolls. The Rays, Pirates etc don't keep payrolls half the size of the Red Sox because they want to, they have to for one reason or another. It's silly to ignore that and simply suggest that well they can just plug Trout into the 2013 Pirates and they'd win the WS.

Sorry I didn't post that sooner but I was recently reminds that simply posting one liners isn't what this board is about.
 

JakeRae

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MakMan44 said:
Radsox, you can't just ignore that there are tons of factors that go into lower payrolls. The Rays, Pirates etc don't keep payrolls half the size of the Red Sox because they want to, they have to for one reason or another. It's silly to ignore that and simply suggest that well they can just plug Trout into the 2013 Pirates and they'd win the WS.

Sorry I didn't post that sooner but I was recently reminds that simply posting one liners isn't what this board is about.
That's not at all what he is saying. The idea is 1) you can build a playoff team with a $60 million payroll and 2) lots of teams have $100 plus million dollar payrolls, therefore 3) it is clearly possibly to spend $40 million a year on a single player and build a championship team.

There may be lots of reasons why Tampa cannot boost their payroll to $100 million, but are there any reasons why a team with that spending ability couldn't use their non-Trout money on building a team of similar caliber to the Rays?
 

Yelling At Clouds

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MakMan44 said:
Radsox, you can't just ignore that there are tons of factors that go into lower payrolls. The Rays, Pirates etc don't keep payrolls half the size of the Red Sox because they want to, they have to for one reason or another. It's silly to ignore that and simply suggest that well they can just plug Trout into the 2013 Pirates and they'd win the WS.

Sorry I didn't post that sooner but I was recently reminds that simply posting one liners isn't what this board is about.
 
I know this isn't your point, but imagine Trout and McCutchen in the same outfield...
 

MakMan44

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JakeRae said:
That's not at all what he is saying. The idea is 1) you can build a playoff team with a $60 million payroll and 2) lots of teams have $100 plus million dollar payrolls, therefore 3) it is clearly possibly to spend $40 million a year on a single player and build a championship team.

There may be lots of reasons why Tampa cannot boost their payroll to $100 million, but are there any reasons why a team with that spending ability couldn't use their non-Trout money on building a team of similar caliber to the Rays?
The only two teams off the top of my head that have been really successfully with using the Rays approach aka drafting and building through the farm and the Dodgers/Yankees approach, which is the high payroll part, are the Red Sox and the Cardinals. 
 
So yes, it's totally possible but there's a ton of outside factors that make it a very hard thing to achieve.
 

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MakMan44 said:
The only two teams off the top of my head that have been really successfully with using the Rays approach aka drafting and building through the farm and the Dodgers/Yankees approach, which is the high payroll part, are the Red Sox and the Cardinals. 
 
So yes, it's totally possible but there's a ton of outside factors that make it a very hard thing to achieve.
 
You're overthinking this.  Take a team with a payroll of around $100m, like the Orioles.  In four years they revamp their roster so it looks similar to Tampa's.  Then when Trout becomes a FA and they shed some payroll, they sign him for $40m while the rest of their roster that they've been building for the last four years is making $60m combined.  They can afford it, they now have Trout, and they have 24 other guys that look like a Rays team.
 
Putting all of this aside, isn't it a little early to be assuming that Trout will be a $400m player in four years?  He's clearly an incredible player but lots of things can happen in terms of performance and health before he becomes a FA.
 

radsoxfan

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MakMan44 said:
The only two teams off the top of my head that have been really successfully with using the Rays approach aka drafting and building through the farm and the Dodgers/Yankees approach, which is the high payroll part, are the Red Sox and the Cardinals. 
 
So yes, it's totally possible but there's a ton of outside factors that make it a very hard thing to achieve.
 
My argument is simple, and JakeRae already explained the logic well so I won't belabor the details much.
 
There are a ton of teams that could do just fine with a 40M player on the payroll. There is nothing magic about that number that is "too much" for legitimate roster construction, once you assume some baseline that's required for the rest of the team (I picked around 100M off the top of my head since there are plenty of contending 60M teams). You could probably argue 80 or 90M teams might be willing to also, since you don't have to create quite as good of a team with your other 24 guys if Mike Trout is on your team.
 
A lot of teams would be perfectly willing to pay 40M/season for 8-10 WAR, and would find that to be a very reasonable use of resources. I'm not saying the Rays, Pirates or A's would be one of those teams.  But plenty of other teams that are planning ahead could get into the bidding. 
 
Even the richer teams are still trying to build up their farm systems and could go with a Tampa-type approach to the rest of the roster relatively quickly.  The Red Sox are a great example of a wealthy team that could easily give Trout 40M/season, hold off on the Napoli/Dempster/Victorino short term signings for a year or two, and still be in great shape with their current farm system. But there are plenty of others.
 

derekson

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Seems more likely an attempt to butter him up than a sign that they have a deal waiting for the season to start to me. Especially considering how pissed off Trout probably was last year when they gave him all of a $20000 raise after an all time great rookie season and a #2 MVP finish.