Should the Red Sox Look into Punto Pt. 2?

thestardawg

Member
SoSH Member
Jul 30, 2005
862
Section 38, Row 13
It's pretty simple: Betts has long been thought of as a "5-tool" player but last season his stolen base numbers dropped to 16, so I think we can safely subtract "good baserunning" from his set of tools. As a result, he is now a 4 tool player. Defense is one of them; one divided by 4 is 25%. If he can't get his average back above .300, we'll ahev to downgrade him to a 3-tool player.
You are aware that baserunning is more than stolen bases?

You also are aware that 16 SB had Betts at 10th in the American League?
 

Plympton91

bubble burster
SoSH Member
Oct 19, 2008
12,408
This post is amazing



You’re right that this is how it should work. But it has been looked at several times, and it doesn’t appear to. FA contracts, the arb system, and implied trade values point towards a linear $/WAR valuation that prices wins produced by 2 WAR players roughly the same as 6 WAR players.

If anything observed market behavior suggests the opposite is true; the curve bends the other way. Mike Trout is easier to project than almost anyone; barring injury, he’ll give you 8+ WAR. Yet not only does he not earn a premium for packing all that value into a single roster spot, he doesn’t even reach the average $/WAR, which would imply an AAV of perhaps $50m, depending on how you project him to age.

(I’ve made this point before, but I’d note that the fact that these outlier players are underpaid on this basis is an argument for giving Mookie Betts $360m.)
Right, that’s what I said; though, apparently not that clearly.

Since no one is getting paid $48 million a year, it can’t be the fact that “market value” is $8million / WAR. The relationship is obviously nonlinear. I’m surprised no one has been able to get a 5-percent p-value on some other coefficient. Cubic would be my honest first guess. Flat from 0-1.5, steep from 1.5 to 5; flattening out above 5.
 
Last edited:

Max Power

thai good. you like shirt?
SoSH Member
Jul 20, 2005
7,878
Boston, MA
If you look at baseball reference, he has about 30 WAR from offense and ~10 war from defense. I'm guessing those are the numbers he's using. That defensive value is based on their Defensive Runs Saved stat.
Exactly. Cumulative WAR numbers show you how good Betts has been at a young age, especially defensively. They don't tell you anything about what you should expect going forward.
 

Cesar Crespo

79
SoSH Member
Dec 22, 2002
21,588
The only reason it's $9 mil per FA WAR is because guys like Devers get paid less than $1 mil. If they were being paid closer to "market value" that $9 mil per WAR number would go way down.

I think people misuse the $9mil/war number because if Betts gets paid $35 mil a year and has 10 straight 4 WAR seasons... was it really worth it? Is that really break even? It seems like that $35 mil could be better allocated. Using $9 mil/war as a benchmark is such a ridiculously low bar to climb.

Using that figure, Pedroia was actually worth his contract despite playing in only 496 out of 972 games and most likely to miss the next 324 as well. He's actually in danger of "not being worth his contract" because over the last 2 seasons (9 games) he's put up a -0.6 WAR.

Does it matter how Betts accumulates said WAR? What if the first 5 seasons, he puts up 33 WAR and over the next 5, he puts up 10. Good signing?
 

OurF'ingCity

Member
SoSH Member
Apr 22, 2016
8,469
New York City
Does it matter how Betts accumulates said WAR? What if the first 5 seasons, he puts up 33 WAR and over the next 5, he puts up 10. Good signing?
I'd rather have that scenario vs. the one where he puts up 4 WAR a year - 33 WAR over 5 seasons averages out to 6.6 WAR per season which is basically a top-10 player every year in that span. In today's MLB the only way you are going to secure a player of that caliber is to overpay in the contract's latter half. Gerrit Cole is getting pretty close to the $350/10 you are proposed for Mookie and I'd put the odds extremely low that he even comes particularly close to matching Mookie's value over the next 10 years (obviously it's not precisely apples to apples given pitcher scarcity, etc.).

The real question is whether Mookie would accept a 350/10 offer or whether some teams will offer even more.
 

Cesar Crespo

79
SoSH Member
Dec 22, 2002
21,588
I'd rather have that scenario vs. the one where he puts up 4 WAR a year - 33 WAR over 5 seasons averages out to 6.6 WAR per season which is basically a top-10 player every year in that span. In today's MLB the only way you are going to secure a player of that caliber is to overpay in the contract's latter half. Gerrit Cole is getting pretty close to the $350/10 you are proposed for Mookie and I'd put the odds extremely low that he even comes particularly close to matching Mookie's value over the next 10 years (obviously it's not precisely apples to apples given pitcher scarcity, etc.).
Me too. Maybe it wasn't an extreme enough example.
 

TenCentBeerNight

Member
SoSH Member
Jul 11, 2009
522
UK
Right, that’s what I said; though, apparently not that clearly.

Since no one is getting paid $48 million a year, it can’t be the fact that “market value” is $8million / WAR. The relationship is obviously nonlinear. I’m surprised no one has been able to get a 5-percent p-value on some other coefficient. Cubic would be my honest first guess. Flat from 0-1.5, steep from 1.5 to 5; flattening out above 5.
As nice as it is to see the cubic transformation making a comeback on this site, what you are describing is not a cubic function. I think you mean something like a sigmoid.