Adam Jones: So What Would An Extension Look Like?

Recently, Adam Jones reminded the Orioles fan base of something.

One year left also.

— 10 (@SimplyAJ10) December 19, 2017

This left me with the question about what exactly would an Adam Jones deal look like and whether it would even be a good idea.  People age and all good things come to an end, but Jones still looks like a capable player.  Last year, in the second half of the season, Jones slashed 307/343/502.  That was some prime time Adam Jones action.

To try to look at the angles, I employed the newer version of BORAS to see what his 2019 contract would look like.  I also used a comp model to project his 2019-2023 seasons (ages 33-37).  With the often leaked front office perspective that Jones is a true RF now, I also modeled out what happens when a center fielder moves to right field.  Finally, I assumed that the 2018 season had already played and Jones performed on par with what ZiPS projects him to do.

BORAS 2.0
As you know, the BORAS model looks at a players recent past and compares it with recent contracts to determine how many years a player will sign for as well as what yearly salary the player will take on.  For Jones' 2018 season, we will assume his ZiPS projection is accurate and go from there.  BORAS suggests his age 33 and 34 season would be covered in a 2/23 deal if he is a free agent a year from now.

Given Jones' recent contract and how a two year extension is really not all that much of an extension, I would advise him to not sign that deal if I was his agent.  It would be a shock if he was not able to secure one year deal for each of those off seasons, so I would suggest him to bet on himself and go bigger.  But, what does BORAS think the benefit or cost is to wing it on a one year basis?

Yeah, that is an ugly, bare-bones graph.  The horizontal axis is what Jones might do in 2018 using WAR as an encapsulating statistic for what goes into the model.  The left is AAV and the right is years.  Jones probably needs something north of a "3 WAR" season to get more than two years.

Comp model
We have used comp models before.  Basically what we try to do here is take a player's most recent performance and find similar players who play similar positions.  When we did this for some players, like Manny Machado, it was effectively impossible to find enough players at that age who offensively performed similarly.  For Jones, it is a bit easier, but he is such a unique centerfielder that we needed to consider corner outfielders in the methodology to have a large enough sample size.

Who is in Jones' age 33-37 comp model?
Al Martin, Rondell White, George Bell, Jose Guillen, Mike Morse, Eric Byrnes, Jacque Jones, Cody Ross, Glenallen Hill, and Nelson Cruz.

Admittedly, it is a weird group.  Nelson Cruz and Rondell White do not look like twins, but the process looking at the entire population has delivered good comps in the past.  What we find in this group (Cruz' age 37 year is projected) is that only Cruz makes it to the end.  Most of the players end their career before the midway point of their age 35 season.  To account for those lost seasons, we project their performance, but it identifies uncertainty in the population as we travel further down the path of age.

Moving From CF to RF
A second consideration that needs to be made is that based on the leaks coming out of the warehouse (it might well be the only leak) is that the club no longer views Jones as a competent centerfielder, seeing him true defensive position as a rightfielder.  The old rule of thumb was that moving from center to a corner outfield position was worth an increase of about five runs in defensive ability, which covers about half of the -10 run positional adjustment from center field to right field.

Trying to be more exact or at least more defined, I decided to run a series of regression models for arm, error, and range values.  However, none of the models came out as significant.  All hovered around the 0.1 value.  If those were useful, it would suggest that Jones, a -4 run ZIPS value in center, would translate over to a +2 run rightfielder largely on the strength of increase range performance.

I then decided to do a batch model by looking at fielders from 2015-2017 who played at least 200 innings in right field and left field in a single season.  I then batched these by Statcast sprint speed in three groups: greater than 28.5 ft/s, 27.5-28.5 ft/s, and less than 27.5. Jones would fall into the final center fielder speed category as his 27.2 mark was one of the slowest in MLB last year for that position.

Anyway, what I found is that the fast group actually sees a reduction in range value of -5 runs.  This likely has to do with reduced opportunity in right field.  If you have stellar speed and can use it to expand your range, then a tight foul territory reduces that usefulness.  That reduction though is slightly reduced from improved throwing and error prevention, which results in an overall loss of -2 runs for that speedy group when converting over to right field.

The mid-level speed and lowest speed groups both appear to benefit similarly overall.  The mid-level group sees slightly more improvement in range and slightly less improvement in arm than the slowest group.  However, they both come in around a 5 run improvement.  This would suggest that sliding Jones over to right field would make him a +1 run right fielder.  Part of me wonders if this might be an underadjustment because Jones has shown in the past that he is far batter at moving toward left field than he is at moving toward right field.  Add in that route running and you could imagine him being a +5 run, but for this exercise, we will assume he performs like the population performed and that he is a +1 RF.

All Together Now
Incorporating the conversion into the comp model, what we get below is the projection for Adam Jones' next five years assuming he logs 550 PA each year.

Proj 550 PA	AVG	OBP	SLG	xWAR
2019	.254	.304	.418	1.4
2020	.251	.303	.426	1.5
2021	.251	.305	.433	1.6
2022	.235	.289	.401	0.6
2023	.228	.28	.397	0.3

What it suggests is that players like Jones maintain a level of performance through their age 35 seasons and then collapse.  Of course, that collapse is largely due to the projection given to all the players whose careers ended mid age 35 season or before.

If we assume that Jones is more like the players within the group who had longer careers, then we would wind up with this projection.

Proj 550 PA	AVG	OBP	SLG	xWAR
2019	.281	.335	.476	3.1
2020	.272	.326	.472	2.8
2021	.269	.323	.479	2.8
2022	.250	.307	.443	1.8
2023	.232	.286	.414	0.7

Well, we still see that major drop off even when the population has more players who were able to go deeper into their careers.  That age 36 season (2022) looks like a considerable wall.

Conclusion and Comparisons

The comp model thinks Jones is worth about 2/20 or 3/32.  BORAS 2.0 thinks the extension should be 2/23.  For BORAS to think that Jones should get a three year deal, he would need to give a 3 WAR kind of season and then would be looking at a 3/41 deal.  All of that is in the neighborhood of market value and expected performance value.

For the Orioles, the issue is a bit more complicated.  The signings of Chris Davis and Mark Trumbo along with the plethora of corner outfielders in the minors makes Jones, although a franchise important figure, not exactly occupying a position of need in the future.  In terms of a team player, he still is one of the more important players in the clubhouse, so you could fathom extending him and dealing out of the club's strength or finding a new home for someone like Mark Trumbo to push Trey Mancini into a more natural position at DH and sliding Austin Hays to left field.

Could that be done?  Can you wipe Trumbo's salary off the books?  Does Jones give you a better shot of winning instead of relying on players like D.J. Stewart and Ryan Mountcastle coming through in the near term?  Does Jones relieve pressure on a hitter like Mountcastle and lets him mature a bit longer before being called up?

In the end, I could see Jones being handed a 3/36 extension and it turning out OK.  An athletic and relatively healthy player his entire career, he probably is more alike the players in the top end of the comp model.  He certainly is not a Nelson Cruz (few are), but you can see a number of attributes that will like age well and a 1.5 player over his age 33-35 season is a useful player and looks better than previous comp models on guys like Denard Span.

Monster-cini: Projecting Trey Mancini's Next Ten Years

One of the shining bright spots this year has been the emergence of Trey Mancini as a bona fide major leaguer.  It has been a development that has surprised many in the field.  Mancini has a solid approach, a shorter swing than in the past, and has overcome problems others have foreseen with his decreasing athleticism.  Yes, his time in the outfield seems to be dictated more by the presence of Mark Trumbo and Chris Davis than by any actual ability to play left field, but when you have a decent bat then the manager needs to find you a place to play.

Looking forward, it may be useful to try to envision who Mancini might well be.  Using his current line:

Standard Batting

Year	Age	Tm	PA	HR	BA	OBP	SLG
2016	24	BAL	15	3	.357	.400	1.071
2017	25	BAL	458	22	.295	.345	.513
2 Yr	2 Yr	2 Yr	473	25	.297	.347	.531
162	162	162	628	33	.297	.347	.531

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 8/30/2017.

I tried to find batters aged 25 with similar profiles.  The closest statistical profiles I found were: Rico Brogna, Mike Young, Adrian Gonzalez, Miguel Cabrera, Richie Sexson, Mike Marshall, Cory Snyder, Stephen Drew (?), Raul Mondesi, and Al Martin.  I used this population to predict the average outcome for Mancini each year.  What we get is below:

Year	Age	PA	HR	AVG	OBP	SLG	WAR
2018	26	515	22	.269	.332	.468	2.3
2019	27	561	23	.272	.341	.477	2.8
2020	28	538	21	.274	.350	.468	2.8
2021	29	433	17	.283	.347	.481	2.4
2022	30	485	18	.267	.337	.455	2.1
2023	31	411	15	.258	.320	.444	1.3
2024	32	417	14	.251	.318	.424	1.0
2025	33	317	11	.249	.319	.421	0.7
2026	34	310	8	.227	.291	.363	-0.2
2027	35	273	7	.210	.270	.338	-0.7

The above projection would be rather ideal for the club even though the first two seasons will experience some redundancy with Davis and Trumbo both around.  However, it is more than likely that Mancini should be able to slide into 1B or DH in 2020 depending on how Chris Davis ages.  This version of Mancini is the kind of player a team like the Orioles will need if they chose to throw down trailers full of cash at Machado.

Now, what would an exceptional career look like?  I took the above pool and cut it in half and kept the five players with the best career moving forward.What would a best outcome career look like? I took Miguel Cabrera, Adrian Gonzalez, Richie Sexson, Raul Mondesi, and Al Martin.

Year	Age	PA	HR	AVG	OBP	SLG	WAR
2018	26	607	31	.291	.357	.421	4.3
2019	27	617	30	.284	.366	.518	4.7
2020	28	694	31	.288	.375	.506	5.3
2021	29	483	23	.304	.371	.538	4.0
2022	30	625	28	.277	.353	.488	3.7
2023	31	644	26	.272	.335	.479	3.1
2024	32	554	21	.270	.344	.463	2.8
2025	33	424	18	.268	.348	.462	2.1
2026	34	425	13	.242	.313	.396	0.5
2027	35	332	9	.228	.297	.372	-0.1

That would be a stunning career and one that would keep the playoff window open for the club in the years to come.  That said, let's do a different sub-grouping.  That sub-grouping would be the low walk, high strikeout group: Raul Mondesi, Cory Snyder, Richie Sexson, Rico Brogna, and Mike Marshall.

Year	Age	PA	HR	AVG	OBP	SLG	WAR
2018	26	487	24	.259	.311	.471	1.8
2019	27	549	22	.264	.310	.456	1.6
2020	28	556	24	.256	.323	.458	2.1
2021	29	410	16	.265	.321	.456	1.5
2022	30	474	18	.253	.326	.444	1.6
2023	31	353	14	.243	.309	.433	0.7
2024	32	383	13	.233	.296	.400	0.2
2025	33	245	6	.216	.278	.343	-0.5
2026	34	265	7	.199	.255	.329	-0.9
2027	35	278	7	.189	.244	.312	-1.4

Let us pretend I did not run those numbers.  However, he would still be a useful role player.

Orioles Continue To Raid The Bakery At Closing Time: Dexter Fowler

While Yovani Gallardo's deal is up in the air over an issue found with his shoulder, Dexter Fowler soldiered on and was undeterred into tentatively agreeing to contract terms.  Fowler is rumored to have agreed to a three year deal at 33 MM.  The BORAS model I developed predicted a three year deal at 36.3 MM.  A miss of 1.1 MM a year is pretty decent for a model and, perhaps, indicates that the discount the Orioles got for Fowler was not all that grand and likely a net loss after including the lost draft pick at the end of the first round.  I think a more fair deal would have been a 2/22 deal with a 1/11 option, but at some point this might well be splitting hairs.

As we suggested back in November, the Orioles waited for the market to settle and are now trying to fill every hole on the roster they can.  This is similar to what happened a couple years ago.  Back in the winter of '14, the Orioles blew their first round pick on Ubaldo Jimenez and then slashed their second round pick on Nelson Cruz.  The former has been forgettable and the latter made their first place finish obscenely in front as opposed to comfortably in front.  Gallardo may well be 2016's Jimenez who might be paired with a 2016 Cruz in Dexter Fowler or the other way around.  Fowler has a number of question marks associated with him similarly to how Cruz had his own issues.  Both are/were capable of big things and both had/have a risk of completely crapping out.

The comp model is not particularly excited about Fowler.  His late 20s look most similar to these ten outfielders: Brady Anderson, Brian McRae, David Dejesus, Marvin Benard, Shane Victorino, Mark Kotsay, David Murphy, Fred Lewis, Randy Winn, and Shannon Stewart.  As a group, these players remained remarkably healthy and logged a great number of innings from age 30 to 32.  McRae, Benard, and Lewis are the only ones who completely crapped out.  A 70% three year retention number is a great figure for players in their early 30s.

WAR	Low	Mean	High
30	1.2	1.8	2.4
31	0.0	0.7	1.3
32	0.0	0.9	1.8

The above table was constructed based on Fowler being a right fielder and performing as a -5 run defender.  A general rule of thumb is that a player gains ten runs when shifting from a center field position to a corner position.  However, center fielders with below average arms are general thought to only gain five runs with a shift to right field.  As such, a general expectation of Fowler would have him as a -10 run CF, -5 run RF, and 0 run LF.  As a left fielder, he looks like a decent signing, but nothing special and certainly one a club would hate to lose a draft pick.  As a right fielder, he looks like a poor player to look in long term.  That said, if Hyun-Soo Kim is starting, you would want Fowler in right as opposed to Kim regardless of what WAR says about Fowler individually.

Again, there are reasons why some players are the last to sign.  Fowler is a below average hitter from the left side for an outfielder and is mostly a below average defensive outfielder.  Adding to the confusion over his value is that he has logged minimal innings from a corner outfield position (95 innings in Rookie and Fall League before Fowler turned 21 in addition to one major league inning in 2008).  With that in mind, he certainly feels better than Nolan Reimold and whoever, but maybe only 0.5 wins better.  To sober up that thought, PECOTA pegs Reimold and Fowler as equal value in Right Field when given the same playing time.

It all seems highly questionable because the club appears to be moving the needle slightly while dedicating a high level of resources for that small incremental change.  In fact, if both Gallardo and Fowler signings are finalized, the Orioles will be the biggest spenders of this past off season.  As it stands, a Gallardo addition roughly moves the club from a 12% to 15% shot of getting into the play-in game (first place is about 1%).  Fowler moves the club up into the 17% range with maybe 2 to 3% shot at first. Vegas odds have a similar take with the Orioles enjoying 50 to 1 odds.  Maybe the Orioles have a different way of figuring out how good of a club they are.

The Last Item In The Pitching Display Case: Yovani Gallardo

Yesterday, we learned that the Orioles were done hemming and hawing over retaining their 14th overall selection in the 2016 draft.  They would willingly discard it in order to acquire Yovani Gallardo, a pitcher whose performance does not match what front offices seem to think of him.  In other words, a pitcher who is considered a middle of the rotation arm is one that clubs are typically willing to sacrifice a draft pick in addition to offering a sizeable bundle of cash (see Ian Kennedy, Jeff Samardzija).  Instead, the pitcher who often struggles is one who has accomplished quite a bit, but whose repertoire has become highly questioned (see Ubaldo Jimenez, Ervin Santana).

Back in the fall, I used the BORAS model to project future contracts.  BORAS is a relatively simple model.  It looks at several years of data as well as age.  It does not consider Qualifying Offer status.  BORAS pegged Gallardo for a four year deal at 58.4 MM.  Last I heard, Gallardo was trying to secure himself a three year deal for 45 MM, which is in the ballpark.  That would be a 15 MM annual salary as opposed to a 14.6 MM annual salary.

At this point, it might be good to compare different pitchers projected by the BORAS model:

	Annual Salary
	BORAS (MM)	Actual
Jeff Samardzija	15.8	18
Scott Kazmir	15.6	16
Yovanni Gallardo	14.6	12
JA Happ	14.4	12
Hisashi Iwakuma	13.5	12
Mike Leake	13.4	16
Ian Kennedy	9.6	14

Of the pitchers who are considered similar by BORAS, Gallardo is rather reasonably priced.  Not shown here, is that besides earning a rather reasonable salary, Gallardo is also only on the hook for three years while pitchers like Leake, Samardzija, or Kennedy are locked in for five years.  However, JA Happ certainly makes more sense as he would have provided the club with a left handed starter and not resulted in a lost draft pick.  But just to reiterate, Gallardo's salary is quite reasonable (though the lost draft pick certainly adds a wrinkle and I will get to that later).

A while back I also put together a comparison model for Gallardo, which differs from the BORAS model in that it looks forward beyond the off season market.  I never published it because I figured it would be silly for the Orioles to give up a mid-range first round pick on a relatively forgettable arm.  I read the market wrong on that it seems.  Anyway, the comps at his age for a variety of key characteristics (e.g., walk rate, strikeout rate, peripheral runs allowed indices, handedness) were: Brad Radke, Carl Pavano, Todd Ritchie, James Baldwin, Pedro Astacio, Jon Garland, Jeff Suppan, Ramon Ortiz, Matt Morris, Jason Johnson, Jake Westbrook, and Kyle Lohse.  Pedro Astacio was his closest match.

That group led to this five year mean projection, one year beyond the contract's option year:

	IP	K	BB	FIP	WAR
30	176.2	113	53	4.45	1.7
31	157.2	95	49	4.47	1.5
32	166.2	93	50	4.60	1.3
33	168.0	92	53	4.81	0.9
34	161.0	76	50	4.97	0.5

Next, here are the low, mean, and high expectations by WAR:

WAR	Low	Mean	High
28	1.3	1.7	2.5
29	0.7	1.5	2.3
30	0.0	1.3	2.7
31	-0.4	0.9	2.3
32	-0.9	0.5	1.9

Part of the decrease is due to the injury rate of pitchers.  As is pretty common, injury rate is quite low in the first year of a contract.  For this comp population, 8% of the pitchers were unable to provide 100+ IP.  Years two through four increases the attrition rate to 40% and year five has a 60% loss.  If healthy, the contract could actually be a modest boon,  The chance that Gallardo stays healthy and productive for the next three seasons is 33% and 13% through the option year.  Purely on a coincidence, 33% is the historical average during the 2000s for a drafted player in the teens to turn into a regular which is what the Orioles gave up to sign Gallardo.

That draft pick, of course, is the cost associated with Gallardo that is the most difficult to pin down.  Based on data science, a mid teens draft pick is worth about 20 MM.  That number comes from the odds of a player panning out, cost controlled surplus value, and decreased value based on that value coming years down the line.  In practice, teams appear to value these picks about half of what the data science suggests they are worth, so about 10 MM in market terms.

With the Gallardo deal, the Orioles saved ~10 MM on what BORAS thought Gallardo's salary should be.  The Orioles saved additionally by only having to offer a three year deal, while BORAS suggested four.  That probably saved the club another 7-9 MM.  In other words, the Orioles appear to have gotten true data science value in signing Gallardo.  However, if we look at it from a comp model perspective, he should have earned 3/33 and the only value saved is on not having to ensure a fourth year.  So, that would be a savings of 7-9 MM which is closer to what market value of picks suggests.  This paragraph is somewhat confusing.  The take home is basically, this is relatively fair.

However, I do not think Gallardo is considerably better than what the Orioles already have shuttling between Baltimore and Norfolk.  Additionally, the minor league system is nearly bereft of talent and an additional pick would be helpful to make the future look a little brighter.  Some have suggested that due to the Orioles history of poor development that the club should value their draft picks less, which is a weird perspective to have.  Personnel turnover has occurred regularly over the past couple decades and poor performance is not hereditary.  The logo on the polo shirt does not provide automatic deficiencies.

From 2001-2010, the Orioles were below average in developing first round talent, but not by much.  This range had a wide range of competency, from the wreck of the Syd Thrift era to better organizational efforts of Jim Beattie, Mike Flanagan, and Andy MacPhail.  Over the course of these years and considering the probability of developing regular starters by draft pick, the Orioles would have been expected to produce 4.3 starters.  Instead, they developed three: Nick Markakis, Matt Wieters, and Manny Machado.  There is nothing exceptionally bad or good about that.  I think that there is a "feeling" of poor development of first round picks that simply is not shown well in that actual production of their draft selections.  Keep in mind, the decision to focus greatly on pitchers also plays a bit of a role on the below average success rate as pitchers are less likely to develop into starters than position players are.

Anyway, even if the Orioles have difficulty developing their own drafted talent, it helps picking higher up in the order where evaluation and development is often easier to accomplish.  I think that argument holds no water.  However, again, the play here is for the next couple years before the core gets old and Manny leaves for a 400-500 MM deal somewhere else.  The draft pick would have no bearing on this window beyond a chance it could be used as trade bait.  I know if my contract was coming up after 2018, I would not value these picks so greatly and would be looking to see how I could swing some success into another position.

Taking Another Cut At The Chris Davis Contract

by Jake Brintzenhofe

Over the past several weeks, the writers at Camden Depot have taken multiple looks at Chris Davis and his contract. During this process, we became aware of Jake Brintzenhofe taking on the same question, but from a slightly different perspective. He currently is part of the expanded roster (feel free to email us with a sample article if you are interested in being a part of that) and may be joining the stables. Click here for the Chris Davis archives.

For two out of the last three years, Chris Davis played outstanding baseball. Per Baseball Reference, Davis tallied WARs of 6.5, 1.8, and 5.2 WAR in this three-year period – two all-star caliber seasons and one borderline everyday player caliber season. This winter, Davis hit the free agent market with the expectation of cashing in long term on those two years of success. This post examines what a team could reasonably expect to get out of Davis over the next seven years and what that means regarding the seven-year, $161 million contract that the Orioles gave him.

The Process
It is within the realm of possibility that Chris Davis could produce a simply Bondsian late career stretch where he harnesses power and plate discipline to become a dangerous hitter through his 30s. It is also within the realm of possibility for him to do what most players do and decline rather rapidly beginning in his early 30s. To determine where Davis's future lies, we have a process.

The approach is a comparison model based on the performance of similar players in the past in their age 30-36 seasons. Baseball Reference’s similarity score feature lists the 10 most similar players in baseball history through their age 29 seasons – a similar, but ultimately different method than what Jon Shepherd used. Using those similar players, we’ll calculate their total WAR over their age 30-36 season, attach a linear weight to it based on the degree of similarity to Davis, and calculate our projection from there.

Weights were calculated by dividing each individual similarity score by the average similarity score of the group and then dividing that number by 10 – the number of players we’re comparing to Davis. Dividing by 10 makes it so that when we add up our equation, we get our total projection with each player contributing a little more or a little less than 10% to the total. For example, Richie Sexson’s weight was his 944 similarity score over the 924.6 average and then we divided that number by 10. We then multiplied that number by Sexson’s age 30-36 total WAR.

The top 10 most similar players to Chris Davis through their age 29 seasons were, in order: Richie Sexson, Cecil Fielder, Mark McGwire, Glenn Davis, Lee May, Dave Kingman, Tino Martinez, Tony Clark, Nick Swisher, and Willie Stargell. This motley mix of steroid era mashers, overweight first basemen, journeymen, and borderline Hall of Famers feels about right for Davis’s career arc to me. He has had two seasons at the plate that jump directly off the page in the midst of an otherwise forgettable career characterized by strikeouts, forgettable defense, and splashes of raw power.

Let’s get to the math.

The Model
Based on the similarity score weighting detailed above, we get the following equation:

Projected WAR = .1020982(SexsonWAR)+.1016656(FielderWAR)+.1011248(McGwireWAR)+.1006922(DavisWAR)+.1000433(MayWAR)+.0992862(KingmanWAR)+.0989617(MartinezWAR)+.0989617(ClarkWAR)+.0986372(SwisherWAR)+.0985291(StargellWAR)

Subbing in each player’s WAR from his age 30-36 seasons we get our calculation of Projected WAR = 10.618

Financial Analysis
On the open market each WAR that a player accrues is worth $7 million. That leaves us with the quick little calculation below:

10.618 Projected WAR * $7 million per win = $74.326 million

He almost got halfway to $161 million in projected value. Almost. What this calculation says is that our projection puts Davis as being worth $74.326 million in baseball productivity over the next seven years of his career.

A reasonable point to raise would be that this calculation doesn’t examine the revenue aspect of the game – that’s completely true; it doesn’t. To mend this, I ran a quick regression of team wins on revenue while correcting for year and got the following output. Team wins were taken from 2001-2014 from eight teams to match with available revenue data.

If you’re not familiar with regression output, this chart says two main things that we really need to look at. First, for every additional win a team accrues, it can expect $2.75 million in additional revenue when holding the year constant. Second, this calculation is statistically significant at the 95% level. This means that we’re almost completely sure the additional revenue per win is between $1.74 million and $3.77 million and that our best estimate is $2.75 million.

Adding in our new revenue data and extrapolating a bit onto the next seven years, we get that Davis will be worth an additional $29.2 million.

$2.75 million per win*10.618 Projected WAR = $29.2 million in expected revenue

Adding the $29.2 million to the $74.326 million in market value, we get that Davis is projected to be worth a total of $103.526 million over the next seven years.

We’re not quite done though. Because the Orioles will not be paying him upfront, but instead on a year-by-year basis, we need to do a present value calculation on his value that way. The idea is that paying someone $10 million today looks a lot different than paying them $10 million in 1916 or in 2116. To do this, we’ll assume an annual inflation rate of 3% - the long-term historical average. The calculation will break down Davis’s expected annual value and modify it with the expected inflation.

7 year value=14.79+1.03(14.79)+〖1.03〗^2 (14.79)+〖1.03〗^3 (14.79)+〖1.03〗^4 (14.79)+〖1.03〗^5 (14.79)+〖1.03〗^6 (14.79)

Seven-year value = $113.328 million

The reason for the additional size of the exponent in each term is that inflation happens every year. Next year will inflate 3% over this year and the following year will inflate 3% over next year – we need to assess this every year.

So our conclusion is that in baseball performance and revenue dollars added, we can project Chris Davis to be worth $113.328 million over the next seven years.

Recommendation

10.618 wins over seven years does not measure up to the contract. Even with increased revenue from the wins, the Orioles could perhaps find those 10 wins in a cheaper way with a few smaller contracts on a roster that still has a couple gaping holes. 

If I were a GM, I would have stayed far away from Davis. You could probably have talked me into a somewhat inflated contract of seven years for about $120 million where we gamble with the idea that maybe those two great years are the real Chris Davis going forward. I could live with throwing away several million dollars in expected value in that bet with the hopes of hitting it big.

That said, seven years for $161 million is asking the GM to gamble $50 million of his owner’s money on the possibility that an old and slow first baseman will somehow manage a few more years of peak performance and then age gracefully. This is pretty much like a kid blowing $200 of his parents’ money at a carnival and coming away with a slew of teddy bears that they could have snagged at the local Wal-Mart for $100. 

Closing

The Orioles gave Davis a huge deal and that was always the likeliest outcome. Robinson Cano got paid, Prince Fielder got paid, Anaheim will be direct depositing checks into Albert Pujols’s account for the next five years – these things happen. If you’re an Orioles fan, just hope that the real Davis is the power hitting monster that we’ve gotten to watch for two years and that Orioles fans aren’t explaining the importance of frugality to their kids with this contract as an example in three years.

Yoenis Cespedes: High Volatility And Opt Outs

It has been about a month since I have thrown together a comp model for a top end positional player.  However, now seems to be a good time to revisit the approach as light rumblings have associated the Orioles, in their undying desire to being merely unreasonable in resigning Chris Davis, with talking to Yoenis Cespedes' agent about maybe the weather or his impression of the Force Awakens.  Let us pretend though that this is legitimate interest in Cespedes and what pray tell we might expect from a Cespedes clad in Baltimore orange.

The comp model in this case was focused on all outfielders with particular weight to walks, strikeouts, isolated power, and defense.  The comps were rather loose for Cespedes, but not as tenuous as Nick Markakis' were.  Only one player really lined up well with Cespedes and that player was Adam Jones.  Being the same playing age, that comparison does not work well for our exercise here.  Anyway, here were the ten best comps.

Sammy Sosa

Jesse Barfield

Don Lock

Tony Armas

Derek Bell

George Foster

Tommie Agee

Raul Mondesi

Richard Hidalgo

Aaron Rowand

 On first look, this is a rather scary grouping.  Strong bats, all of them, but most faded out quickly.  The most optimistic outlooks would be those attached to Sosa, Armas, and Foster.  Most did not see significant time in their fifth year. Here is the mean outcome of this population:

Year	Age	PA	HR	AVG	OBP	SLG	WAR
2016	30	529	25	.255	.326	.466	3.2
2017	31	496	22	.254	.325	.456	2.8
2018	32	420	19	.276	.349	.486	3.2
2019	33	456	17	.226	.294	.397	1.0
2020	34	442	17	.218	.278	.386	0.4
2021	35	410	15	.206	.263	.367	-0.3
2022	36	402	12	.191	.248	.332	-1.0
2023	37	382	11	.177	.231	.312	-1.6

 There is one caveat to the above table.  Cespedes is considered an excellent defender (+10 runs over a full season) for the 2016 season and that measure has an age curve applied to it.  His 2023 season has him slightly above above (+1).  That mean gives the appearance of three strong years, one make do season, and then him considering retirement.  What the mean obscures though is the range of what we can reasonably expect.  That is below:

	Low	Mean	High
2016	1.2	3.2	5.3
2017	1.5	2.8	4.2
2018	-0.1	3.2	6.6
2019	-0.5	1.0	2.5
2020	-1.1	0.4	1.8
2021	-1.6	-0.3	1.1
2022	-2.1	-1.0	0.1
2023	-2.8	-1.6	-0.7

This is an incredibly wide range.  Cespedes might be a monster for three seasons and then be usable for three more seasons or he might be done after two middling years according to this comp approach.  With such a wide range of possibility, Cespedes is probably one of the more ideal players to be seeking a player option.  He needs to find a club that either believes he is a monster performer one that will let him walk out if he winds up being one.

BORAS, which yesterday missed Alex Gordon's 4/72 contract by predicting 4/69, thinks Cespedes should see a six year contract (just barely) for 18.8 MM (6/113).  However, the comp model thinks the following:

Length	Low	Mean	High
1	8	23	37
2	19	43	68
3	18	68	119
4	14	76	139
5	5	79	154
6	-10	77	164
7	-30	67	165
8	-57	51	158

BORAS is right between the Mean and High ranges, which is not exactly the most ideal place to be.  This is particularly true when the low end projection sees Cespedes as a net negative player.  Again, this seems like an area where a player option might make sense.  With an 18.8 MM AAV, a four year deal with that final fourth season a player option could make a great deal of sense.  Risk would be even for both sides with the total surplus value probability equaling with the total negative value probability.  For the team, a four year deal at 75 MM would also be right in line with Cespedes projected mean worth.  If Cespedes continues on his late blooming tear, then after three seasons BORAS thinks he would be able to garner himself a 6/155 deal.  At that point, his comps would like look incredibly different.  Amazingly, the numbers all seem to magically come together on this one.

Anyway, it would be interesting to see if the market continues to play to the BORAS model or if the uncertainty in Cespedes future makes team weary and a confidant player bets on himself for a big payday in a few years.