Chris Davis: Orioles Contracts and Extensions that Did Not Work

Chris Davis is the summit in a lot of ways: he holds the most expensive and longest contract in the history of the Baltimore Orioles.  Although the deal was ill-advised at the time, it was certainly not outlandish. 

Peter Angelos desired to re-sign Davis after the 2015 season.  He noted it in late September of that year to the press, a rare public statement on a player by the owner.  Angelos noted it again after the Winter Meetings, further solidifying what we all kind of knew, which was Angelos would move heaven and earth to get Davis back on the club.  It was noted that the Orioles front office largely did not agree with this approach to the 2015/16 offseason.

What many fans forget though is that Davis has another suitor.  Tigers Illich thought Davis to be the missing piece in Detroit.  He was certain that Davis could spend a year or two out in right field, something that Boras was stressing to everyone within earshot, before existing contracts would open up first base and designated hitter later in the contract.  It was rumored, and widely reported, that the Tigers were discussing the parameters of a contract around 190 MM against the wishes of the Tigers' front office.

What wound up happening is that the Tigers front office convinced ownership to hand out a deal to Justin Upton instead for 132 MM (well below the parameters discussed with Davis).  Davis went back hard to the Orioles, with Yeonis Cespedes circling, and signed a 7/161 MM deal with much deferred (making it worth more like 126 MM) two days after Upton inked.  It seemed to be very similar to how Baltimore approached Ivan Rodriguez and Javy Lopez a decade earlier in offering them both the same deal, waiting until someone came back to them and said yes.  Cespedes then went back to the Mets the following week on a 3/75 (a deal he would opt out of after the year was over and sign a staggering 4/110 deal after the season).

The contract has not been kind.  Davis' first year was fine with a 3.3 bWAR, but for someone who had six more years left to go on a contract, you certainly wanted a bit more production because he was entering typical decline years.

Standard Batting

Year	HR	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS+
2016	38	.221	.332	.459	110
2017	26	.215	.309	.423	95
2018	13 (21)	.159	.242	.297	49
11 Y	280	.239	.321	.476	112

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 8/10/2018.

And decline he did.  Contact, walk rate, power, they have all declined.  In 2018, Davis is having one of the worst seasons in the history of the game.  At -2.2 bWAR, he would wind up around the 30th worst season ever out of 18,000 player seasons with more than 100 games played.

Under the terms of Davis' deal, that 126 MM should have translated into an expected return of about 12.7 bWAR.  Almost three full seasons in, Davis stands at a cumulative of 1 bWAR or 7.8% of what was expected.  This begs the question as to whether it truly was the worst contract extension or free agent signing in Orioles' history?  Let us cherry pick a few contracts and see how they shake out:

	2016 $	xWAR	bWAR	%
J.J. Hardy	44	4.2	1.7	40
Brian Roberts	57	6.7	1.0	15
Albert Belle	310	30	4.0	13
Glenn Davis	73	7.2	0.7	9.7
Chris Davis	126	12.7	1.0	7.8
Scott Erickson	153	14.5	0.1	0.7

One thing to note is that Albert Belle is uniquely on this list.  Before insurance companies got wise, the Orioles were able to secure a ~1.7 MM premium on Belle's contract that would pay out 11.7 MM per year for every year that he was out due to a permanent injury.  So, you could argue that the Orioles really paid Belle 29.9 MM, which would be a xWAR of 13.6 and that he achieved 29% of  his expected performance.  

Scott Erickson either did not qualify for the insurance premium or the Orioles were unable to secure one for him.  And you can see how much the Orioles put into him with what would be around a 5/153 deal in 2016 free agent land.  Sometimes those dollar figures (5/32) look so quaint back then that you do not see how much the deal actually was in that market.  Nowadays, you would think of that being if someone forked over that deal to Ervin Santana when the Orioles were trying to nab him on a one year deal and pair him with Ubaldo Jimenez.  Yes, Erickson was coming off of two 4 bWAR season, but that is an exceptional deal for someone who really was not an elite pitcher.

Maybe a percentage base is not the right way to look at it.  Perhaps a better way to look at it is how much money was sunk.

	Sunk $
J.J. Hardy	26.25
Brian Roberts	59.85
Glenn Davis	68.25
Albert Belle	100.8
Chris Davis	122.85
Scott Erickson	151.2

It does not change all that much.  Glenn Davis and Belle flip around. 

It should be noted though that Chris Davis' career is still active.  With another 1.2 bWAR, he will surpass Brian Roberts in % return.  With a couple more bWAR, he will move past Albert Belle in total sunk cost.  He certainly can make this contract become a slightly smaller albatross. 

However, given his -2.1 bWAR so far this year, he can sink lower.  A -1 bWAR moving forward would mean falling beneath Erickson in terms of percentage.  A -3 bWAR moving forward would put Davis as a sunk cost greater than Erickson.  Hopefully, that will not happen.

-----

In case you want some further reading on the value of WAR.
https://www.beyondtheboxscore.com/2013/10/15/4818740/how-much-does-a-win-really-cost
https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/the-recent-history-of-free-agent-pricing/

Reviewing Mike Roberts' Baserunning

Baserunning is a richly textured handbook that describes precisely successful tactics and strategy on the basepaths while interweaving a few back stories from a long serving baseball man.  That man is Mike Roberts.  He has seen a lot of baseball.  He was an All-ACC catcher for the University of North Carolina back in the 60s and 70s.  He was drafted by the Kansas City Royals in the 34th round and assigned to their rather progressive academy (under the direction of Syd Thrift and speed coach, the rather famous and controversial miler Wes Santee) whose goal was to turn excellent athletes into quality baseball players (that experimental academy ended in 1974 and was considered a relative failure, but it was an impressive idea).  After two years with the Royals where he showed very good performance at the plate, Roberts went back to UNC and coached the team for 23 years where he:

• went to the College World Series twice;
• won the ACC five times; and
• developed many successful major league players including but not limited to Walt Weiss, B.J. Surhoff, and, his son, Brian Roberts.

He now continues to ply his trade with the Cotuit Kettleers in the Cape Cod Collegiate Baseball League.

I bring up Roberts' back story because this entire book depends on that.  As a reader, you likely picked this book up because you want to be able to: (1) teach your players/kids the finer points of base running, (2) are a player who wishes to hone their own skills, and/or (3) a spectator who wants to more deeply appreciate the skills displayed on the diamond.  Whatever groups you fall under, the message of this book depends on the weight of Mike Roberts.  It is a weight he easily carries as his career as a baseball mind and educator attests.  However, these men often work in the shadows of the professional game and your recognition of his name may be reserved only to sentences tucked away in issues of the Baltimore Sun whenever a writer chewed on his son's background.  In other words, feel comfortable absorbing the knowledge in this book as Roberts is a baseball man respected by baseball men which is as good a reference as you can get in this field.

If you have truly watched Brian Roberts in his career with the Orioles, you have seen the incarnation of Mike Roberts' basepath philosophy.  Brian runs with controlled aggression, a constant alertness.  His movements may seem smooth and elegant out on the diamond, but they feel that way because he is watching for reaction in the opposing players and implementing skills that he has long practiced.  As a statistical analyst, I often cringe when I see a headfirst slide as the concern about the chance of injury (e.g., broken finger, concussion -- it actually appears that outside of foul tips that sliding collisions away from home plate is the second leading event that results in concussions in baseball) seems to outweigh the value long term.  However, you do truly appreciate a well executed slide, which is something we have seen a great deal of over the past decade with Brian Roberts.  Not blessed with elite speed, Roberts had a knack for understanding when a pitcher committed and how to slide based on the positioning and changing stance of the player covering the bag.  It is that fully engrained philosophy and presence of mind that this book tries to convey.

The way Mike Roberts conveys these points is to provide a very brief background or statement of philosophy that he has developed over his years in baseball.  From there, he directly addresses certain points including but not limited to sliding (head and foot first), base running, taking leads, base stealing, and strength and conditioning (with help from Tim Bishop, the former strength and conditioning coach with the Orioles).  When he addresses a topic like running the bases, Roberts breaks it down into different scenarios.  For instance, how does a player run when breaking out of the box from the left or right side.  How does a player run on a grounder or a fly ball.  These points are then accompanied by suggested training exercises for players, which is potentially a major help for coaches enabling them to avoid reinventing wheels.

As guidance, I think Baserunning lives up to what it tries to be.  As a reader with a statistical analyst perspective, it reminds me of questions I still want answered.  For instance, the book mentions that a foot first slide is slower than a head first slide.  That makes intuitive sense to me from running the bases and makes sense to most people who have watched the Olympics as no runner ever drop kicks his way through the tape.  Additionally, we also know it to be true that sliding into a bag is faster than running to it as negative acceleration is much quicker that way.  Where conventional wisdom has made up its mind and where I think there is still wiggle room is to what extent it makes sense to slide into first base on plays.

The book states that head first slides come into play when a pitcher crowds the line on a throw from the first baseman in order to avoid a collision or when the first baseman shuffles his feet in expectation of a poor throw coming up the line.  I agree with those thoughts.  However, I wonder whether properly sliding into first base is faster than running through it.  The hypothesis is driven by the concept that the center of mass (i.e., the torso/thighs) is more in line with the lower body than with the hands.  By coming in high to reduce friction with the group, does an outreached hand touch the bag more quickly than a running foot?  Executed properly, I think it would get there more quickly.  That said, the benefit in speed probably is completely undone by the effects of sliding on every close play down the line and the outcome of a tired player trying to execute a slide.  Still, it would be nice to see a book like this dabble into the statistical play resulting from their solid foundation of knowledge.  This is not a knock on the book, but more of a general call for traditional baseball guidance to come hand in hand with empirical evidence.

That all said, what Mike Roberts writes here is not controversial and really does not need a body of empirical evidence.  With rounded corners, it fits into a perfectly acceptable narrative of play on the basepaths.  A narrative that should make coaches, players, and fans better appreciate the finer points of the game that will definitively improve play.

Baserunning by Mike Roberts with Tim Bishop and forward by Terry Francona
208 pages, Human Kinetics 2013

Looking Back on the Brian Roberts Era

On Tuesday, longtime Orioles second baseman Brian Roberts signed a one-year deal worth $2 million (plus incentives) with the New York Yankees, ending his 15-year tenure in the Baltimore organization.  During his time with the Orioles, he was basically a league average hitter (102 wRC+) who added value with above average defense and baserunning (all-around, an above average second baseman).  Some of his more relevant statistics are shown below.

Roberts was drafted by the Orioles out of the University of South Carolina with the 50^th overall pick in the 1999 draft.  He showed up on Baseball America’s Top 10 Orioles prospect lists in 2000 and 2001, at numbers 7 and 10 respectively.  In retrospect, the Baseball America staff paints a fairly accurate picture of what Roberts would become during his time in Baltimore.  He was considered by scouts to possess great baseball instincts and above average tools all around, though none of those tools were considered outstanding.  After limited time in the majors during the 2001 and 2002 season, Roberts was up with the big club for good in 2003.

With his last four years being our most recent memory of him as a player, it’s easy to forget just how good Roberts was from 2003 to 2009.  Over the course of that time, he average approximately 4.0 fWAR per season, including a 2005 that saw him produce a .314/.387/.515 (AVG/OBP/SLG) line, with 70 extra base hits, 92 runs scored, a 10.6 UZR/150, and 6.6 fWAR, which was good for 6^th best in the entire league.  In fact, among second basemen from 2003 to 2009, Roberts produced a total of 27.8 fWAR, trailing only Chase Utley’s mark of 39.3.  Following that stretch of production, the Orioles signed him to a 4-year extension worth $40 million…

…And then, things started to go downhill.  The problems started in April 2010 during the first month of his brand new extension when a strained abdomen that landed him on the 60-day disabled list.  It was a stay that ultimately ended up costing him a total of 91 games.   Despite missing over half the season, the time he spent on the field in 2010 wasn’t unproductive, and his fWAR/600 PA’s in 2010 was actually higher than that of 2009.  His year ended with a self-inflicted concussion, causing him to miss the final 6 games.  Despite an entire offseason of rest, Roberts struggled with concussion symptoms, struggling to perform regular day to day activities such as walking the dog or driving.  After a lengthy recovery, Roberts was cleared to play in spring training the following year.

Then on May 16, 2011, his concussion symptoms returned following this seemingly innocuous play.

As a result, he was again placed on the 60-day disabled list, not only missing the rest of the 2011 season (122 games), but also the first 60 games of the 2012 season.  The effects a concussion can have been in the headlines lately, and it’s been a topic of a couple of recent posts on the Depot recently as well (here and here).  There is still a lot of unknowns when it comes to concussions, and the fact that Roberts needed as much time as he did to return from what appeared to be a harmless play reinforces the fact that there is a long way to go in understanding how the brain functions.

Roberts began playing again in mid-June 2012 for about a month, before returning to the disabled list after tearing the labrum in his right hip, putting him out for the season once again.  Going into the last year of his contract, with his hip healed and his concussion(s) further behind him, there was a cautious optimism entering the 2013 season.  Unfortunately, he strained his right hamstring in the third game, eventually opting for surgery, which kept him out of the lineup for another 79 games.  Once he returned, he was somewhat productive, accumulating 0.9 fWAR in just under 300 PA’s.  Still, you can’t produce if you’re not on the field, and unfortunately that pretty much defines up the last 4 years of Roberts’ tenure in Baltimore.  All in all, he produced a total of 1.0 fWAR during that time.

By all accounts, 2010-2013 was frustrating not only for fans and the organization, but for Roberts as well.  Despite his long (and overall productive) tenure with the team, based on reports, it seemed like both sides were ready to move on.

The #orioles did reach out to Brian Roberts' agent last week. Didn't appear that he was on the verge of signing with anyone. And then...
— Roch Kubatko (@masnRoch) December 17, 2013

Also, from everything I'm hearing, Roberts never gave #Orioles chance to match NYY offer. He clearly was ready to move on.
— Roch Kubatko (@masnRoch) December 17, 2013

And while it may be emotionally difficult for some Orioles fans to see Brian Roberts playing baseball in a different uniform next year, our own Matt Kremnitzer pointed out that the on-field performance probably won’t be any different.

Flaherty in 2013: .224/.293/.390. Roberts in 2013: .249/.312/.392. Neither very good. Flaherty younger, better defender. Not a big deal.
— Matt Kremnitzer (@mattkremnitzer) December 17, 2013

Overall, Brian Roberts was one of the most productive players in Baltimore over the last decade, and he should be remembered as one.  Due to several reasons, it’s rare for a player to spend as much time with one team as Roberts has with the Orioles.  Even the ones that do, it’s not uncommon for them to move on as they attempt to extend their careers with other franchises promising more playing time.  At age 36, Brian Roberts has reached that point in his career, and it’s hard to blame him for wanting to extend it, even if that happens to be in New York City.

And with that, we’ll wrap this up with Gary Thorne’s call on what was likely Brian Roberts’ final home run as a Baltimore Oriole…