The Final Move: Fister Or Jackson?

by Jake Brintzenhofe

Jake Brintzenhofe contributes to our expanded roster freelance effort.  Feel free to email us with a sample article if you are interested in being a part of that.

By signing Chris Davis to his recent mega deal, the Orioles sent a message: the club is built to win. The contract was a mortgage on the future by saddling what is likely dead money five years down the line for the sole purpose of sustaining the competitive status of the team over the next two or three years. With more holes to fill, then what else can the club do during the back end of free agency? Rumors have the Orioles willing to spend as much as $15 million more on their payroll next year and two major holes to fill: one in the rotation and one in the corner outfield. Let us assume that to fit their budget, they are going to choose to fill one of these holes with a free agent at a salary in the $10 million per year ballpark. Two possible fits left on the market are Austin Jackson and Doug Fister – this article will examine which player would make more sense in Camden Yards.

Doug Fister
Steamer, Fangraphs’ projection model, projects that Fister will be worth 1.4 WAR next year. I like Steamer, but chose to also run my own projection using a weighted linear model and Baseball Reference’s similarity score feature. I used the ten most similar players to Fister and then weighted each of the ten’s contribution to the model based on how similar those players were to Fister. The ten players were Ray Washburn, Danny Cox, Mike Scott, Pat Zachry, Cy Blanton, Dutch Leonard, Dick Donovan, Craig Swan, Jack Kralick and Virgil Trucks. I was struck by the fact that these were old timers for the most part; we have not seen a player quite like Fister in a long time. It was also striking that their age 32 season’s WAR (Fister’s age next year) ranged as high as 6.9 and as low as -2.1; there really was not a cluster.

My projection ended up a bit less optimistic than Steamer at 1.235 WAR next year for Fister. This is a great time to say that a projection is different than a prediction. Projections are the average result of a range of outcomes – if our projection uses correct assumptions, it’s a coin flip for which side of it Fister lands on. While 1.235 WAR is a solid expected value, it’s likely that given the wide range of performances by the group we used to project Fister, he will fall on either side of it by a significant amount. There is a lot of possible variability. For the Orioles to succeed, they really need Fister to out perform that projection. To assess which side Fister would likely fall on, I took a look at his peripherals. The chart below describes several important numbers for predicting future performance.

 A few takeaways:

• Fister’s fly ball rate and home runs per fly ball took a jump from 2013 to 2014 and stayed there in 2015. Fly balls account for the overwhelming majority of home runs. If fly balls are happening more often and leaving the park more frequently, that means A LOT more home runs allowed.
• Fister’s line drive rate also took a jump. Line drives are bad for pitchers because they are difficult to turn into outs. Per Fangraphs, line drives result in a .685 average for hitters when they occur; given this, Fister will simply not be able to be effective if he continues to give up line drives at a high rate.
• Fister’s fastball velocity has consistently declined for the last 5 years and 32 year old pitchers do not gain velocity back on their fastball. It’s highly likely that that velocity continues to drop and that hitters hit Fister more often with more hard contact going forward.

It is worthwhile to consider whether or not Fister’s declining performance the last two years is due to misuse after his move from Detroit to DC as many have suggested. This is certainly a possibility, but Fister’s fastball should be independent of this switch; its decline points more to Fister just getting worse at baseball .

Austin Jackson

Steamer projects that Jackson will be worth 1 WAR next year. I used the same weighted model system as explained above and got a projection of .863 WAR next year for Jackson. The ten players used were Brian McRae, Jim Piersall, Marquis Grissom, Gerardo Parra, Augie Galan, Al Cowens, Coco Crisp, Bobby Tolan, Lenny Dykstra and Johnny Groth. This group is significantly more modern than that of Fister and was much more consistent with performance. While their range went from -1.1 WAR up to 4.4 WAR; they were mostly between -1 WAR and 1.5 WAR.

Just as with Fister, I took a look at Jackson’s peripherals to see if we could learn anything about which side of the projection he’ll likely fall on.

A Few Takeaways · Other than a possible fall in line drive rate the last 3 years, there aren’t any clear trends in the data. · I took a look at Jackson’s splits versus lefties and righties and didn’t see an abnormal difference. As such, he doesn’t profile as a great platoon option. · Jackson has extremely high BABIP numbers; for a player of this age, that normally stays high until he ages and loses speed. Jackson being 29 next year means he probably has a few more years before this starts to steeply decline.

Recommendation:
Neither player inspires optimism for the type of big year the Orioles probably need to make themselves serious wildcard contenders. That said, if the Orioles are serious about contending next year, they need to make the savvy moves where they find a player who is going to really outperform his projection and thus his price.

On January 15, Jerry Crasnick reported that Fister was seeking a deal for 2 years and $22 million. I couldn’t find any reports on a possible contract for Jackson, but he played on a 1 year $7.7 million deal last year – it’s reasonable to think he would take a similar deal this year. While this isn’t exactly a scientific comparison, it’s fair to assume that Jackson will come a bit cheaper than Fister will. I can’t get past Fister’s fastball velocity decline or his increasing propensity to give up home runs; I see him as a bad gamble. This is especially true given that Camden Yards was the second most home run friendly park in baseball last year.

Jackson on a cheaper one year deal with little risk makes more sense. While his peripherals are all over the road, their randomness makes it hard to say for sure that he’ll decline. He was a plus defender last year and could give the Orioles outfield depth that they have sorely missed the last several years. I wouldn’t expect much more than 1 WAR, but it appears far more likely that he out does this number than that Fister does. If I were the Orioles GM, I would offer Jackson a one year deal to play at Camden Yards, the third best park for run production in the MLB last year, and maybe earn himself a big contract next offseason.

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.