December 5, 2014

Why Not Headley?

Should we be surprised that Chase Headley‘s value shot up in an off-season chock full of big money contracts? If we take a weighted average of his WAR for the last three seasons, we get an average of 4.6 fWAR and 4.1 rWAR. Let’s call it 4.3 WAR. Since he’s over 30, we’ll figure in a 10% decline each of the next four seasons, for an expected total in that time of 13.3 WAR. Since a single WAR seems to be valued at $7 million this off-season, he should be worth $93 million over four years. So if a team can pick him up for $65 million, he’s a steal. At that price, he would be a great pickup for the Giants, who know him well since they play quite a bit against the Padres.

There’s plenty of room for the bidding to go higher.

1 thought on “Why Not Headley?

  1. obsessivegiantscompulsive

    I guess this shows how methodology can change the value perspective.

    I like using 3 year averages too, but when there is an obvious outlier like his 2012 season, I feel the need to balance that out by either going to 4 year average or dropping it and using the 4th year in place. I’m not sure how you weighted it, but the straight average drops from like 5.1 fWAR to 4.4 fWAR by doing that. Assuming a similar drop that makes the 4.3 WAR to 3.6 WAR, or about 15-20% drop.

    Applying that to the 13.3 WAR puts it roughly at 11.0 WAR. At $7M/WAR, now his valuation is $77M or only slightly above the $65M reported offer, leaving very little margin for error on the part of the team’s valuation and not much more area to go above.

    And looking at his rWAR, that 3.6 WAR is more in line with his historical production, excluding his 2012 outlier.

    Plus, looking at the numbers, much of his value in 2014 was derived by his fielding, but if you look at it in the context of his career, it was a huge outlier. The danger with him is that if his offense continues to limp along as it did in 2014, while the fielding returns to prior good but not great levels, his value will sag immediately and disastrously, and instead of a 3.6 WAR starting point, it could be 2.6 WAR (fWAR defense roughly 1 WAR above prior in 2014) or lower.

    So this is not a riskless acquisition, the team signing him is betting that either his offense improves, his defense stays great, or both.

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