Baseball Musings
Baseball Musings
October 20, 2008
Ellis Underpaid?

The Mark Ellis signing seems to be generating a bit of controversy:

Or, was his surgery so risky that this is the best he could do? Why in the world would he not let the market dictate how much his surgery cost him? At the very least, he could have told the A's: "Whatever the market bears, I'll take 1 year off and 1MM per year off". To do what he did was simply irresponsible to the player market, and the MLBPA must be having a fit right now. As are all other middle infielders.

The only question is if the other 29 GMs are upset at not having a crack at Mark Ellis, or elated that Billy Beane could have managed to set the market so low for players of Ellis' high caliber.

We sometimes forget that to some people, there are things more important than money.

"I know it wasn't a very good year for anyone in the organization, myself included," Ellis said. "But I'm very proud to be a part of this organization and I'm excited about things here -- not to sound like a total cheeseball, but you see what the Rays have done this year and what the Rockies did last year, and it's not out of line to think we can compete and do well soon.

"We have a lot of young pitchers on our staff, but they've got the stuff to be pretty good. Look how quickly things snowballed for Tampa Bay."

Ellis likes it in Oakland, he likes playing for this team, and he's on the downside of his career coming off a shoulder injury. All of that was obviously worth a few million dollars to him.

Update: Beyond the Boxscore agrees with Tom Tango. I assume that Beane and Ellis must have some information we don't. Beane is in the habit of obtaining players when their value is down, not screwing them out of money.


Posted by David Pinto at 11:16 AM | Free Agents | TrackBack (0)
Comments

Click on my name for someone else's post who expands what I was trying to say.

Posted by: tangotiger at October 20, 2008 02:05 PM

I, too, think Ellis is likely being underpaid, and that he lost nothing by filing for free agency. (Even if he had made up his mind that he wasn't leaving Oakland no matter what, that's probably not what you tell your agent to tell your employer. Maybe he's just honest in his negotiations and decided to remove a source of anxiety.) However, I think there are three factors here that aren't being considered.

1. The A's have a ton of 2B upcoming. Thus the A's can afford to lowball him to some extent. How much depends on how far off the other guys are and when their next window of contention opens.

2. Defense is undervalued in the marketplace. Mark Ellis is an oft-injured below-average hitter. Those injuries, the fact that he's likely about to leave his peak batting years, and the possibility that his defense will not be correctly valued on the market, may have led Ellis to believe this was a decent deal for him.

3. Baseball talent is distributed as the far-far-right of a bell-curve, but salaries aren't distributed that way. That is, while I (and some of the other posters here) recognize that an average player should be paid an above-average salary, the market tends to pay an average player an average salary.

Combining 2 & 3 leads to the absurd-but-true tendency to pay players like Ellis below average salaries.

(BTW, a run saved isn't as good as a run produced at the margins, since you can't win a game 0 to -1. The lower the run scoring environment, the less important defense is.)

I think that Hudson is not perceived the same way by the market (and having been traded already, probably doesn't have the same attachment to an organization). I think Hudson is seen as a great defender, a good hitter for 2B, and generally healthier than Ellis. While some of the GMs know better, I'll bet that enough think that Hudson is a tier above Ellis and hence both worthy of competitive bidding, and a bigger baseline deal.

Posted by: Subrata Sircar at October 20, 2008 05:37 PM
Post a comment









Remember personal info?