As Chris Davis and the Orioles discuss a free-agent contract, Steve Melewski asks if loyalty should play a role:
On the one hand, Davis is doing nothing more than what many players have done. He earned his free agency and earned the right to talk with any team. Players don’t get too many chances to go to the highest bidder, or to at least see what their true value is on the open market and pick their team, rather than have it picked for them.
On the other hand, the Orioles publicly stood behind Davis when he was suspended at the end of the 2014 season. While some of his own teammates were critical of him at the time of the suspension, they also welcomed him back and moved on when the time came for that. Many fans, seemingly a very large percentage, did the same.
Basically, should Davis take less years and money to stay in Baltimore, or should the Orioles give him more years or money than they think he is worth?
Note that free-agent contracts are not always just about the money. Sometimes players want to be in a certain city, because they want to be close to home, or they think a particular team has a better chance of winning (see Jason Heyward). Sometimes a player show loyalty by giving the team a home-town discount, then gets traded (see Bronson Arroyo). In Davis, the Orioles have someone they like, and in the Orioles, Davis has a town he likes and a team that suits him.
The Orioles made Davis a good offer. I figure he’s worth $156 million for seven years, estimating him as a four WAR player and discounting that 10% a year. That means I would expect Davis to produce 20.8 WAR over the seven year contract, and at $7.5 million per free-agent WAR, he is the above number. At this point I don’t know what Davis wants. Would going eight years make a bigger difference than going up in annual value to $23 million a year? The Orioles front office is very good at finding value in players, so I get the feeling if they think he is worth $154 million for seven years, offers from other clubs are not going to be that different. Since he hasn’t signed anywhere else, no one made an offer to blow the Orioles out of the water. We’ll if either side blinks.
Hitters with 100 million dollar contracts or extensions since 2009 signed after age 25, fWAR avg in 2014-2015
Name-contract start date, avg fWAR 2014-2015
Ellsbury-2014, 2.5
Cano-2014, 3.7
Fielder-2012, 0.7
Pujols-2012, 2.5
Crawford-2011, 1.5
Choo-2014, 1.8
*Votto-2014, 4.2
Kemp -2012, 0.9
Tulo-2011, 3.8
Agon 2012, 3.3
*Posey-2013, 5.7
Wright-2013, 1.4
Werth-2011, 2.3
Howard-2012, -0.4
*Cabrera-2016, 4.8
Pedroia-2014, 3.3
Reyes-2012, 2.0
Braun-2016, 1.8
Zimmerman-2014, 0.9
Longoria-2017, 3.8
Andrus-2014-1.4
Teixeira-2009-2.0
Hamilton-2013-0.7
Joe Mauer-2011 , 1.0
Great 4+ 13%
Good 3-3.9 22%
Mediocre 2-2.9 20%
Bad 1-1.9 25%
Barf under 1 20%
This does not touch on the expected decline for most of these contracts and for a couple of players the numbers are affected by injury and suspension, but it is what it is. In 65% of those cases the last 2 years have been disappointing, and only 13% of those contracts are really producing much surplus value and less than half are at least break even.
Its not all age related decline either as many of these disappointments start very soon. My best hypothesis is players get off the juice or just stop working out hard in the offseason.
With Davis the fear is he reverts to 2014. What guarantee does a team have that Davis is granted a TUE every year. He did not get one in 2014 but did in 2013 and 2015