January 17, 2018

Random Player Report

The Random Evil Player program selected Mike Moustakas for the next review. Moustakas played third base for the Royals during his seven-year career, and is now one of the free agents hanging in limbo as teams decide who they want to pay for the 2018 season. Looking at Moustakas history, I’m not surprised that teams are balking at signing him.

A rule of thumb that works well for me in predicting a free agent contract is to start with the last three season WAR, and work forward from the average of those three seasons. That average is about 2.25 WAR, combining both Baseball Reference and FanGraphs. Free agents should be getting about $8 million per WAR, so Moustakas should be getting about $18 million for the 2018 season. Since he will play 2018 as a 29-year-old, we don’t expect a decline for a couple of years. After that, I figure in a 10% decline a year, so for a five-year deal, his WARs would by 2.25, 2.25, 2.025, 1.8, 1.6 for a total of about $79.5 million. If Moustakas has a five-year, $80 million contract on the table, he should take it.

The problem with Moustakas is volatility. His rWAR for the last three season are 4.4, 0.7, 1.8. His fWAR for the last three seasons are 3.7, 0.7, 2.2. You see the same kinds of ups and downs throughout his career. So over a five season contract, a team may get two good years, but they may get two bad ones as well.

The final word of warning against Moustakas is his poor OBP, .305 for his career. He is an out machine. Recently, he increased his power to compensate for this. Still, $16 million a year over fives years is a lot of money to pay someone to make a high number of outs.

If I were a GM who needed a third baseman, I’d offer Moustakas $40 million for two years. The higher salary would serve as compensation for the shortness of the deal. I would hope in one of those years he can get on base like he did in 2015, and that his 2017 defensive decline was a blip. If he plays well, he comes out of his prime years looking like someone who deserves a $100 million, five-year contract.

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