Saw this on Twitter yesterday, and just heard Bernstein mention it.

Jeff Passan‏Verified account
@JeffPassan

Austin Jackson was a two-win player last year. That's worth somewhere in the neighborhood of $15M in value for one season. He got a total of $6M guaranteed for two seasons. The bottoming out of this market is staggering, and what's scary is that this is just the beginning.

If my math is correct, if you paid that you would have a $675 million payroll for a 90 win team, so obviously you don't start from zero. So what is the "baseline" or whatever numbers of wins they are using for this equation?

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Not sure the exact starting point, but WAR is wins ABOVE replacement. In theory, a team of AAAA replacement level players would win 60 wins or so. So a team winning 90 games strictly acquiring players through free agency should expect a payroll of 450 million.

Seems about right.

I've never put much into $/WAR or looked much into the various analysts and how they judge what WAR is worth. However, bWAR has a fully replacement level team as being 52 wins.

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Still seems a little high, IMO, but yeah I figured the baseline was around 50-60 wins.

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That's what's dumb though. bernstein loves to point out a negative WAR guy (usually on the White Sox) and act like there is some farm with "replacement level" players just waiting to replace him.

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At least using Fangraphs WAR, I'm getting between 54-74 as being the starting point.

Took a look at the 2 highest/lowest WAR teams and subtracted that from their actual. In theory that should be a baseline to a point.

High
Astros 101-33 = 68
Dodgers 104-30 =74
Low
Giants 64-10=54
Padres 71-7=64

I don't follow NBA much, but don't they track through WIN Share. Essentially each win is participated out to each player to determine value. So if you add up the total win share of a team you get the actual number of wins?

Yes I believe that is true. Obviously WAR in baseball is significantly more prominent than WS or WS/48 is in basketball.

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Of all things stupid things he says, I don't think this is that dumb. Just because they are replacement level doesn't make them free and they are likely under contract to a team during the season. If the Sox are out of contention, there is no reason trading a lottery ticket in single A to slightly improve a good awful centerfielder to a bad centerfielder.

These trades happen with contenders when a team "shores up their [insert position]" for some player you are likely never to hear of again.

The Sox paid Jackson $5M and he was a -0.1 WAR player. The Gigantes better hope they don’t get that guy.

My point is, nobody wants to have a negative WAR guy in the lineup. When someone does it's not like he's that easy to replace. bernstein seems to have the impression that "replacement level" means any other bum you throw in there. You could get a guy that is a worse negative.

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Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

We've been thru this already today. Jackson got hurt and only played about 30 games for the Sox. He had a nice season with the Tribe last year.

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Guess we can disagree there. There is no promise you won't get a worse WAR from grabbing some other guy, it is still easy to pull that trigger and try someone else. Either but promoting a journeyman from AAA or trading for a AAA player having a good year.

Fangraphs WAR only have 15 players finishing the season with over -1 WAR. These pretty much fall into young guys that may improve or old guys that are owed lots of money.
Old - Pujols, Beltran, Adrian Gonzalez, Victor Martinez Young, Trumbo

Speaking of Pujols, the dumpster fire that is the remains of his contract.

-2 WAR last year
2017: $26M, 2018: $27M, 2019: $28M, 2020: $29M, 2021: $30M

Jesus Christ. MLB desperately needs a salary cap or some type of new CBA limiting the years of a contract.

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That contract is just insane. Dude is 38 right now. How could they sign someone and pay them that kind of money through the age of 41?

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Commie.

His WAR so far on that contract

3.6
0.6
2.8
1.8
.8
-2

He is standing at 7.6 of total WAR with 4 years remaining on the contract. They may have paid him 240 million to be a less than replacement player for the contract on the whole.

Just saying as primarily an NBA guy. It’s crazy to think about some of the contracts those assholes would hand out under MLB’s salary structure.

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Or looking at it in terms of the formula FF had in the original post, his value has been:

27m
4.5m
21m
13.5
6m
-15m

$57m worth of value and probably decreasing from here on out.

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I'm guessing a decent amount of Jackson's WAR is dWAR which is still really fucked up.

-.3 dWAR last year actually.

FF is right. MLB needs a salary cap and a salary floor.

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The Angels knew there would be a lot of dead years on it, but I don't think anyone thought he would die as quickly as he did. The fact that MLB contracts are fully guaranteed is something that I think would be very hard to get MLBPA to back down from, especially seeing how you are treated like a piece of meat in the NFL. You would think most players would be for it if they could get something to help them out when they are younger though.... these ridiculous contracts only happen to maybe 2 or 3 players a decade?

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Agreed except for the last part. They seem to happen annually, not once or twice a decade. I’ve seen many guys like CH, dolphin, and others say they don’t understand the nba trade value system, and likewise I don’t understand basically the entire MLB system. To me it seems outrageous and totally outdated. You can draft a young stud and basically control him for a decade for next to nothing. Meanwhile, the sport has the dumbest contracts in sports for guys over 30 and it’s not even close.

The NBA contract system makes sense to me. Rookie scale, guaranteed contracts, 4 year max contract for FAs, 5 year max extensions for superstars you drafted.

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A free market system is the best. No one put a gun to the Angels heads and forced them to give Pujols that contract. A salary cap puts more money in the owners pocket. I’d rather see the money go to the players.

Agreed.. I enjoy seeing teams fuck themselves with awful deals. 4 more years for Albert

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6 more for Heyward

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At this point, it's not, but no reason for you to start making good baseball posts.

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Yup..real bad, at least Jhey can field though..I think we can dump him in 2 years in a package.

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