FA season is upon us, and with everybody lining up bids for their favorite unrestricted FAs, i thought i ought to try to figure what these guys are actually worth. After all, we’ve got some wacky contracts in this league ***cough*** Rusty Greer ***cough*** brought on in part by questionable management decisions (and here I also include my payout of $5MM a year to lefty specialist Graehme Lloyd–good player with good results, but badly overpaid) and in part due to inherited contracts, like $20MM a year for Man-Ram.

So how do you allocate your limited dollars to maximize payroll efficiency (wins per dollar of payroll)? Turns out that is an extremely complicated question to answer and there’s tons of academic and other research on this topic–not surprising given that MLB is a multi-billion dollar industry and there’s alot riding on the answer!!! It’s surprisingly hard to calculate how much a win costs, and even harder to then relate that to a player and figure out how many extra wins he’s gonna get you to determine what if anything the guy’s worth. Since I was stumped, I had to come up with a different way.

I decided instead to look at win shares and see how much each player contributes to a team’s win total. This way you can look at where a team’s wins come from and compare it to your payroll and see where you’re out of whack, or where you’re ahead of the game and maybe have room to spend.

The win shares data I got from this site http://casdra.com/winshares/index.html#nl_west where the guy lists win shares for all players for last year.

Here are the win shares by position (roughly, i mean, i didn’t add up every guy that pitched in the fifth spot, just the guy that did the best there. the rest i categorized as MRs) for last year’s LA Dogs:

SP1: 30
SP2: 27
SP3: 23
SP4: 14
SP5: 8

CL: 20
MR: 11
MR: 7
MR: 6
MR: 5
MR: 3
MR: 2
MR: 1
MR 1
(again some of these MRs were spot starters/spent time in the rotation)

C: 10
1b: 15
2b: 18
ss: 15
3b: 17
LF: 19
CF: 26
RF: 26
4th OF: 11 (here again, i didn’t try to allocate pierre’s totals to LF, just broke him out separate)
Util IF:2
none of the other util guys had a positive number

Now convert this into payroll, assuming $100MM payroll and where your money is about evenly divided between offense and defense

SP1: $9.5MM
SP2: $8.5MM
SP3: $7.3MM
SP4: $4.4MM
SP5: $2.5MM

CL: $6.3MM
MR: $3.5MM
MR: $2.2MM
MR: $1.9MM
MR: $1.6MM
MR: $950K
MR: $630k
MR: $320k
MR $320k

C: $3.1MM
1b: $4.7MM
2b: $5.7MM
ss: $4.7MM
3b: $5.3MM
LF: $6.0MM
CF: $8.2MM
RF: $8.2MM
4th OF: $3.5MM
Util IF:$630k

How useful is this information? Hell if I know. Certainly, I’m not saying you should pay your raking C only $3MM a year. In fact, maybe just the raw win share data is more useful just so you can see where your wins come from (REMINDER: the win shares data is for the 2009 Dodgers only, not indicative of where your specific team gets its performance), and then you can decide what that’s worth to you, and where you should scrimp and save–like on your fourth reliever/lefty specialist!!!

Anyway, I hope this starts some thinking/conversation on payroll, because like I say, there are some real payroll challenges in this league in terms of inherited contracts, a cash maximum, salary cap, etc. and then throw in the fact that you can sign old guys off the FA scrap heap for $300k and turn them into studs (just remember to give them that extension first!!!!) and you see that the payroll question gets very complicated very quickly. But here’s to hoping this at least provides food for thought and helps people thinking about whether that big trade makes financial sense or how much to offer that guy you’re eyeing in free agency. I guess my goal is to figure out a way to make better financial decisions for myself and the next guy that contemplates giving Rusty G $20+!!!!! And to be clear, I’m not arguing for rules changes, but rather looking for better decisions within the structure we have (which already has a recalc, no CEIs, and other protections built in to protect the money you do end up spending).