MWAH: Angels Payroll According to WAR

Great way to look at the team: comparing production to salary. Despite all the bumps in the road, the Angels seem to be nearly breaking even with getting what they pay for according to this metric.

4 months ago Rev Halofan 14 comments 0 recs |

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How does this work?

Value is $141,820,000 MORE than salary. Doesn’t this mean the Angels are getting way more than what they are paying for?

by SLOfan on Feb 6, 2012 1:18 PM PST reply actions

Because the $5.0 million per WAR is only applicable to the price of free agents on the open market. Obviously most of the team was not signed this way. I think to really get a good understanding of how much excess value the Angels are getting (or how much extra they’re spending over what they should get), you’d need to see what the total value of all players are and then find out by what factor that exceeds the total amount of money actually spent on salary. Then you could apply that factor to the total value of the Angels’ players to come up with a better comparison.

It wouldn’t be perfect, but it would give a better comparison.

Defending maligned chants since 2009

by Gorbachav5 on Feb 6, 2012 1:39 PM PST up reply actions

According to Fangraphs

There was a total of 1,163.6 WAR total for all players last year. If you use $5 million per WAR, that would be a total of $5.818 billion of value. According to Cot’s Baseball Contracts, the total payroll last year was approximately $2.877 billion, a factor of 2.02 WAR value to actual value. So to get a somewhat better estimate I would divide the total Angels value ($291 million) by that factor, which would leave $144 million of value, or almost exactly what the Angels are paying in salary ($149 million).

Overall, I think the point is valid – if guys put up similar seasons to what they did last year, the Angels payroll will be justified.

Defending maligned chants since 2009

by Gorbachav5 on Feb 6, 2012 2:05 PM PST up reply actions

Players who haven't reached free agency aren't free-market commodities

I haven’t counted, but I would guess that the majority of major-league regulars are still under team control. Since these are mostly younger players, I’d also be willing to bet that they’re the most productive group as well. The point is, paying the market rate for your roster as a whole is not an accomplishment. It means that whatever surplus value coming from your young players is getting totally devoured by your old players, and that’s not a consistently winning equilibrium unless you can spend Yankee money.

I’m as excited for Pujols as anyone, but I do seriously hope that the Angels can reverse the aging trend within the next five years. I’ll be very interested to see how this next draft works out.

by Suboptimal on Feb 6, 2012 2:14 PM PST up reply actions

No picks till the 3rd round - not overly excited (yet)...

…going to need some creativity from our new front office team

I see red people

by The Limey on Feb 6, 2012 2:17 PM PST up reply actions

This is exactly why I don't buy into the accepted fact of 1 WAR = $5 mil in value

In my opinion that is way too high and I do not understand why everyone accepts this number. I think a $15 million per year free agent should be capable of producing a lot more than 3 WAR per year, and so on.

by Persi W on Feb 6, 2012 3:40 PM PST up reply actions

agree.

12/8/11!!! What a day!

by stuck in Romania on Feb 6, 2012 4:32 PM PST up reply actions

Well, people at Fangraphs, Baseball Ref

and/or other analytics sites don’t determine the cash value of a win.

Owners and GMs do.

"If a woman has to choose between catching a fly ball and saving an infant's life, she will choose to save the infant's life without even considering if there are men on base." ~Dave Barry

by LAASurfin on Feb 6, 2012 6:10 PM PST up reply actions