Sabathia to New York for 160 Million? Lowe Next?

by R.J. Anderson on Dec 10, 2008 9:42 AM EST

Unofficial, but everyone seems to be confident that it's going to get done.

If the deal does indeed finalize as 7 years 160 million, that's roughly 23 million a year, and leaves the Yankees paying for about 4.6 WAR annually. Here's a look at Sabathia's performances over the past three seasons (note: NLRS is strictly over replacement level starters in this case):

Season	FIP	NLRS
2006	3.30	52.4
2007	3.14	69.9
2008	2.91	79.8

Marcels has Sabathia slated for ~61 NLRS next season. CC's coming off of three consecutive increases, suggesting he's probably in the prime of his career. Whether he can actually push that to four is probably unlikely, but if he does play up to Marcels he's still going to be a nice addition to the Yankees staff. Here's a look at his estimated costs even if he starts declining by 0.5 WAR:

Year	Mil/WAR	WAR	$
2009	4.84	6.1	29.92
2010	5.32	5.6	30.19
2011	5.86	5.1	30.29
2012	6.44	4.6	30.02
2013	7.09	4.1	29.47
2014	7.79	3.6	28.44
2015	8.569	3.1	26.96

Or roughly 206 million, and that assumes he declined pretty quickly, 0.3 at a time adds about six million to the total cost. Here's the scary thing: even if Sabathia drops 1 WAR per season, he'd still be worth about 129 million over the next seven seasons. That means if Sabathia loses an arm he'd only be overpaid by ~30ish million, and to the Yankees, who are opening a new park, have their own regional sports network, and have contracts coming off of the books, that's not overpaying by much at all.

As Dave Cameron says, this appears to be the best buyers market in recent memory, and it appears the Yankees are going to reload their rotation with the likes of Derek Lowe as well. At least this seems more well-guide than their 2004 signings of Carl Pavano and Jaret Wright.

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Comments

Regular inflation is like 3-5% so how do you come up with the 10% inflation rate on Mil/WAR? Is that what it’s been in recent years for baseball? That means we might see $40-50M a year contracts within the next decade?

by VictorW on Dec 10, 2008 12:33 PM EST reply actions

That's the number Tango used in his method...

Here.

by R.J. Anderson on Dec 10, 2008 12:39 PM EST up reply actions

And with the minimum salary so incredibly low, and with arb-players being so underpaid and their salaries not keeping pace with baseball-inflation, there is extra money being thrown at free agents.

That helped put it all together for me. Makes sense.

by VictorW on Dec 10, 2008 1:02 PM EST up reply actions

Government reported inflation is 3-5 percent. Real inflation is much higher and is increasing. If you want to look at a truly perverted statistic, look at how the government calculates inflation. Its one of those things that is so bad that it makes a person laugh. Price inflation follows monetary inflation. There is a lot of evidence that the money supply has exploded in recent years. I’d say 10 percent is entirely possible. I’d also say that the 7th year of his contract will pay less than the Randy Wolfs of the day will make. He’ll either opt out at 3 or renogitiate.

by ol Pete on Dec 10, 2008 8:58 PM EST up reply actions

Yes, that's been baseball "inflation".

It’s mostly a result of revenues increasing really fast. Teams don’t just have 3-4% more money to spend on players each year, they have 10% more. To compete with other teams spending all of that increase, your favorite team has to spend it. Well, unless they don’t want free agents, which is usually a good decision.

Beyond the Boxscore // Calling BJ Upton lazy is lazy.

by Sky Kalkman on Dec 11, 2008 5:12 PM EST up reply actions

If contracts are coming this "cheap", big-spending teams have the advantage.

And teams that are usually more fiscally responsible should consider spending more money this off-season and laying low in future years when the FA market prices should go up at a faster rate once again.

Beyond the Boxscore // Calling BJ Upton lazy is lazy.

by Sky Kalkman on Dec 10, 2008 5:15 PM EST reply actions