If we accept the premise, I am not sure such a player would ever be worth what he could fetch on the free agent market (again, assuming you only have $100 million). You could only pay him about $90 million a year (after paying your other 24 guys league minimum). But he would be worth (by my quick and dirty calcs) at least 20 WAR. Giving him $4 million per WAR, that suggests he should be worth at least $80 million.

But a team that had this guy and all replacement level talent would win about 78 games (again, quick and dirty). That’s not very good. Some other team would probably outbid you, anyway.

But he would just HAVE to impact positively the team’s attendance. After about 10 starts of perfect games teams would be able to sell SRO without even trying. Plus merchandise, etc. So maybe he would justify it after he built up a reputation?

Add that to replacement level, and you’ve got an 82-84 true talent win team (meaning their distribution centers around 82-84 wins) depending on the league. Of course, 82-84 true talent wins only gets you into the playoffs about 15% of the time.

However, if you made the playoffs, he would pitch about one 3rd your games, meaning you would have the equivalent talent of about a 100 win team in the playoffs, which makes you the heavy favorite.

So, I guess you just need to give yourself a fighting chance at making the playoffs, which would mean you’d need to win about 90 games. 4.5 Mil per Win, means that you would have to save about 36 million to pay for the rest of the non-replacement guys on your team.

So, I would offer Pedro Halladay “Three Finger” Gibson-Young-Carpenter-Wainwright 64 Million. Of course there is no defined lower limit, so I would probably offer him 0 dollars :)

Add that to replacement level, and you’ve got an 82-84 true talent win team (meaning their distribution centers around 82-84 wins) depending on the league. Of course, 82-84 true talent wins only gets you into the playoffs about 15% of the time.

However, if you made the playoffs, he would pitch about one 3rd your games, meaning you would have the equivalent talent of about a 100 win team in the playoffs, which makes you the heavy favorite.

So, I guess you just need to give yourself a fighting chance at making the playoffs, which would mean you’d need to win about 90 games. 4.5 Mil per Win, means that you would have to save about 36 million to pay for the rest of the non-replacement guys on your team.

So, I would offer Pedro Halladay “Three Finger” Gibson-Young-Carpenter-Wainwright 64 Million. Of course there is no defined lower limit, so I would probably offer him 0 dollars :)

Pitchers scare me. :)
-j

a WAR is a WAR is a WAR. There is no need to save money to get other players from free agency. If you have no players, and 100 mil to spend, then you’re screwed either way, you can’t field a playoff team with the 25 or so WAR you can get on the market. But whether you spend them all on one player or on 7 is irrelevant.

In a real life scenario, you will have some decent cost controlled players, and you might as well spend the rest on a sure thing, if you can get him for 80-90 mil (whatever is left over).

If I’m an AL team and he could hit, he could also DH on his off-days. In the NL he’s in the lineup, so his 100-ish PAs also count.

He creates 35 wins.

If rest of team is replacement players they generate 38 wins [(162 – 35)*0.3]

You are at 73 wins

Cost on replacement players is (400K *24) = 9.6 or say 10 million

90 million to spend and should add 17 wins to get to 90 wins for season, to give team a chance at playoffs. Through free agency the 17 wins would cost 68 million (17 * 4 million). Now you only have 22 million left to spend on the pitcher. Unless this team can get some players that are priced controlled, they would have problems getting this player and making playoffs.

35*5.5 is 193 runs saved a season, which is 19 WAR. He ‘should’ cost over 100M using $6M/WAR free agency but he won’t be worth that to the team as blowing your entire budget on a 19 WAR player will get you to about the talent level of the Pittsburg Pirates

81 pitches, 27 strikeouts or 27 pitches, 27 outs?

is the effect he will have on your postion players. Once every five days, your defense is meaningless and your offense is almost meaningless, so you’re basically making everyone on your team average. If you go sign Albert Pujols, his bat will only really matter 80% of the time, so he probably isn’t worth his market value to you.

So if you do sign him, and somehow have some money to spare, spend it all pitchers.

Is there any possible way his WAR ends up being less than (35-replacement level)? I mean, he’s guaranteeing you 35 game wins, so that should be around what his WAR is (minus 2 or whatever a replacement pitcher could give you), right?

If it’s Boras there’s no chance you’ll get him for under $90 million. He’ll go to Japan.

Contract structure. Like a commenter earlier mentioned, your payroll will certainly be higher than $100 million/year after a full season by Mr. UberPitcher. You’re basically guaranteed a sell-out in 20 percent of games, as well as a substantial boost in merchandise.

I’d pull a Ricciardi and offer a 10-year deal with the following breakdown: 1y=$.5M, 2y=$.5M, 3y=$3.5M, 4y=$7M, 5y=$14M, 6y=$21M, 7y=$28M, 8y=$35M, 9y=$42M, 10y=$49M.

While the actual breakdown is completely subjective, the ten-year total is $200.5 million, which breaks down to just over $20 million a season.

You have to save some money, and i’d say save it in the bullpen and offense 1/5 games the bullpen is unnecessary and will be better rested than any other in the league. Also, like someone else mentioned, extra offense is less important due to only bare minimum offense needed 20% of the time. Therefore I think you pay him 40-50 Mil a year, sign a couple other good “human” SPs @ 10 mil a year and go barebones on offense, bullpen, and rotation back end.

And i have no data to back that up.

Why not just call him 1884 Charley Radbourn? 20.3 WAR.

if i can take the NL West with 88 wins, then i’m spending just about whatever it takes: i’m at ~ 75 wins with this guy and a team of replacement-level guys, but some of my rookies will be better than replacement. odds are i’ll be able to get 13+ wins out of the other 24 guys on the roster, make it into the playoffs, and then take my chances with a guaranteed 2-3 wins in each playoff series.

if i’m in the AL East then i don’t bid up that high i’ll probably need 92-95 wins to get in the playoffs and the Yanks/Sox will bid up his price to at least full fair-market value ($100mn/year). i’m not sure i can expect to get 20 WAR from the other 24 guys, and if i don’t i’ve got little chance of making the playoffs. if i let him go to another team, i can hopefully get more than 1 WAR per $4mn by spreading the money out, looking for inefficiencies, and getting a little luck. or by spending $20-25mn/year on Mauer, Pujols, Hanley, or some other 6-8 WAR star. those guys are all bargains by comparison.