Greinke-Garza Value Calculator

by Sky Kalkman on Jan 7, 2011 4:43 PM EST in Research

Zack Greinke is (I believe) a better pitcher than Matt Garza. But Garza's under team control for an extra year, almost assuredly earning less money each season. That monetary savings can be spent on other helpful pieces, bringing the two players closer in value.

Below is a little calculator you can use to see if talent or cost wins the day. By changing the numbers in the green boxes, you can see how each player's contract provides savings relative to acquiring their production on the free agent market -- the TOTAL SAVINGS line at the bottom.

Hit the "click to edit" button to start. Go crazy. This is a model, giving you the opportunity to see how your views affect the comparison. Feel free to share your inputs, outputs, and line of thought in the comments.

Quick note on FA compensation: There's a good chance compensation will be gone by the time these guys are free agents. However, feel free to add it in. Type A status is worth about $6M on average, Type B $3M.

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Okay,

This is just awesome. Love the spreadsheet integration.

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by J-Doug on Jan 7, 2011 3:54 PM EST reply actions

Front-paged, where this belongs.

Phenomenal work.

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by Justin Bopp on Jan 7, 2011 4:45 PM EST reply actions

Put the calc below the fold for

front-page load time purposes.

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by Justin Bopp on Jan 8, 2011 11:56 AM EST up reply actions

RE

Sky, can you explain the WAR projections you chose?

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by JD Sussman on Jan 7, 2011 5:00 PM EST reply actions

Not really ;)

Looked at both rWAR and fWAR, guesstimated 2011 WAR, subtracted half a win each season. Just wanted to get something in there as a starting point. I’m not tied to those numbers at all, although I don’t think they’re crazy.

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by Sky Kalkman on Jan 7, 2011 5:13 PM EST up reply actions

Haha gotcha

Two things I would have maybe accounted for differently were the switch to NL and the aging. I understand subtracting .5 WAR after the age of 29, (I do .7 after 35 too). But, these guys are still in their prime. Subtracting the WAR is also an attrition thing and (I assume, I’m not economist) a win now vs win later component. But, I don’t usually subtract for years prior to 29.

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by JD Sussman on Jan 8, 2011 10:33 AM EST up reply actions

All good points.

For pitchers, I always subtract b/c of attrition. I trust them to keep their skills, but not their health. Again, way too subjective to draw any for-sure conclusions.

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by Sky Kalkman on Jan 8, 2011 11:54 AM EST up reply actions

Gotcha

Very cool & innovative post. I can’t wait to see what other spreadsheets will pop up at BtB now.

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by JD Sussman on Jan 8, 2011 3:28 PM EST up reply actions

Awesome

How do you embed things like that on SBNation? I’ve tried view source and copy-pasted what I thought were the relevant tags but it doesn’t work. How do you do this when creating a FanPost?

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by vignette17 on Jan 7, 2011 6:43 PM EST reply actions

You can't do it as a FanPost; I tried.

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by Sky Kalkman on Jan 7, 2011 9:20 PM EST up reply actions

Awesome.

"The WAR folks like yunel apparently. i know this, bobby cox hated going to war with this guy." - Jon Heyman

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by PWHjort on Jan 8, 2011 1:59 AM EST reply actions

Wow

This is spectacular. Thanks, Sky!

by Patrick42 on Jan 8, 2011 12:31 PM EST reply actions

It looks like Garza has only two arbitration-controlled seasons remaining

as he avoided arbitration on 1/19/10 by signing for $3.35 MM with the Rays.

http://mlbcontracts.blogspot.com/2005/01/chicago-cubs_112114177768677294.html

by gregorybfoley on Jan 8, 2011 5:11 PM EST reply actions

He was a Super-2

That means he’s actually under team control for seven years — 2006/2007 sort of counts as one year, but he was able to go to arbitration earlier. 2011 is technically his second year of arbitration, but it’s like most people’s first year; he’ll have four total and is scheduled for free agency after 2013.

Being a Super-2 likely bumps up his expected arb awards going forward. I don’t know how much he’ll earn. Nobody does. But that’s the point of having a model where you can test a bunch of things out.

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by Sky Kalkman on Jan 8, 2011 5:30 PM EST up reply actions