Spring Training Gamethread/Discussion

nsacpi said:
As I noted earlier no one thinks WAR is perfect. But everyone agrees defense is very important in valuing a player. And most would say that in terms of overall value, Heyward is superior to Freeman. Not theoretically, but based on actual performance during their major league careers, even accounting for Heyward's tendency to get injured more often so far.
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Again, that really depends on just how much you value defense. I just don't think a definitive statement can be made that either Heyward has been more valueable up to this point and that he will be more valuable moving forward. To just quote WAR and try to make it an open and shut case I think it inappropriate.
 
Orphan Black said:
True, but it's apparent that teams do not value defensive stats over offensive stats when determining salary....see Adrelton and Freddie...if we want to go by WAR alone without consideration of defensive or offensive. Adrelton has an average WAR of almost 5, and defense is not luck dependent like offense is somewhat is. If you take into consideration that a third of Heyward's WAR is from defense, I think 20 million is too much to commit to him at the moment. He probably should be higher than Freeman, but probably by only a couple million a season so maybe $17.5 million per, but since he has not had a full healthy season in his career you may have to knock some of that salary off.
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Not really true. Andreltons salary is so low in his free agent years because he signed after only 1 season in the majors. He took financial security and gave us two cheap free agency years. Freeman was 3 years away from being a free agent and got paid market value for it. Defense is valued a lot more now then it was 5 years ago when it comes to salary. WAR is a big component when determining the market for free agents.
 
thewupk said:
Not really true. Andreltons salary is so low in his free agent years because he signed after only 1 season in the majors. He took financial security and gave us two cheap free agency years. Freeman was 3 years away from being a free agent and got paid market value for it. Defense is valued a lot more now then it was 5 years ago when it comes to salary. WAR is a big component when determining the market for free agents.
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I agree that WAR is used heavily in terms of determining the market but I still don't believe that SImmons would get more than Freeman if they were both free agents today.
 
thethe said:
Again, that really depends on just how much you value defense. I just don't think a definitive statement can be made that either Heyward has been more valueable up to this point and that he will be more valuable moving forward. To just quote WAR and try to make it an open and shut case I think it inappropriate.
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Whether people want to accept it or not it's a pretty common belief across baseball right now. And it's not just posters on message boards. It's apparent front offices look at this stuff too. Now they might have different data to use for how they value defense but it's definitely something they look at it. The only group of baseball people that discount defense and war as a it may be accurate and it may not be seem to be the BWAA.
 
Orphan Black said:
True, but it's apparent that teams do not value defensive stats over offensive stats when determining salary....see Adrelton and Freddie...if we want to go by WAR alone without consideration of defensive or offensive. Adrelton has an average WAR of almost 5, and defense is not luck dependent like offense is somewhat is. If you take into consideration that a third of Heyward's WAR is from defense, I think 20 million is too much to commit to him at the moment. He probably should be higher than Freeman, but probably by only a couple million a season so maybe $17.5 million per, but since he has not had a full healthy season in his career you may have to knock some of that salary off.
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There is a service time issue that makes comparing Freddie and Andelton difficult. Andrelton is five years from free agency. Freddie is three years away. But I would agree that teams do not pay as much for the defensive WAR component as they do for the offensive component. For example, last season Cleveland signed two free agents in their early 30s to four year contracts. If you look at WAR Michael Bourn has been more valuable than Nick Swisher. But he got 12M per year and Swisher got 14M. So the market does not entirely agree with WAR on valuing defense. But it does give defense substantial weight. If you look at batting WAR, Swisher was almost twice as valuable as Bourn in the three seasons leading up to free agency, but he is not being paid twice as much.

So the market does give substantial weight to defense though not as much as WAR. To round things off with respect to Freeman and Heyward, the advantages Heyward has when it comes to defense and base running are large enough that even if you weight things closer to what the market does, he is very likely to get paid more than Freeman.

Freeman's contract pays him a little over 21M/season during his free agency years. I think Heyward will get paid 23-25M/year for his free agency years.
 
thethe said:
I agree that WAR is used heavily in terms of determining the market but I still don't believe that Simmons would get more than Freeman if they were both free agents today.
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Offense does pay more. But they would be a lot closer then you think. And I doubt either would get as much as Freeman got if they were on the open market right now. Teams need to see a track record and both only have 1 excellent year to their names. If Andrelton had a track record of having all-time great defensive seasons at short he would get paid a lot of money by some team.
 
I don't know how anyone could justify a 23-25 million a year salary for Heyward when he hasn't even been able to stay healthy the whole season. If he does so, and lives up to his potential then maybe you can justify that.
 
Orphan Black said:
I don't know how anyone could justify a 23-25 million a year salary for Heyward when he hasn't even been able to stay healthy the whole season. If he does so, and lives up to his potential then maybe you can justify that.
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He was healthy in 2012 and put up a 6.4 WAR season. I think that is worth 23-25 million a year.
 
thewupk said:
He was healthy in 2012 and put up a 6.4 WAR season. I think that is worth 23-25 million a year.
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Yea, how is 158 games-played not "stay[ing] healthy the whole season"?

I also find it really difficult to hold acute inflammation of the appendix and acute fastball-to-the-face against him.
 
Heyward needs to prove he can be consistant offensively before getting that big contract. Yes, he's great defensively, but he's also a very big dude. How many more great defensive years do you think his body has left? 2? 3? 4 if he's lucky? Then he's just an average defensive guy and if he hasn't gotten over the offensive hump yet, we would have a good player making great player money. If our salary goes up more, I hope we keep him anyway, but I can't understand why anyone would want to give him one of the highest salaries MLB. He's just not that good, yet.
 
thewupk said:
He was healthy in 2012 and put up a 6.4 WAR season. I think that is worth 23-25 million a year.
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And I would venture to guess in his other 3 seasons his WAR was much less? I don't care for all these advanced stats as I have made it clear in the past.
 
NinersSBChamps said:
And I would venture to guess in his other 3 seasons his WAR was much less? I don't care for all these advanced stats as I have made it clear in the past.
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Sure. He also hasn't played in full seasons in the other 3 due to various reasons. However in two of them he has been just as good in the time he did play. And you don't have to care for advanced stats but they do exist and people do look at them.
 
Dalyn said:
Still much lower than Justin's. It is a terrible decision.
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Aside from April last year Justin Upton was only ok last year. .256/.343/.409 (.753). If BJ gets on base enough to justify it (which I think would be around .320) which I think BJ can do I think having his baserunning ability at the top of the order improves the Braves lineup. BJ is a better baserunner than Justin is. Justin dropping down to the 5th spot lengthens the lineup by giving us more power spread more evenly throughout the lineup.
 
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