Friday, November 30, 2012

Wright extended

As Veronica Mars once said "the one who stays is the one who cares" and it's nice to know that David Wright cares so much about the NY Mets. Wright's deal is a very reasonable eight years, 138 million dollars. 138 mil is a perfect valuation for Wright. Sandy is known for being a savvy, smart GM who doesn't make bad deals and this is just further evidence. I may not always agree with Sandy but I know I can count on him not to make overpay, hype signings. That being said I would have been a little happier with less years. This contract carries Wright through his age 37 season which will likely include a bad year or two. That being said it could have been much worse and we aren't carrying 5+ years of expected declining play like some other contracts.

A few people have said Wright's on field play has not been worth the roughly 17.25 mil he will be making a year. Let's take a look using the WAR to dollars formula. Popular consensus says that a player is worth about 5 million dollars per win he adds to the team. So a player with a WAR of 2 should get paid ten million bucks. Let's take a look at Wright's history.

Year
WAR
Dollar Value (in millions)
2004
2.5
12.25

2005
6.2
30

2006
5.2
25

2007
8.8
45

2008
7.1
35

2009
3.5
17.25

2010
4
20

2011
1.9
10

2012
7.8
40



According to these numbers Wright has earned a salary greater than 17.25 mil in all but two seasons, one of which was his rookie year. I am not always bullish on Wright. He tends to strike out a lot and go on long slumps and regress as the season goes on but at the end of the day I am a numbers guy and Wright's number are elite. For those worried about how Wright may look in future seasons I suggest you read my projection article from last month, good things should be in Wright's future.

2 comments:

  1. I don't think we can say the Wright cares about the Mets. The vast majority of players always follow the money, and i don't see any indication of Wright not being one of those players.
    I was under the assumption that 1 WAR is about 4 mil, not 5 million. But we all know that he is highly unlikely to perform at his contract level in 2-3 years, but he was paid that much mostly for his intangibles, which are hard to quantify.

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  2. I was always taught that 1 WAR was 5 but its not a hard and fast rule, I am sure 4 makes sense. I used to worry more about right but the research I do and more I look at player similarity the better I feel about him performing well for a few more years.

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