You think that all 30 MLB teams value the draft picks at $5M, and that explains why Varitek went begging?

I have no idea how much a first round pick is worth, or how much GMs value it. But even if we did have the perfect knowledge that Veritek wasn’t offered anything by any other team, you’re assumption doesn’t follow. Just becuase Varitek is worth 5 million (which really surprised me until I looked him up) doesn’t mean each of those 30 teams values draft picks at an equal or higher rate. Most of those teams simply don’t need a FA catcher.

Well, that was my question, right? You think that all 30 MLB teams value the draft picks at $5M, and that explains why Varitek went begging? If so, wouldn’t you think that all contracts signed by Type A FAs would be lower, since teams would factor in the opportunity cost of the lost draft pick?

Maybe, and it’s definitely an issue that I hope somebody studies further. But I think this particular offseason is a bad time to make conclusions like that to explain why FAs are still looking for work, since guys like Abreu and Dunn are also unsigned despite having no compensation picks attached to them.

Off the top of my head I can think of the 70s Yankees and A’s. The 30s Cardinals hated each other. If I thought some more, I could come up with many examples.

This is sort of a chicken and egg argument, bad clubs lack cohesive clubhouses and leaders while good teams have these elements. Isn’t that more a function of the record? To claim the loss of Guillen had more of impact than losing Jones and Sherill and getting a bag of damaged balls in return really does not understand the importance of talent vs. leadership.

Nothing beats talent, when was the last time there was a prospect who was rated five stars based on their leadership skills?

You’re making an assumption that draft picks aren’t very valuable. It’s screwing with your conclusions.

If I understood your original post, the issue wasn’t how much players were paid in relation to what they are worth (If we’re evaluating signings based on the FanGraphs metric, the off-field stuff must be a negative — Floyd is getting paid less than he earned a year ago, after all).

What you cited was how much those guys were paid in relation to what the market would dictate for similar players in the 2008-09 offseason. Floyd is making slightly more than the minimum to fill his role at the end of the bench and a “clubhouse leader,” ergo the value placed on those skills is no more than $350,000.

Jason Varitek was either going to play in Boston or not at all — I think we can all agree on that. Nobody else was interested in signing him, and if you want to make the argument that the sole reason is the draft pick then that’s fine (although clearly some teams are willing to give up picks to sign guys). But on the open market, Jason Varitek’s value to every baseball team except the Boston Red Sox was such that he didn’t get any interest from the other MLB teams.

For your argument to work here, you would have to assume that teams valued draft picks at somewhere around $5 million. Otherwise, you would think that someone would at least offer Varitek a contract with a discounted number — one year at $2 million, perhaps, with the lower dollar figure subtracting the value of the lost pick.

If you really think Varitek’s on-field value is $0, then I don’t know what to tell you.

Just so I’m clear, are you arguing that teams are valuing first-round picks at $5M apiece?

Because otherwise I don’t get your point. Every single team but one did not make him an offer, as far as I am aware. One team offered him $5M.

29 teams thought Varitek was worth less than the value of the lost draft pick between No. 17 and the middle of the second round, or later if it was for a team like the Yankees who had already signed multiple Type As. One team thought he was worth much more.

So basically, Boston is paying well over what the market decided Varitek was worth that season. Based on both Boston’s actions and their words, do you think they are NOT paying him that kind of money because of that off-the-field stuff?

There are some meta-questions not really being looked at by the stat-community, such as, why do players up and down swear by things like “the clutch”, “leadership” and the like? Humans have attested (and revered) these qualities in others for millenia, in sports, war, politics, etc. If this effect doesn’t actually exist, why do we perceive it so strongly?

Maybe that is straying too far into sports psychology, but I think there is something to it. We’ve all choked (or seen someone choke) to understand that under pressure, some people thrive and some don’t. I don’t know… sometimes I get frustrated that the concept is so readily dismissed as “non-existant” when the reality is that there are so many research questions yet to ask. Just because one set of tools doesn’t show a result doesn’t mean that there is no result to be had.

In the same vein, I’m sure there are people that go to pieces, but the data suggests otherwise. I couldn’t find data that had any one player historically “clutch” or “unclutch,” although such data might exist.

Not wanting to tangent from this excellent topic, but yes, there are some players who perform better in ‘clutch’ situations and ones that don’t. BPro’s Baseball Between the Numbers covered this pretty well. Check it out.

Now back to your regularly scheduled programming.