FanGraphs: Seidman: Valuing Meche

Meche, with a 4.18 FIP in 199 innings, would be responsible for 92 runs. Conveniently enough, this cancels out with the 92 runs surrendered by the replacement starter, meaning Meche’s value above replacement level is +25 runs. Converted to wins, Meche would be worth 2.5 wins.

Last year, the average dollar figure per win was around 4.5-4.75 million dollars. With inflation, I’ll call this year’s amount a firm 5 million per win. 2.5 wins multiplied by 5 million dollars per win amounts to 12.5 million dollars. That is, if Meche were a free agent right now and signed a 1-yr deal, 12.5 million dollars would be an appropriate fee. For multi-year deals, we usually factor in a 10% discount rate, since players tend to sacrifice a bit of their monetary value for some security. With that in mind, a 3-yr deal for Meche would come out to 33.75 million dollars. A 5-yr deal would be valued at 56.25 million dollars.

Meche may not have seemed worth the money back in 2006, but as of right now, his average annual value would be somewhere around 11.25 million dollars, just slightly above the 11 mil in his actual contract.

And, uhh Barnald...it’s Herman “Hesh” Rabkin not Meche. Nice try.