Should baseball go to a pay-for-performance model?

On top of the base pay, a player would be owed $4 million per WAR based on his performance that year. The antiquated arbitration system which rewards service time over production would be completely eliminated. There would be no reason to game the system for service time (except to move back free agency and that could be remedied somewhat by making it either 5.5 or 6.5 seasons of service time to be eligible for free agency). There is also no reason why you couldn’t have a player’s base pay go up as soon as he hits the service time threshold, even if it is in the middle of a season.

So for a player like Whit Merrifield in his second year of service time, he would have a base pay of $500,000, but would get in effect, a bonus at the end of the year based on his 5.2 WAR, an amount that would total $20.8 million for a total salary of $21.3 million. Could there be possible sticker shock for teams that see they have to suddenly pay a player $20 million at the end of the year? Perhaps. But teams can mitigate some of that volatility by offering more long-term deals, like the one Merrifield received. Only now those players will have more leverage to get something closer to market value.

What about veterans who have reached free agency and are enjoying guaranteed contracts? They can still enjoy guaranteed contracts, but teams should be encouraged to move to a more incentive-based model. Right now, teams are not allowed to offer contracts based on performance-based incentives, instead the only incentives allowed to be offered are for playing time (i.e. $1 million for reaching 500 plate appearances) or receiving awards.

Tomase: Overreliance on WAR may have hurt J.D. Martinez in AL MVP vote that’s going to be won by Mookie Betts | WEEI

Take this year’s AL MVP race. Betts led the league in WAR, will win the award, and deserves it. Hard to argue with Trout or Ramirez, either, based on performance, though I’m certainly open to the idea of an MVP coming from a winning team, and not Trout’s sub-.500 Angels.

But there are other deserving candidates whose WAR won’t give them a sniff. Red Sox slugger J.D. Martinez is one of them. For five months, he flirted with the Triple Crown. Because he’s mostly a DH and no better than an average fielder when he does don a glove, he never had a chance, though his 5.9 fWAR is roughly in range of Ramirez.

Some advanced stats make a case for Martinez, such as his weighted runs created (170, 3rd), base-out runs added (73.36, 1st), win probability added (5.4, 3rd) and . . . there’s no need to lose ourselves any further in those weeds.

“There’s no need to lose ourselves any further in those weeds”? The **stats** he uses ignore defense and baserunning.

WAR isn’t perfect. While I agree people shouldn’t simply use WAR to rank players for award voting, Tomase’s case is extremely weak and unconvincing.

Wins Above Replacement—all
1. Betts • BOS 10.9
2. Trout • LAA 10.2
3. Chapman • OAK 8.2
4. Ramirez • CLE 7.9
  Lindor • CLE 7.9
6. Snell • TBR 7.5
7. Bregman • HOU 6.9
8. Sale • BOS 6.9
9. Martinez • BOS 6.4
10. Verlander • HOU 6.3

Sabrblog: What a Drag it is Getting Old

You can see that old player value has been in free fall in recent years. In 2017, age 35+ players accumulated 15.9 WAR in total, just 1.6% of the value in all of baseball. By percentage, this was the smallest total since 1877 when the major leagues were just getting started….

Setting aside the reasons for the exceptional aging that went on between 1998 and 2007, which has been debated to death, it is interesting to wonder why players are not aging as well today. The most common answer will be “steroids testing,” but could there be other causes?

Could the current game, which values velocity in pitchers and the ability to hit velocity in batters, be more of a “young man’s game”? Could pitching velocity be causing more injuries and therefore shorter careers? Could an historical crop of young stars – Mike Trout, Mookie Betts, Francisco Lindor, Carlos Correa and many more – be temporarily skewing the data?

All of this and more could be true.

in 2002, 35-and-older plyers accounted for 14.2% of MLB WAR

Ryan Yarbrough has broken how Fangraphs calculates WAR - DRaysBay

Another reason not to use fWAR for pitchers.

The FIP shown isn’t the FIP that is used to calculate their brand of WAR. One has to add infield fly balls and the home park’s FIP park factor to reach the right calculation. After factoring in the 21 infield flyballs that Yarbrough has induced improves his 102 FIP- to 99 ifFIP- (in other words, he has been 0.8% better than the average American League pitcher).

It all comes down to replacement level. The other pitchers discussed have been used a starter outside of LeBlanc getting five appearances out of the bullpen, but replacement level is different for starting pitchers and relievers. Overall this makes sense as MLB starters have put up a 4.21 FIP and 101 FIP- while relievers have put up a 4.05 FIP and 98 FIP-.

However in the calculation of fWAR the replacement level for starters is 0.12 WPGAR (Wins Per Game Above Replacement Level) while being worth .03 WPGAR for relievers.