Hanley Ramirez Not Worth $25m Per

Recent reports have surfaced that the Dodgers are looking to extend Hanley Ramirez, who will become a free agent after the 2014 season.  And that's reasonable.  When he plays, Ramirez is a plus shortstop, particularly on the offensive end.  But the numbers that are being floated show just how nuts the landscape of baseball has become and how little some general managers view durability.  Now, who knows whether the floated numbers are accurate, i.e. looking for a $130 to $153 million dollar deal that could be in the range of $25 million dollars per season.  They seem way out of line for us.  And here's why.

Hanley Ramirez doesn't play often enough.  Two out of the last three season, Ramirez did not reach 600 plate appearances.  And no matter how good you are, if you're not on the field, you do not help your team win.  In fact, it may be just the opposite, spending money that could be allocated somewhere else that would be on the field.  Now the Dodgers are afloat with money, so maybe the normal metrics of paying value and using up payroll space for another player don't apply.  But, ... they probably will at some point.

Look, let's be honest.  We don't see Ramirez as a plus player any longer.  He's barely been above good starter territory and nowhere near All-Star caliber.  Why do we say that?  The last time Haney was a player who should have a $25m per year discussion attached to him was in 2009, when he had had three straight All-Star caliber, best shortstop in baseball, type of years, reaching 23.588 PEVA rating points.  He had had four straight years of over 650 plate appearances.

How's he been since then.

2010     12.754 PEVA, 619 PA
2011       2.996 PEVA, 387 PA
2012     10.374 PEVA, 667 PA
2013     10.989 PEVA, 336 PA

And the first six weeks of 2014 has him at an OPS of 0.772, right in line with those years, except for last.  What we're starting to see is a ping pong of an elite player sliding down.  No longer the base stealing threat he once was and difficult to stay on the field.  At 31 years of age by the end of 2014, a contract longer than three years does not make club sense, and any discussion of a contract in the neighborhood of $25 million per year, or $20 million per year, or $15 million per year will likely not work out.  Now he's going to get one in one of those regions.  Chase Utley got one in the lower stratosphere at an older age, but ask yourself, do you really think Hanley Ramirez is better than Chase Utley at this point in time.  Who would you rather have on your team, if, and we know that's a big if, they stayed healthy?  And why would you pay one player a multiple of the other just to find out?

Update: Ben Sheets, Durability, and Why The BE Player Rating System Values It So Much

February 6, 2009 - Well, it surely didn't take too long. Even before he could sign a contract, Ben Sheets has been put back on the shelf with an injury that looks like it could prevent Sheets from playing this season. And that brings us to the topic of the day. Why is durability important in shelling out a baseball contract and why should Major League general managers think of it more often, or highly, when they do?

Now any player can get injured. It's a physical game, not up to the level of football or hockey, perhaps, but baseball is still a physical game. But some players get injured more often. And some players get injured enough that they don't play full seasons, even though the injuries are not up to the level of costing them season long trips to the injured reserve list. And that's why some statistics, really popular ones by sabermetrics fans today such as OPS and OPS+ can't be used as a guru to value, at least without considering whether that value was attached to durability.

The PEVA player rating stat developed by baseballevalution.com uses durability as a highly measured factor. In fact, one-third of the entire player rating is based on use, durabilty to us. How do we measure durability or use and do we forgive a player who gets injured once? We measure durability by grading each player on a scale between the maximum and average values of two categories. For a pitcher, the first category is Games or Games Started, giving precedent in the factor to Games Started; the second category is Innings Pitched. For a batter, the categories are Games Played and Plate Appearances. These two factors provide a girth to the PEVA Player Grade and helps make it solid. We think that's important. The remainder of the factors that go into making the Player Rating comb the more sexy stuff for stat geeks; yes, ... OBP and SLG (OPS for your folks, although we count it even more highly than adding the two together), Run Production, etc.

It matters, folks, whether a player is on the field, because, in simple terms, he can't help his team win if he's sitting the pine, for whatever reason. And you certainly don't want to give him a contract that could harm your club down the line if his history tells you there's a good probability he won't give you innings or at bats. But yes, because the Player Rating system had at its core mission to mirror the way real baseball values its player, using Player Salaries as its constant, we do forgive some injuries in a way. We do this by using two averages of the past several seasons, by reaching back to years when injuries didn't come into play. But we do not forgive the injury in a single season by discounting that it happened; and that's what we're seeing in baseball contracts given out recently, albeit not in the case of Ben Sheets because the injury came up before he could sign the dotted line.

Tale of Two Contracts

January 6, 2009 - After the two week lull of the holiday season when few contracts for free agents were announced, Monday saw an increase in activity as baseball teams sought to fill in the gaps in their rosters. And it was two contracts, not two for the most coveted free agents on the market, not future Hall of Famer Manny Ramirez or even Adam Dunn, but two outfielders just below All-Star caliber that were close in ability in 2008 and far apart in so many other ways.

Pat Burrell, long-term left fielder for the World Series champion Philadelphia Phillies was on borrowed time in the city he had called home for his entire career, even after commanding center stage at the parade down Broad Street. He had been a fixture in the town, a solid, hardworking player who fans liked, albeit a player who had a habit of putting up very good numbers, think 30 HR and 90 RBI almost every year, but doing so in such a inconsistent basis within the year that his value dropped on the market. Burrell was also, however, capable of carrying the team on his back for a month like the best in the game, see May/June of 2008 when he and Chase Utley overcame the poor start of Ryan Howard, and by the end of every season, had his 30/90, plus a great OBP and solid Player Grade (12.202 PEVA 2008). But the writing on the wall became magic marker when Raul Ibanez was signed earlier in the offseason to a 3 year contract that Pat's days were done in Philly. And yesterday he signed a 2 year $16 million contract with the World Series runnerups, the Tampa Bay Rays. The contract was below what many thought his value, below the reported 2 year $22 million contract offered by Philadelphis in midseason. And well below the 4 year $40.9 million contract the Stat Geek Baseball Salary Projection model thinks he is worth. And by the end of those years, think he will prove he is worth.

Milton Bradley is somewhere between soup and nuts, but he is a baseball player with ability. Unfortunately, it is ability wrapped in a package not too tightly wound, or too tightly wound, depending on your point of view. But yesterday, the Chicago Cubs offered Bradley a 3 year contract for $30 million dollars. This is a player who while playing in AA ball, got thrown out of a game while walking to the plate prior to the first pitch being thrown. It takes a lot of soup and nuts to do that. But in 2008, Bradley had his best year, with 22 HR and 77 RBI plus a 0.321 Batting Average, which calculated to a 13.810 PEVA Player Grade. And he does have value, but just what is that value. Bradley drives people crazy, has never put together two very good years in a row, and for the three seasons prior to last year, would not have been valuable to a team at all, beyond a reserve, don't count on me roll. But the Cubs, desperate again, preferred Bradley over Burrell, as the entire baseball community did, paying him more.

Don't get us wrong, we still think Bradley is worth good money, $22,476 million over 3 years, not too far below what he got. However, by the end of the next 2-3 years of these two contracts, we're thinking the more productive of the two players will be Burrell. Yes, he's two years older, but a whole lot more consistent as a person and player from year to year. Do we really think it's a coincidence that Bradley has now been a member of 7 different teams over his major league career while Burrell has been on one, which just won a World Series. I don't think anyone thinks that, even the Cubs.

Pat Burrell, 32
2004 - 24 HR, 84 RBI, 0.257 BA, 6.837 PEVA
2005 - 32 HR, 117 RBI, 0.281 BA, 12.813 PEVA
2006 - 29 HR, 95 RBI, 0.258 BA, 11.542 PEVA
2007 - 30 HR, 97 RBI, 0.256 BA, 10.726 PEVA
2008 - 33 HR, 86 RBI, 0.250 BA, 12.202 PEVA

Milton Bradley, 30
2004 - 19 HR, 67 RBI, 0.267 BA, 8.542 PEVA
2005 - 13 HR, 38 RBI, 0.290 BA, 3.882 PEVA
2006 - 14 HR, 52 RBI, 0.276 BA, 4.350 PEVA
2007 - 2/11 13/30 0.292/0.313 (Split Season), 4.233 PEVA
2008 - 22 HR, 77 RBI, 0.321 BA, 13.810 PEVA