3/30/14
The Detroit Tigers extended
their star player, Miguel Cabrera, to an eight-year extension on Friday. Cabrera,
who was due $44M between 2014 and 2015 before hitting what would have been his
free agency, will now earn approximately $248M over the next eight years,
keeping him in Detroit until he is 40 years old in 2023. Total, the Tigers will
pay Cabrera $292M over the next ten years. However, Cabrera’s good news does
not end there.
There are vesting options
in Cabrera new contract that, if all are met, the 2-time MVP would earn $352M
over the next twelve years.
Cabrera will turn 31 this
April.
Had Detroit not signed
Cabrera to this extension and he played out 2015 and sequentially hit free
agency, the Tigers would have paid Cabrera $152.3M from 2008 – 2015, Cabrera’s
age 25-32 seasons.
Why there has been
criticism from the media over this contract is not the $29.2M annual payday
that Cabrera will receive for the next ten seasons. The criticism is over the
$31M that Cabrera will earn over the course of the new extension alone – which he
can safely assume will be Cabrera’s decline.
Personally, I’m of the
belief that baseball has to be
smarter than this and learn from other club’s mistakes.
Alex Rodriguez and Albert
Pujols both signed contracts that owners, writers, and baseball fans cringe at
thinking about and that fellow players and agents dream of. We’ve all heard the
phrase, “Well it’s not the A-Rod deal” when attempting to justify a
questionable move made by a GM or team. Tigers fans can no longer use this
phrase. Rodriguez’s deal pays him – excluding the 2014 suspension – over $25M
annually. Albert Pujols’ contract pays him $24M annually. Again, Cabrera will
now make more annually over the next ten years, as well as over the course of
the extension alone (years 2016-2023).
Essentially, Detroit is
paying Cabrera for what he will have already done. Not what he will be able to
do for eight years.
Even for the sake of argument,
let’s compare Cabrera to another player.
The following is a look at the
previous six seasons of Miguel Cabrera’s career, ages 25-30, and how it
compares to another unidentified player. We’ll call this player “Player X.” The
fun part is that, unless you look this information up as you are reading, which
one is Miggy and which one is Player X will be unknown to you. Now, if you want
to ruin the surprise you can do so and just scroll down, but otherwise you
should keep the portion of the page you are currently reading near the bottom.
The following is the age
25-30 seasons of Miguel Cabrera’s and Player X’s Slugging Percentages.
So, as you can see, the blue line has remained on a linear upswing over the course of his age-25 through his age-30 seasons. The only season in which this player declined was his age 28-season, which followed a solid increase experienced in the season prior. By age 30, this player had topped that mark with a SLG% of .636.
Meanwhile, the red line experiences a little more fluctuation but is consistently slugging at a higher rate. Although, this players' age-27 season was his worst between the age of 25 and 30. This player did manage a dramatic increase the next year, but never topped the .671 SLG% he posted at 26 years old.
Next, is OPS, which obviously takes into account a player's slugging as well as their ability to get on base. This is perhaps the best metric for telling whether a player is just a slugger or an actual hitter.
Here we see that the red line is consistently a better overall hitter, with the exception of ages 27 and 30. As we've established, the age of 27 was not the best year for the red line, but when you take into account the differences between their two players' SLG% and then their OPS, you can tell that the player represented by the red line actually took a lot of walks in a season in which he struggled to hit for power, relatively speaking. Point being, both players are consistently close, and in the years when the blue line surpassed the red line, it was by a really small margin.
The biggest differences is the player represented by the red line was a much better overall hitter at the ages of 25 and 26. That's like the difference in a 2009 Jayson Werth and a 1997 Barry Bonds. Both got MVP votes but...you'd take Bonds.
Next, let's look at WAR (or Wins Above Replacement)
Again, here we see the difference. From an early age the player represented by the red line was well established and putting up MVP caliber seasons. The player represented by the blue line has a far more impressive jump from age 25 to 26, but still never touches an 8 WAR. And, most importantly, by age 30 both players posted WARs of 7.5.
Okay, for the most part you've made it past the graphs and now I hope you're ready to be (less than) shocked, because the "Player X" is....
None other than....
....
Albert Pujols.
Now the real question is which player was the red line and which player was represented by the blue line.
And I'm sure I fooled you and masked any bias well enough that you could not pick up that Miguel Cabrera was represented by the blue line and Pujols was the red.
Now before further fighting against Miguel Cabrera, let's look at Pujols since age 30. In order to maintain a linear plot of how Pujols has regressed since then, we'll keep the same time frame of six years - ages 28 – 33. First, here's Pujols' Slugging Percentage over that time frame:
So there's obviously a dramatic fall once Pujols hit 30 years old. And with regard to this and all following graphs, Pujols only played in 99 games in 2013 due to injury, so the decline looks much worse than it is. We can probably safely say his 2014 will not be as bad as his 2013, but I'd be surprised if a 34-year-old Pujols could hit even close to as well as he did at age 30.
Now with regard to Cabrera, here's why I chose Pujols to compare him to:
- Both have now been handed jaw-dropping contracts that have faced scrutiny.
- These are two very similar players.
- On Cabrera's baseball-reference page, Pujols is a "similar batter at age 30."
- On Pujols' baseball-reference page, Cabrera is a similar hitter at age 27, 28, and 30.
- On both players' baseball-reference pages, similar batters include:
- Frank Robinson
- Hank Aaron
- Ken Griffey
- Mel Ott
Pujols has experienced more difficulty in taking walks as well. So much so that in Pujols' career, he only struck out more than he walked in 2001 (his rookie campaign), 2012, and 2013. For the record, that is one season in which Pujols struck out more times than he was walked before age 31. He was 21.
Also worth noting for Tigers fans, at age 33, Pujols' OPS steeped down into the .700's for the first time in his career. That's the age at which Cabrera's new extension kicks in (Then again, Pujols was hurt).
Now for Pujols' WAR:
This is where the injury-plagued 2013 season really hurt Pujols. The regression line that you can visualize is really alarming for the Angels in this graph. Take into account 2013, and Pujols is on pace to have a WAR of about 3.0 games. And even if referencing Baseball Prospectus, they have Pujols' at a projected WAR of 2.2. Taking out 2013, one would project Pujols at a 4- or 3-WAR clip until 2016, but bodies do break down and injuries do happen.
Is it a fair comparison? Maybe not - if you ask me, Pujols is the better player when comparing them at the same age.
But is it warranted? Duh.
Miguel Cabrera was not due to hit free agency until 2016, so my question to Dave Dombrowski would be, why now? It's not like the Tigers have a farm system that is going to bring in the next crop of Miguel Cabreras and Justin Verlanders, so locking Cabrera up is like having to build around a 38-year-old tree trunk in 2021. Detroit has a roster that is built to win now (sans their left field, shortstop, and bullpen situations). This team's window is closing.
By the way, we have yet to see one of these monster contracts work out well at all and as it stands now, Cabrera is a Tiger for life, whether Detroit fans want him in 2020 or not.
Music Recommendation:
"They Don't Have Any Friends" by Taking Back Sunday
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