What's a Homer worth?
I’ve been thinking about Homer Bailey quite a bit lately. Maybe it’s because the longest-tenured Red (he beat Joey Votto by a few months) is coming to the end of his much-maligned long-term contract and most likely won’t be a Red for much longer. While all indications are that his fellow 2007-debuter will be around for the length of his own long-term deal (or close to it) and will most likely be thrilling us with all the walking he’s paid to do through 2023 , Homer’s deal will be up by 2019 at the latest. And if he shows himself to be back close to his 2010-2011 self (if not his 2012-2014 peak) a deep-pocketed contender just might be willing to pick him up for some quality innings in the second half of this year or next. So that gives Homer a maximum of 1.975 seasons left in Cincinnati.
I’m not going to go through Homer’s entire career (Chris Farley voice: "Remember when he was a Top 10 prospect in all of baseball and then threw two no hitters? That was awesome"), but I feel like Homer is in a weird place at the moment. He’s got the no-hitters, threw 526 innings in three playoff years, had a memorable postseason performance, and generally been an affable, introspective, interesting guy for 11 years. And Reds fans* just hate the guy.
*I’m not referring to actual, thoughtful fans like the fine folks at Red Reporter, who can break down a contract or performance without turning into troll-y, Facebook guy like this jabroni:
Not having ever lived in Cincinnati, I’ve always been fascinated by the psyche of your average Reds fan. Back in the day they would emerge to call into WLW or the Banana-phone, nowadays you can just peruse some Facebook comments (but don’t though, for real) on any Reds-related post to find them. They are a miserable lot. I never understood the hate they harbored for the Ken Griffey Jr.’s and Adam Dunn’s of the world. I never understood their adulation of Pete Rose. Now, it seems, the favorite target of their vitriol is David Dewitt Bailey himself.
On the one hand, I think I get it. Homer was the Chosen One – into every generation a top-tier pitching prospect is born – he was supposed to be the ace, the Cy Young winner the Reds have never had. And he got off to a slow start, so people got frustrated right off the bat. Then, when he was putting up great seasons on playoff teams, he was overshadowed by guys who were better (Cueto), or were brought in with a big trade (Latos) or were younger (Leake) or just weird enough to be interesting (Arroyo). Then he signed a big contract, caught the injury bug and hasn’t been the same since. So, an uninformed fan could write off his entire career as a huge bust and be mad - it’s wrong, but I get how they could.
But back to the Facebook jabroni above. This is the type of guy that rails on the Reds for signing players to long term contracts, while also bemoaning that the Reds never sign guys to long term contacts when they end up on other teams. He’s just the worst. But it got me thinking about the money paid to Homer, the value he’s provided to the Reds over the years and how that should be evaluated. Full disclosure, the info below is rudimentary, and I’m sure smarter baseball/analytic people over the years have found much better ways to evaluate money/value, etc., but this was an easy way for me to look at it, and should be simple enough for Facebook trolls to grasp as well.
I’m going to use fWAR since it values Homer more than bWAR and thus helps prove my point more. I hope that’s cool. According to Fangraphs, Homer has been worth 14.6 fWAR in his career. When his current contract is over, the Reds will have paid Homer ~$114 million over a span of 13 seasons (includes the $5m buyout for 2020). Seems like a lot of money - was he worth it?
On Fangraphs, I found an article that breaks down the estimated $/WAR for each year. Obviously there are caveats aplenty here as this refers to the open market value of WAR and there is some estimating going on, but I think it gives a nice baseline value for each year of Homer’s Reds career. Using those $/WAR estimates, as of today, Homer has been worth $103 million to the Cincinnati franchise (see below).
If you add in his 2018 ZIPS projection of 0.8 WAR, that number jumps to $111 million dollars worth of value the Reds are getting for their $114 million. And what about 2019? After all, if he’s still in Cincinnati, Homer has a chance to add to that WAR total – even a modest 0.3 WAR season in 2019 will put him over the $114 million mark. Say he bounces back and puts up something closer to 1-2 WAR seasons in ’18-’19, then you are talking about a reasonable surplus of value.
As I said above, I know this isn’t the most scientific or precise way to analyze value to a franchise, or the value of his specific 6 year contract, but when looking at the scope of his entire career, and the financial commitment the Reds made to him, I think it will end up about in line with open-market WAR estimates. Now, obviously, in an ideal situation, you are getting surplus value for your financial commitments, not paying full open market value, and there will really be no way to sugar coat his 6-year deal when all is said and done – he just lost too much time to injuries during that specific time period - but if you take a holistic view of his entire career in Cincinnati, Homer will have roughly been worth what the Reds paid him over the years. When you add in the no-no’s and the memories, I’d say the man has earned his money, if not the respect he deserves from Reds fans – now if he could just lasso and hog-tie a few of those Facebook jabronis for us, that would really add some value to the world!