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How Much Did the 2022 Mets Pay For A Win?

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Brad Penner-USA TODAY Sports

What truly is an MVP?

  • Is it the player who provided the most overall value to an individual team?
  • The player who displayed the most prowess on a playoff-bound club?
  • The player who rewrote the history books?
  • Or is it the player who simply added the most value to his team’s win total, with respect to the club’s payroll?

For small-market teams, it might be the latter.

“Most Valuable Player” is a convoluted term.

Michael Lewis’ infamous novel Moneyball turned the term on its head. The novel, rather infamously, chronicled the story of the 2002 Oakland Athletics, the team that disrupted the model of how baseball teams are built.

In the book, the duo of Billy Beane and Paul DePodesta, the latter of whom eventually worked for the Mets under Sandy Alderson, applied economic theory to optimize player valuation. Their objective to value a win by analyzing previously-unapplied metrics, resonated with small-market teams with limited funds.

During the 2001-2002 offseason, Jason Giambi and Johnny Damon, two of the Athletics’ most prolific hitters the past season, left the club, pivoting to greener pastures (and more greenbacks) elsewhere.

Despite running a payroll of 85 million dollars less than the Yankees, the 2002 Athletics rolled off a 103-win season, including a historic 20-game win streak, resulting in an AL West division title. Their top-salaried player, Jermaine Dye, earned $7.16 million, the 71st-highest mark among Major League players that season.

Despite a team-wide salary exceeding just over $40 million, the 2022 Athletics paid $388,389 per win, the most efficient mark in the Majors that season.

The experiment of the 2002 Athletics proved to be the foundation of the “sabermetric revolution,” a period of cataclysmic change that has shaped the sport. Instead of purely judging a player on past performance, analysts took into consideration a variety of factors to predict not only what a player is, but what a player could evolve into. This shift in philosophy drove teams to invest in more analytical-friendly infrastructure to support their baseball operations staff, a movement that Mets owner Steve Cohen has supported.

In his introductory press conference 18 years later, Steve Cohen talked about modeling his team after the Los Angeles Dodgers, implying that a continuation of the standard that the Athletics set would continue in Queens.

I’m curious about applying one of the Athletics’ approaches to the 2022 Mets: How much did they pay for a win?

In 2021, the Mets’ payroll sat at $203 million. The club won 77 games, missing the playoffs for the fifth consecutive season. After a frenzied offseason, which was highlighted by the record-breaking signing of Max Scherzer (and notably not Steven Matz), the club’s payroll shot up to $282 million, the highest mark in baseball.

Overall, the team spent $2.8 million per regular-season win. That Million-Per-Win metric ranked third in the Majors, only behind the Philadelphia Phillies and the Boston Red Sox.

It is interesting to note that five of the top 10 teams failed to reach the playoffs in 2022. The Angels, White Sox, Red Sox, and Rangers all had hopes of a playoff berth entering the season. The Rangers, in particular, invested heavily in the 2021-2022 free-agent market. The club spent upwards of half a billion dollars on Corey Seager, Marcus Semien, and Jon Gray, but to no avail. Meanwhile, the Washington Nationals’ post-title euphoria influenced signings during that winter that are tracking to be among the decade’s worst.

Breaking it down to a more granular level, we’re able to see which player contributed the most value, with respect to his salary. To calculate this figure, I compared the player’s WAR with his salary. For players who were acquired midseason or rotated through the Majors and Minors, I adjusted their salary and contributions to account for the time they were on the Major-League roster. Players with a 0.0 WAR or lower were unable to be calculated.

Please note that I used the Adjusted Salary metric on Spotrac to calculate the following:

Fan-favorite Daniel Vogelbach took the crown in this regard, with David Peterson, Jeff McNeil, Colin Holderman, and Luis Guillorme rounding out the top five. Notice that Vogelbach, Peterson, Holdermann, and Guillorme all fall in the pre-arbitration salary category; this jives with the theory that pre-arbitration players are some of the most undervalued assets in sports. We’ll delve more into that later.

Trevor May and his  $77 million per WAR bring up the rear, followed by James McCann, Seth Lugo, Max Scherzer, and Jacob deGrom. May, inked to a two-year, $15.5 million deal during the 2020-2021 offseason, fought through an injury-ravaged campaign, accruing a total of 0.1 fWAR. That’s certainly a detriment to this study; it includes only counting stats, not taking into account any time spent on the IL.

The below visualizes a player’s WAR, compared to his salary.

Although Scherzer and deGrom both rank poorly in this metric, that’s simply the cost of signing free agents. Rarely do free-agent signings reflect an exact quantifiable of the player’s value. For some teams, some players who finished in the red are a luxury that they are unable to afford (Looking at you, Rays).

It should be stated that this analysis is less of a conundrum for the current Mets ownership. As seen with the May 2022 release of Robinson Cano, this ownership group is willing to eat sunk costs in order to produce a better on-the-field product. Max Scherzer isn’t likely to be worth  $43 million a year in a pure million-per-WAR metric, but his on-field temperament, HOF resume, and grandeur showed the Mets were ready to win.

The chart below visualizes each player’s Million-per-WAR, categorizing each player by their contract type. The Mets’ arbitration and pre-arbitration players (color) are concentrated on the left side of the chart.

Jeff McNeil, Brandon Nimmo, and Pete Alonso represent the red data points in the upper left quadrant. At a combined $17.4 million, the trio produced 15.3 WAR, a fantastic mark considering their price point.

Some teams, like the Rays, have eschewed the free-agent market in order to build their roster with players who are still in arbitration and pre-arbitration. And arguably, if payroll is limited, that’s an intelligent move.

While the Rays have received much flak for trading away club leaders as their arbitration number increased, their payroll situation doesn’t give the club much choice, assuming they have a suitable replacement lined up.

The May 2021 trade of Willy Adames fit that billing. The Rays’ clubhouse was reportedly crushed by the move, viewing Adames as a leader among the players. From a financial perspective, Adames was about to enter arbitration. Instead, the Rays opted for similar production at a more efficient price point, from the über-talented Wander Franco.

While the Mets shouldn’t go scorched Earth like the Rays, it stands to reason that growing the team through improving the farm system is the prudent approach. A few of the Mets’ top farmhands, like Francisco Alvarez, Brett Baty, and Mark Vientos, spent time on the Major League roster last season. The team’s future success will hinge on if they can live up to their high  expectations. After a strong 2022 draft, the club’s farm system is certainly on the upswing.

Spending through free agency can help complement a strong farm system, but free agency shouldn’t be used as a fill-in to support an underwhelming farm system. All in all, small-market teams are forced to be efficient with their cost-controlled players, but having an owner with deep pockets allows for more flexibility in creating a 26-man roster.

Data via Fangraphs and Spotrac

Visuals Provided By Matt Mancuso: Github link

The post How Much Did the 2022 Mets Pay For A Win? first appeared on Metsmerized Online.

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