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Players are aware that a big walk year will increase their value on the open market and thus fatten their wallets. Free agent contracts now run as high as nine figures, and major league ballplayers know they have a limited career window. It makes sense that they'll employ a little extra focus and time -- in batting cages, on the mound, or in the gym -- during that walk season. Their performance that year could mean the difference between a set-for-life contract or one that simply tables the same pressures for a few years. Players have every self-interested economic reason under the sun to be at their best when free agency looms.
Take Adrian Beltre for example. In 1994, the Dodgers were pursuing the most hotly coveted talents ever to come out of the Dominican Republic. They signed Beltre to what they believed was an allowable contract. A few years later, his agent Scott Boras discovered that his client had been signed at the age of sixteen -- too young by Major League standards. As a result, Boras wanted Beltre to be declared a free agent. Commissioner Bud Selig ruled that Beltre would remain Dodger property but that the organization had to suspend its scouting operation in the Dominican Republic for a year. The Player's Association fild a grievance on behalf of Beltre, again seeking free agency for him. The Association dropped its claim after the Dodges inked a lucrative three-year contract.
A regular by the age of nineteen, Beltre possessed a broad base skills that led the Dodgers to believe he was a future star: At twenty-one, he batted .290, drew 56 walks, with 52 extra-base hits in 138 games. But his production went down from 2001-2003, and the word "bust" began to surface when people spoke of him. Beltre's on-base percentage over those three seasons barely topped .300. His best slugging average during the same time period was .426, a serviceable figure for a third baseman but hardly the stuff of superstars.
In 2004, however, Beltre broke out: He posted stats of a batting average of .334/on-base percentage of .388/ and a .629 slugging percentage. He also hit 48 HRs while flashing gold-glove defense. Coincidentally, the 2004 season was also his walk year. Beltre opted for free agency; executives and observers around the league pondered whether it was wise to pay him base on his 2004 performance. On the one hand, his numbers that season were wildly out of step with the rest of his career. On the other hand, many in the game had long predicted great things of Beltre -- perhaps he was finally realizing his potential.
The Seattle Mariners lured Beltre in. They lavished him with a five-year contract worth $64 million. Coupled with the arrival of Richie Sexson, Beltre was supposed to restore winning baseball back to Seattle. But while Sexson had a big year, Beltre and the Mariners didn't. The team went 69-93; Beltre's production crashed to a line of a .256 batting average/.304 on-base percentage/.414 slugging percentage. That was WORSE than his cumulative pre-2004 numbers -- if it hadn't been for a midseason hot streak, it could have been a lot uglier.
The cynical explanation was that Beltre, out of brazen selfishness, willfully ramped up his production in 2004 to inflate his market value. Then once he grabbed his multiyear, guaranteed contract, he indolently regressed to form. The less cynical explanation is that, as a matter of happenstance, Beltre's career year AND his walk year occurred at the same time.
In any isolated case where a player experiences a walk-year spike, there's NO WAY to answer the question of motive and causation. A quandry I CAN tackle, though, is whether players tend to perform better in walk years than they do in seasons preceeding or following their entry into the free agent market. To do this, I'll use a Baseball Prospectus statistic called Wins Above Replacement Player (WARP). WARP measures the number of wins a player contibutes above what a fringe Triple-A veteran would produce, while also accounting for defense. Using WARP, I'll compare the walk years of 212 prominent free agents from 1976-2000 with their immediate pre- and postwalk seasons.
In each table, column "WY" stands for walk-year. That will be the average WARP for all the aformentioned players in their walk years; "WY -1" will be the average WARP for those players in seasons immediately preceeding their walk years; and "WY +1" will be the average WARP in the seasons immediately following their walk years.
Based on the results, it does appear that players experience a cumalative performance spike in their walk years -- a 9.4 percent uptick in WARP, to be specific. Of course, before I draw any firm conclusions from these stats, there's a matter of age to consider. Using the same pool of 212 players, let's look at the average for players in their walk years, before and follwoing their walk years (Table 1.2)
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Table 1.2 Average Age, 1976-2000, Top Free Agents
WY --- 31 WY -1 --- 30 WY +1 --- 32
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These 212 players average thirty years of age in their prewalk seasons, thirty-one in their walk seasons, and thrity-two in their post walk seasons. Studies by baseball's most famous sabermetrician Bill James and other researchers show that a player most often hits his peak between the ages of 25-29. That makes the walk year in this study further removed from their prime territory than PREwalk year. In other words, age does not explain the walk years' performance discrepancy.
Let's take a closer look. Table 1.3 shows the percentages of players who peaked in WY, WY-1, WY+1.
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Table 1.3 Percent of Players Peaking in Walk Year, Before, or After, 1976-2000, Top Free Agents
According to this table, players: 1. Perform better in their walk years.
2. Do so at an age that does NOT lend itself to peaking, and...
3. Perform better in their walk years than they do in their pre- or postwalk seasons.
Whether this phenomenon is a function of accident, unconsious design, or willful self-interest is impossible to say, but the trend in manifest. Of course, WARP is a measure that's dependent, to some extent on playing time. It's possible to put up better rate numbers (AVG, OBP, SLG, ERA) than another player but to have a less valuable season because of a playing-time deficit. After all, a player who slugs .550 in 250 plate appearances is less valuable than someone who slugs .510 in 600 plate appearances. WARP is a stats like it reflect this fact. As such, it's possible that players, merely soldier on, playing through minor injuries and fatigue that might sidelined them in other seasons. Table 1.4 explores whether that's the case for these same 212 players.
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Table 1.4 Average Games Played/Pithced in Walk Year, Before, or After, 1976-2000, Top Free Agents
WY --- 89.2 WY-1 --- 82.9 WY+1 --- 84.4
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Indeed, players do play or pitch in more games in their walk years, by a margin of 6.3 over their prewalk seasons and 4.8 over their postwalk seasons. The bump in playing time explains away part of the walk year WARP advantage, but, in light of what we learned about average age and the degree of the WARP edge, it's not enough to nullify the trend completely.
If anything, these data should make organizations even more cautious on the free agent market. Baseball's economic structure is such that players do not become free agents until after six seasons of major league service. Often, this means they hit the open market after their prime seasons are behind them. Also to be considered are the corollary costs of signing a prominent free agent. If a player has been offered salary arbitration by his former team and is a free agent ranked by the Elias Sports Bureau that year, then the team signing him must forfiet -- depending on the player's rankings -- on or two high draft picks to his former team. A team that regularly fritters away compensatory draft picks will inevitably thin out its farm system. Doing so, or course, exacts a cost down the road. Signing free agents who have been offered arbitration is even more costly than the contract years and dollars would lead you to believe. The upshot is that organizations had BETTER be damn sure they've got the right guy.
Regardless of what a player has done in the past, teams need a dispassionate evaluation of what a player will do in the coming seasons. This means taking into account not only the player's age but also the context of his previous performances.
In the winter of 1999, the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, going only into their third season of existence and seeking to make a splash on the free agent market, signed outfeilder Greg Vaughn to a four-year contract worth $34 million. What the Rays saw was a player who tallied 94 HRs in the previous two seasons. What they SHOULD'VE seen was a 34 year-old who was slow on foot, defensively challenged, and blundered with "old player" baseball skills (hits for power and draws a lot of walk, but little else). The result was one of several D-Ray free agency disasters.
In Vaughn's first season in Tampa, he posted a line of a .245 batting average/.365 on base percentage/.499 slugging percentage, roughly even with his .245/.347/.535 performance in the previous season; but his HR total plunged, from 45 in 1999 to 28 in 2000. The next season, Vaughn hit .233/.333/.433 with 24 HRs; his .433 SLG was the worst showing among all regular designated hitters that season. The following year, Vaughn, making a career-high $8.75 million, reached new depths.Injuries limited him to 69 games. Mercifully so, given his horrific .163/.286/.315 performance -- numbers that, on a per-plate apperance basis, made him one of the worst hitters in all of baseball that season. In spring training 2002, Vaughn scuffled once again, and the Rays cut him, eating the $9.25 million he was owed that season. After a brief 22-game dalliance with the Rockies in 2003, Vaughn was out of baseball for good.
The most precipitous drop from a walk year to the season immediately following was experienced by Nick Esasky. In 1983, Esasky replaced an aging Johnny Bench as the third baseman for the Cincinati Reds. In 1985, he enjoyed a breakout season of sorts, hitting 21 HRs in 125 games. In December 1988, the Redds dealt Esasky to the Boston Red Sox as part of a five-player trade. Fenway Park is a great environment for right-handed power hitters, and accordingly, Esasky thrived in his lone season in Boston. For the 1989 season, Esasky, by then a full-time first baseman, sloggued .500, totaled more than 60 extra-baseb hits, and drew 66 walks. From his performance that season, the Atlanta Braves signed the twenty-nine year-ol d Esasky to a three-year contract worth $5.6 million.
Once you adjust for the tendencies of Fenway, in what was then a moderate era for offense, Esasky's work in 1989 was not impressive considering the high offensive bar for first baseman. On the road that season, Esasky hit .253/.331/.459; at Fenway, he hit .300/.379/.541. In fact, Esasky, in the context of park and league, had never been anything special with the bat. However, failing to leaven his numbers in Boston, the Braves overvalued Esasky.
What happened, however, NO amount of statistical correction could have predict. Not long after Opening Day in 1990, Esasky developed an inner-ear infection that eventually resulted in a debilitating case of vertigo. Esasky's malady caused him unrelenting dizziness, which obviously wouldn't allow him to play baseball. The 9 games he played for the Braves in April were the final 9 games of his career. An insurance policy covered the remainder of his contract. On the Wins Above Replacement Player (WARP) front, Esasky went from a walk-year mark of 7.2 to a 1990 WARP of -0.4
You can make a compelling case that no multiyear, hig-dollar free agent contract tendered to a first baseman has turned out to be a wise decision. That's mostly because first baseman, as a species, do not tend to be athletic and don't age well. The Angeles, for example, were in love with Mo Vaughn's resume -- which included the 1995 MVP Award and a 1998 walk year in where his batting average was .337/on base percentage of .402/slugging percentage of .591. Those stats came with 40 HRs that year. The Angeles signed him to a massive six-year deal worth $80 million. The Angels, like many other teams hungry for a slugging first baseman, were willing to overlook Vaughn's age (he was 31 when he signed the contract); his huge, cumbersome physique; and his decidedly old-player skills. After a respectable but injury-shortened 1999 in which he hit .298/.353/.508, his numbers dropped further the next season. Dumped on the Mets in exchange for Kevin Appier's albatross contract, Vaughn slipped to .259/.349/.456 in 2002 -- a solid result for a low-priced shortstop but a catastrophe for a first baseman making more than $17 million that year: he played just 27 games in 2003, then scummbed into injury and never played again; he pocketed $34.3 million for the 2003 and 2004 seasons.
The list of disatrous free-agent first baseman contracts goes on and on. The five-year, $85 million contract extention the Astros gave Jeff Bagwell after the 2001 season also became a boondoggle when age and a degenrating right shoulder curtailed Bagwell's production, then forced him to miss huge chunks of time. On the Astros' 2005 playoff roster more out of ceremony than anything else, Bagwell had cost the Astros nearly $20 million dollars last year. Where is he now?
Jim Thome and Jason Giambi -- also barrel-chested slugging first baseman on the wrong side of thirty -- looked as if they would be exceptions to the free-agent first-baseman trap early in their megadeals with the Phillies and Yankees. Injuries and other ailments have all but assured a nasty endeing for both. Though Carlos Delgado fared well in year one of his four-year, $52 million contract, it's hard to like his odds of sustained stardom as he turns thirty-five and thirty-six over his next couple of years.
In 2011, we should see a team throwing tens of millions of dollars too much to Ryan Howard.
Not all high-dollar free agent contracts culminate so grimly, though. In the winter of 1992, Barry Bonds was one of the most feverishly pursued free agents in history. He was coming off a season in which his batting average was .311/on base percentage .456/slugging .624, along with 75 extra base hits, drew 127 walks, stole 39 bases, claimed his third straight Gold Glove in left, and won his second MVP Award for the division-winning Pirates. In terms of the Wins Above Replacement Player formula (WARP), Bonds's 1992 season was the best of his career to that point, a league leading mark of an extra 12.9 wins compared to what a theoretical triple-A veteran would have produced. (assuming he played left field in the same number of games).
Bonds signed a six-year, $43.75 million contract -- the richest in baseball at that time -- with the SAn Francisco Giants.
Over the next twelve seasons as a Giant, Bonds would become the first player in history to steal 500 bases AND hit 500 home runs -- after becomeing the first player to steal 400 bases and hit 400 home runs. He would win five more MVP Awards; lead his team to the World Series, and on the verge of breaking Hank Aaron's record for most home runs hit in a career.
The Giants did several things right:
1. They got a player who, at age twenty-eight, was young relative to other six-year free agents.
2. They got a player whose skills -- an ability to hit for average, broad-based power indicators, speed on the bases, high walk totals in tandem with low strikeout totals, and excellence with the glove -- figured to hold up over time and argured a promising aging curve.
3. They signed a player who, in every sense of the word, was an elite proformer. Even with modest age-related decline, Bonds would still be among the best in the game. It just so happened that his finest seasons were yet to come.
In four of his next twelve seasons, Bonds would beat his former career-high VORP (value over replacement player); only twice over that span did he dip below the 10-WARP mark.
In the case of Adrian Beltre, the age was right, but the established record of performance was not. In the cases of Greg Vaughn and Mo Vaughn, each had been a consistent high-level performer, but both were old, with old player skills. In Bonds's case, all signs pointed to success.
My final words:
By knowing the age at which players begin to decline, keeping a player's recent performance in context, valuing skills that tend to be maintained over time, and being aware that the walk-year performance spike is OFTEN a genuine phenomenon, organizations cam make better desicions on the free-agent market. Otherwise, they're fucked.
Take a look at the closer The Angels have. He's having, by far, the best year of his career. Oh yea ... he's also a free agent at the end of this season. Again, the trend continues. I think it's more than coincidental that his best year and is contract year are occuring at the same time.
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