Monday, October 13, 2008

Getting to Sheets' price the hard way

I started reading this one from TheHardballTimes, and it brought me back to my stats classes back in undergrad pretty quickly. Let's just say that if you are not a fan of these "new fangled stats" such as WAR and PECOTA projections, and have no idea if a risk-adverse curve is concave or convex, just skip it.

However, if you want to check out a very thoughtful and unemotional analysis to player values and how they project to free agent prices, definitely go read it.

So what should Sheets get on the free agent market? Well, the risk seeking team in this example values Sheets as a 3.2 WAR player, which would be worth about $16 million for a one year contract. Using Tom Tango's salary scale, Sheets should get around a four- or five-year contract for $55 of $65 million, assuming a team doesn't sign him for over five years.
Of course, emotions ARE a major part of these things and who knows which skittish owner/GM, having missed out on the other free agent pitchers, decides to overbid for fear of doing nothing? I'd add the "OS" variable into their equations, which relates to the "oh sh*t" factor. An "OS" of more than 6.35 indicates a likelihood to overpay beyond rational boundaries. [Note: If the Yanks are indeed involved, the "OS" is pegged at 8.24 automatically as a starting point.]

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