Seymour Siwoff, the statistics maven who turned the Elias Sports Bureau into the place to go for exact information on teams and athletes for more than a half-century, died Friday. He was 99.
Siwoff owned Elias for more than 70 years before selling it to his grandson in March 2018. He started as an accountant in 1938 and purchased the company in 1952.
ESPN.com
Siwoff’s reluctance to share data as more people became interested in fantasy games and led to the rise of alternatives, starting with the Bill James Baseball Abstracts, which led to Project Scoresheet, STATS, Inc., and Sports Info Solutions.
A full World Series share worked out to $382,358.18 this season. The Washington Post details how many shares were awarded and how teams in general arrive at the number:
The number of people for the Nats: 61 full shares, 14.13 partial shares and two cash awards. That’s more shares than there are players, and that requires some explaining.
WashingtonPost.com
It’s a very good explanation of how the pot is generated, what teams get what percent, and how the players vote to distribute the money. What was new to me is that the players tend to vote before the post-season, before they know the level of money they receive. That allows them to be generous (or not) to staff members without the amount of money biasing the decision.
The Nationals declined Yan Gomes’s $9 million option earlier this month, but bring him back for two seasons at just slightly more then they would have paid for one.
Veteran catcher Yan Gomes has agreed to a two-year, $10 million deal to return to the World Series champion Washington Nationals, a source told ESPN’s Jeff Passan on Wednesday.
ESPN.com
The catching market appears to operate on a different scale than the rest of the free agent market. Gomes averaged 1.6 fWAR and 1.7 rWAR over the last three seasons. So a respectable guess for his WAR over the next two seasons is about three, which should be worth between $25 and $30 million for two seasons. Catchers, however, tend to fail in their early 30s, and that failure rate seems to take a huge hit off their earning power.
On this Thanksgiving I am grateful to all who read and comment on Baseball Musings. For eighteen seasons you helped make this site a joy to research and write. I’m also grateful that for half a century baseball brought me days and nights of great fun. It’s a game that appeals to me both emotionally and mathematically, making it easily my favorite sport.
Here is wishing all of you a wonderful day with your friends and family!
The Pirates complete their management overhaul by hiring Minnesota bench coach Derek Shelton. Shelton has a long history as a minor league manager and major league coach:
Ask those around the game about Shelton, and you’re going to get glowing reviews. He’s revered for his ability to communicate and command respect and also how effectively he’s able to straddle the line between new and old school.
“He’s just a tremendous person to do this job,” Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said. “This job entails a lot of different things, and he’s really good at all aspects. He’s a tremendous communicator. He’s wonderful with people. He’s got a very talented baseball mind, too.”
Post-Gazette.com
Due to the holiday, Shelton will not be introduced until next Wednesday. It sounds like Shelton is in the mold of Brian Snitker and Mike Shildt, men who were involved for a very long time in the game, but did not manage at the major league level. The Pirates hope Shelton is as successful as those two.
The Padres started their Thanksgiving feast early. They start the festivities with a trade, partnering with the Brewers.
In a deal first reported by MLB.com’s Jon Paul Morosi, the Brewers are getting 22-year-old Urias, left-handed starter Eric Lauer and a player to be named later or cash from the Padres for up-and-coming outfielder Trent Grisham and steady starter Zach Davies in a swap of clubs aiming to contend in 2020. The teams have not confirmed.
If the two deals come to fruition, the Padres receive minor league on-base machine Grisham. He posted a .376 OBP with a .415 slugging percentage in the minors, with great base stealing numbers. He should fit well at the top of the Padres batting order. Davies is a starter in his prime who pitches to contact, with averaging just 6.4 K per nine IP during his career.
Note that since the Padres play in a home park that limit power, both these players should do well. When power is limited, OBP becomes more important, and with a good defense behind Davies, especially on the left side of the infield, putting the ball in play should help. Davies did not see his home run rate increase in 2019, despite the record setting season for homers.
Lauer is just moving into his prime years. Right now, he has no weaknesses in terms of three true outcomes, but no great strengths either. If he can improve any of the three just a bit, he’ll be a useful third starter. There is good upside potential for the Brewers in Lauer.
Urias is even younger, entering his seasonal age 23 season. He was also an on-base machine in the minors, but has not reached that level in the majors yet. Again, the Brewers are getting a great deal of upside potential here, and players that they can control for a number of years.
Pomeranz worked out well as a reliever, as the Brewers transitioned him to that role after acquiring Pomeranz from the Giants. He posted a 15.4 K per 9, being able to throw as hard as he liked for an inning at a time. If the Padres decide to use an opener strategy, Pomeranz would do nicely, since he already knows how to prepare as a starter.
Will Brunson pitched ten seasons in the minors and reached the majors briefly. He died on Saturday, Nov. 23rd, of a sudden heart attack.
I am Will’s brother, John Brunson. We have had such an outpouring of love and support at the news of Will’s passing. Will left a lasting impression on everyone he met. Will grew up in Desoto, TX. He played baseball for Eastfield Juco and Southwest Texas State (Texas State) where he met his wife Dana Huneycutt. Will played many years of minor league baseball with the Reds, Dodgers, Tigers, A’s, and Angels; with some time in the Big Leagues with the Dodgers and Tigers.
GoFundMe.com
My thoughts go out to his family and friends.
Brunson was a AAAA pitcher. He did well in the minors, with a good ERA and decent three-true outcome numbers. He pitched poorly in his brief appearances in the majors, however, and never stuck.
The above link goes to a Go Fund Me page where you can donate to help his support his family.
More than 350 supporters and 50 celebrities joined David Ortiz at the Ritz-Carlton in Key Biscayne, Fla., for the Red Sox legend’s 12th annual David Ortiz Celebrity Golf Classic this past weekend. The event raised more than $2 million for the David Ortiz Children’s Fund.
Boston.com
There are plenty of photos at the link. Ortiz looks very good, as he did during his appearances during the post-season. A few months ago his life was on the line as a result of a shooting. We can all be thankful his recovery went so well.
In the decades following the Civil War, the emerging sport of baseball weaved itself into the broader fabric of Thanksgiving and American life. While the regular baseball season had long since ended, local businesses, athletic clubs, and neighborhood teams filled the void. The games often occurred alongside other activities like shooting contests, relay races, dog races, and other festival activities. Often they were part of charity events raising money for orphan and poor relief. In 1887, the Nassau Athletic Club in Brooklyn held its third annual charity “burlesque games” featuring a greased pig wrestling contest, a cranberry pie race, and a not-at-all-problematic baseball game between “Chinamen and colored men.”
In San Francisco, Californians celebrated Thanksgiving similarly to their brethren on the opposite coast. On November 24, 1887, San Francisco featured a host of theatrical performances, charity events, and “various other amusements, from peppering pigeons with leaden pellets and betting on horse races, to assisting in social exercises and responding to toasts.” The highlight of Thanksgiving, however, was a baseball showcase the city had never seen before.
THT.FanGraphs.com
Football as we know it would soon be invented, and of course it is a sport much more suited to the fall than baseball.
As you prepare for your fantasy team, the Musings Marcels are available for your use. Batting Marcels provide projections for all batters who played in 2020. Opposition Batting Marcels project how batters will hit against pitchers.
The Atlanta Braves signed catcher Travis d’Arnaud to a two-year, $16 million contract on Sunday, the team announced.
ESPN.com
Normally I look at the average three-year WAR when evaluating a contract, but since d’Arnaud basically did not play in 2018, he looks like a 1.5 WAR catcher. So $16 million for two years seems a bit high, even assuming $10 per WAR. Yasmani Grandal, signed a four year deal for well under his projected WAR. This could be an example of teams willing to go for a higher average annual salary for a shorter term deal.
David Laurila posts his Sunday Notes column at FanGraphs with a look at how the Tigers are ramping up their analytics department. I’m surprised it took the Tigers this long. One important aspect of this is building a bridge, as GM Al Avila notes:
“There are obviously some things that your average instructor, or pitching coach… those guys aren’t analysts,” said the GM. “Those guys don’t work with numbers. They work with human beings, so it’s more of, ‘Hey, here is what the numbers are telling us about this pitcher.’ [Wergiles] can be deciphering that to the coaches, so that they can make those adjustments with the pitchers.”
FanGraphs.com
The lag in analytics likely goes back to Dave Dombrowski’s time as GM. Dombrowski strikes me as a Pat Gillick type of talent evaluator. The two were extremely good at evaluating talent without a ton of numbers. If you look at how they build teams, one would assume they were crunching numbers as well as anybody, but they were able to do this in their head, rather than on a computer. Very few people have that kind of talent, so when they leave a club, it’s not easy for the next person to come in and continue the trend.
First, there is a number gaffe in Manfred’s statement given to Hardball Talk:
“The comments, the way the conversation actually went, as opposed to the way that it was spun: we invited the MLBPA to come forward with suggestions about midterm modifications that might address some of their concerns. In the meeting, Mr. Meyer suggested a series of changes that would turn the Basic Agreement back 50 years. I mean, essentially give back to the union everything we’ve achieved over the last few decades. “
MLB.NBCSports.com
This is the kind of gaffe that opponents of someone use to show that the speaker doesn’t know what’s going on, while supporters point out that people make mistakes when speaking aloud. With this kind of gaffe, the supporters of the person are almost always right. This one is extremely similar to the Barack Obama 57 states gaffe. If you listen to it, it’s very clear what happens is he starts to say he visited 50 states, but stops himself because he realizes that’s not true, he visited forty seven states. The forty, however, never comes out.
This what happened with Manfred. He meant 40 years. There is no way he meant going back to 1969, but 1979 was very different. Here is what free agency looked like in 1979, based on the agreement that took effect in 1976:
Players qualify for free agency after six years of service. Players whose 1976 contracts were unilaterally renewed (not signed by the player) become free agents after the season. (This group consists of 39 players, including Reggie Jackson, Joe Rudi, Ken Holtzman, Fred Lynn and Rollie Fingers.) Players with unsigned contracts for 1977 will become free agents after the 1977 season. Players with multi-year contracts may become free agents at the end of the next regular season, if they choose not to sign. A player entering the free-agent pool may negotiate with no more than 12 clubs (13 in 1977), which must have acquired the right to negotiate with him by selecting him in the re-entry draft. Clubs are limited in the number of free agents they may sign, based on the number of players in the free agent pool. However, a club may sign as many free agents as it loses in any one season.
Legacy.BaseballProspects.com
I could see where a re-entry draft might be interesting to the union, as clubs would be forced to state they are interested in a free agent. Then the union could rightly claim that a club that did not draft free agents wasn’t trying to win. I could also see the union maybe wanting the “unilaterally renewed” clause back in. In addition, salary arbitration came after two years of service.
So let’s just stipulate that Manfred said 50 years, but probably meant 40 years.
Which makes Rob Manfred’s stance during those talks somewhat surprising. Multiple sources briefed about what occurred in those talks told NBC Sports today that Manfred took an aggressive posture, telling the union that there is “not going to be a deal where we pay you in economics to get labor peace.” Manfred also told union representatives that, “maybe Marvin Miller’s financial system doesn’t work anymore.” Those briefed on Manfred’s comments requested anonymity because they were not permitted to share the details of July’s talks. Officials from the Major League Baseball Players Association declined comment.
Those briefed on Manfred’s comments tell NBC Sports that the impression left by them was that the league plans to take a hard line with the union and is unwilling to make any concessions on the numerous pocketbook issues about which the players are concerned, including tanking, the glacial pace of the free agent market, the Competitive Balance Tax, and qualifying offers.
MLB.NBCSports.com
The newer article gives Manfred’s view of the comments:
I asked, in response to his suggestion, what was in that deal for the clubs? He said, ‘Labor peace.’ The way the conversation actually went is I said to him, ‘Labor peace is a mutual benefit. It’s not something that you trade economics against. It is a mutual benefit it keeps the players working and getting paid and it keeps our business forward.’
To me, it seems like both sides are taking a rather hard line, but that’s what you are supposed to do in negotiations, especially this far out.
In the 1970s, and the 1980s, and even the 1990s, the union took advantage of owner stupidity. They took advantage of the misconception that players peaked at age 30, even though people like Bill James were pointing out that the peak was at age 27. They took advantage of the owners thinking that RBI and Wins were individual, not team statistics. They took advantage of the owners trying to keep the reserve system in place illegally, getting big rewards in the collusion settlement. They took advantage of big free agent signings putting people in the seats and a long run of different teams winning World Championships every year.
Then teams started hiring business professionals, not baseball people, to run their teams. They realized that big free agent contracts to players in their 30s were a waste of money. They realized that the most bang for their buck came from keeping a player in the minors until he was 23, signing him to a six year contract once he proved he could play in the majors, then letting him to when he became a free agent.
Players are worth more in their 20s than their 30s is the economics that is not going to change, even if the players go on strike. Marvin Miller’s system always had this flaw, but it took MLB 30 years to exploit it. If the MLBPA continues to cling to this system, they are as stupid as owners who clung to a reinstatement of the reserve clause, 30-year-old peaks, RBI, and Wins.
The union needs to move free-agency to an earlier point in a player’s career. Use seasons in the majors instead of service time. Put an age ceiling on the reserve clause, so players could be free agents after six seasons or their age 26 season, which ever comes first. Fight for no free agent compensation. Raise the minimum salary to $2 million. Lower the amount of time a player can spend in the minors before being eligible for the rule five draft. These make economic sense, and they also will be seen as fair requests by the public.
Maybe as a concession, the MLBPA might agree to limit the number of years on a free agent contract to four. That way, a team won’t be allowed to make a big mistake. Contract extensions, could be for as long as a team and player want, however. (That might quell critics of players who don’t their careers with a single team.)
It will be tough for the union. Owners are less dependent on the game for revenue that ever before. MLBAM, even the small stake the owners still hold, will keep them in the chips for a long time. Things have changed since the Beatles played Shea Stadium, where no one could hear them. Now Lady Gaga plays Fenway, and it’s an experience everyone enjoys. Teams are diversified. The players can’t really do diversification. Most have few talents beyond playing baseball.
So I see Manfred as issuing a wake-up call to Tony Clark. The current system is outdated, and trying to force MLB owners to act as they did in the past isn’t going to work. It’s time to try something new.
Evan White, the 17th overall pick in the 2017 draft, and the Mariners agreed to a six-year, $24 million deal with three options, according to multiple reports. MLB.com first reported the agreement. The deal can max out at $55.5 million if the options are exercised.
White spent the 2019 season with Class-AA Arkansas in the Texas League. No player at that level has ever received a long-term extension.
The contract is almost identical to the one Scott Kingery and the Philadelphia Phillies agreed to before the 2018 season. Both deals guaranteed $24 million over six years, but Kingery’s deal could max out a $65 million and he played a full season at the Triple-A level.
USAToday.com
Without looking at the play, my first thought was the Mariners must believe he’ll be pretty good, as they would probably wind up paying over $30 million in his six year prior to free agency. With the three option years, they would lock in his prime age seasons.
Having looked at his statistic in the minors, however, I wonder what the Mariners are thinking. He hit .296/.361/.471 in his three minor league seasons. That’s a good line for a major league player, but for a 22-23 year old at A and double A ball, I’m not impressed. I’m less impressed given that 2019 saw a big jump in home runs with the minors using the major league ball.
This guy is a first baseman. I don’t care how good he is with the glove, first basemen need to hit. Take 10% off that slash line and he’s at .266/.325/.425, and he’s nothing special. The Mariners may indeed know something I don’t, but White seems like the kind of player who is as likely to fizzle out after two seasons as he is to play six solid ones.
A manager isn’t moving pawns on a board when he makes make a pitching change; he’s rolling dice. No baseball decision is guaranteed success or failure. Baseball, ultimately, isn’t a strategy game. It wasn’t designed to be. It’s designed to be random chaos, a push-your-luck gamble where the best team doesn’t always win, and baseball is so much better for it.
THT.FanGraphs.com
A manager’s job, when it comes to strategy, is to put his players in situations where they have a high probability of success. Baseball is not a zero strategy game, but good strategies can fail at inopportune moments. I do love it when a replay of a hit reveals that the pitcher executed a good pitch, but the batter just executed a better swing.
“Unlike last year around this time, where the market was kind of completely nonexistent, this year was just slightly different,” Grandal said. “It seemed like there were several teams that were working hard within their limits to be able to compete. There were several teams that were really interested. The one thing that kind of stood out the most for me is the White Sox. I love their professionalism, their preparation and the direction of the program.”
ESPN.com
The White appear to have gotten a deal. Grandal averaged 4.7 WAR over the last three seasons. Projecting him to a 4.7 WAR in 2020, with a 10% decrease each of the next three seasons puts him at 16 WAR for the contract, or about $4.5 million per WAR. I thought the going rate was somewhere between $8 million and $10 million per WAR.
Of course, Grandal is a catcher, and catchers over the age of 30 can decline rapidly. If $9 million is the going rate, then the White Sox might be expecting him to come in closer to eight WAR.
Grandal should be a good catcher for the pitching staff, as well as providing a nice bat at what is usually a low offense position. American League catchers in 2019 posted a .230/.296/.403 slash line. Grandal posted a .380 OBP in 2019.
This deal could work out extremely well for the White Sox, as Grandal’s relatively low salary gives the team plenty of room to maneuver.
Ellsbury injured an oblique muscle in his right side early during spring training in 2018, developed a bad back and had hip surgery on Aug. 6 to repair a torn labrum in his left hip. He experienced plantar fasciitis in his right foot during his rehab program before spring training this year.
StarTribune.com
If the Yankees are going to pay him not to play, they might as well get a useful player onto the roster. Teams make this move rarely.
“He had a great career,” said former University of Minnesota athletic director Tom Moe, who was a high school teammate of Johnson’s. “He was a great guy. Enthusiastic and he loved baseball. He was two years ahead of me at Edina. He was so good with young guys like me. As a high school baseball player, he was a can’t-miss.”
Moe and Johnson were teammates on Edina’s 1954 baseball team, which finished third at the state tournament. Shortly after the tournament, Johnson signed a contract with the Detroit Tigers.
StarTribune.com
My thoughts go out to his friends and family.
There is a very nice story in the obituary about Johnson’s heroics in the first game at RFK Stadium (then Columbia Stadium). He peaked early, his best years coming from seasonal age 25 to 27, but was only a full time players in 1962, his age 26 year.
Parra’s three year fWAR average stands at 0.6 WAR. So a major league team would likely have paid him $5 million to $6 million for a season. If Japan tops that, maybe that league is finally doing what I’ve wanted them to do for years, start poaching North American free agents.
It’s also possible that Parra wants to play every day. Given the Japanese fans group cheering tradition, the Baby Shark song will be played everytime he goes to the plate, home or away.
I’m now waiting for one of the players who rejected the qualifying offer, but who is on the edge of that value, to head for Japan.
The Daytona Tortugas issued this statement in response to MLB placing them on the list of teams to lose their MLB affiliation:
It is good that the team will do “everything humanly possible” to keep the team playing. I hope that includes forming an independent, competitive league. With 42 teams contracted, there should be plenty of good players available.
In the model, each vote is determined by two things: the player’s actual value, and the “perceptual error” of the voter, resulting from the voter’s bias and from gaps in his information or gaps in his understanding. Since the perceptual error can be either positive or negative, with an increase in the number of voters it trends toward an average of zero. Thus, as more voters are added, the ratio of actual value to perceptual error increases, and the voting outcomes become more reliable.
If the proposal carries, the teams themselves will not immediately be folded. They can still exist, and “would be welcome to join a lower-quality Dream League populated largely by undrafted and released players.” However, as one official put it in the New York Times, this would be a “death sentence” for the minor league clubs. The Tigers and SeaWolves, along with many of the other 40 teams on the list, would be hard-pressed to stay afloat financially without the support of their major league affiliate.
BlessYouBoys.com
The minor leagues sold their souls to the majors leagues a long time ago. Rather than staying independent and competing with the majors for talent, they took the money from the majors to develop talent and became just a showcase for future stars, rather than a group of competitive organizations. If the minors really don’t like this deal, then abandon the majors. Where are all the prospects going to play? Start signing youngsters as free agents. At this point, MLB is paying low draft choices so little that the minors might attract decent talent. Sell your teams as trying to win with talent, not trying to develop talent.
Yes, many teams would fold, but that’s what should have happened 100 years ago. There would have been the majors leagues, but right under them would have been an excellent 16 team AAA league. Teams could sell players to the highest bidder in the majors when they felt it would improve the club.
On top of that, the successful franchises could show MLB where the next expansion would work, and the franchise would already be in place.
It won’t happen. The owners of the minor league teams like the situation where they put a cheap product on the field and get paid by the major leagues. I doubt 42 teams will get cut. MLB now is good at asking big and taking incremental improvements (see pace of place negotiations). Unless the minors are as willing to ask big, however, MLB will win this fight and keep pushing for more control in every subsequent negotiation.
Goldstein, who did not return a message seeking comment, wrote in the email: “One thing in specific we are looking for is picking up signs coming out of the dugout. What we are looking for is how much we can see, how we would log things, if we need cameras/binoculars, etc. So go to game, see what you can [or can’t] do and report back your findings.”
ESPN.com
It’s the camera comment that’s problematic. No one would complain if a scout picked up on a sign from the dugout. Aiming a camera at the dugout is a different story.
In information theory, the concept of entropy deals with the number of bits needed to encode a language. Morse code provides a nice example of this, as a bit is represented by a dot or a dash, and four bits can represent all letters in the alphabet.
The entropy for the sign language used by teams should be pretty low. On offense, managers are calling for takes, swings, hold the base, steal a base, hit and runs, bunts, etc. To make the language tougher to understand, teams add noise. Watch the third base coach go through signs, and you will discover that most of the movements he makes are superfluous. There are two bits that matter; the indicator, which conveys that the real sign is coming, and the actual sign itself.
This is the kind of problem that an AI algorithm should handle well. Imagine the Astros get a feed from the opposing dugout for a three-game series. They code each set of signs with the outcome, then train an AI with that information. I suspect they’ll be able to figure out that the nose touch followed by the hand clap is the steal sign.
There are humans who are good at this, but they need to see lots of examples. Opposing teams can change things around, but they can’t do that too often, or their own players will miss the signs. That’s why MLB rightly bans electronic spying on teams. It’s too easy with the algorithms today to figure out what is going on in the other dugout.
New York Supreme Court Justice Joel M. Cohen wrote in a decision issued Thursday that MASN should pay the Nationals the $296.8 million recommended by the panel, minus rights fees MASN already has paid for that five-year period. Cohen said the clerk of the court should calculate interest on the net amount from April 15 through the date the remaining money is paid.
ESPN.com
Note the Nationals received about $200 million of that during the time period. That might help them keep one of their star free agents.
The Athletic, citing sources, reported that Beltran (the primary designated hitter on the 2017 Astros) and Alex Cora (then Houston’s bench coach and now Boston’s manager) played a key role in devising the illegal sign-stealing system that their former pitcher Mike Fiers and sources revealed to The Athletic. In that system, The Athletic reported, the Astros are alleged to have used a center-field camera relayed to a monitor near the dugout to steal signs in real time.
NYPost.com
Will MLB suspend Carlos Beltran and Cora if the charges prove true? Beltran’s managerial career might be over before it started, and Cora’s 2018 World Championship might be a bit tainted.
He died at 94 on Friday at his home in Carlsbad, Calif., his grandson Casey Ayala said.
Noren was best remembered for his All-Star season in 1954, when he led the Yankees in hitting with a .319 average. He tied Nellie Fox of the Chicago White Sox that year for third place in the A.L. batting race, behind Bobby Avila, the pennant-winning Cleveland Indians’ second baseman, at .341, and Minnie Minoso of the White Sox at .320.
NYTimes.com
My thoughts go out to his family and friends.
Noren did a good job getting on base, with a career .348 mark. He did not hit for power, however, his best season being his rookie year of 1950. His best season in terms of WAR was his 1954 campaign.
Lynn, you see, was a cautionary tale that Jake Odorizzi heeded in his deliberations about whether to accept the one-year qualifying offer from the Twins.
“I didn’t want to be sitting on my couch come February because of some teams not wanting to lose a draft pick,” Odorizzi said Friday, the day after he put off his free agency for a year in order to escape the draft-pick penalty that bidders would have to pay to sign him this winter. Lynn, burdened by the same restriction two winters ago, never found a multiyear deal to his liking, finally agreed to a one-year deal with the Twins in mid-March 2018, and underachieved in four months in Minnesota before being unloaded to the Yankees in a July trade.
“I think if you asked Lance, not having spring training really hindered him that year,” Odorizzi said of his former teammate. “And look what he did this year after having a [long-term] contract and being back on a normal [training camp schedule].” In 2019, Lynn won 16 games for Texas and finished fifth in AL Cy Young Award voting.
StarTribune.com
I think Odorizzi made a mistake here. Lynn was coming off a poor year with the Cardinals. Odorizzi is coming off a fine year with the Twins, probably the best of his career at 4.3 fWAR. If he regresses back to his typical 2+ WAR season, he probably leaves money on the table.
