For example, the Mets will probably loose Murphy this off season. They have a few fair pitchers with a year or two left.

If Kang doesn’t project to be healthy early by early (like first month) of the season then you keep Walker until he is. Then gamble that a contender will need a consistent second basemen at the deadline where Walker’s value may go up again.. well atleast to that team 🙂 hopefully by that time Hanson is finally ready to make the MLB jump.

Great points across the board. That said, I’m very big on both adding and subtracting at the major league both on competitive and non competitive teams. In fact, I think it’s essential for teams, large or small market, to do this effectively in order extend their competitive window beyond a single core group of players. You have to move some valuable pieces at peak value while keeping others during their useful playing years. They succeeded in doing moving Travis Snider and Joel Hanrahan at the right times, but may have actually waited too long on Walker to get the kind of return fans will expect for him.

The reason I mentioned the GM’s and whom they might follow was b/c I remember reading that certain teams didn’t have a analytics dept. So I assumed that they would just got the numbers off a reputable website that did the leg work for them when needed.

Thanks again for your time.

Steve and I worked on prospect values together and we went with $6.5M. Steve, himself, chose to go more conservative at $6M/WAR. There’s no “consensus” out there, as Fangraphs tracks it even higher. I read one time that Mark Shapiro, while with the Indians, put it closer to $10M/WAR — which is insane.

The agreement between Fangraphs and BRef is on “replacement level value”. However, the two sides differ in the basis-of-calculation. FG uses FIP for pitcher WAR while Bref uses Runs Allowed (ER and Unearned). For hitters, it is defense — FG uses UZR, Bref uses Total Zone.

Each front office uses their own in-house proprietary metric, I would presume, to calculate player worth. I imagine that the gulf between “citizen’s WAR” and “front office WAR” is not that substantial, perhaps with better defensive metrics.

Two GM’s don’t get that deep in the weeds on if a guy is a 2 WAR or 2.5 WAR player — if they want a deal, the difference is close enough they hammer it out.

I love your website. I will admit I’m a Yankees fan but have been following the Pirates ever since G. Cole spurned the Yankees and went back into the draft (God that still hurts) 🙂 I came across your website after seeing a link on MLB Trade Rumors for an article in July on The Fallacy of Prospects. I have been coming back at to the site ever since.

I have a couple follow up questions and just so you know I’m still wet behind the ears with the analytic side.

In your response you used 6.5m per 1 WAR as does the link for prospect values, but in this article Steve uses 6.0m per 1 WAR how do you get the different numbers? Doesn’t this effect the valuation of prospects?

Also in the article “How much an mlb prospect is worth” you said that Fangraphs and Baseball Reference came to an agreement on WAR, but when I was looking at WAR on BR and ESPN they had the WAR for Betances at 3.7 and 3.8. I know you guys use FanGraph but what do the GM’s use?

If your Huntington and I’m Cashman and you use FanGraph and I use Baseball-Reference we’d never come to a deal because we both value players differently.

That’s 8 WAR at $6.5M/WAR for $52M of production.
Since he’s a setup man and doesn’t (yet) have a bunch of shiny, arb-friendly saves, he’s still graded as a middle reliever. However, his ERA and counting stats are so gaudy that it may not matter. I’m comfortable putting him on a $5M/$7.5M/$10M scale for his arb years. That’s a total of $22.5M (plus $500K for 2016) for $23M of salary.

That gives $29M of surplus value. Of course, there’s tons of combinations you can come up with from our chart in the article, but you could be looking at:
Hitter #26-50 + Hitter #51-100
OR
Pitcher #11-25
OR
Pitcher #26-50 + Pitcher #51-100

So something like Josh Bell + Alen Hanson OR Tyler Glasnow straight up OR Jameson Taillon + Nick Kingham (his value is dropped because of TJ, though). But you get the basic idea.

Walker and Mark are surely worth a quality 3,4,5 starter in a similar contract situation. (i’m not sure who is available though)

Pedro could be worth a middle relief or a struggling starter (like Happ and Volquez where before they’re trips to pittsburgh) Even it is just a salary swap trade it is still probably win for the pirates.

The real win on dumping Walker and Pedro is saving salary as they have people ready or near ready to step in their place who will probably perform similar (Harrison and Hanson for second and Morse and Bell at first).

I agree, teams will probably just wait out Pedro getting non-tendered.

Mark is another story.. if they cannot resign Soria (who we got for a prospect at the deadline btw) or land another quality setup or closer guy then almost have to keep Mark. For a top closer his projected Arb. salary is still pretty decent.