Snobs vs. Slobs

Over Thanksgiving weekend, the Houston Astros announced that they had signed outfielder Carlos Lee to a six year, $100 million contract.

When I initially heard the news about Alfonso Soriano’s nutty contract, I planned to write a blog about Carlos Lee and compare just how similar these two players really were. They’re the same age, play the same position, have virtually the same career OPS (Lee: .286/.340/.495; Soriano: .280/.325/.510), and I assumed that because mostly of his stolen base prowess, Soriano’s contract would dwarf Lee’s, and that the Cubs would have looked stupid for signing Soriano to such a massive deal when they could have had almost the exact same player for a lot less cash.

Well, you know what they say about assuming things.

Carlos Lee is now getting paid $16.67 million per year for the next six years while Alfonso Soriano is getting paid $17 million per year for the next eight. Setting aside the fact that both of these men are .800-.850 OPS hitters who are getting wildly overpaid in a very thin free agent market, Alfonso Soriano suddenly looks like a bargain compared to Lee. Not only are the Cubs not paying him very much more for his services, but he brings to the table better defense than Lee (as bad as Soriano is in the field, Lee is just a butcher; Baseball Prospectus scored his defense at below replacement level in 2006), added value in his stolen bases, and, most importantly in a contract situation like this one, superior durability and athletic body that projects to age much better over the course of each of these players’ mid-30’s. Make no mistake – the chances are that both teams are going to be regretting making such tremendous deals with such (relatively) middling players come 2009 or 2010 (or maybe even sooner). And the Cubs are on the hook with Soriano for two years longer than the Astros are with Lee. But if I’m a GM, and I have to be on the hook for one of these guys in 2011, and my choice is between a 36 year-old Alfonso Soriano for $17 million and a 36 year-old Carlos Lee for $16.67 million? I’d take Soriano in a heartbeat.

This has been a very odd offseason in terms of free agent talent. The market is extremely thin, which has caused players like Lee and Soriano to get money that until this season was reserved for players like Carlos Beltran, Vlad Guerrero and company. After his dismal 2005 campaign, Mets fans were up in arms about Carlos Beltran’s massive contract. However, after an MVP-caliber 2006 (.275/.388/.594 at $13.5 million), Beltran’s deal suddenly looks like a bargain. Indeed, Soriano’s and Carlos Lee’s deals are starting to make some of the insane megadeals from the early 2000s look downright sane. Take a looksy:

Player, Career* AVG/OBP/SLG, $ per year of megadeal, baseball age going into first year of megadeal
A. Rodriguez, .305/.386/.573, $25.2M, 25
M. Ramirez, .314/.411/.600, $20M, 29
D. Jeter, .317/.388/.463, $18.9M, 26
J. Giambi, .292/.413/.541, $17.14M, 31
C. Beltran, .281/.355/.492, $17M, 28
A. Soriano, .280/.325/.510, $17M, 31
C. Lee, .286/.340/.495, $16.67M, 31
V. Guerrero, .329/.390/.583, $15M, 28
T. Helton, .333/.430/.593, $12.86M, 29

* Note – These are career numbers after the 2006 season. Looking at each player’s career numbers at the time they signed their megadeals would be a better evaluatory tool, but that is an awful lot of work. Feel free to calculate this in your spare time.

For me, when I look at this list, the largest discrepancy between Soriano, Lee and the truly elite players on this list is basically one thing: The almighty On-Base Percentage. Put simply, Carlos Lee and Alfonso Soriano make outs far more consistently than anyone else on this list. When you consider what they’ve done in recent seasons and the fact that their contracts are in the same price range, Carlos Beltran, Jason Giambi, Vlad Guerrero and Todd Helton (who, even though his power numbers have dropped drastically the last two years, is still an on-base machine) are starting to look like bargains… and Derek Jeter and Manny Ramirez’s contracts have gone from looking downright nutty to looking more like market value. Indeed, considering Ramirez’s historic prowess at the plate and the fact that Jeter is an excellent hitter for the position he plays (average defense aside), you could make very good arguments that those deals are also starting to look like bargains. Would you rather have Alfonso Soriano and his likely .830-.850ish OPS at $17 million a year, or would you rather have Manny Ramirez at $20 million, whose worst full season in the majors was 2005, when he hit “just” .292/.388/.594? Just like the 36 year-old Carlos Lee vs. Alfonso Soriano question, this one shouldn’t take you much time to answer.