Will Salvador Perez's Contract With Royals Be Influential?

What’s funny about this, is not so much why would the Royals make this deal, but why would Perez?

From the Royals side, I guess they are betting that Perez would make more than 5.5 million (the 7 million minus the 3 years of league minimum he would have made without this deal) in his first 2 years of arb. I guess it’s not a terrible gamble. Will a good-hitting (batting average-wise) be worth more than 2.5 million in year one of arbitration? I don’t know.

The biggest question, though, is why would Perez do this? I guessing he’s betting that he WON’T be able to make more than 5.5 million in his first 2 years of arb. With Tabata, it was pretty obvious why he wanted to insure that he’d be here long-term. Number 21. The fact that Tabata is playing his idol Clemente’s position of right field with Clemente’s team, is probably a pretty big factor for him.

And as you mentioned, Charlie, Tabata has a bit more of a pedigree.

I’m curious to if anybody has done a positional analysis (I’m sure they have) to see, on average, how much more money outfielders are awarded in arbitration than catchers. Or if there is really no correlation between the position and money.

Year 1: $0.75M
Year 2: $1M
Year 3: $1.5M
Year 4: $1.75M
Year 5: $2M
Year 6: $3.75M – option
Year 7: $5M – option
Year 8: $6M – option
$5M in unknown incentives

from royalsreview

I would feel pretty good about a contract like that for him. Overall it seems like a good strategy. Curious to see if this catches on.

Is what his likely Arb 1 looks like if he’s merely an OK catcher.

Let’s say he plays a bit better than you’d project from his MiL stats/pedigree, but doesn’t break out in any meaningful way. Looking at all catchers with at least 200 PAs in 2011, let’s say he’d be in the bottom third of batters – wRC+ in the high 80s, between John Buck and Josh Thole. But he’s a solid defender, so his fielding number (caveat about catching defense metrics) is around +2.5 runs.

He ends up looking something like Kurt Suzuki, I think, who was worth 2.3 fWAR in 134 games. Suzuki’s best seasons might have been better than Perez will ever be (wRC+ 95, +6.4 Fld), but I think it’s fair to say that, if the Royals are right about him, he’s a ~2 WAR/season guy, worth ~$9M/year on the FA market. Go with a 40/60/80 split (unreliable I know), and his first 2 arb years look something like $3.6M and $5.4M.

Now that doesn’t – at all – say that the deal is a bargain for the Royals. They’re taking on way more risk than a typical extension, and $9M in arbitration is an upside (but not ceiling) number, not a median projection. However, there’s a lot of room between $5.5M (what they’re on the hook for) and $9M. Factor in some inflation, and it may be that Perez only needs to be a bit better than a warm body to at least be a break-even value (frex, if 1 win is worth $5.5M by then, and he’s a 1 win player, than his first 2 arbs would be worth almost exactly his contract – and his first option would be a significant bargain).

may not be the risk that he doesn’t produce at all; it may be that he ends up a McKenry-like guy, a fine backup but not nearly good enough to deserve 125 starts per year. But, although $1.75M isn’t a huge sum in 2015, it does cut into what you can pay a FA to start 125 games – theoretically you can find a win and a half for $7.75M, but do you really want to sink $9.5M into the catcher position and not even get 2 wins out of it (and remember, these are the highly constrained Royals).

So McKenry caught my eye – he just barely made by arbitrary 200 PA cutoff for looking at catchers. in almost exactly half of a starting catcher season (58 games, 201 PAs), he was worth 0.2 fWAR. So if Perez turns into McKenry – solid glove, no bat – the Royals are screwed.

However, the good news is that McKenry is a truly bad hitter – wRC+ of 59. And all of the other guys at the bottom of the catcher ranks are also massively flawed – Miguel Olivo paired a wRC+ of 79 with a -10.9 Fielding number (!), while Joggin’ Ronny combined a wRC+ of 82 with a -4.1 in 248 PAs. Point being, Perez would have to be pretty damn bad – almost no bat at all, and very little glove – to fall far below 1.0 WAR/year as a full time guy.

Which, per my calcs above, suggests that the risk may not be that severe: if the guy can hang at all, then he’s decently likely to reach that threshold where the guaranteed portion of the contract at leads roughly breaks even. IOW, I don’t think the risk is that he’s a bad player (he only needs to be a bit better than McKenry), it’s that he can’t play at all (Robinzon Diaz).

im guessing they just load it up on Salvador’s Dolly.

groan

And please don’t say, ‘Sure, why not?’ $7 million is not ‘why not?’ money, even if you’re the Yankees.

I dont know, it seems to me that it really is. That’s not to say you give it to a fringe guy like Josh Harrison, but for C, SS, or SP, if you like their chances of sticking and they’ve shown they can handle the big leagues in a small sample (2/3 year), it seems like a no brainer to take the chance. It puts a bit more pressure in terms of notthrowing away money for small market teams, but thats about it.

No offense Charlie, but I don’t see Kyle McPherson as a good comp. Though it’s a small-sample size, Perez had more than 150 plate appearances in MLB as a 21-year-old. McPherson has never pitched above Double-A, and was a bit old for that level. If Kyle had a 3.00 ERA with at least a 2-to-1 K/BB ratio in seven or eight starts for the Pirates, then I would definitely give him a Perez-like deal. But, at this moment, we have no idea if he would look as overmatched as Jeff Locke.

Those are some funny, funny dudes, and I have no doubt its my AL destination if my frustration with The Twins Way, management and disproportionately shiny-happy rah-rah fan base ever sours me irrevocably.

Anyway, I recall that RR’s well-informed equivalents to BD’s minor-league focused, sabr-friendly regulars have had Perez on their VIProspect radar as catcher-of-the-future for a while now – WAY before the call-up, which I believe came earlier than anyone imagined at the beginning of 2011. So he’s at least a guy smart KC fans viewed as an important piece for a while.

As far as the deal goes, I think it’s a fantastic concept and one the Pirates would do well to ape at the appropriate time if they want to have the potential to extend their competitive window.

It comes down to market size: is there risk here? Sure. If you do it 3 or 4 times is that a lot of risk? Sure.

But we all know that no matter how successful, a winning “band” in Pittsburgh will get broken up – at least to some significant extent – at a point not far removed from their winning peak. If you’re big market, you don’t have to do this, because you can afford to keep above average players around.

If you’re tiny market – like the Pirates and Royals – you have no option but to get a better return on investments than average.

So you do things like pay for high upside high school arms in the draft. Not because they’re an inherently good gamble (even if they are/were), but because you NEED to hit on some scratch-off tickets if you’re going to contend for a World Series.

I see this as the same thing: it’s something the Pirates/Royals CAN actually afford, with returns that have the reasonable potential to far outweigh the cost. Yes, it could blow up in their face, but nothing ventured, nothing gained. And if it “hits”, the window for contention just got significantly longer. If he’s a 3 WAR player and you’re paying him @ $11m (inflation-devalued) dollars for years 7 & 8 combined, that’s an insane value.