Friday, December 26, 2008

Mike Cameron is Overpaid?

The past few weeks I've been diving into fangraphs.com more and more.  Today, mlbtraderumors.com points to another exciting feature.  At the bottom of each player page is now a value section.  The section compares a player to replacement level, shows how many wins he is worth and what that equates to in real dollars.  Conveniently it also shows the players salary.  Here is Mike Cameron.  In 2008, he was worth 4.1 wins over replacement level.  This makes him worth $18.3 million last season.  He was paid $6.3 million.  On the other hand, is Melky Cabrera.  Last year, he was "worth" -0.1 wins.  Playing Cabrera cost the Yankees a tenth of a win.  He should have paid them $700,000 for letting him on the field.  As it was, the Yankees gave him a half million.  Essentially, while his salary was only worth $500k, the Yankees gave away $1.2 million and it cost them 1/10th a win. 

But, you say, Cabrera was good in 2006 and 2007!  He has potential!  His career value added?  0.1 wins.  In three of his 4 seasons he has been worse than replacement level, only helping the Yankees in 2006, when he was worth 1.2 wins over replacement.  The past two years he has been worth -0.6 over replacement level.  Over his seven season, Cameron has averaged 3.8 wins over replacement, bouncing back from a lull in 07 to be very good in 2008.

Don't let anyone tell you that Cameron is bad or that employing him is like lighting $10 million on fire.  In reality he was worth $18.3 million last year, and the only season he was worth less than $10 million was 2005 (when he was worth $7.2 million).





10 comments:

Eric said...

So you hate Mike Cameron then?

Chris said...

No ESK loves Cam, who doesn't love Cam? Cam is the Greatest Center fielder in the history of the Milwaukee Brewers he makes Robin Yount look like shit.

I was rewatching some brewers games on Xmas while the kids were playing with their swag.

The Pittsburgh game where Braun hits the Grand Slam was great. I got to see Cam strike out in that 10th inning and not even advance the runner for the Brewers. It was an amazing moment, I cannot wait for next season to get here. So I can watch Cam fail and have ESK tell me that I should ignore what I see and trust him that Cam is a steal at 10 mil.

Yeah it is going to be a wild 09 season for we Brewers fans.

I cannot wait for Spring Training to get here. I really mean that.

E.S.K. said...

In comparison to Melky Cabrera? A thousand times yes.

Anonymous said...

A thousand times yes? you weren't faking were you?

Chris said...

So it is ok that he sucks just because you believe he sucks less then Melky

But you are forgetting that they could have not picked up his option and saved most of the 10 Million and then we would both be happy no Melky and no Cam

E.S.K. said...

No, he was much better than most center fielders last year and is certainly the best option on the current roster. He is projected to have a pretty serious decline next year though.

When they improve on Mike Cameron I'll be happy. Of course, I'll be happy if they figure out a way to improve anywhere/everywhere, so that is nothing against Mike Cameron. He's the best option they have, which is why I'm glad they have him.

Anonymous said...

I'm glad the Packers have Justin Harrel. Clearly he is awesome because the Packers haven't got rid of him yet.

E.S.K. said...

That doesn't even make sense in the context of this argument, and it's likely he is worse than replacement level.

What is it you have an issue with? Is is the method used to determine value? The equation used to figure VORP? You haven't really touched on the content of the post.

Anonymous said...

No issue here. Just thought i'd ignore your content, perhaps even deliberately misinterpret it. THen i thought i'd come up with a pithy comment to amuse myself.

E.S.K. said...

Your pithy needs work.