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).