Free Pedro

It’s officially Trade Week, and because I know how we fans of the big-market teams spend this time of year fretting over the decision whether to sell the farm for a perennial all-star, I’ve put together this analysis to help us undertand just what’s at stake. Once I’ve covered trading the prospects, I’ve included some graphs of the signings our favorite teams (and my least favorite) have made over the past few years, in order to show how they value age in their decision process.

The graph below shows the career arcs of the average MLB batter and pitcher. It’s based on regression analyses (here and here) that isolated the effect of age on production. The vertical axis in my graph is the percentage better than the player was at age 21, so a positive percentage is how much better a player is at a certain age than he was when he was 21 and a negative percentage is how much worse. The average batter peaks at 29, and the average pitcher peaks at 28. For discussion of the current rumors, I have graphed the supposed trade targets and the potential Red Sox prospects in play.

So mark this down right now: The Sox, won’t trade for Halladay. OK, let me amend that a bit–the Sox won’t trade for Roy Halladay if they have to give up what the Jays are asking for. As we can see in the next graph, under Theo Epstein, the Sox have been very careful not to give long-term contracts to aging pitchers. They let Pedro and Lowe walk and showed little interest in the Santana trade or acquiring Sabathia. The length of the arrow is the length of the contract, and the number is the average yearly salary of the player.

Clearly, the Sox value a pitcher who they can sign when he’s still in his mid-twenties. As such, they value players like Lester, Buchholz, Bowden, and Kelly extremely highly. They wouldn’t give up Lester to get Santana. The reason they are so protective of their pitching prospects is not that they think they are all going to be stars, but because they know that if they do develop into talents, they will have the opportunity to lock them up in their mid-twenties and have them under contract for the primes of their careers. As we can see, the Red Sox have had great success in extending the contracts of their players at below-market rates. Ortiz, Youk, Pedroia (coming off an MVP!), and Beckett were all signed at good prices for shorter deals. The Sox have a clear strategy. Their MO is to sign a player who is still under contract to a cheap, short extension. Obviously, the Sox have had problems with shortstops, and the Drew contract is unforgivable.

To me, this means that the Sox are much more likely to give up their young talent for Adrian Gonzales than they are for Roy Halladay, who is quickly approaching the mid-thirties range where pitchers have historically fallen off a cliff. (Of course, these numbers are probably overly generous to older players because they were compiled in the PED Era. Don’t expect to see many productive 38-year-old pitchers in the next decade.)

Let’s consider the Mets.

Omar, like Theo, has done a fantastic job of signing his young talent to extensions. (That Wright contract may be one of the best ever.) It seems he has a soft spot for over-the-hill pitchers.  The Martinez and Wagner contracts were Cashman-esque. (Brian Cashman has a history of overpaying for past production. Oftentimes, this production was not even in the recent past.) While Santana was the best pitcher in the game when he was signed, very soon he will qualify as very overpaid. But Omar is getting better. The K-Rod deal is the type of short contract that works for a young pitcher. And though the Perez deal was a bit of a head scratcher because, let’s face it, his production wasn’t that great, even if it  was presumed to go up based on this analysis, at least it was short and for a young pitcher.

For laughs, let’s look at the Yankees next.

Brian Cashman may be worse at his job than anybody whose performance is so publicly observed. The A-Rod contract is so bad and so long that I had to extend the X-axis. No further discussion is necessary.