What Molina’s Contract Means for McCann
February 28, 2012 at 1:28 pm by Ben Duronio under Atlanta Braves, Economic Analysis
If you missed the news yesterday, Yadier Molina agreed to a five year deal for up to $75mm. The contract will begin at Molina’s age 30 season, since he was already under contract this year and the new contract is slated to begin after this season. Coincidentally, Brian McCann will become a free agent just before his age 30 season. Molina’s contract is a good base for what we should expect McCann to receive.
In December, Franklin wrote about why a deal will get done with McCann. He predicted a contract of five years and $80mm, which sounds just about right. Dave Cameron of FanGraphs wrote this morning about how the Molina extension is probably better than most would immediately assume.
Cameron’s reasoning is that the lack of quality defensive metrics for catchers may cause Molina to be relatively undervalued. If you assume Molina is about a four win player, the $70mm contract nearly equals what his expected production will be over the course of the contract, says Cameron.
Using the same concept that Cameron did, the below chart details what McCann’s estimated dollar value should be, if you consider him to be the 4.45 win player that he has been over the past four seasons. Since the aging curve for catchers is limited from ages 28-29, I did not include a .5 win loss from this season to next season. Instead, I included a .125 loss (half of half), making him a 4.3 win player in 2013 and then discounted .5 wins in each following year. This is not exactly an exact science, but it does draw a sketch for what he would be worth over the length of a five year contract. I also included 5% inflation, just as Cameron did in his article.
| WAR | $$ | |
|---|---|---|
| 2012 | 4.45 | 22.3 |
| 2013 | 4.33 | 21.6 |
| 2014 | 3.83 | 20.1 |
| 2015 | 3.33 | 18.3 |
| 2016 | 2.83 | 16.4 |
| 2017 | 2.33 | 14.1 |
| 2018 | 1.83 | 11.6 |
Since 2012 and 2013 are already under contract, they are not included in the total. Interestingly enough, McCann’s total value during the length of a five year contract would be $80.5mm. Franklin’s estimation looks pretty accurate, to say the least.
If the Braves were going to extend McCann during free agency, they would like to sign him for a bit less than market value ($80.5mm). Molina signing this extension will make that a bit more difficult, as I am sure both McCann and his agent believe he is the better player. After all, the statistics that can be quantified all point heavily in McCann’s favor.
It is much easier to determine McCann’s value, since he is an offensive-minded catcher, than it is to determine Molina’s. Even so, it is still difficult to pinpoint exactly how good or bad catchers are defensively, which makes judging their overall value more difficult than other positions – even offensive catchers like McCann.
Molina’s contract provides a floor for McCann’s next deal, more than anything else. He will most likely sign for nothing less than $75m, which will only be a slight discount based on the above projections. It is possible that McCann signs a home town discount and his contract equals that of Molina’s, but it is far from a guarantee that he voluntarily takes such a discount. If McCann is extended before he hits free agency, a contract between $75-80mm over five years is what we should expect him to sign for. If they wait to sign him once he becomes a free agent and teams start bidding, a contract above $80mm is likely. Signing him this time next year, just as the Cardinals did with Molina, seems like the wisest choice for the Braves as they will likely save a small amount of money and will not have to worry about competing with other team’s bids.
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Just depends on what route Wren decides to go. If you take emotion out of it, the Braves would not sign McCann to such a large deal, considering the potential of Bethancourt. A team like the Braves simply cannot pay that money to an aging catcher.
Conversely, the Braves are not the Rays in terms of how they deal with players. It’s more of a family setting, and making no legit offer to McCann is not “the Brave way”.
Good work, Ben.
I would definitely give McCann this kind of money. He’s a proven player at a high-value position who has shown sufficient durability. In my mind, McCann is exactly the kind of player you sign (assuming he doesn’t ask for an astronomical salary) to a lengthy deal. While it would be all well and good if Bethancourt pans out to an effective major league catcher, we KNOW that McCann is an All-star catcher, and he’s given us no reason to think he’ll do anything less (natural age regression aside) over the next several years.
@1
I definitely wouldn’t let Bethancourt factor into my decision on whether or not to sign McCann at this point. Bethancourt is nowhere even close to a sure bet. He hit well in the AFL, but outside of that he has not been a good offensive player at all. Now if Bethancourt blows up this year offensively, maybe the decision is tougher, but right now Bethancourt being a MLB coliber player isn’t a risk you can really take.
If I had to make a bet on Bethancourt, I would be he’s a career back up defensive specialist type guy with occasional power, but with a low BA and OBP. Of course he has some chance to be a superstar type player with his arm and athleticism and power potential. This year will go a long way in helping us figure which route he will take.
It’s not Wren, it’s Liberty Media. Granted, the Braves did extend Uggla, but, it wouldn’t shock me if they let McCann go if they think they have a capable replacement, especially since he will be in his thirties.
5 years at $75-$80m works out to be $15 – $16m per season which means we will have $28 – $29m locked up between Uggla & McCann. Assuming our payroll remains around $95m during the same period it means we will have about 30% of payroll committed to 2 players.
With a high proportion of young players coming through all with relatively low salaries it maybe better to front load the deal with McCann and free up salary space when the young guys hit Arb2 & Arb3.
McCann’s salary from last year was around $11m (Incl all bonuses reached) so essentially the raise is only $5m for the next 5 years. I understand there will be a significant risk with last 2 or 3 years of the deal but I think it is a worthwhile risk.
Bethancourt would be doing well to reach the majors 2 full seasons from now and the streaky bat may not handle a full season anyway.
@4, does ownership really get into that level of oversight? I’d assumed that they gave Wren a budget, and as long as they’re getting back 5% over that, or whatever, they didn’t care how the money was spent.
@4, 6
Wren/Schuerholz get a budget and how they spend it is up to them. Liberty Media has nothing to do with the specific player choices.
@6 & 3 I’m completely agree with you both. Like any other prime time company out there, Liberty Mutual does not care how they make their money, just as long as their investments are making money. If Bethancourt does show substantial promise year, they would be able to have some potential bargaining room in regards to McCann’s next contract. But, as said above, unless McCann’s asking price is sky high, he will be a Brave for quite a while. Also, if Chipper decides its over this year, what do you think the chances are the Braves trade one of their young-gunners for a young premier 3B/LF?
I don’t think McCann is the type of guy who is going to let an extra couple million a year sway his decision. He doesn’t even necessarily seem like the guy who would want the attention/pressure that comes with signing a big money deal. I think he’ll be more than content in a similar situation to Chipper, where he doesn’t even take the most he can get out of the Braves because he wants some flexibility for the Braves to add talent around him. I also wouldn’t be surprised to see him defer a good portion of his money so that the number is bigger on paper than it is in reality.
I really think someone will offer McCann 20 millions per year for more than 5 years. One of the reason the Braves does not give Bourne an extension, I think it is because they want to see what McCann will ask for.
There are good young catching prospects with great defensive skill, which McCann lack. No one will ask them to hit as well as McCann but their Salary will likely to be just over 1 million.
There is no good CF prospect in the Braves system. It makes more sense to leave McCann alone if he is askin for anything more than 15 millions per year. I love McCann but the reality is just cruel.
@8
Liberty Media and Liberty Mutual are two very different companies.
@10
If it gets to the stage where teams are bidding for McCann, the Braves are definitely out of it. An AL team with deep pockets and a part time DH spot will easily outbid anything the Braves could offer.
Our best bet is extending him in the 15-16 mill per year range before he gets to free agency.
Also, the biggest reason they’re not giving Bourn an extension is that he’s a Boras client and Boras doesn’t give extensions. Boras is the master of the bidding war. If the Dan Uggla contract is any indication, I’m sure Wren would be plenty willing to talk extension with Bourn if it wasn’t for Boras.
I like McCann, but with two years to go, if I extended him, he would have to take a discount equal to the cost to insure if insurance were used.
I say 10% he suffers a significant career limiting injury in the remaining 2 years. And, the team can’t afford to pay him 15 million not to play. We know because of the info on the TV deal that Braves revenue will rise more slowly than our competitors.
The contract Ben proposes would be the second biggest catcher contract ever. The first biggest is looking mighty dumb (and that is with an AL team that has DH options and AB’s).
You can get a 2 WAR catcher for 5 or so mill (several have signed in the past couple of years). So why not plan on doing that and using the proposed McCann money to do early extensions with any of the “young guys” who would give a “more player friendly version of a Longoria deal” (Heyward, Freeman, Teheran, Hanson, Venters, whoever). Those savings, if any, can carry you through the remaining years of this wretched TV deal.
@13
25 years remain on this wretched TV deal.
@13
Hanson ain’t taking anything remotely resembling a team friendly long term deal. He’s a so cal guy with no real ties to GA other than playing for the Braves and he’s a Boras client.
Heyward might take a team friendly extension, but at this point do you do that from the Braves angle, with Heyward’s injury issues? I think Heyward will end up being durable, but I realize that’s a hopeful guess at this point. Teheran? I guess if he takes an extremely team friendly deal you take the risk on him, but he hasn’t really proven much of anything at the ML level and long term pitcher deals are questionable at best. Venters? Your solution is to extend a reliever long term? Freeman might be the best bet, but I don’t view him as any safer of a way to spend money over the next 6 years than McCann.
also @13
I think any talk of an extension would obviously come either during or right before his final year option is picked up. We’re not talking about doing it tomorrow by any means.
For Heyward, I think right now would be a great time to buy out his arb years.
[...] an interesting read on what it may take to sign McCann, read Captitol Avenue‘s take on [...]
@17
From the Braves perspective sure, but unless he has no confidence in himself why would Heyward even consider it? Unless you’re guaranteeing money beyond arb years, he’s almost certainly better off playing out this season and then signing them away for more money or getting more through arbitration if he simply plays at a level close to what he did in 2010.
Tommy Hanson’s family did all move out to Kennesaw, Ga, I guess to be close to him. That was when he was a rookie I remember reading about that in Chop Talk Magazine.
Also didn’t the AJC say that the TV deal was for 20 more years not 25? Either way it sucks. They could be in place to get more revenues after 2013 when the national TV deals are up and they are supposed to be a big increase in TV rights with the new 1 game playoff being included.