Most people presume that the A's won't re-sign Matt Holliday after this season and will only have his services for one season at most. This is consistent with the A's behavior in the past as they've allowed almost all of their free agents walk at the end of the year or traded them before they reached free agency. The only players they've signed to long term deals that went more than a year or two past their arbitration eligible years were Jermaine Dye and Eric Chavez.
So why might this time be different? Well, the A's have a grand total of $17.5 million committed to their 2010 roster and $0 committed to the 2011 team. That's right, ZERO dollars (or more accurately, a half million dollars - the A's have a $6 million club option on Mark Ellis for 2011 with a $0.5 buyout) to their 2011 club. Their only long term (past this season) committments as of now are to Eric Chavez and Mark Ellis. Bobby Crosby will be a free agent after this season and Chavez and Ellis come off the books after 2010.
Oh, but what about players who are currently arbitration eligible or will be in a few years? Well, one good thing about being a bad, but young team is that you don't really have to pay your players anything. Of all the players who played for the A's last season other than Chavez, Crosby, and Ellis, only a handful of players project to be worth keeping for more than a few years - and none of them seem likely to get big paydays anytime soon. Kurt Suzuki, Daric Barton, Ryan Sweeney, Travis Buck, Aaron Cunningham, Dana Eveland, Gio Gonzalez, and Sean Gallagher all have varying degrees of promise, but all enter 2009 with 2 years or less MLB service time (meaning they'll still be under team control for at least four more years).
The only players who the A's will have to worry about paying a reasonable amount of money any time soon to are Jack Cust and Justin Duchscherer who will be 30 and 31 next season. Cust will be eligible for arbitration for the first time this season. I think a reasonable guess at his salary will be for the next three years, will be around $3 million for '09, $4 million for '10 and $5 million for 2011. (This is based mostly on the salaries of Joe Crede and Casey Blake when they had the same amount of service time.) Duchscherer will be a free agent after this season and assuming he has a decent season will likely be able to earn at least $11 - $14 million a year (AKA Meche Money). For a team that traded away Hudson, Mulder, Zito, Harden, and Blanton before they got expensive, it's very unlikely that the A's will keep Duchscherer around at that rate.
All this means that the A's are unlikely to have any significant commitments to make until 2012 at the earliest. That the A's will have a lot of money to pay Holliday is only part of the equation. The other part, obviously, is exactly how much it would take to re-sign him. $20 million a year is likely to be a starting point for Holliday's salary and with Manny reportedly being offered $30 million a year (albeit for fewer years than Holliday would get), $25 million annually is a reasonable estimate.
The last thing to consider is what the A's payroll will be in the future and what percentage of it would be unreasonable to spend on Holliday. The A's 2008 Opening Day salary was under $50 million this year, and some reports say that the A's are willing to spend $30 million more this year. Also, with a new park presumably to open some time in the next few years, the A's could likely maintain or even increase that payroll for the foreseeable future. Given that the A's payroll for 2007 was nearly $80 million, it's not unreasonable to guess that the A's can have a payroll of around $70-$75 million for the next few years. Should the A's be willing to commit about 40% of their payroll to one player? It's a close call. On the one hand the A's could afford to do it, but would not be able to fill in the roster with expensive free agents. On the other hand, the A's have the money to do it and Holliday is probably one of the top 15 players in baseball and players like him don't become available that often.
After weighing all the factors it still seems unlikely that the A's will re-sign Holliday. Still, it's not an open and shut case that people assume it is. And everyone knows what happens when you assume...
Keywords: Jack Cust, Justin Duchscherer, Matt Holliday, Oakland Athletics
Comments
Nice post. I'm curious - how in the world are you able to research the numbers? How do you know they have so little in contracts for 2011? Where do you get that sort of detailed information.
Anyway, interesting post. I'm sure you've read "Moneyball"? I think in some ways it seems other teams have caught up the A's and they're no longer able to find hidden value in players.
Thank you for reminding me. I should have noted that Cot's Baseball Contracts at http://mlbcontracts.blogspot.com/ is super helpful, especially for looking at something like this.
I think that you're right and that almost every team now is considering all the information they have, including statistical analysis, to evaluate talent. That being said, the market will never be exactly perfect, meaning that some players here or there will be over or undervalued. The inefficiencies may not be as great, though, and low revenue teams like the A's will always have to find innovative ways to compete (or field a roster of players with less than 6 years of playing time).