Johnny Damon signs with Yankees

[Rubeskies]

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Plan B with the Yankees is to get on your knees and pray (see '05). It can't hurt, everyone knows God is a Yankee fan.

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Come on now!

[andyfox]

Parcells started out with the Giants.

Clemens went to Toronto first (when he was in the "twilight" of his career).

Damon had twelve million good reasons for going to the Yankees. Boston offered 40 mill, New York 52. Plus, with his personality, he might be the toast of New York.

As far as his value as a player, the Yankees overpaid. But who cares about that? While he's not a great player, he's a good one, certainly better than Williams at this stage of his career or Bing Crosby or whatever the hell his name is.

Jeter did a fine job adjusting his style last year to take more walks and be a terrific leadoff hitter. Having Damon will allow Jeter to bat in the #2 spot which probably suits Jeter's hitting style better. Jeter could hit 25-30 home runs this year.

[Jack of Arcades]

Jeter will lay down 90 sacrifice bunts next year. He's so selfless!

[andyfox]

It still amazes me to see these stats on ESPN's site. Guess which stat is the eye-opener:

Bats: Right
Throws: Right
Pos: SS
Experience: 10 years
2005 Salary: $19,600,000

[Jack of Arcades]

Yeah, Jeter's so baby-faced, seems like he just came up yesterday.

[pokerdirty]

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It still amazes me to see these stats on ESPN's site. Guess which stat is the eye-opener:

Bats: Right
Throws: Right
Pos: SS
Experience: 10 years
2005 Salary: $19,600,000

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that he still plays SS [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img]

[sublime]

I'm guessing that Johnny Damon had a much bigger marketing effect on the Red Sox than he'll have in New York.

I agree, on the NYY he is the 4th or 5th most marketable figure.

also, i dont facftor any of that into a contract.

[sublime]

sublime, I don't disagree with you much on sports, but why is signing a guy like jacque, who is honestly rather terrible at everything, for $5mil a year better than getting damon at this price?

hey bug-

here is how i view the situation before i break it down into stats. damon plays in boston and has this huge persona, and jones played in minny and well....plays in minny

now the stats and money:

defense: i dont have much to work with here, but from what i do have at my disposal jones is damons equal here at this time, not counting the fact that damon has the worst outfield arm in baseball. i would think jones gets the edge here.

offense: break out the eric van inspired BRAR/$$$ formula. for those who don't know, here is how BP calculates BRAR

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Batting Runs Above Replacement. The number of runs better than a hitter with a .230 EQA and the same number of outs; EQR - 5 * OUT * .230^2.5.

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so basically, its a pure offensive value stat. doesn't have any biases or anything like that, just spits out a number of runs a player is worth above average.

the weighting i use is this (3 seasons ago gets 1 weight, 2 gets 2 weight, last season gets 3 weight) this is a crude way to estimate next years production, without accounting for age perfectly.

anyways, on to jones and damon.

jones

03 23
04 9
05 17

damon

03 22
04 38
05 35

jones expects to spit out 15.5 BRAR @ 5.3m per year (his deal is actually structured in 4/5/5.5 format, which is good, but whatever)

so you are getting 2.92 BRAR for every million spent on jones (not counting defense, which i think we all agree he will be better than damon overall)

damon

projects to produce about 33.8 BRAR next season at 13m which equates to 2.6 BRAR per million

so on that level, jones provides more value for the dollar spent. now, some will say you pay a premium for those extra runs because they are worth it. i say, [censored] and teams prove it every single freaking year.

anyways, onto more info.

age/decline rate/contract length:

jones is one year younger than damon and his contract is one year shorter. so the cubs get to cut ties with him after age 33, while the yankees have damon till hes 35.

as for the rate of decline, one thing i like to look at is how often a guy walks. the ability to control the strike zone seems to be something that will prolong a players worth when other things fail.

johhny damon has gotten on base 2419 times in his career (includes all hits and BB+HBP) 630 times was the result of either being hit by a pitch or being walked. so 26% of his value so to speak is tied up in walks.

jones has reached base 1233 times with 259 times being the result of a walk. so 21% of his value is tied up in walks.

i would guess that negates the fact that jones is a year younger. seems like a fair trade off, although the yankees are still on the hook for an extra year.

so, IMO jones at that price is a better acquisition.

[kenberman]

Sublime,
You did a good job here valuing each deal. However, this type of analysis works best in a salary cap environment, where every team only has x number of dollars to spend in order to achieve maximum production.

clearly, this isn't the case in baseball, or with the NYY.

which is why paying a premium for potentially extra production makes sense for them.

And, why having a potentially bad 4th year to deal with isn't a disaster, since they can probably eat some of the contract in a trade, or afford to have a $13M guy as 4th outfielder.

[sublime]

for those that want to predict how much offense damon will lose due to his age/decline rate, here are some examples.

one poster compared him to tim raines, while i choose bernie williams. for those that dont want to check, raines declined slowly in his 30's while williams took a nose dive. lets check why that happened and see who damon projects to be more like.

tim raines was on base 3983 times in his career. 1378 of those came as the result of a walk or HBP. 34% of his offnesive worht was tied up in walks, and as a result he was an effective player until the age of 38 and had a slow decline rate.

bernie williams has been on base 3291 times in his carrer. 1073 of those came as the result of walks, or 32%. he was effective until last year, or until he was 35.

basically, history shows us that damon will decline faster than these guys. of course, the opposite could hold true, but that is a very expensive gamble.

you gusy can check out otehr CF's with damons pedigree, i am sure you will see the same patterns.