St. Louis Cardinals: Valuing prime years of a star player

With free agency approaching, the St. Louis Cardinals will seek to finally have an offseason where they reel in a big star. How much value could  signing such a star bring for John Mozeliak?

The St. Louis Cardinals will be entering the free agency period following the finish of the World Series. Last week’s article, St. Louis Cardinals: The deal with the mega deal, cautionary tales, focused on how seldom a mega deal works. This week will look at the valuing the prime-age years (26-31) of the big targets for the St. Louis Cardinals, Bryce Harper and Manny Machado.

The 2018 MLB top-10 highest paid hitters were the starting point of approaching how to value prime years. This is because the two big name free agents are expected to likely join the 10 highest paid hitters with mega deal contracts this off-season. These values reflect the price of a player’s 2018 fWAR (Fangraphs Wins Above Replacement) multiplied by the 2018 free agency cost of a fWAR subtracted from their salary (AAV).

All fWAR values and salaries are pulled from Fangraphs.

Some of the players outperformed their contracts while others didn’t.

The St. Louis Cardinals understand that the value of a player cannot be measured from one year of production. Therefore, the same 10 players above will have their ages 26-31 seasons averaged to better understand the value of their prime seasons. General estimates to the prime years of how star hitters age can be found here. Also, there will be some configuring as certain players on the list have not yet played all of these years.

Wow! The average fWAR of these 10 players in their age 26-31 seasons is 5.58 fWAR. The St. Louis Cardinals top player by measure of fWAR in 2018 was Matt Carpenter with 5.0 fWAR.

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The average annual surplus value of these hitters is $30,190,000, which multiplied by five years grades out to a casual $150,950,000. This is the average total surplus value of the 10 currently highest paid players during their ages 26-31 seasons.

These star hitters have provided an immense amount of surplus value in their primes if you consider surplus value a profit gain over the amount paid to the player. Who knows how much money it takes to sign them, but when it comes to the mega deal contract for Bryce Harper or Manny Machado, the St. Louis Cardinals will likely be opening a five-year window of contention.

Trying to imagine a hypothetical where Bryce Harper (3.5 fWAR) played right field for the Cardinals in 2018 instead of Dexter Fowler (-1.2 fWAR), and the St. Louis Cardinals who finished only 2.5 wild card games back would have at least made the play-in game of the playoffs with the differentials adjusted. Similarly, the Cardinals would have made the playoffs in 2018 with Manny Machado playing either third baseman or shortstop.

The St. Louis Cardinals have missed the playoffs for three straight seasons — it is time to bring a star hitter in their prime to change the dynamic of this team. The value of contending for the next several years goes beyond what numbers can provide.

Even more valuable may be getting a star face for a franchise full of fans who may feel void of stardom since the departure of Albert Pujols. Only time will tell how John Mozeliak and company judge the value of signing a star player in his prime.