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Burleson should not be in the outfield at all, let alone “regularly.” It has taken an absurdly unlucky slew of injuries (and a thin roster) to justify the number innings he has played in the OF thus far.
In only 835 innings (just over half a season):
-10 DRS
-14 OAA
-10 FRV
-7.7 UZR
-10 Fielding RAANo way to spin it, those numbers are just bad.
KCB, the default BTV values (before they put their thumb on the scale with various overrides near the trade deadline) tend to have some recency bias in their forecasts. Burleson’s BTV has increased over $20mm based on roughly 350 additional PAs. Without commenting on the absolute values of their estimates, that’s a big change based on a small sample. To Jnevel’s point, teams have their own proprietary models with different parameters, and therefore may forecast future performance and value differently.
Regarding your specific question, a big driver of his value is the fact that he is still making MLB minimum and isn’t arb eligible until 2026. An average MLB starter (roughly 2 WAR, which is what he’s pacing toward this year) is incredibly valuable when his salary is only $750K.
Worth remembering, the Cardinals forfeited approx. $2.1mm of additional slot money (and the associated high 2nd round pick) to sign Gray. Their total bonus pool is $10.2mm (plus an additional 5% they can go over without penalty). If Wetherholt signs for an amount meaningfully over the $6.8mm slot, things start to get a little tight with the rest of the pool.
They seem to be scrambling to save money in rounds 3-5. May indicate Wetherholt is going to sign for well over slot, but who knows.
Interestingly, the player tied with Victor Scott for the top sprint speed in MLB this year: Bobby Witt, Jr.
Brian, limited data, but he clocked 30.4 ft/s top-end in his short time in the majors. That’s 100th percentile(!) speed.
How’s W-holt’s speed compared to Edman, Bader, O’Neill, Winn, etc.?
JJ, as I mentioned above, Wetherholt was tracked at 28.7 ft/s top-end sprint speed. By way of comparison:
Player/2023/Best-season
Winn: 29.2; 29.2 (28.8 in 2024)
Edman: 28.8; 29.4 (No data in 2024)
Bader: 28.8; 30.0 (28.2 in 2024)
O’Neill: 28.5; 30.0 (27.5 in 2024)(I picked 2023 as the base year to get a decent number for Edman.) These are all basically 90+ percentile sprint speeds.
I know I’m not supposed to overly express my enthusiasm for how fabulous Burleson has been for Cardinals. But Wetherholt is going to be very comparable to Burly as an MLB hitter. Stay tuned.
Wetherholt has excellent plate discipline, an extremely low chase rate (14%), a double-digit BB rate (18%), is fast (28.7 ft/s), and potentially can play multiple high-value defensive positions. The only thing he and Burleson have in common is they’re both LHHs with high contact rates. You’re a broken record.
Drafting amateur pitchers is like venture investing: a diversified portfolio of smaller bets is the optimal strategy, because the fundamental failure rate is high (due to injury and/or performance), the “winners” generate outsized returns that usually cover the failures, but it’s extremely difficult to know ex ante who the winner(s) will be. You still do thorough due diligence on the individual pitchers, but apply a higher discount rate to your underwriting.
The difference in our statements is that I base my statements in economics, you base them on what you learn on baseball sites.
Seriously? What are you talking about? In the scenario we’re discussing, the Cardinals are going to save a net $25mm at 1B alone–do “economics” tell you that they must pocket either 100% or 0% of the savings, with no other options in between? Apparently, you are convinced the Cardinals are going to dramatically reduce payroll next year. That’s fine. But alternative scenarios where they pocket something other than a perfect 100% of the savings are also based in “economics,” they just use different assumptions. The real difference in our statements is I don’t pretend to know with certainty where the Cardinals will set their payroll next year.
There’s a lot of room to maneuver between $26mm (Goldschmidt’s salary), $16mm (the FA mkt value of 2 wins), and $800k (Burleson’s salary), it’s not a purely binary payroll decision. If we define surplus value as the delta between the FA mkt value of production and a player’s current salary, then there is “surplus value” in various parts of the roster irrespective of the overall team payroll. Payroll is at least partly fungible: the Cardinals could theoretically save $25mm ($26mm minus $800K) at 1B next year and still get similar production, going from a significant deficit at that position to a significant surplus. They could then pocket all of that savings, or they could use some percentage of it to address other areas of need and pocket the rest (and still reduce overall payroll).
If one thinks Burleson is a 2 WAR player going forward (I think the jury is still out), then swapping out Goldschmidt for Burleson creates a lot more flexibility next year, all else equal.
Cardinals will most likely be cutting payroll next year due to decreased ticket sales/concessions.
All the more reason to take advantage of / arbitrage the surplus-value of a pre-arb player. I’m talking about the allocation/use of surplus value, not raw payroll dollars. 2 WAR from Goldschmidt cost $13mm per win, whereas 2 WAR from Burleson cost $400k per win.
At the risk of rewarding yet another entirely pretextual new thread that turns out to be just more “Burly-bait”:
Burleson is not “fine” defensively. Last year, he was at -6/-4 fielding RAA (FG/BR) in just 493.1 innings. That’s not good. This year, he’s at -2.3/-2 in just 357.1 innings. Also not good. Simply put, he is slow (11th percentile in statcast sprint speed) and therefore has poor range, and that isn’t going to change.
The best argument for Burleson at 1B is the one you’re not making: cost–he’s cheap (for now) per unit of production. Given his defensive and positional value, if we assume, for the sake of argument, that he lands somewhere in the 115-120 OPS+ range, he’d be roughly a 2 WAR player, which is the benchmark for an average MLB starter. Normally, that wouldn’t be good enough at 1B for a playoff caliber team, but Burleson will only cost around $800K next year, so in that scenario he’d generate about $15mm of surplus value (approx. $16mm of FA mkt value of production minus about $1mm in salary), which the Cardinals could then redeploy toward other areas of potentially greater need.
Said differently, an average starter making $800k is inherently valuable, until he reaches arbitration and becomes more expensive. Even if he winds up being less than a 115-120 OPS+ type hitter, he’ll be a below-average starter, but will still have meaningful surplus value (for now) because of his low cost.
@blingboy wrote: If Saggese can carry a .300ish BA we will have a trifecta. Saggese, Firmin and Dunn.
At the rate he’s going, he will have to hit .300ish because he swings at almost everything (39.6% chase rate) and refuses to take a walk (5% BB%), resulting in a subpar OBP (.294).
Even after a couple of good games, Saggese has a 72 wRC+ at AAA. That’s 28% worse than the average hitter at that level.
How about we wait until he becomes at least an average hitter at AAA before we start talking about him as a starting MLB 2B/3B?
When the Cardinals got Saggese from the Rangers I was led to believe that he was a real good player. Has he not performed well at AAA in Memphis?
63 wRC+ in 360 PAs at Memphis thus far.
Also, depending on the ballpark, parking can be a pretty big line item because the gross margins are so high on that revenue stream.
Without commenting on the accuracy of the estimate, note that the $74.40 average spend covers “themselves and everyone else in their party combined.” I don’t know what the right average multiplier is for a party, but for a family of four, that would be about $19-20 per head/ticket. Apply that to the 500K ticket delta, and you’re looking at something more along the lines of $9-10mm of lost concessions revenue. Or maybe $12mm if you use closer to a 3.0 multiplier.
Katie Woo article covering media address by BDWJr and BDWIII back in January says “[h]istorically, the club has sold about 70-80% of their annual tickets before Opening Day.”
Unfortunately, if you hide the 2022 row, Arenado appears to be on a pretty consistent trendline. Goldschmidt’s fall-off is more severe, but he is 3 years older, and aging curves in baseball are just that: curves–on average, player decline isn’t linear.
Surprisingly, Arenado didn’t exercise his opt-out after that incredible 2022 season, and he *and* the Cardinals are probably going to end up worse off for it.
1TD, one potential issue with how you’re measuring their decline is you seem to be anchoring on 2022 as the fixed point of comparison. But if you pull back the lens a little and look at the broader sweep of their careers, their 2022 seasons look (and appeared at the time) like pretty major anomalies that fortuitously happened in the same year. Basically, against long odds, Arenado had the best year of his career at age 31, and Goldschmidt had the second best of his career at age 34. And they both happened at the same time.
But if you look at how they were trending in the years immediately before and after 2022, this isn’t that crazy of a fall-off for players who are in their mid-30s (though Goldschmidt’s decline has been more severe than Arenado’s). Said differently, the bigger anomaly may be 2022, not today.
Goldschmidt (Age/ OPS+/ wRC+/ fWAR/ bWAR)
2014: 26; 158; 154; 4.3; 4.7
2015: 27; 168; 163; 7.2; 8.3
2016: 28; 133; 133; 4.4; 5.0
2017: 29; 142; 142; 5.4; 4.9
2018: 30; 142; 145; 4.6; 5.5
2019: 31; 115; 117; 3.0; 2.6
2020: 32; 145; 147; 2.1; 2.1
2021: 33; 141; 136; 4.8; 6.0
2022: 34; 177; 176; 6.9; 7.7
2023: 35; 120; 122; 3.4; 3.4
2024: 36; 87; 90; 0.1; 0.4Arenado (Age/ OPS+/ wRC+/ fWAR/ bWAR)
2014: 23; 115; 113; 2.6; 3.6
2015: 24; 124; 121; 4.5; 6.3
2016: 25; 129; 126; 6.0; 5.9
2017: 26; 130; 130; 5.7; 6.7
2018: 27; 133; 133; 5.9; 6.4
2019: 28; 131; 130; 6.1; 7.3
2020: 29; 86; 76; 0.6; 1.5
2021: 30; 119; 112; 4.3; 4.0
2022: 31; 151; 150; 7.2; 7.7
2023: 32; 108; 107; 2.7; 2.4
2024: 33; 99; 101; 1.0; 0.4
