On Monday I took a quick glance at four similar baseball players just by looking at their statistics and nothing else. Each player played the same position and therefore had the same normalized stats:

Chicks obviously dig the long ball, but let’s run a few comparisons, “mystery game” style. Check it out, using 2008 statistics:

Player A: .270/.341/.500, 25 HR in 492 AB, 123 OPS+, UZR/150 -7.1
Player B: .251/.339/.543, 48 HR in 610 AB, 124 OPS+, UZR/150 2.6
Player C: .276/.372/.507, 34 HR in 588 AB, 128 OPS+, UZR/150 -8.7
Player D: .247/.377/.494, 31 HR in 590 AB, 127 OPS+, UZR/150 3.8

Check out how similar these players are — you can’t guess who’s who without specifically looking up the statistics first. Without doing that, rank these players from who you’d most want and why, and I’ll lay out the same (putting contracts in mind) on my next post and explain why the three players who aren’t Ryan Howard are more desirable to have on your team than the big slugger himself.

Just for the record, if I were looking at these statistics by themselves, I’d rank the players, from best to worst, 4-2-3-1. Let me know what you think.

Those players, in order, were Adam Laroche, Ryan Howard, Prince Fielder, and Carlos Pena. I was a little bit surprised to see that Laroche was almost as good as the other “big three” first basemen in this category in terms of pure statistics, even though he lost quite a bit of value defensively for not being that good at first base.

These four players are very similar statistically, with about one total win being the difference between them (assuming they all had the same amount of PAs). However, their contracts appear to be wildly different. Check out what each of these players are getting paid:

Adam Laroche: 1 yr/ $7.05 million plus $10,000 in incentives for reaching PA plateaus
Prince Fielder: 2 yrs/ $18 million plus $500k for reaching 500 PA
Ryan Howard: 3 yrs/ $54 million with incentives for various accomplishments that could reach an additional $2.5 million
Carlos Pena: 3 yrs/$24.125 million plus $25,000 for each Gold Glove

It’s incredible to me how much the media can change the face of a player simply by means of how much hype they give him. Howard is considered a first-class slugger in the majors because he can hit home runs and plays for a major market team. Alternatively, Carlos Pena had a higher OPS+ than Howard, was better defensively, and gets paid less than half of what Howard makes. The only real “knock” against Pena is that in 2008 he only hit 31 HR while Howard blasted nearly 48 hitting in an extreme hitters park in Philadelphia.

Let it be known too that Pena went nuts in 2007, putting up an incredible line of .282/.411/.627 with 46 HR and 172 OPS+ with some plus defense in first base as well. Since he plays in Tampa, though, he doesn’t get near the amount of media attention that he deserves.

The discrepancy in salary between these two players is an obvious choice when deciding who I’d rather want as a player. Considering Howard’s massive $18 million salary next year, I’d just as soon take the services of Adam Laroche because he costs $11 million cheaper, and I can make up for Laroche’s dropoff in production by signing someone else to fill in the gap somewhere else — an extra $11 million will be able to buy me some more wins somewhere else where there’s a market to upgrade. Or that $11 million can be put back into the system for next year in order to afford a cool free agent coming out. Or, I can try and lock up a pre-arbitration player. The possibilities with extra money are endless; $11 million to lose out on one extra win is a gamble I’d be quite willing to take.

I decided to take a look at some of the best values of some of the best players in the majors. I used Beyond the Box Score’s Top 50 Players in 2008 list and compared the salaries of players with how much they’re worth on the field. Just a few notes before I publish the spreadsheet:

– I sorted players by those in their arbitration years and those who have signed longer-term contracts. I did this because players in their arbitration years get smaller contracts than those who have proven themselves and are ready to become free agents. This is so that we’re comparing apples and apples; not apples and oranges.

– Players who are in pre-arb years were omitted; the salaries are too similar. Of the top 50 players on Beyond the Box Score’s list, that means I’m skipping out on Josh Hamilton, Geovany Soto, Joey Votto, Carlos Quentin, BJ Upton, and Mike Aviles.

– Because some players’ contracts are backloaded, I decided to normalize cost/win values by averaging the entire contract of the player in terms of price/year and finding out the cost/win that way in addition to the player’s contract in 2009.

– Manny Ramirez hasn’t signed anything yet and I just estimated his salary at $20 million, since that’s the base number that gets thrown around a lot.

– Chipper Jones’ salary isn’t disclosed, so I just estimated it based on what MLB Contracts said. Nothing scientific there.

So, here’s what I found.

One of the things that jumped out at me was the incredible value ballclubs are getting by signing pre-arbitration players to long-term contracts that translates to guaranteed money for the players when they are just one injury away from losing millions of dollars (see: Ben Sheets). Evan Longoria is the best deal among the top 50 players, and likely the world — at $120,000/win, he’s an incredible bargain, no matter what team you are. And he’s only 23. Considering his contract is a little backloaded, he still only costs $630,000 per win, and when you consider he didn’t play the entire season last year (which means his WAR over a full season would be higher) and you expect a 23-year-old to improve as he continues to make progress in the big leagues, he’s probably going to come cheaper than that. The Rays paid their superstar virtually no money to go out and add 5 wins above replacement.

With that said, it’s widely known at this point that the Angels are not the most efficient of spenders. They considered Gary Matthews Jr. enough of a talent to pay $10 million/year to OPS .675 and play terrible defense. Torii Hunter is the lone Angelic who appears on this list, proving to be an inefficient purchase, even though he adds 3-4 wins to their win total.

Of course these numbers aren’t perfect. I personally don’t expect Ryan Ludwick to repeat his 2008 performance since it seemed like a flukish year and I don’t trust an oft-injured player like him to repeat an entire season’s worth of good hitting. However, if it’s a good quick cost-benefit analysis for players where you’ve already evaluated talent levels on.

For my part 3 preview (which I’ve started by the way!), I’m going to do a spreadsheet on all current Brewers and how they can project to do for the 2009 season using this analysis. Using Beyond the Box Score’s cost-per-win analysis to use Milwaukee’s current payroll to determine who’s worth it and who’s not.

Anyone want to undertake the task of doing this for the entirety of MLB?