How Much Should the Indians Rotation Actually Cost?

This is simply going to be an exercise in showing how valuable the Indians rotation is and to keep things simple, we’ll assume a 2016 rotation of Corey Kluber, Carlos Carrasco, Danny Salazar, Trevor Bauer and Cody Anderson.

David Price just set a new high for pitcher pay grabbing $217M over seven years from the Red Sox while Jordan Zimmermann made quite a big splash for a more mid-level pitcher when he signed for $110M over five years with Detroit. From the top to the bottom, where Brett Anderson received a $15.8M qualifying offer from the Dodgers and Bud Norris got $2.5M from the Braves as one of the worst pitchers in the league.

At the same time that this is taking place, the Indians feel pretty set with their rotation. They have three of the best starters in baseball (all finished in the top 10 in WAR) in Kluber, Carrasco and Salazar and a large pool of players capable of being a four or five in Bauer, Anderson, T.J. House, Josh Tomlin and even deeper with names like Michael Clevinger and Adam Plutko. For the primary five, the contract breakdowns are noted below:

Again for the sake of keeping things simple, I’m assuming all pre-arbitration salaries are $800K as that number was the most given to a non-contracted pre-arb player in recent seasons and arbitration seasons as $3M, $5M, $10M and $15M as these are similar to numbers awarded during the 2015 arbitration season around the league. Because of this, these numbers are just rough estimates, but should be near the actual situation in the future.

Before even looking at the value the pitchers provide, it is interesting to note that the entire Indians rotation is cheaper per year than Zimmermann on his own in both 2016 and 2017 and about the same price as Price in 2018. Even in 2020 with projected arbitration salaries and options that may or may not be used, the entire five man rotation should cost about the same as two Prices. If Clevinger, Plutko or any number of qualified minor leaguers come up before then, that number will drop significantly.

Even without thinking about the quality of pitcher, one has to approve of the pragmatism of the Indians front office. By building this rotation through drafts (Anderson), international signings (Salazar) and trades (Kluber, Carrasco and Bauer), the Indians have saved money even compared to a 2016 rotation made up of five Rich Hill‘s ($6M for next year). Every time the Indians have tried to sign a low level starter to guaranteed money (Scott Kazmir was a minor league invite, so he doesn’t count) it’s worked out terribly from Brett Myers to Gavin Floyd. Nearly every time they have went to a young internal option, on the other hand, it has worked out or been a cheap enough risk that it didn’t hurt the team over the long term.

There is no really fair way to compare pitchers on an equal level and I used WAR when writing about a similar situation for the Outside Corner last week. In that case, the average dollar per win added was between $5M and $9M, but here we’ll look at Win Probability Added just to get a different look.

Looking at the seven players who have already signed this off-season as a starting pitcher (excluding the two with a negative WPA, Norris and Anderson), these players have signed for an average of $23M each year per WPA. This is only based off their 2015 WPA, but disregarding age and contract length, the best deal for the 2016 season is Marco Estrada, who will make just $4.7M per WPA and the worst was Zimmermann, who will make $78.57 per full win added.

For the Tribe, they average just $8.5M per WPA, the cheapest being Anderson and most expensive being Salazar, still using the numbers from the chart above. All five of the starters in question had a WPA of at least 0.60 and three of five were above 1.25, something that only two of the pitchers who have signed through the off-season so far can claim. To answer the question in the title, based on the average price of starters signed this year, the 2016 Indians rotation should actually cost $135.3M for just 2016 on the open market. They will only cost about $173.7M total including all salaries through 2020.

There’s little question that Price is better than any current Indians starter, but he is also older and can only pitch every five days. By having five above average starters, the Indians should be able to get nearly 1,000 innings from these five men with a minimum of at least 870 if they remain healthy. Price, on the other hand, has never thrown more than 250 innings and will likely see that number drop as he ages. For about $11.5M next year, the Indians will get between three and five times the innings that the Red Sox will get for their $31M.

Going back to WAR, Price may have been worth 6.4 wins above a replacement player, but the fact that he can only pitch so often really limits that number. For the Indians, their rotation that costs one third the price in 2016 was worth 16.1 WAR in 2015 and that was with Anderson throwing less than 100 innings.

Over the length of control, the Indians deals will become more expensive, but should be even more valuable. Because of strong minor league depth, Bauer, Salazar and Anderson will either improve or be replaced for less money. Kluber and Carrasco are guaranteed money, but instead of getting an opt out if they outplay their contract, like in the deals for Price and Clayton Kershaw, they have option years at the end, benefiting the team. If Kluber was a free agent right now, he could easily command a deal of six years for more than $25M per year. Instead, he won’t ever make above $14M with the Indians and if he falls apart before 2020, they don’t even have to pay him the final $13.5M.

Is any of this fair to the players? Of course not, but either is the fact that a very limited amount of teams are capable of bidding on the highest level for the best players. The MLB standard for years of service is the only thing giving teams like the Indians any chance at all and the current Tribe rotation is the perfect example of how to take advantage of that system.