The 1977 Free Agency Report Card

[Alan T]

As we take a break from the top performances of the first 15 years for the weekend, I'm going to bring out a new yearly article I will start writing. We will look back at the previous free agency period and try to hi lite the winners and losers from the past free agency period.

For all figures quoted in this article, I evaluated every free agent signed last offseason. Any players that were signed to a minor league contract, I set it to the ML minimum of 190k for stat comparisons. Any player that did not make the majors at all with league minimum salary or Minor league contract was dropped entirely. We only factored in players that played in the majors and any one that did not make the majors but had a major league contract.

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Top 5 performances from past year Free agents:

There was a bit of debate earlier this season regarding how much one of these players were signed to.. I went out on a limb and claimed that I thought it was a fine signing and that he was a good player. Sure enough, the top performance from a free agent this year was indeed:

1) 1B Bob Arnold - Chicago

Number two on this list had no suprises about them at all, and was one of the higher profile free agents on the market this year. Out of the blue New Orleans came in and snatched them up, and were not dissapointed..

2) SP David Barajas - New Orleans

To round out the top 5 list:

3) 2B Christian Larsen - Brooklyn
4) 1B Joey Higman - Rio Grande
5) 3B Warren Lewis - Brooklyn


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Of course if we are talking about the best performances of the year, we have to talk about the worst performances of the year too! Ironically enough the same team that enjoyed the best performance from a free agent signee this year, also enjoyed the worst! Allowing hitters to bat .311 against him this season as part of Chicago's well-documented 6 man rotation is our worst Free agent performance of the year.

1) SP Max Hughes - Chicago
2) SP Doug Proctor - San Diego

It pains me deeply to present the third player on this list, but he was also topic of discussion earlier this season. Unfortunately it does appear that my head was correct and not my heart...

3) RF Roberto Pagan - New Orleans

To round out the final two:

4) SS Javier Medina - San Diego
5) 3B Jesus Perales - Columbus

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Performance of course is not the only consideration when signing a free agent. Obviously how much money is available and using it wisely plays a big factor in thinking. Signing a player to big money and having them end up being absolutely no-factor for a team is not always the best way to succeed earlier. Here are our top 5 most expensive non-factors from this season:

1) SP Hirokazu Nakamura - Compton
2) 1B Tomas Lara - New York
3) RF Clarence Gilliam - Brooklyn
4) LF William Davis - New York
5) 3B Lorenzo Martinez - Valdosta

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And finally, what I've been waiting to present.. the best Free Agent "deals" of this past offseason. Obviously loading up a team of super stars would be easy with an unlimited budget, but all owners have to also factor in getting the most bang for the buck. I would present this in top 5 form, but amazingly one single team had all of the top 5 positions. Perhaps one of the most under-rated and never mentioned managers in FOOL, Commo_Soldier quietly has returned to FOOL with almost no fanfare at all. All he did was by far have the best off-season of any owner in the league.

The top 5 list of best bargain free agent signees this past off season:

1) RF Richard McClure - Brooklyn
2) 3B Warren Lewis - Brooklyn
3) 2B Christian Larsen - Brooklyn
4) SP Rob Goodwin - Brooklyn
5) LF Juan Medina - Brooklyn

[kaosfere]

1) RF Richard McClure - Brooklyn
2) 3B Warren Lewis - Brooklyn
3) 2B Christian Larsen - Brooklyn
4) SP Rob Goodwin - Brooklyn
5) LF Juan Medina - Brooklyn


That, right there, is very, very impressive. Nice work, Commo Soldier!

[Chief Rum]

Nice work, Commo.

And nice work, Alan, great read. Surprised Davis didn't make the "worst" signings list, although I am confident he just had his worst year short of his eventual ratings collapse in another four years or so.

[Tasan]

Nice work, Commo.

And nice work, Alan, great read. Surprised Davis didn't make the "worst" signings list, although I am confident he just had his worst year short of his eventual ratings collapse in another four years or so.

I don't know Chief. Its one reason I stayed away from him last offseason. I didn't want to be locked in to someone for the money it would take to get him with the decline he looked to maybe be trending towards. If you look at his numbers for your last season there, they again show a decrease in Ks, walks back up again, earned runs increasing and BABIP staying pretty high. I hope he corrects and has a better season for you next year, but his numbers are a little troubling.

[Chief Rum]

I don't know Chief. Its one reason I stayed away from him last offseason. I didn't want to be locked in to someone for the money it would take to get him with the decline he looked to maybe be trending towards. If you look at his numbers for your last season there, they again show a decrease in Ks, walks back up again, earned runs increasing and BABIP staying pretty high. I hope he corrects and has a better season for you next year, but his numbers are a little troubling.

Well, it's clear he's not the same pitcher. His ratings have had a gradual drop over the past four years, since when he was, what, 26? Which is an odd age to start to show a decline. That said, the decline is very gradual, and he is still a very highly rated pitcher. Last year's numbers are far below what he should have performed. So until he puts together more of the same, I am going to write it off as a fluke.

It could be FOOL doing its "a big drop is coming" stats hit, which we occasionally see, but I am crossing my fingers on that one.

[TimGuru]

I beg to differ about Lara. He got 172 ABs (185 PAs) vs left handed pitchers, replacing and protecting the rookie Conway who only hit .227 vs lefties in very limited action. He also only made 3 errors while on the field, in defiance of his 32 rating at 1B (he even caught 2 innings!). This was an important contribution and apparently he offered some protection to Hunter, who hit .308 vs left for the year.

[Alan T]

I beg to differ about Lara. He got 172 ABs (185 PAs) vs left handed pitchers, replacing and protecting the rookie Conway who only hit .227 vs lefties in very limited action. He also only made 3 errors while on the field, in defiance of his 32 rating at 1B (he even caught 2 innings!). This was an important contribution and apparently he offered some protection to Hunter, who hit .308 vs left for the year.


In this report, I statistically tried to remain neutral so the report would be more objective than applying my subjectiveness to it. Obviously in some cases people picked up guys for a year or two down the road (as you see one of the guys I got on my team made the list in a bad way), but in order to remain neutral, I based the majority of this on VORP which should measure a player vs replacement level which sounds about right for a report on replacement players.

In Lara's case he made a list of players that wern't bad pickups, but more irrelevant pickups. He virtually ended up with a 0 VORP (his VORP was a fraction below 0, but above -0.1) which says that his at bats this season as a whole (not broken down rightys or leftys) was basically the same value as any other replacement player. So the reason he ended up on the list was that he was paid almost $1mil for no real gain in production... If that makes sense. Once again, right behind Lara on the list is someone I picked up who didn't matter this year, but I expect him to eventually!

[Alan T]

Nice work, Commo.

And nice work, Alan, great read. Surprised Davis didn't make the "worst" signings list, although I am confident he just had his worst year short of his eventual ratings collapse in another four years or so.


Davis didn't make it because he actually did have a positive VORP this season. It ended up with him having a cost effectiveness of 0.1 which almost put him on the other list that I was just speaking about regarding Lara though!

By the way, if anyone wonders, the numbers used can also be seen in some cases on the Front Office page in game. The section called the Least and Most Cost effective players in the game. I chose to use this value for this report in another attempt to be objective. Since the game already had it in there, I decided to go with it for good or bad. The only downside is that the game doesn't appear to have anywhere that it lists this by player (only the top and bottom per team).. so I actually did have to compute all of the numbers in a spreadsheet which took me a few hours.

[Alan T]

Double dola...

You can also see entire team cost effeciencies on the same page within the Front office tab of a team. In there you'll see that it echos what I said about Brooklyn's great off season as they had the second best cost efficient team in the league this year with a hair under $700k per win.

Number 1 obviously was Hartford at $612k per win, but Hartford primarily did that through bringing up young players through their farm system and not through free agency, which always will be cheaper but not really covered in this report.

[kaosfere]

The section called the Least and Most Cost effective players in the game.

That is one of my absolute favorite additions in OOTP9.

(Or did I just never see it in prior ones?)

[Alan T]

That is one of my absolute favorite additions in OOTP9.

(Or did I just never see it in prior ones?)


I honestly don't remember when they added this in.. Might be ootp9, if not it was ootp8. I've done this type of thing though on my own since ootp4 though oddly enough. So it was great to see OOTP also incorporate it in. I love fun stats to look at, even if in some cases it is meaningless :)

[Young Drachma]

OOTP9 is the first version to have it. It was one of the biggest changes during the financial overhaul during beta. I agree it's very nice to look at...

[magic_number]

1) SP Hirokazu Nakamura - Compton in all fairness to this guy: I never got him in the rotation- he was the last FA I got & since I did no export this friday he just sat it out for most of the year... I'm sure getting paid for nothing helps soothe his ego.

I was needed more elsewhere this season so thats that. I hope to have a better 78. I do have a prob with our Cap format & I'll get into that as soon as I have the time... maybe I'm missing some key bits of info on the "why" part so it will be good to air it out.

Congrats to champs & 100 season wins is no small feat indeed!

Peace.