75 0 All dpwoodford Angels in the Offseason - The Players who got away 4/9/05, 7:23am Ok, so as we left things the Angels were solidly in the black, having signed Cabrera, Finley and Byrd for a projected $3.9m below the market value. But what about the players that got away? In order to estimate this, we have to assume that the Angels could have signed Eckstein, Glaus and Percival for the same price paid by their respective new clubs (St Louis, Arizona and Detroit). Troy Glaus signed for the Arizona Diamondbacks for $40m over 4 years. PECOTA projects he will have 17.1 WARP over the length of the contract, that is $2.38m per win, meaning the Diamondbacks are losing around $4.06m on market value over the course of the contract. If Troy was asking for the same from the Angels, then it’s hard to argue with the decision to let him go. Incidently the break even point for Troy is $36.59m over 4 years ($9.15m/yr) — that is, that was his true market value. Could the Angels have got him for less than that? Only management truly know… Did they need to? That’s not a question for this article. Percy signed with the Tigers with a 2 year, $11m deal. Baseball Prospectus give him 3.2 WARP over the 2 years of the deal, for a cost of $3.37m per year. This means that over the deal, the Tigers lose an estimated $4.35m on market value. Percy’s break even point is $6.84m over 2 years ($3.4m/yr). Could we have signed him for this price? Probably not. The most interesting of the bunch however is David Eckstein. David signed a 3 year, $8.8m deal with the Cardinals. PECOTA gives David 10.2 WARP over the course of the deal, translating to an amazing 869k per win. This means the Cards gain $12.99m in value over the course of the deal. David’s true salary lied somewhere around the $21.8m ($7.3m/yr) mark. Eckstein ranked as the #3 steal of the offseason. Next time, we’ll round up the discussion, and run the numbers on how the Angels did, on a per position basis as well as overall. We’ll also take a look at the steals and suckers of the 2004/05 offseason. [dpwoodford from Kent/UK] Replies: 10