Four Arguments (Plus One) on Christian Yelich’s Contract

In recent years, Baseball Prospectus has had an effective and much needed call to stop speaking about baseball players as assets, which is one of the issues with the early analytics era — silence on the view of players as assets allowed a stats and value-seeking movement to become a labor suppression movement. But, I want to write about Christian Yelich’s contract extension, and why it’s not a bad contract; this will necessarily require implying that the ballplayer has some sort of value as a financial asset, or that his performance on the field can be translated to a value statement. This is unfortunately necessary because the simple fact is, when Brewers fans complain about their superstar’s contract, they are implying that the former MVP is no longer valuable.

Quick MLB Labor Background

First, I would like to note that there is an inherent value-seeking language in baseball fans that the MLB’s arbitration has embedded into fans. There are many nuances to this system, but in a nutshell, MLB’s rookies and most players working within their first 2-to-3 seasons have absolutely no negotiating leverage with their ballclub; the MLB club reserves their contract rights without question, and can therefore renew a player’s contract for whatever they wish to pay.

The situation for players improves somewhat during salary arbitration; should a player’s career reach years 4-to-6 (or 7), in those years they will most likely have the contractual ability to bargain with their parent club and take any disputes to arbitration, where negotiating differences between the parties can be settled. Then, finally, after year 6 or 7, a player reserves the right to sign a new contract with new terms to whichever suitor they prefer. These are the player’s free agency years.

This system was a novelty throughout the late-1970s and 1980s, but over the last couple of decades, an entire generation of fans has been raised within this system. Therefore, there is no question that most fans view their teams more like ownership groups, rather than sharing sympathies with players — most fans love the idea of teams developing or trading for prospects because you don’t have to pay prospects. The goal for many fans is actually to see their club graduate prospects into immediate star roles while paying them less than $1 million annually (let alone $20 million). This is how you end up with someone like Mike Trout earning little more than the league minimum while producing once-in-a-generation statistics on the field.

Therefore, with this type of league labor structure in mind, I suspect that most Brewers fans default to a view in which they don’t care whether MLB players earn their fair share, and they certainly don’t wish to see the Brewers pay market value for a player like Christian Yelich. Moreover, I believe this view is not even a malicious one, but more of a status quo, whereby even the most well-intentioned fans simply want to see a contract that solely reflects a player’s value.

Now the fact: entering the 2020 season, Christian Yelich signed a nine-year $215 million deal, with a mutual 10th year option. This contract would potentially keep Yelich in Brewers blue through his age-37 season.

Argument 1: The Brewers Are Simply Cashing Out Their Trade Value for Yelich

Recall that when the Brewers acquired Christian Yelich, they traded away their then-top prospect Lewis Brinson, other top-10 intriguing bats in Monte Harrison and Isan Diaz, and (criminally underrated) system depth RHP Jordan Yamamoto. At the time, Yelich was already under a contract extension with the Miami Marlins, to the tune of four remaining years at $43 million (plus a club option for $15 million in 2022). This contract would almost guarantee that the Brewers would be able to count on Yelich in their batting order during his age-26 through age-30 seasons. So, in short, the Brewers surrendered an alleged haul in prospects, but they did so to receive five potential years of cost-controlled contract reserve.

I use an estimation called “Depreciated Surplus” to assess the value of MLB players. This statistic uses the assumption that (a) every MLB player’s Wins Above Replacement Player (WARP), ex. their basic value above a team’s minor league depth replacements, can be expressed in monetary terms, (b) a player’s future WARP may generally be assumed to be lower than their present WARP, (c) a prospect’s future potential scouting grades can be expressed on a scale involving risk that is translatable into both monetary and WARP terms, and (d) that a team receives value from both a player’s actual on the field performance and the right to reserve a player for a particular number of years. There are critical issues with these assumptions for many reasons, which I have written about at length at Baseball Prospectus Milwaukee between 2016 and 2018, but the stat works as a quick-and-dirty assessment of trades.

It is worth noting that prior to a recalibration of the Baseball Prospectus WARP system, Yelich was valued higher than he would be valued now at the time of the trade.

At minimum, Christian Yelich’s contract entering the 2018 season would be worth $44 million in surplus value to the Brewers organization, and as much as $165 million in surplus value if one were to expect his performance to simply match his career-high 2.6 WARP throughout each of his prime years. In short, Yelich was an elite trade asset.

Each of the Brewers’ prospects traded away had some solid future value grades, but were also extremely risky prospects. In their 2018 Brewers Top 10 prospect list, for instance, Lewis Brinson received an infamous “The Risks: He may not hit major-league pitching. Wheeee!” to describe his risk profile. Therefore, although the Brewers traded away highly rated prospects, they certainly did not trade away sure-thing prospects, so each prospect grade must be graded with substantial risk. Here’s my attempt, using historical Overall Future Potential estimates:

(1) Lewis Brinson (Risky 70 OFP grade by Baseball Prospectus). Top value is $100 million; graded at a “Likely 60 OFP” means a value of around $50 million; risk-adjusted value (40 OFP to 60 OFP) is approximately $20 million.

(2) Monte Harrison (Risky 70 OFP grade by Baseball Prospectus). Top value is $100 million; graded at a “Likely 55 OFP” means a value of around $35 million; risk-adjusted value (40 OFP to 55 OFP) is approximately $14 million.

(3) Isan Diaz (Risky 55 OFP grade by Baseball Prospectus). Top value is $34.2 million; graded at a “Likely 50 OFP” means a value of around $20 million; risk-adjusted value (40 OFP to 50 OFP) is approximately $7 million.

(4) Jordan Yamamoto was not a Top 10 prospect for the Brewers, so there was no scouting grade. But I liked him a lot and we wrote about that a lot at BP Milwaukee, so at the time I simply gave Yamamoto a solid 45 OFP grade, which is worth $1.5 million.

At their very best, taking their top ceiling prospect grades without risks, the Marlins received $235 million in prospect value for trading away Yelich; Yelich had yet to truly breakout into an MVP role, so even assuming that he would be a solid 3 WARP player for five years, the Marlins returned an excellent haul.

Even at their worst, the Marlins received a good haul for Yelich: risk-adjusted, they received around $45 million in prospect value, which almost perfectly matches Yelich’s depreciated surplus value I posted above ($44 million).

Of course, the Marlins did not develop their prospects, with the exception that Lewis Brinson is suddenly coming on strong in his age-27 season. Here are the Marlins’ players WARP performances thus far:

Brinson: 0.6 career WARP (career .201 batting average / .252 on-base percentage / .331 slugging percentage).

Diaz: -0.1 career WARP. Harrison: 0.0 career WARP. Yamamoto: 1.4 career WARP

In grand lessons that no trade is ever a sure thing, the Marlins prospect haul in the Yelich deal must be viewed as an excellent cautionary tale. Teams ought not simply trade for the highest prospect grade, but also the risk. It turns out that the high-floor minor league depth arm became the best player in the trade (and, with the Mets, Yamamoto continues to fight for an MLB role).

Overall, the Marlins received 2 WARP and counting from the Yelich deal. Meanwhile, Yelich surged to become a Most Valuable Player and posted two exceptional seasons in 2018 and 2019, prior to the pandemic woes of 2020 and the injury-and-bad-swing woes of 2021. Nevertheless, Yelich has already been worth 12 WARP and counting for the Brewers. In four seasons, that averages out quite nicely to his solid 3 WARP expectation; in this case, the Brewers can be viewed as simply extending the time horizon of their trade, and cashing out the rest of their trade value.

In simple on-field value (12 WARP minus 2 WARP over four years), Yelich is worth at least $175 million more than the four players the Brewers traded away extrapolated over the next decade. In their most elite prospect surplus roles, the Brewers traded away four players worth $235 million. With a 10-year, $235 million maximum contract value, the Brewers simply transferred that trade value into on-field, guaranteed contract value. There is an argument to be made that the Brewers simply “cashed out” their trade surplus, and in doing so have also transferred potentially elite (but risky) prospect roles into the real deal on the field.

2. Yelich was simply underpaid in 2018 and 2019 and the contract extension makes up for that

This is an easy argument to make. Yelich surged for the 2018 and 2019 Brewers, leading both teams to competitive playoff seasons (2018 resulted in a great League Championship Series fight, 2019 in a gut-wrenching Wild Card loss). In more than 1200 plate appearances, Yelich slugged 80 homers and stole 52 bases with a .327 batting average / .415 on-base percentage / .631 slugging percentage slash line. Baseball Prospectus thought the performance was real, as in each season their Deserved Runs Created Plus (DRC+) stat suggested that Yelich’s contextual performance would be expected to produce batting lines between 40 percent and 60 percent better than league average.

This all was worth 11 WARP to the Brewers, for a player that they didn’t even pay $17 million. If you even take a conservative stance that one WARP is worth $7 million to a contending team like the Brewers, Yelich was underpaid by more than $50 million in those seasons. Given that contending teams may push contracts into the $10 million / one WARP valuation, the extent to which Yelich was underpaid is even more extreme.

If fans were to expect that players are actually paid what they are worth based on their immediate performance on the field, the Brewers reasonably owe Yelich around $90 to $100 million simply based on 2018 and 2019 alone. Given that the salary system is actually based on service time more than actual performance on the field, fans should reasonably expect a player like Yelich to absolutely cash out on their free agency years(or free agency buyout extension, like Yelich signed), and a club like the Brewers will gladly pay (evidenced by the actual extension signed).

Let’s assume a disaster scenario in which Yelich is simply a 1 WARP player for the remainder of his career (which I find highly implausible, for what it’s worth). Even in that scenario, over a decade a [$70 million on field performance] + [$70 million on field performance — $235 million contract] equation puts the Brewers $95 million in the red: which is almost exactly what they owe to Yelich for his 2018 and 2019 surplus.

3. Brewers fans mistakenly thought that the Yelich deal was a bargain

Focusing solely on 2018 and 2019, and licking their chops at the chance to watch a few more elite seasons from their prime-aged MVP candidate, Brewers fans largely seemed to feel that the Yelich extension was a bargain at the time it was signed. However, if one looked at Yelich’s three year profile (12.5 WARP) and depreciated surplus (6 WARP to 9 WARP expected over three seasons), the Brewers basically signed an extension with Yelich that almost perfectly matched the lower WARP profile.

In this sense, the Yelich deal was not a bargain, but a perfectly justified and well-priced contract for a player that had produced WARP of 1.2, 4.8, and 6.5 over the previous three years.

Even extending this profile to Yelich’s full career through 2019, which totaled approximately 18 WARP, Yelich’s full on-field value over a decade might be expected to be worth $126 million depreciated surplus. If you add the Brewers’ right to control that contract to the on-field value, Yelich might be expected to be worth $252 million over a decade. Compared to a sticker price that could actually pay $235 million over a decade, that’s a pretty well-priced deal.

4. It’s Fun to Sign MVP Players

Okay, enough with the numbers. MLB is an entertainment industry, and it’s fun to watch multi-faceted stars like Yelich, who can gracefully run the bases, blend some power and speed, and exhibit a disciplined plate approach. That’s before you even consider any value Yelich might provide the organization as a long-term leader in the clubhouse (or, at least, one long-term player who can blend eras of young prospects and older free agents who will inevitably comprise the David Stearns hodge podge Brewers over the next decade).

5. It’s Not Our Money!

Moreover, we as fans don’t actually have to spend money on these players. So who cares what they earn? We’re not General Managers. We are watching an entertainment product, and we should simply cheer our favorite players (or, dislike them and decide to hatewatch them. Again, it’s entertainment, do what you want). Given that there are at least three statistical reasons that the Yelich contract is a fine deal, and one intangible argument for keeping around a player like Yelich for a long time, we should also start to address the fan attitude to constantly want to find value in our players in a manner that means we expect players to be underpaid.

It’s one thing to expect an actual Baseball Operations division to behave that way (make no mistake about it, if I’m a Baseball Ops guy, I want to take a chance on every single player that I believe may find a specific MLB role, and I’ll always want to find the right price for a guy). But, sometimes paying the right price for a guy is also simply paying sticker price. That’s true for an actual MLB club, and it should be true for fans, too: so if you’re a Brewers fan, stop worrying about Yelich’s contract. The deal is fine even if he’s a 1 WARP player for the rest of his career; if you want to be mad about something, you might want to ask why owner Mark Attanasio couldn’t even crack a $150 million payroll during two seasons in which he was paying a bona fide MVP in peanuts.

Cover Photo by Patrick McDermott/Getty Images, taken from Brew Crew Ball.