How much is Gil Meche worth? According to FanGraphs' Eric Seidman, maybe more than you think …
Following the 2006 season, Gil Meche inked a [five-year, $55 million] contract with the Kansas City Royals. The deal underwent immediate scrutiny due to Meche's below average performance throughout the previous few seasons. His ERA ranged from 4.48 to 5.09, with [a] FIP entrenched in the 4.60-4.70 area. Simply put, an average annual value of [$11 million] did not seem appropriate for someone with his credentials. Perhaps Dayton Moore, who apparently goes by the nickname DMGM, knew what he was doing, because Meche has established himself as a solid and consistent pitcher over the past two seasons.
--snip--
Last year, the average dollar figure per win was around [$4.5-4.75 million]. With inflation, I'll call this year's amount a firm $5 million per win. [That's] 2.5 wins multiplied by $5 million per win amounts to $12.5 million. That is, if Meche were a free agent right now and signed a [one-year] deal, $13.8 million would be an appropriate fee. For multi-year deals, we usually factor in a 10 [percent] discount rate, since players tend to sacrifice a bit of their monetary value for some security. With that in mind, a [three-year] deal for Meche would come out to $37.3 million. A [five-year] deal would be valued at $62.1 million.
Meche may not have seemed worth the money back in 2006, but as of right now, his average annual value would be somewhere around $12.4 million, above the 11 mil in his actual contract.
I have absolutely no issues with Seidman's math (and by the way, if Seidman really is 22 -- as his bio says -- this kid's got some future in this game). But dollars per win can take you only so far. In a vacuum, there's no better way to evaluate a contract. But contracts don't exist in a vacuum; they exist within a particular context, and that context is different for every team.
Does
Mariano Rivera's $15 million salary make sense for the Yankees? Absolutely.
Would Rivera's salary make sense for the Rays? Absolutely not. You can't spend a third of your payroll on a 70-inning pitcher.
I will happily admit that I've been wrong about Gil Meche's performance. After never throwing more than 186 innings in six seasons with the Mariners, he has topped 200 innings in both seasons with the Royals, posting sub-4.00 ERAs in both years. I was not, however, wrong about Meche's contract, which was not a good one for the Royals.
Why not? Because big contracts don't make sense for losing teams. In Meche's two seasons the Royals have finished 69-93 and 75-87, with a .500 record still just a fantasy. Now, the argument that has been made is that while Meche might not push the Royals into contention all by himself, signing him "showed the Royals are serious" and would thus attract both fans and free agents.
Fans? The Royals finished last in attendance this year, next-to-last the year before. Free agents? The only notable free agent they've signed since Meche came aboard is
Jose Guillen (about whom the less said, the better).
Now, it should be said that Meche's contract
still is quite valuable. He's signed for two more years for reasonable figures, and if the Royals were a Strat-O-Matic team you would trade his card to someone in your league for two or three prospects. But of course now we're getting back into that vacuum. Of course the Royals
should trade Meche. They would have a better chance of someday winning 90 games if they traded him this winter, or perhaps next summer. But there are only a few organizations bold enough to make such a move, and the Royals pretty obviously aren't one of them.
Someday, the historians will look at Gil Meche's statistics and his salaries and conclude that the Royals got their money's worth, and then some. Today, though, those dollars are just another example of the mismanagement that has plagued the franchise for nearly 25 years.
Rob Neyer
