Value Over Contract

Found this interesting graph and analysis by Walter Fulbright over at Beyond The Box Score.

The top 3 contributors on this team in terms of WAR are Matt Kemp, Casey Blake(!), and Clayton Kershaw. If Blake weren't having the second best year of his career and were closer to his career norms, the third would be Chad Billingsley. This is the most prominent example we've shown (so far) where the top payroll breakdown tells a much more interesting story than the VOC graph does: The Dodgers young talent isn't complementing their success, it's creating it.

Of the top 5 paid players, 2 are worth their money: Kuroda and Furcal. In terms of WAR, Kuroda is the 10th best player on this team. Furcal 12th. Schmidt is a completely lost cause, Pierre (despite having a season actually above what he projected, and what he had shown in prior years), was a lost cause the minute they signed the contract, and it wasn't bad luck: any due diligence would have revealed that he would be exactly what he is. And of course, Manny. I'm surprised some blind old scout with shingles doesn't get credit for identifying one of the best right handed hitters in baseball history, and after careful deliberation and listening to the plane of the bat swing, deciding that yes, he's a pretty good player.

After 2 straight years of Ned Colletti doing anything he could to prevent his young talent from contributing on offense, they eventually broke through on their own and made it impossible to send them back to the bench or platoon duty. The next couple of years should be a blast to watch, just remember to give credit where the credit is due.

Touting the youth movement as the reason for recent success is not exactly a new thing on this site, but I thought it would be nice for somebody else to beat the dead horse a bit.