Nico Extended

[Stratos]

6 hours ago, Jason Ross said:

So one thing that we need to understand here on bat speed and EV: players who trade contact for power tend to lower their bat speed (this keeps the bat in the hit-box longer and gives them more swing control) thus dropping their EV. They further drop their EV as they trade K's (which have no effect on EV) for weak contact (which lowers our average EV). 

The idea that Hoerner could increase his power is possible. But we'd likely see an increase in bat speed, an increase in K's, and thus, EV's and hard hit% would go up. 

It doesn't always work out. Jake McCarthy with Arizona is good example of this. He traded power for contact last year and became a far worse hitter.

Agree with this. Yes high contact guys can hit a lot more weak contact which will affect their EV numbers.   But Nico's max EV last year was 1081, the worst on the team. 

He may be able to improve his power/bat speed/EV a bit but i just don't think he's a naturally powerful hitter and I don't think it makes any sense to significantly change Nico's approach to try to squeeze another 5 HR or whatnot out of him.  We've seen him try to drive the ball at different times and it hasn't worked.  He should lean into what he's good at IMO

[Stratos]

3 hours ago, Transmogrified Tiger said:

Next season per Rosenthal

 

He's not just a defensive player through, between the wRC+ and baserunning/stolen bases he's been worth around 9-10 runs above league average yearly.

If he were an average baserunner and you instead added that value into his wRC+ it would probably be around 115-1118.  He was a better offensive player than Happ was last year with a lower OPS and wRC+.

[Stratos]

4 hours ago, Rcal10 said:

I guessed 6/$130. Not far off. I think it is a good deal for the Cubs. If Nico improves even slightly with power(maybe 10-12 homers) and does everything else the same as last year, I think he could have gotten over $150M for 6. Maybe as much as $170M. Cubs gave him a fair offer and he wants to stay in Chicago, it seems, so this works. 

I think he had a good chance to get more AAV in FA.  This is a good deal for the Cubs.   He must want to stay here, which is nice.

[Stratos]

4 hours ago, Rcal10 said:

His agent works for him. Maybe he wants to stay in Chicago. Maybe he wants the security of knowing he has 6 more years in Chicago. He could get hurt and not get more next season. Personally, I don’t think he would have gotten $30M a year. But maybe he would have🤷. At the very least, IMO, he would have done better than what the Cubs gave him. Doesn’t mean the agent is bad. Means Nico wanted to stay here. 

I think based on what the Cubs gave Swanson and Bregman and those guys being similar WAR infielders, there's a chance Nico left anywhere from 10-40m in the table, we'll never know.  But Nico may have wanted the security.  When someone offers you 135m that's hard to turn down. Like you said, he could get hurt or have a down year.  Yeah maybe he gets another 20m but is it worth the risk?  He might also end up with 20m less with a down year, then have to take a short term deal with opt-outs etc.  Seems like a pain in the arse for money that probably sits in investments anyways.

[Tangled Up in Plaid]

40 minutes ago, Stratos said:

I think based on what the Cubs gave Swanson and Bregman and those guys being similar WAR infielders, there's a chance Nico left anywhere from 10-40m in the table, we'll never know.  But Nico may have wanted the security.  When someone offers you 135m that's hard to turn down. Like you said, he could get hurt or have a down year.  Yeah maybe he gets another 20m but is it worth the risk?  He might also end up with 20m less with a down year, then have to take a short term deal with opt-outs etc.  Seems like a pain in the arse for money that probably sits in investments anyways.

He also doesn't have to deal with the shortened FA period coming up this offseason because of the lockout. Also, who knows how a new CBA would affect the contract he gets when a deal inevitably gets done.

[BigbadB]

So Tucker got 57m and Hoerner, Bregman and Shaw will make something similar to that combined for a similar length of time as Tucker's deal. I'm imagining that if the Cubs gave Tucker that deal, Shaw would be manning 3b and they'd be looking for a replacement 2b next year.

I think the Cubs are better with those three over giving Tucker all of that money. And that's ignoring his amazing ability to miss games.

[Geographyhater8888]

17 hours ago, Jason Ross said:

We all do, it's not like a "you" thing, but wRC+ says they were both 9% better than league average. 

Despite PCAs OPS being nearly 30 points higher. That’s one of the biggest gaps in wOBA to OPS I’ve ever seen. Nico’s wOBA was actually 1 point higher too.

Edited March 28 by Geographyhater8888

[Jason Ross]

3 minutes ago, Geographyhater8888 said:

Despite PCAs OPS being nearly 30 points higher. That’s one of the biggest gaps in wOBA to OPS I’ve ever seen. Nico’s wOBA was actually 1 point higher too.

It's a great example of the limitations of OPS. OPS weights SLG higher than OBP which leads us to think PCA is a significantly better hitter. But with wRC+'s missing being to balance these on a similar playing field, we get two players who were instead identical production wise with very different styles.

2007 me would have been harping hard on why PCA was better. 2007 me would have been so wrong.

[Geographyhater8888]

1 hour ago, Jason Ross said:

It's a great example of the limitations of OPS. OPS weights SLG higher than OBP which leads us to think PCA is a significantly better hitter. But with wRC+'s missing being to balance these on a similar playing field, we get two players who were instead identical production wise with very different styles.

2007 me would have been harping hard on why PCA was better. 2007 me would have been so wrong.

Because more times on base means more run scoring opportunities. The hitter who goes 4/4 with 4 singles would have a slightly higher wOBA than the hitter who goes 2/4 with a home run and a double despite the same OPS. Intuitively it makes sense from a team success standpoint.

It’s similar to passer rating vs ANY/A in football. 

Edited March 28 by Geographyhater8888

[JunkyardWalrus]

Love ya'lls narrative is 'second hometown discount' 'must have left money on the table' and not 'nico may not have been worth ($$) what I thought.'

You guys love your Hoerner boners. God bless ya. 

Go Cubs.

[Bertz]

12 minutes ago, JunkyardWalrus said:

Love ya'lls narrative is 'second hometown discount' 'must have left money on the table' and not 'nico may not have been worth ($$) what I thought.'

You guys love your Hoerner boners. God bless ya. 

Go Cubs.

It's weird to crow when you were very wrong in the opposite direction?

[Geographyhater8888]

Bichette got 3/$126 with an opt out after the season, mainly for his offensive ceiling. You might not like the length of the deal but in no way is this an overpay. A decade ago, sure.

Edited March 28 by Geographyhater8888

[Jason Ross]

43 minutes ago, JunkyardWalrus said:

Love ya'lls narrative is 'second hometown discount' 'must have left money on the table' and not 'nico may not have been worth ($$) what I thought.'

You guys love your Hoerner boners. God bless ya. 

Go Cubs.

Here is a recent article from Fangraphs exploring how free agents are being paid on the market currently. This goal of this article is to see how teams are valuing different tiers of players who hit free agency. What the article found is that players who are projected to be roughly 2 wins per year (or more) over the lifetime of their contract were being paid between $10.6m and $12.9m per win. 

Nico Hoerner's real world dollars will bring him in at $135m. Over his next 6 years, to average 2 fWAR per, feels very likely between the ages the Cubs just locked him up at. He's been worth 17.4 fWAR over his last four, which is a 4.3 fWAR average. So let's do a simple age regression starting at 3.5, where he loses .5 fWAR per. I'll note here this is a pretty low position, as it assumes his worst full-season of his career (his lowest fWAR to date is 3.8). This means we're looking at a regression of:

3.5 (2027), 3 (2028), 2.5 (2029), 2 (2030), 1.5 (2031) and 1 (2030)

This gets you to 13.5 fWAR and I think is an incredibly pessimistic outlook for his ages-33 and 34. But this is also well above the 2 fWAR per year threshold as 12 fWAR would be that number to crack to put him in this tier of free agent. To get him to the 12 fWAR threshold to lower his FA expected dollars you'd have to essentially have him age regress out of being a starting player by age 32. 

If teams are willing to pay at minimum, the lowest level, at 13.5 fWAR, his contract should be around ~141m for six seasons. The Cubs signed him to a 6-$135m (accounting for deferred money and real-world dollars). 

So to recap: even if we assume a pretty negative view of his regression curve, and that teams would pay Nico Hoerner at the very bottom rung of what 2+ fWAR projected players are getting, he's still coming under the number we would expect. 

There's a bit of a "New CBA boogeyman" we can't account for. As next year's free agency is likely to be truncated and with at least a new CBA and some quirks to it it's unlikely to be world shifting (like I don't expect a cap/floor) and we probably won't really know what an offseason looks like until 2028. Hoerner would have hit FA next year, so there's some weirdness to his situation, I still think it's best to look at the world as we at least know it instead of some hypothetical mystery. 

If we assume that he'd have come closer to the $12m mark at 13.5 fWAR that puts his contract over $160m. And if we give him a less negative age regression, say one that starts at 4 fWAR, we're looking at 16 wins overall and the contract can adjust more.

None of this sounds like having a "Hoerner Boner". 

[Rcal10]

1 hour ago, JunkyardWalrus said:

Love ya'lls narrative is 'second hometown discount' 'must have left money on the table' and not 'nico may not have been worth ($$) what I thought.'

You guys love your Hoerner boners. God bless ya. 

Go Cubs.

I think you keep trying to compare his deal with PCA’s. And that is the problem with you not liking Nico’s deal. But what you are not factoring in is that with PCA the Cubs are buying out cheaper years of his contract. With Nico every year is a FA year. That is the reason Nico is making a higher annual salary. Cubs don’t have to pay PCA $20M next year. He can go to arbitration and maybe get $5M. Maybe the next year $8M. Hoerner’s deal starts at FA pricing. PCA’s starts at arbitration pricing. Huge difference. And Nico is absolutely worth the contract he got. 

[17 Seconds]

1 hour ago, JunkyardWalrus said:

Love ya'lls narrative is 'second hometown discount' 'must have left money on the table' and not 'nico may not have been worth ($$) what I thought.'

You guys love your Hoerner boners. God bless ya. 

Go Cubs.

why are you pretending like you were right?

[JunkyardWalrus]

 

17 minutes ago, 17 Seconds said:

why are you pretending like you were right?

Oh, did he get that $150-200 contract? or $10m/WAR (or $40m/ year like the Dodgers new RF?)

No?

Maybe because the FA market doesn’t treat all WAR equally? Like, offense is worth more on the open market than defense? Maybe?

It’s not like the market hasn't shown us this every off-season. 

 

 

 

 

 

[JunkyardWalrus]

1 hour ago, Rcal10 said:

I think you keep trying to compare his deal with PCA’s. And that is the problem with you not liking Nico’s deal. But what you are not factoring in is that with PCA the Cubs are buying out cheaper years of his contract. With Nico every year is a FA year. That is the reason Nico is making a higher annual salary. Cubs don’t have to pay PCA $20M next year. He can go to arbitration and maybe get $5M. Maybe the next year $8M. Hoerner’s deal starts at FA pricing. PCA’s starts at arbitration pricing. Huge difference. And Nico is absolutely worth the contract he got. 

I was using PCA’s contract, not him, as the example. 

I didn’t want the Cubs to pay NIco $20m/year. PCA’s contract, not PCA per se, was the example of a contract (6/115, or just under $20m/) I wanted Nico’s extension to stay under. 

[Neuby]

18 hours ago, tartan22 said:

very lightly dipping your toe into the deferral waters is a good bit. saving $1m a year on the actual value of the contract is just the kind of creative accounting that could put this team over the top

I'm dissapointed and surprised the Cubs didn't start Nico or PCA's deal this year to offset some of the annual average of the deals.m

Edited March 28 by Neuby

[JunkyardWalrus]

2 hours ago, Jason Ross said:

Here is a recent article from Fangraphs exploring how free agents are being paid on the market currently. This goal of this article is to see how teams are valuing different tiers of players who hit free agency. What the article found is that players who are projected to be roughly 2 wins per year (or more) over the lifetime of their contract were being paid between $10.6m and $12.9m per win. 

Nico Hoerner's real world dollars will bring him in at $135m. Over his next 6 years, to average 2 fWAR per, feels very likely between the ages the Cubs just locked him up at. He's been worth 17.4 fWAR over his last four, which is a 4.3 fWAR average. So let's do a simple age regression starting at 3.5, where he loses .5 fWAR per. I'll note here this is a pretty low position, as it assumes his worst full-season of his career (his lowest fWAR to date is 3.8). This means we're looking at a regression of:

3.5 (2027), 3 (2028), 2.5 (2029), 2 (2030), 1.5 (2031) and 1 (2030)

This gets you to 13.5 fWAR and I think is an incredibly pessimistic outlook for his ages-33 and 34. But this is also well above the 2 fWAR per year threshold as 12 fWAR would be that number to crack to put him in this tier of free agent. To get him to the 12 fWAR threshold to lower his FA expected dollars you'd have to essentially have him age regress out of being a starting player by age 32. 

If teams are willing to pay at minimum, the lowest level, at 13.5 fWAR, his contract should be around ~141m for six seasons. The Cubs signed him to a 6-$135m (accounting for deferred money and real-world dollars). 

So to recap: even if we assume a pretty negative view of his regression curve, and that teams would pay Nico Hoerner at the very bottom rung of what 2+ fWAR projected players are getting, he's still coming under the number we would expect. 

There's a bit of a "New CBA boogeyman" we can't account for. As next year's free agency is likely to be truncated and with at least a new CBA and some quirks to it it's unlikely to be world shifting (like I don't expect a cap/floor) and we probably won't really know what an offseason looks like until 2028. Hoerner would have hit FA next year, so there's some weirdness to his situation, I still think it's best to look at the world as we at least know it instead of some hypothetical mystery. 

If we assume that he'd have come closer to the $12m mark at 13.5 fWAR that puts his contract over $160m. And if we give him a less negative age regression, say one that starts at 4 fWAR, we're looking at 16 wins overall and the contract can adjust more.

None of this sounds like having a "Hoerner Boner". 

No?

You’re still arguing he should be making more than what the market bore. 

I don’t believe all WAR is created equally, nor is paid symmetrically in Free Agency. I don’t believe the market treats them equally either. 

There are countless examples as you’re well aware. 

I don’t understand why you think defense and offense are equally valued on the open market?

[17 Seconds]

11 minutes ago, JunkyardWalrus said:

 

Oh, did he get that $150-200 contract? or $10m/WAR (or $40m/ year like the Dodgers new RF?)

No?

Maybe because the FA market doesn’t treat all WAR equally? Like, offense is worth more on the open market than defense? Maybe?

It’s not like the market hasn't shown us this every off-season. 

 

 

 

 

 

you clearly thought he was going to get a lot less and you're using the tucker stuff (nobody in this thread said he'd get as much as tucker) to make it sound like you were right

[Jason Ross]

14 minutes ago, JunkyardWalrus said:

No?

You’re still arguing he should be making more than what the market bore. 

I don’t believe all WAR is created equally, nor is paid symmetrically in Free Agency. I don’t believe the market treats them equally either. 

There are countless examples as you’re well aware. 

I don’t understand why you think defense and offense are equally valued on the open market?

You keep saying this, but have provided no data. I literally just broke down how league wide spending is going, and how the league values fWAR in different tiered players. I also broke down the contract and what we could expect based on him per fWAR. For Hoerner to have not gotten even the lowest level of 2+ fWAR players you either would have to:

1. Believe that the league would have made him the least interesting 2+ fWAR free agent the league has seen recently - in which, I would like some reason other than feelings behind it
2. Believe he does not belong in that tier to begin with because you feel he's not going to average 2 fWAR over his 6 years (or accrue 12 total fWAR) - in which I'd love to see your regression model for Hoerner and why that would be.

So until you can provide any sort of league wide data spending on oWAR vs dWAR from recent years and trends, you've really got not a single leg to stand on. Instead, it feels very much that you simply feel this way because there seems to be no trends I can find to support this. I can find some articles over the concept that date back, say, to 2017, but we're literally a CBA beyond that and almost a full-10 years. Spending patterns from 2017 are outdated and meaningless comparatively. 

Until then, the best course of action we have is using the spending trends we legitimately can see, and that puts expected contract somewhere in the range of the Fangraphs article I provided. Meaning not only was there no way he was ever getting $20m or less AAV, it's very possible the Cubs will find surplus value in this deal as long as he remains a viable MLB starting player through age 33 or 34.

[Bertz]

26 minutes ago, JunkyardWalrus said:

 

Oh, did he get that $150-200 contract? or $10m/WAR (or $40m/ year like the Dodgers new RF?)

No?

Maybe because the FA market doesn’t treat all WAR equally? Like, offense is worth more on the open market than defense? Maybe?

It’s not like the market hasn't shown us this every off-season. 

 

 

 

 

 

Fangraphs currently projects Hoerner to be worth 3.2 WAR in '27 and 2.8 WAR in '28.  Do the half a WAR per year decline thing and that's ~12 WAR for the life of his contract.  I'm not going to back of the napkin the inflation calc but $12-13M/WAR.

[squally1313]

I’ll just chime in here and say that I do, in fact, love my Hoerner Boner 

[Rob]

1 hour ago, JunkyardWalrus said:

You’re still arguing he should be making more than what the market bore. 

He didn't hit the open market. We don't know what the market would have been. We only know what he actually settled for, whatever his reasons.

[JunkyardWalrus]

1 hour ago, Jason Ross said:

You keep saying this, but have provided no data. I literally just broke down how league wide spending is going, and how the league values fWAR in different tiered players. I also broke down the contract and what we could expect based on him per fWAR. For Hoerner to have not gotten even the lowest level of 2+ fWAR players you either would have to:

1. Believe that the league would have made him the least interesting 2+ fWAR free agent the league has seen recently - in which, I would like some reason other than feelings behind it
2. Believe he does not belong in that tier to begin with because you feel he's not going to average 2 fWAR over his 6 years (or accrue 12 total fWAR) - in which I'd love to see your regression model for Hoerner and why that would be.

So until you can provide any sort of league wide data spending on oWAR vs dWAR from recent years and trends, you've really got not a single leg to stand on. Instead, it feels very much that you simply feel this way because there seems to be no trends I can find to support this. I can find some articles over the concept that date back, say, to 2017, but we're literally a CBA beyond that and almost a full-10 years. Spending patterns from 2017 are outdated and meaningless comparatively. 

Until then, the best course of action we have is using the spending trends we legitimately can see, and that puts expected contract somewhere in the range of the Fangraphs article I provided. Meaning not only was there no way he was ever getting $20m or less AAV, it's very possible the Cubs will find surplus value in this deal as long as he remains a viable MLB starting player through age 33 or 34.

Wouldn't the Swanson situation amongst the 4 SS of his class be an example? He was the best defensively and received the least of the four?

Wouldn’t a Pete Alonso, 5/$155 be an example? Never put up a 4 fWAR year, but got more than Nico last off season? The Juan Soto deal? 

Maybe I’m cherry picking? 

I can agree I may be antiquated in my view of what a $20m/ should look like. You’re likely right. 

Doesn’t change he signed for (somewhat to much) less than most here thought, even if it was more than I wanted.