The Washington Nationals shook the baseball world on Sunday by signing Jayson Werth to a seven year, $126 million deal.
Werth is a very good player, a right fielder who does a little bit of everything. He’s coming off his best season yet, hitting .296/.388/.532 with the Phillies. That said, Werth is far from a premium talent, and perhaps more importantly he’s going to be 32 years old next season.
Here’s a basic forecast for Werth:
| Year | Werth’s age | Werth’s WAR | $/WAR | Salary |
| 2011 | 32 | 4.5 | $4.5 | $20.3 |
| 2012 | 33 | 4.0 | 5 | 20 |
| 2013 | 34 | 3.5 | 5.5 | 19.3 |
| 2014 | 35 | 2.8 | 6.0 | 16.8 |
| 2015 | 36 | 2.1 | 6.5 | 13.7 |
| 2016 | 37 | 1.4 | 7.0 | 9.8 |
| 2017 | 38 | .7 | 7.5 | 5.3 |
That’s a total of $105M over the seven years, quite a bit under Werth’s actual salary of $126M over that time.
It looks like a might be situation where the Nats will be fine for a few years, but Werth becomes a burden later in the contract. If the Nationals envision themselves competing in a couple of years, with Strasburg, Harper, and company, and Werth becomes a key part of their first playoff run, the deal may end up being a good one – at least a defensible one.
In the end, it looks like a bad deal, though not a historical bad one. If Werth were a few years younger, it might be a perfectly fair contract, but guaranteeing an aging slugger with Werth’s profile $18M per for seven years probably isn’t the best use of resources, especially for a team in Washington’s situation.
*The chart above is merely one simplistic implementation of the numbers, and should not be taken too seriously.
The problem I have with the “well, in a few years they might be good” argument is that the Nats could have just waited a few years, and then signed a player like Werth. There never seems to be a shortage of good at the moment, aging corner outfielders.
Who did the Nationals think they were bidding against? Boras doesn’t even seem to have played his well-worn “mystery team offered more” card, he accepted the deal and ran giggling from the room.
The Nationals may be forced to pay free agents more to play for them, but 40 million and 2-3 years more? Couldn’t they have won the bidding with 1 extra year and 10 million more dollars?
Some of the teams complaining about the Werth deal have done their own bit to inflate the market, so they have no business complaining. It probably won’t affect us much. We’re not signing those kind of free agents and those deals don’t affect arbitration.
Good points, guys. I certainly don’t like the deal, just trying to find out where the Nats are coming from here.
Tom probably has it right, they have to overpay to get free agents to consider them, and this was a big “here I am” statement for them. If it were an individual, a psychologist might consider it a cry for help, but for an ownership with deep pockets ($3-$5 Billion – them’s DEEP pockets) and a franchise that needs to establish itself with the public and MLB, the move makes sense. Once.