Grading the 2019 MLB season free agent signings
By Bill Felber
Ranking the effectiveness of each team’s free agent signings based on the cost and the players’ production during the 2019 MLB season to date.
Major League teams have spent more than $680 million on free agents – that’s counting only 2019 salaries — since the end of the 2018 season. Which ones made the best use of all that cash?
With the 2019 MLB season approaching its close, it’s time for a report card designed to determine which clubs aced the off-season and which ones flunked baseball economics.
The assessment below quantifies the impact of every player signed or re-signed on the open market since last season’s conclusion. That’s 221 free agents on the 2019 payrolls of the 30 teams. Our measuring stick is Adjusted Wins Above Average, a variant of WAR that is based on the value of an average major league rather than a replacement player.
The adjustment we’re making, which is designed to reflect a team base of 0.0 rather than the negative WAA totals some teams accumulate, merely lifts the mathematical calculations out of the murky realm of the negative; it does not impact the comparative rankings.
Grades are based on two calculations. The first, dubbed Net ROI (Return on Investment), measures each team’s Adjusted WAA against the MLB average of 5.44, irrespective of how much that team actually spent. In other words, it favors productive economy.
The second calculation, Gross ROI, gauges the same thing but does so irrespective of each team’s spending. That gives a natural advantage to higher-spending teams.
Each team’s final GPA represents the average of its Net and Gross ROI grades.
With that as an explanation, here are the grades, organized by division.