MLB: The game’s most valuable first basemen
By Bill Felber
6. Yuli Gurriel, Houston Astros, $8.128 million value; $10.4 million salary
Among the 35 MLB first basemen encompassed in this assessment, Yuli Gurriel is one of the few whose contract bottom line and production roughly balance out one another. For virtually all of the rest, either ownership is taking advantage of the player or the player is taking advantage of ownership.
Gurriel brings a combination of traits to his work with the Astros. Since slugging percentage is half of the overall formula, it’s virtually impossible to rank high without doing at least representatively well in that area. Gurriel’s .541 slugging average ranked fifth among first basemen in 2019, valuing out to $4.622 million.
His .343 on base average was mediocre, only fractionally above the .340 positional average. That translated out to $2.379 million in justified salary, about $20,000 more than the group average.
But Gurriel could be counted on. He played nearly 1,250 innings during the season, the sixth highest total among all first basemen, and worth more than $1 million. His 73 assists were only slightly above the group average of 65, adding a final $62,000.
Most of Gurriel’s career was spent in Cuba making him an anomalous figure from a value standpoint: a 36-year-old fourth year player. The deal that brought him out of Cuba will pay another $8.4 million in 2020, and financially it will be interesting to see how arbitration treats a 37-year-old first-year in 2021.