In today’s MLB, $20 million doesn’t always buy talent

Can you spare any sympathy for the MLB owners who pay big money to attract top-level players?

I know it’s hard, but try. To judge by the performance of many of the game’s best-paid players, the owners, too, are getting ripped off.

There are 36 players who will earn at least $20 million this season. They’ll average $26.68 million. One-quarter of the way trough the 2022 schedule, a sizable proportion of that 36 are not — based on their play — earning their keep.

The 40-game mark, which teams are crossing this week, may not be the surest predictor of full-season performance. But for most position players, it translates to between 150 and 175 plate appearances. The game’s best pitchers should have made seven or eight starts by now.

Yet eight of the 36 have to date returned negative WAR values in exchange for their $20 million-plus salaries, and eight more are WARing below replacement level.

Three — Boston’s Chris Sale, New York’s Jacob deGrom, and Washington’s Stephen Strasburg — have not even taken the field yet. That trio will rake in a cumulative $98.65 million by season’s end, and none is certain to return before mid-season.

Injuries have been a recurring theme among the game’s best-paid players. Joey Votto ($25 million) recently came off a 44-day stay on the injured list. Since his return, Votto was been worth -0.8 WAR to the Cincinnati Reds.

The list goes on:

• Wil Myers, San Diego Padres, $22.5 million, +0.2 WAR, 13 IL days
• Hyun Jin Ryu, Toronto Blue Jays, $20 million, -0.3 WAR, 27 IL days
• Jason Heyward, Chicago Cubs, $22 million, -0.4 WAR, 8 IL days
• Marcus Stroman, Chicago Cubs, $25 million, +0.2 WAR, 11 IL days
• David Price, Los Angeles Dodgers, $32 million, 0.1 WAR, 23 IL days
• Javier Baez, Detroit Tigers, $20 million, 0.3 WAR, 11 IL days

But injuries are hardly the only explanation. In most cases, simple poor performance will suffice. The average WAR of the 36 best-paid players through the first quarter of the 2022 season is just +0.88. Carried out through the full season, that would work out to about a +3.6 player

What’s a 3.6 WAR player? There were four of them in 2021: Whit Merrifield, Louis Robert, Ronald Acuña Jr., and Brandon Nimmo. But Robert, Acuña and Nimmo all had shortened seasons due to injury or other reasons, meaning the one clear comp was Whit Merrifield.

Question: Would you give Whit Merrifield in excess of $26.68 million? Neither would anybody else; Merrifield is getting $7 million this season from the Kansas City Royals.

Some of the deals are working out acceptably, and in a couple of cases the richly endowed player has returned roughly commensurate value. Of the 36 players, 20 have to date accumulated a 1.0 or higher WAR, putting them on course for a 4.0 WAR season. That would have ranked top 50 among position players, top 25 among pitchers, in 2021. Not great, but good

But only six of the 36 have thus far accumulated in excess of 2.0 WAR, putting them among the season’s 20 most productive players. At the top of that list is Manny Machado ($34 million), whose 3.2 WAR leads MLB. Mike Trout ($37.12 million) is close behind at 3.0 WAR.

The other plus-$20 million earners who are also plus-2.0 WAR performers are Nolan Arenado ($32.97 million), 2.4; Justin Verlander ($25 million), 2.2; Jose Ramirez ($22 million), 2.1; and Paul Goldschmidt ($25.33 million), 2.1.

But in setting up their rosters for 2022, too many MLB teams appear to have placed too much faith and cash based on a player’s reputation, off-field attractiveness, or prior performance rather than future performance.

The Washington Nationals are poster children for this problem. The Nats have committed more than 40 percent of their 2022 talent funds to two players — Strasburg (signed in 2020 for seven seasons, $32.2 million of it this year) and Patrick Corbin. He was signed in 2019 for six seasons, his deal paying him $23.4 million in 2022.

As noted earlier, Strasburg has not pitched at all this year. In fact, he’s pitched only 26 innings under the new contract. He’s on a rehab assignment and may ‚— emphasis on the may — be back in a few weeks.

Corbin has pitched … much to the regret of Nats fans. In nine starts, he’s 0-7 with a 6.60 ERA. He’s allowing an unthinkable 1.7 baserunners per inning.

We’ve known all along that $55.6 million doesn’t go very far in Washington, and the tandem of Strasburg and Corbin are proving it.