Is Marwin Gonzalez for real, and if so, should we give him a bunch of money?

I assume you're using rWAR; using fWAR he's been worth 2.8 from 2014-2016, and 3.6 over his 561g career.

All WAR are not equal on the free agent market; $8M per is a fine estimate but that's when estimating the most valuable guys. Players who project for 1 WAR do not fetch $8M/yr.

 

Looking at guys projected in preseason for 0.9-1.1 fWAR, they signed for a total of 120.5 million dollars for 15 years combined....which rounds out to 8 million a year. So while people may not believe WAR should have a linear relationship with dollars, MLB teams typically sign players close to it.

Edit: Granted there is a lot more variance in contracts when they get that small, but that is expected as teams have their own WAR models. 0.5 WAR difference doesn't make a big difference in a 200 milliin dollar contract for a star while it is the difference between 4 million dollars and 12 million dollars for a projected 1 fWAR player.

 

This is the most confident I've felt about a utility player or pinch hitter for the Stros or any other team in a long time for that matter. He's a weapon. He's not quite a starter.

 

Bill ****ing Spiers.

 

This needs to be discussed....

Marwin is going to command 15-20million in free agency.

Pay the man for three years so his contract comes off the books when our Core starts yearning for the big pay days.

He's been playing like a 3-4 war every day player so far this year. He's a giant part to our team and he seems to carry a little toughness about him that I think needs to be around this team.

 

I should be allowed to "Like" this post 18,000,000 times.

 

If he is able to even come close to replicating what he has done so far this year his agents would hang up on a 3 year offer. As is, he's gonna hit free agency at 29 (30 by opening day), which means he has 4 "safe" years to offer a team signing him

This newfound patience as a hitter has elevated him, and I see no real reason why he shouldn't maintain high productivity, even if his HR rate comes down. If he finishes strong, it will be an interesting offseason. Do we move him at a high point, or do we let it ride and worry about free agency when it happens. If he can even maintain an OPS in the mid-800's as an everyday player, and middle infielder, he will probably command close to a 100 million dollar deal.

He would have more value to another club as an everyday 2B/SS, but if we let Beltran go, he could still have a ton of value to us as the mobile DH, who plays everyday, just not at the same position. Plus he has the unique ability to be a productive replacement for literally our entire infield if injury occurs.

But ultimately it's half a season. He's still just been a good utility guy for 90% of his career, gonna take some time to shake that opinion.