The reason why there is such little activity on Jason Heyward this off season
is that teams cannot get a handle on how to evaluate him.
As one old time front office person says, "we don't pay for defense."
But in the modern advanced metric evaluation systems, defense and WAR
are more complete measuring sticks. By that valuation, Heyward, 26 and
still not in his prime, has averaged a 5.2 WAR during his career (6.5 last year).
Just by his average WAR alone, this equates to $31.2 million per year.
The top hitters in 2015 were paid $24 million (Robinson Cano and Albert Pujols).
But no one compares Heyward to Cano and Pujols in regard to offensive production.
In 2015, Heyward hit /293, 13 HR 60 RBI with .359 OBP.
If you take out the defensive WAR for his career, he is at 21.3 or an annual average of 3.55.
At 3.55, his annual salary would be around $21.3 million/season.
And here is the gulf: $10.00 million per season on a four or five year deal.
Teams and Heyward's people are not in the same universe starting points.
At $24 million per season, teams expect a hitter to be a #3 or #4 power hitter/run producer.
Heyward is not that type of hitter, even though the Cardinals used him in the No. 3 slot
because of injuries to other players, like Matt Holliday.
The whole financial structure of the league could fall off its foundation if a 60 RBI guy
is suddenly the highest paid hitter in the majors. I don't see a team owner getting the
wrath of the other clubs for overpaying Heyward.
