Evaluating Jack Wilson

There's been rumors that a deal for Jack Wilson was done between Detroit and Pittsburgh, and that the deal was never finalized and that they're still talking. Whether it's done, not done, or not even being talked about is only mildly important until we know the value of Jack Wilson.

So, let's evaluate him. His Marcels projection has him posting a .311 wOBA in 418 plate appearances in 2009.

First off, the 418 PA's seems rather low. That's because Marcels is built on a 3 year sample for players which are weighted at 5/4/3. He was hurt last year with a leg injury and, thusly, had just 330 PA's. From 2005-07 he averaged 589 PA's. Lets average that with his 2008 330 PA's and we get 460 PA's, which is roughly 66% playing time.

So, let's calculate his worth.

To turn wOBA into a runs number, you just have to do the following:

wOBA - league average wOBA / 1.15 * PA

Very simple. The League average wOBA will always be the league average OBP. 2008 in the AL, it was .335. For Wilson, it looks like this.

.311-.335/1.15*460=-9.6. That is 9.6 runs below average. His CHONE defensive projection for 2009 is 7 runs to the good defensively. That would make him -2.6 runs above average (RAA).

Now, 10.5 is the relationship between runs and wins, so -2.6/10.5=-0.248 Wins Above Average (WAA). Replacement level is defined at being 2 wins below average, so we add 2 to that and get his Wins Above Replacement (WAR) of +1.752.

Now, that +1.752 WAR is the not the same coming from a shortstop as it is from a 1st baseman. So, we must use a positional adjustment. Tom Tango (I'm leaning heavily on his methods for this evaluation), has positional adjustments laid out. For a SS, we ad 0.5 wins. Our total now comes to 2.252 WAR.

This offseason, the going rate for a 'win' is roughly $5 million. So, 2.252*5=$11.26 million.

However, we don't expect someone who has been so durable over his career to play just 66% of the time. Let's adjust that to 85% (the typical amount of a full time starting position player) and we get 595 PA's. His new offensive runs projection equals out to:

.311-.335/1.15*595=-12.42 RAA. Add in the +7 defensive projection, and you get -5.42 RAA. Convert to WAR and you get 1.48 WAR. Add in the positional adjustment and you get 1.98 WAR. The going rate for that would value him at $9.9 million.

Jack Wilson's contract pays him $7.25 in 2009 with an $8.4 million option in 2010 with a $600,000 buyout clause. The difference between his value and his actual salary is $2.65 million in savings. His current contract is paying him approximately like a 1.45 WAR player, and we've valued him at 1.98 WAR. Depending on the prospects going to Pittsburgh, which I can't imagine being high-end given that Wilson's coming off a bad, injury-plagued campaign in 2008, I would like a deal for Jack Wilson, contingent on the prospects heading the other way.