Tuesday, October 7, 2008
NY Post: A.J. DECISION COMING ASAP
With CC Sabathia expected to land in California, A.J. Burnett will have the rest of the country to pick from. Burnett is expected to opt out of the final two years and $24 million with the Blue Jays.
And like Sabathia, Burnett doesn’t want to be shoveling snow in Maryland without knowing where he will pitch in 2009.
“If he does [opt out], it’s not something that is going to take all winter long,” agent Darek Braunecker said yesterday.
I’m still not sure that Sabathia’s not going to follow the money, but if I had to handicap what free agent starting pitcher ends up on the Yankees next season I’d give Burnett an edge over anyone else right now. Is that a good thing? Here’s Burnett’s range of CAIRO projections:
*2008 is translated to a neutral league and park which is why it varies from his actual numbers
RSAR: Runs saved above replacement level pitcher.
This is for Burnett as a Yankee, assuming the Yankee defense is about the same in “quality” next year as it was in 2008. So the baseline is three wins above replacement, but with some nice potential upside.
Unfortunately, you can’t sign Burnett for just one season, so even though projecting pitching is an exercise in futility, here’s CAIRO’s five year forecast for Burnett.
$$: Value in terms of marginal wins (assuming $4,500,000 per marginal win in 2009, increasing by $250,000 each year)
So if you look at the next five years, Burnett projects to be 128.6 runs above replacement level, which is around 13 wins, or 2.6 WAR(wins above replacement) per season. The value of that would be around $60 million using my $4.5 million + $250K assumption.
Since he just opted out of a deal that paid him $12 million a year, I’m guessing he’s going to want more. Signing Burnett wouldn’t be a bad move as far as adding talent, but it will likely be an overpay.
However, if Burnett is over his injury history, his value goes up a fair amount. Here’s what he’d look like if he can average 219 innings over the next five years.
Expecting a pitcher to pitch that many innings over his ages 32-36 seasons is probably not much more than wishful thinking though.
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