MLB Free Agency and Contract Extensions During the 2010’s

Introduction

This document contains interactive plots that analyze MLB team free agent and extension spending during the 2010-2019 seasons.

Data

The data come from the following sources:

• Free agent signing data, such as who was a free agent and when they signed the contract, comes from the ever-reliable Baseball-Reference.
• Domestic free agent contract information (salaries) comes from MLB Trade Rumors.
  
• Contract extension information also comes from MLBTR.
• International free agent contract information comes from Spotrac.

I adjusted all salaries to 2020 dollars using www.usinflationcalculator.com. I fully admit this is a very simplistic approach that probably isn’t correct. So let’s just say, the idea is to remove the effects of general inflation in the US in some way, not to be 100% accurate with respect to MLB salaries.

What’s included:

• All domestic free agents who signed MLB contracts that are in the above sources
• All contract extensions given out that are tracked in the above sources
• International free agents who signed for $10m or more. Spotrac groups its data differently than MLBTR and Baseball-Reference, so I had to prioritize which contracts I’d manually inspect. Signings of $10m or above are the ones that generate the most headlines and portend an appearance in MLB soon.

What’s not included:

• Qualifying offers
• Option years
• International free agent signings under $10m
• Anything I missed, which is likely something given I had to combine information from three data sources and manually add several deals in :-)

Also note that opt-outs are not handled well. For example Yoenis Céspedes signed a three-year deal with the Mets during the 2015 offseason. The following winter he opted out of it and signed a four-year deal with the team. The plot below counts all seven years towards the Mets’ total expenditures, even though that’s not correct.

Oh, and I built this with R (particularly the tidyverse and the graphs are done with Plotly.

With that out of the way, let’s get to the graphs!

Free Agency

Spending by Team over Time

First up is a timeline of free agent spending for each team. Hover over a bullet point to see the total salary for that offseason, each player signed, and their salary. Remember all totals are adjusted for inflation.

Total Spending by Team

Which teams spent the most and least in free agency during the decade? The ones you’d expect!

Hover over a team’s bar to see the total salary given out and the number of players signed.

25 Largest Contracts of the Decade

Now for the players’ viewpoint. There are almost 5,000 signees in the decade, way too many to list here, so I’m showing just the 25 largest contracts handed out:

5 Largest Free Agent Contracts per Team

The following graph shows the top 5 contracts given out per team during this timeframe.

Signing Time Trends

During the 2017 and 2018 offseasons, many people noticed that free agents were taking longer to sign. The following graph shows the median number of days elapsed between November 1st of each offseason and the day a player signed.

What we noticed in 2017 and 2018 was the result of a trend that started during the 2016 offseason. And although I saw fewer stories about a stagnant free agent market during the 2019 offseason, this graph shows it’s still a long way from where we used to be.

Signing Time Trends, by Player Type

Not all players are created equal. I was interested in how the different calibers of players experienced the slowdown. To do this I categorized each player according to their role (position player, starting pitcher, or reliever) and the rWAR they accumulated in their walk year and the two years prior.

You can hover over some data points to see players’ names; some don’t work because the list of players is too long.

The Cold Stove of the 2017 offseason affected all kinds of players. But it affected Role Players, All Stars, and Superstars the most. I think that’s why the baseball community felt so shocked. Guys we thought would get deals in December, no-brainers who’d had great runs and seemed primed to sign, waited far longer than we’d been used to.

Signing Time Trends, by Age Group

MLB’s youth movement is well-documented. Younger players save teams money, provide cost certainty, offer more freedom with respect to minor league options, and in some cases out-produce older players. So I broke the signing time trends down by age bucket. Note that not all players have this data available.

Older players have always taken about 10–15 days longer to sign than the spring chickens. But in 2017, the typical older player waited more than 20 days longer to sign than they did in 2016, while players 30 and under waited just 10 days longer.

Signing Time Trends, By Month by Offseason

Let’s take one more look at the slowdown. The following graph shows the number of players who signed in each month for each offseason in the decade.

You can see the slowdown beginning in the 2015 and 2016 offseasons but really take off in the two years afterward.

Contract Extensions

Now let’s look at the sport’s other big expenditures: contract extensions. Because of how extensions work I had to choose which ‘offseason’ to put them in. I settled on this rubric: Extensions signed in January, February, or March are attributed to the previous calendar year’s offseason. Extensions signed in any later months are attributed to that current ‘offseason’.

For example:

• Mike Trout signed his (second) contract extension in March 2019. I attributed this to the 2018 offseason.
• Joey Votto signed his contract extension in April 2012. I attributed this to the 2012 offseason.

Contract Extensions by Team Over Time

Top 25 Contract Extensions

Top 5 Contract Extensions per Team

Total Expenditure

In Aggregate

The following graph shows each team’s approach to free agency and contract extensions over the past decade. Note that international free agent signings are omitted.

I also show the team’s winning percentage during the years 2010-2019. This means the data doesn’t include 2020 which means any correlation to 2019 offseason spending won’t be visible. But the point isn’t to show correlation, just to be informative.

The color of each label turns from red to green, and the size of the label increases, as the winning percentage goes up.

You may have to look really hard to find them, but I swear to you that the Marlins are on this graph!

Over Time

The next graph shows the same info as above, only over time, and with international free agency added back in.

That’s about all I’ve got for now. Thanks to Tom W, Tom T, Monte, Jimmy, Eric, Jan, Kevin, and Mike for giving me feedback on drafts of this.

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