Szymborski: Mike Trout is Valuable

Yesterday the New York Yankees said “to hell with the luxury tax” and signed Jacoby Ellsbury to a seven-year, $153M deal. What does this have to do with anything about anything that concerns Mike Trout? Well, it brought up the topic about what the value of a “win” is. ZiPS creator, Dan Szymborski, puts the value of a win at $5.3M. And since he is much more fluent with math, I am inclined to agree with him.

So, naturally, he continued on with this thought process. He brought up Alex Rodriguez and his original “holy smokes” contract with the Texas Rangers. He brought up Andrew McCutchen. Then he turned his sights on Trout. And, well, if Trout were offered a seven-year deal that paid him according to what he has done so far in his career, his contract would look like this:

That, ladies and gentlemen, is not a typo.

Seven years. $338M.

/Picks up jaw off of the floor

Now, by a show of hands, who would offer that contract to Trout? You know who would? I would. And, to be honest, I wouldn’t think twice about doing it, either.

Trout has given the Angels no reason to believe that he is going to regress anytime in the near future. He still hasn’t hit his prime years (which is the scariest of scary thoughts) and, not only did he not regress last year, he got better. The kid is bananas and I for one cannot wait to see what ZiPS spits out as its prediction for Trout in 2014. Especially after it low-balled him (if you can call it that) coming into 2013.

There have been no rumblings about the Angels and Trout having any sort of conversations about a contract extension, which is both smart and a mistake. It is smart because there is no room in the payroll with regards to the luxury tax (Luxury tax goes off of AAV of a contract. Backloading it wouldn’t spare the Angels). And it is a mistake for obvious reasons that do not need to be rehashed here.

So just let this roll around in your head today while you are sitting at work or in class. If Mike Trout were given a seven-year contract tomorrow, and it paid him what he is actually worth, it would be almost as expensive as both the Albert Pujols and Josh Hamilton contracts combined. Mind. Blown.