SDSU Aztec wrote:
In response to the other poster's comment, small market teams absolutely do not have the ability to print money. Their only only available strategy for having a play-off team, other than being extremely lucky, is to stink it up for a few years like the Astros did and accumulate some early round picks. Sally should be ashamed.
You’re conflating choosing to spend any money to try to be competitive with profits and asset value appreciation. As real estate and TV deals have become larger parts of team’s revenue streams, even small-market teams’ franchise values have skyrocketed at a rate greatly exceeding the increase in the stock market. The recent sale of the Royals exemplifies this:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/mikeozanian/2019/11/22/john-sherman-buys-kansas-city-royals-for-1-billion/?sh=6ef698763851Also, a win in free agency costs about $7.63 million:
https://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-cost-of-a-win-in-free-agency-in-2020/So to answer your question, $22.5 million should buy about three wins above replacement.
Votto signed a 10-year, $225 million contract before the 2014 season. He has been worth 28.6 wins above replacement since then, with 3 more seasons of team control still remaining (2022-2023 guaranteed, and 2024 as a team option—meaning it’s the team’s decision whether they pay it or not):
https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/v/vottojo01.shtml(sum the total in the WAR column from 2014 onwards to see where the 28.6 number came from).
At $7.63 million/win, he is being paid for 29.5 wins, so if he is worth one more win over the remaining two-plus years of the contract he will have more than earned his contract through his on-field performance (even without accounting for the additional value of getting all of these wins from a single roster spot).
And this is all assuming that baseball players are fairly paid for their labors in a market that is set by an employer who has a non-sensical anti-trust exemption, which isn’t necessarily something that I’m willing to stipulate.
Lastly, Votto’s 60+ bWAR, MVP award, and status as the face of a franchise for a decade-plus makes him a Hall of Famer to me, but I’m admittedly a big hall guy.