Introduction

As a follow-up to the article I wrote examining Albert Pujols’ worth, here I apply the same analysis design to Prince Fielder.  Whereas for Pujols, we focused on a 9-year contract beginning with the age 32 season, here we will focus on an 8-year contract beginning with the age 28 season.  Once again, the key questions we hope to answer are, how much decline can we expect, and how quickly will it happen?

Core Methodology and Baseline Results

As with the Pujols analysis, our starting point is the players Baseball-Reference lists as most similar to Fielder.  In this instance, our list of comparable players includes 6 active players, and 13 retired players.  The following table shows the Wins Above Replacement (WAR) that these comparable players generated during their careers, beginning with their age 28 season.

Our next step is to normalize the data by dividing each of the data points in the above table by the player’s average WAR in the three seasons prior to turning 28.

Knowing as we do that Fielder averaged 4.7 WAR over his age 25-27 seasons, we next multiply each annual average in the last row of the table above by 4.7 to convert back to a Fielder-specific WAR value.  Lastly, we apply our assumed value of $5M/win to give us this initial estimate of Fielder’s value over the coming 8 seasons.

As was the case in the Pujols study, our first impression of Fielder’s value moving forward is surely not a very favorable one, relative to the much larger contract demands we’ve heard rumors of.  So let’s next investigate how sensitive our findings are to changes in the sample we’re using.

Sensitivity Analysis

First, we’ll see how restricting the sample based on how long players ended up lasting in the bigleagues impacts our results.  This seems at least defensible on the grounds that despite his physique, Fielder has been remarkably durable to date, and therefore he could be expected to last a bit longer than his comp average.  The next two tables do just this.

Note that in the first pass, we drop all players that retired at or before age 32, as well as the active players that have not yet reached age 32.  In the second pass, we drop all players that didn’t play, or haven’t yet played an age 34 season.  Since there was not a ton of attrition in the sample before age 32 (only 5 players drop out, and 4 of those are actives), the first filter doesn’t impact the results too dramatically.  The second filter gives us a bit more of a boost, albeit only up to a value of $120.1M.

As a second sensitivity check, we will restrict the sample based on how close to Fielder players performed in their age 25-27 seasons, again developing two subsamples from the data.

Interestingly enough, this series of filters actually drives our estimated value for Fielder down.  This is not surprising when we consider that what we have done is knock out a bunch of “late bloomers” like Travis Hafner and Juan Gonzalez -- guys that put up much better seasons at ages Fielder has not yet reached than they had in their age 25-27 window.  Without these guys included, we are left with an expectation that going forward, Fielder will top out at 4.7 wins in the first scenario, or just 3.8 wins in the second scenario.  Naturally, without the benefit of a 6-win season or two, total value is suppressed.

Alternative View

Let’s take a slightly different look at the problem.  For this, we will go back to our full sample (retired players only).  Reading the first row of the table below, what we see is that if Fielder’s career arc mirrors Eddie Murray’s exactly (and applying the 4.7 average WAR Fielder generated from ages 25-27), Fielder will end up generating 27.1 WAR and $135.7M in value over the next 8 years.

Applying these 13 career arcs to Fielder yields a 23% chance (3 in 13) of value less than $50M going forward; a 62% chance of value less than $100M; and an 92% chance of value less than $150M.  Only 1 of the 13 career arcs, or 8% of Fielder’s comparables, yields more than $150M in value over the coming 8 years.

Digging Deeper

The aging curve we observed for Pujols suggested that he can be expected to remain an elite, highly productive player for the next 4 seasons, then exhibit a marked decline at age 36, then be fairly pedestrian in the final four years of the contract.  The aging curve we see emerging for Fielder is somewhat more dramatic, with a significant falloff in production after only two years, followed by fairly stable, solid but unspectacular production in years 3-6, before dipping again near fringe starter range in the final two years of the deal.

Conclusion

In all of our forecast scenarios, Fielder maintains an elite level of production only for the next two years.  Thereafter, he is projected to be a 3-win player, at best, with gradual declines pushing him down to a 1-win level in the latter years of the contract.  In the best-case scenario, Fielder’s total value over 8 years is around $120M; in two of the other four scenarios, his value hovers in the $100M range.

The Pujols analysis suggested that the ideal suitor would be a team that is built to win right away, and thus ideally positioned to take advantage of the remaining elite years at the front of the contract.  This seems absolutely imperative in Fielder’s case, since this analysis illustrates the potential for a drop-off that is both earlier, and more pronounced.