In what has turned out to be record-breaking deal for Major League Baseball, Miami Marlins and two-time All-Star slugger Giancarlo Stanton have reached a monumental 13-year deal: for a whooping $ 325 million. This is the highest ever spent on a player in American sports and many are shocked that the Marlins could even afford it. After all, most had foreseen a shift to the Yankees or the Red Sox when Stanton became too pricey for the Marlins. While they have managed to retain him, the question is if he is worth all this money? The Miami Marlins is a team that has spent less than this amount on its entire major league roster for the last five years combined. Could the $ 325 million have been better spent elsewhere? Or is it investment that will have great rewards? Read on to find out.
Stanton is definitely one of the biggest stars of the MLB but if you are to go statistics alone, then it is quite clear that there are others who have performed better than him. In the course of the last 4 seasons, he has been leading the league in homers as well as sluggish percentage. But a more apt judge of a batter’s performance are the Weighted Runs Created Plus and Weighted On Base Average. The former measures how the player’s weighted runs match up to the league average and the latter combines all aspects of batting into a single metric. Stanton’s statistics have been 8th and 9th in this respectively. So if you are to go by these statistics alone, there are quite a few players with better performances than Stanton’s. These include Adrian Gonzalez, Andrew McCutchen and Mike Trout.
But the fact is that the Marlins and Stanton have a very symbiotic relationship and can end up benefitting each other immensely. Stanton has provided the Marlins with 19.5 wins over replacement, and this is valued at about $ 93.7 million. Basically what this means is that if you had to buy a player to get this exact same performance in free agency, you would have to pay $ 93.7 million. However, the Marlins originally paid only about $ 8 million. So you can see that the Marlins have been on the right side of the ledger for a long time.
The standard worth of one marginal win is about $7 million dollars. So if Stanton can keep up his present record for the next few years, he will definitely benefit the Marlins in a big way. Even if his contribution to date is ignored, it is still a pretty profit for the Marlin management.
Then of course there is the undeniable fact that Stanton is the kind of talent that draws big crowds and will be a charismatic player around whom the team can be built.
While some might argue that the amount spent is a bit too much, overall it does seem that the Marlins and Giancarlo Stanton have a good relationship going which will benefit both in the long run. What is for sure is that he will be playing for the Marlins for the next 6 years at least.
What do you think? Is Giancarlo Stanton worth $ 325 million?