Tremendous study. I'll likely have to spend some more time on it.

But to answer the blog's question... I honestly don't expect a lot out of free agents. My belief, and I've stated this before, is that the biggest free agents rarely are worth the money, especially pitchers. The reality is players' primes are generally through age 31, maybe 32... and that's generally when they become free agents. So, in theory, most are beyond their best years.

Thanks for the good work.

I hoping the a Twins stay away from decline phase pitchers until they have a foundation. There aren't many guys like a Hughes that hit free agency so young, but having the upside of age is critical to a team that needs to tear down and rebuild.

Thanks. I'd have to agree with every bit of both your comments. If anything, the data here shows how rarely you can rely on these guys over the length of the contract. To see such a wide range in current results from our four free agents really shouldn't be all that surprising.

I've made a few edits: changed the table to show seasons of the contract instead of date signed, corrected Lackey's contract info and updated the conclusion. I'm happy to upload the data to a public Google doc if anyone wants it.

Fantastic work. Great indicator of value in risk/reward, especially the tiered data sets.

some teams accept that the last 2-3 years are the price you pay for the first few years, and are probably not counting on value in those last few years. You can decide to be fine with that or not.

$/WAR is a great measure, if you are willing to live with low WAR, you can have a low budget, but then, you'll lose more, right? If it costs $6MM for 1 WAR, and you only spend $12MM, you get 2 wins.....or, if you pay more, you get more wins. If you pay for bad pitchers, you will generally get bad pitchers. Me? I'd rather pay for good to great pitchers, and not waste money on 1-2 WAR pitchers.

mike, which tier begins to qualify as "good to great"? Tier 5? 6?