Swartz: The relationship between spending efficiency and labor markets
From SABR member Matt Swartz at FanGraphs on July 7, 2017:
I’m excited to begin my FanGraphs Residency this month, during which I’ll present an updated analysis of the Dollars per WAR estimates that I’ve used for a long time. I’ve written about the Dollars per WAR framework for analyzing the free-agent market for nearly a decade now, most recently in a three–part series at Hardball Times using data through the 2013 season. In that collection of posts, I established the important definition of Dollars per WAR that I will use throughout this series of articles — namely, the average cost of acquiring one win above replacement on the free-agent market.
Since I’ve written about this, however, there has been a progressively minded, labor-sympathetic pushback against this framework that I felt it was important to address, because if the criticism were fair it would cast a long shadow across all of the analysis in the coming articles. Fortunately, I believe that this criticism is misguided, even if you accept the value system that proponents of this line of criticism generally espouse.
Read the full article here: http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/the-relationship-between-spending-efficiency-and-labor-markets/
Originally published: July 11, 2017. Last Updated: July 11, 2017.