The Free Agent Win Shares Chart

Here’s a quick Win Shares look at how each team could potentially be affected by free agency. I basically added up all the Win Shares of each player who isn’t on his team’s roster at this time, and compared that to the team’s total Win Shares. Players not on the roster include those who filed for free agency, as well as those who were traded in season.

Remember, this is not a prediction, but a measure of the relative impact free agency might have on each team, based on last year’s contributions. “FAWS” stands for Free Agent Win Shares. In my notes, I may reference WSAR as a way of measuring the true impact of these losses. WSAR stands for Win Shares Above Average.

Team Total FAWS Percent Comments
LAD 279 118 42.3% Beltre, Perez, Lima, and the trade of Lo Duca and Mota. Will be partially offset by having Choi and Penny for full year.
CHC 267 95 35.7% Alou, Clement, Grudz and Walker. Rusch has already re-upped. Middle of the lineup concerns
COL 204 72 35.2% Burnitz, Castilla, Reed; all contributed but all should be replaced for long term.
FLO 249 80 32.1% Benitez and Pavano, plus loss of Choi and Penny through trade.
HOU 276 84 30.6% Beltran, Kent and Clements big losses; would be nice to get two of three back.
ATL 288 85 29.6% Drew, Alfonseca and Wright. Can Atlanta recover from a big talent loss again?
BOS 294 80 27.1% Mostly Pedro and Varitek. Not as bad a loss as I would have imagined.
STL 315 83 26.4% Womack, Renteria, Kline, Mabry. Womack wouldn’t repeat anyway; Renteria only 3.7 WSAR.
KC 174 42 24.3% Reflects Beltran trade. Most FA losses actually had negative WSAR’s.
MIN 276 66 23.8% Radke, Koskie and Guzman losses hurt. Replacing Radke is key.
TOR 201 42 20.7% Mostly loss of Delgado and Zaun.
NYY 303 62 20.5% El Duque, Cairo, Sierra, Lieber, Clark, Olerud. Rotation upgrade required.
SEA 189 36 19.1% Not really a free agent loss, this reflects trade of Freddy Garcia.
NYM 213 41 19.0% Leiter and Bottalico. Leiter may re-up.
PHI 258 49 18.9% Polanco and Cormier; two very good ballplayers.
TBD 210 36 17.1% Tino Martinez. Zambrano traded; Kazmir could match his Win Shares in first year.
OAK 273 45 16.6% Damian Miller and Chris Hammond. Without a catcher, lots of passed balls.
ARI 153 25 16.3% Wanted. Baseball Players. Apply within.
CHW 249 35 14.2% Valentin and Ordonez, whose loss is offset by half-year on DL.
CIN 228 29 12.7% Larkin and Paul Wilson only positive WSAR contributors, barely.
CLE 239 26 10.9% Vizquel.
TEX 268 28 10.5% Deluccia and Young only positive WSAR contributors
MON 201 21 10.3% Cabrera actually had negative WSAR while with Expos.
ANA 276 24 8.7% Glaus and Percival; both had limited contributions in 2004 due to injuries.
SDP 258 18 6.9% David Wells.
BAL 234 13 5.6% B.J. Surhoff
MIL 201 11 5.6% Addition by subtraction.
DET 216 11 4.9% Yan’s 7/17 saves in save opportunities kept his Win Shares down. Only player of note.
PIT 216 9 4.2% Traded Benson
SFG 273 8 2.8% No one of consequence
Total 7281 1373 18.9%


Dave Studeman was called a "national treasure" by Rob Neyer. Seriously. Follow his sporadic tweets @dastudes.

Comments are closed.