Since the FA season began I have been tracking player contracts with the their past 3 years of WAR as calculated by Fangraphs. I have calculated the price of WAR based upon the last 3 year averages, 3 year high, and 3 year low. As of tonight, average WAR paid for the current FA class is $5.516mm. Average prices for the high WAR year is $2.585mm and it is $9.092mm based on low WAR years. The median cost for the 3 year average WAR $3.838mm. It is $2.38mm for high WAR years and $6.125mm for low WAR years.

These numbers are heavily skewed, as fractional WAR values have a strong multiplier effect and I did not included negative WAR except in the 3 yr average (if the average was positive), as I did not know what to do with a negative number. These numbers are not adjusted for PAs/IPs, so partial seasons due to injuries may not be materially significant.

What is surprising to me are the players being signed with WAR values well below 2.0, which makes me wonder if WAR is actually measuring replacement value. And what is wrong with Andres Torres?

I am a neophyte to the post Bill James metrics, so I would be grateful for suggestions and criticisms, especially with respect to the fraction/negative problems.

If one of the internet cognoscenti would send me a link to a public file share service I will post the spreadsheets.

Nice title

I believe the cost of war the past 10 years is close to one trillion.

primi, I applaud your research, and I would look into it myself if we didn't have RFan and Scooby and Matches here to be more accurate for us. If you loosely base the price of each WAR at $5M, I think that leaves us with a pretty good benchmark. Moving into the $5.5M territory is probably a little more accurate, but even the saber heads like working with simplified numbers.

Blame it on the Dodgers, the Angels, the Yankees, the Red Sox, the Phillies, and yes, in a couple years you will certainly be able to blame the Rangers, but the price of WAR is only going to skyrocket. That's why signing signing Zack Greinke, or, if you'd like to be more realistic, Nick Swisher, behooves us in the offseason of 2012. Their contracts are going to look like bargains in 2015. But hey, in 2015, Greinke will have opted out of his own deal, so maybe we'll be able to make another run at him.

Then we can have a rotation of Darvish/Price/Greinke/Kershaw/Holland. Ha ha ha!

Darvish/Price/Greinke/Kershaw/Holland
Hmmm.... one of those is not like the rest...

@above - you meant that Darvish isn't American right?

(totally joking)