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JH's picture

There's a flaw in your attempt to reduce this to an either-or scenario: the same GMs that realize that power is overrated and defense and on-base percentage are underrated have zero incentive to correct the inefficiency. So when there's a "bidding war" for a player with undervalued skills, teams don't push the bidding too high. An Oakland or a Tampa Bay doesn't correct the market's overvaluing of power hitters when they sit the market out -- people just say "well, obviously they don't have the money." Teams have been allocating their resources away from bat-first, no-glove guys for years -- Tampa Bay's filled out competitive rosters for years without paying one of these $12-15 million salaries - the closest they came was $10 million to Carlos Pena, or approximately the price of two wins.
The trend, as I see it, is absolutely starting to lessen the value of bat-first guys. Your examples, the Konerkos and Ortiz's, are guys who were re-signed by their previous teams. Adam Dunn is the ultimate type of player who'd be extremely pricey based on stats on the back of a baseball card, but much less so if you consult more advanced numbers. None of us would complain about his paycheck, but his first free agent deal was for 2 years and an AAV of $10 million. His second pushed the AAV up to $14 million, but that's a far cry from what the top free agents get, and this is a guy who put up a half-dozen straight 40hr seasons. If GMs really thought that the baseball card numbers were still the best indicators of value, Dunn would have been paid like an elite guy. Instead, he was paid like the two to three-win player he'd been the few years before he signed his deals.
This year, we saw the Pirates completely rebuffed in their attempt to get value in return for 30HR guy Garret Jones, we saw Adam Laroche unable to get a 3rd year (or any bidding interest), we saw Kendrys Morales, who hit 30HR in his last full healthy season, traded for an innings-eating, soft-tossing lefty, and another 30HR guy, Morse, traded for a catcher that many see as a part-time guy. Unless I'm missing something, the biggest position player FA contracts this offseason went to Hamilton, Upton, Swisher, Pagan, and Victorino, in that order. Not one of them is a bat-only guy.
The trend isn't power-only hitters continuing to get paid like elite players, it's power hitters getting paid approximately what WAR says they're worth, and defense-first guys still getting treated skeptically by guys who have no incentive to redefine the market by bidding each other up for skills they believe are undervalued (which would make the value go away). This makes perfect sense, since everybody in the analytical community will readily acknowledge that metrics for offense are light years ahead both in precision and predictiveness than defensive metrics. The price tags reflect this, but also acknowledge that HR total isn't the be-all, end-all of a player's value.

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