but we differ, I think, in that I don’t think one bad deal deserves another. I love Adam Dunn and used to think the Royals should try to go 4/64 for him. But reading about other stuff has changed my mind about a lot of things. Without getting into my life story, I’ll just tell you how I get my value on Dunn, in a way that’s most generous to him, and assumes he’ll still be in his prime next season.

Offense: using a 5-4-3-2 weighting of his last four years and a slight regression to average, I get his offesensive "true talent " as 22.3 runs above average (not replacement level).

Defense and position: I’ll go with -7.5 runs for left field, and assume that he’s going to be pretty good out there with respect to his career, and be -10 runs. That’s -17.5, which is pretty generous to him. It also convenientlly corresponds with someone who can DH well, which we don’t know about Dunn.

So far, 22.3 + -17.5 = 4.8 runs above average with offense, defense, and position incorporated. But we need to add in replacement level. For NL position players, that’s two wins, so 2 * 10.5 = 21. So Dunn on this accounting is 25.8 runs above replacement level, which is actually just under 2.5 wins, but lets call it 2.5 WAR.

If salary inflation has remained consistent, each WAR is worth $4.84M. Now, we’ve been assuming Dunn won’t decline from 2008 to 2009. Fine, so he’s still a 2.5 WAR player. But after that, one needs to incorporate a -.5 WAR adjustment for each year, plus factor in 10% salary inflation. I made a chart for it a while back from reading Tangos’s stuff earlier. Anyway, your typical 2.5 WAR player, on this market value and a constant rate of inflation and expected decline, is worth the following contract: 1/12.1, 2/22.7, 3/31.5, 4/38, 5/41.5.

You don’t have to believe that, of course. I do think I made everythign as generous to Dunn as possible — assuming he’s not already on decline (overall — that includes defense — defense and speed both generally already start declining at 24 at the latest, also ability to make contact), only giving him a -17.5 on def. + pos. when -22.5 would be most appropriate, rounding up to 2.5 WAR.

But that’s just me. I also think that a small market team should almost never pay market value, much less overpay, because their overall salary/wins ration has to be much more efficient than other teams. But that’s a whole different debate.