Cubs Payroll Efficiency, Take 2

Here is a breakdown of the payroll efficiency of the 2008 Cubs pitching staff



The overall contract profit of the team's rotation and bullpen comes out to about $43.5 million, meaning that the Cubs organization did a decent job at value pricing contracts in 2008. Of course, this neglects the impact of backloaded contracts, which easily skew payroll efficiency.

The team's biggest losses were in Jon Lieber, who cost the team roughly $4.4 million, and (no suprise here) Bob Howry, who was overpaid by about $3.6 million. Though Jon Lieber really wasn't that bad outside of 3 outings, his injury and minimal playing time lead to a negative WARP in 2009.

Zambrano was also a hefty loss at -$3.48 million, although much of that negative value comes from his late season injury/ineffectiveness. Prior to mid/late August, I'm sure that the contract value was about even. Regardless, it is easily discernable that Zambrano is overpaid at his current rate as Dempster and Harden, who had better years than Big Z, had production values that only slightly edged out Z's 2008 cost; as Z's costs increases over the next few seasons, the probability that he provides a contract profit will decrease -- even (and especially) if he produces at his career averages for the remainder of his tenure with the Cubs.

What you may find shocking in this data is that Jason Marquis had a slightly profitable contract in 2008, producing $1.8 million above his salary value. In 2007, his contract profit was even higher. However, this is and was largely due to contract backloading (Marquis is set to make $9+ million -- or little under one-half of his three year, $21 million contract value -- in 2009). If his contract were to have been evenly set at $7 million a year, his two-year contract profit value with the Cubs would have been a cumulative $1.2 million (Marquis was worth $7 million in 2007). So while Marquis may have sucked, he surely wasn't overpaid -- at least not relative to the rest of the league.

On a final note, given Kerry Wood's overwhelming productive contrubution to the team (his contract profit was fourth to only Harden, Dempster and Marmol) in 2008, I'm shocked the Cubs decided not to bring him back for 2009. Even at a cost of $10 million last year, he would have been "underpaid."

This information is courtesy of Fangraphs.com, who calculated the 2008 pitcher WARPs and WARP values.