This article, by BP’s Russell A. Carleton, originally ran on the main site. We hope you enjoy this preview here.
The Cubs really like their president, Theo Epstein, and according to reports just gave him 50-ish million reasons to like them back. On top of that, they also gave his friends (general manager Jed Hoyer and senior vice president of scouting Jason McLeod) a few million reasons each to stick around the North Side as well. The thing about Epstein’s contract is that, if it truly is for five years as reported, it puts his average annual salary at $10 million. That’s impressive, and it’s starting to look like a real major-league player’s salary, despite the fact that Epstein has pitched a total of zero innings this year for the Cubs.
While it’s a major-league salary, immediately after it was announced, it was pointed out that it’s the sort of salary thatJ.A. Happ, Derek Holland, and Edwin Encarnacion made this past year. Is Theo Epstein worth the same as J.A. Happ?
There’s no really good way to value the contributions of a general manager or of a whole front office. The attempts have been made aren’t entirely satisfactory, mostly because much of the information that we would need to make a reasonable estimate is hidden from view. Plus, I’d argue that a lot of what gets talked about when we talk about “what a general manager does” is really only a part of what a general manager actually does.
The Epstein-Happ comparison is also scuttled by a translation issue. We’re used to thinking of players in terms of on-field value measured in Wins Above Replacement Player during a single year. With front offices, we swing and miss on all three of those. (That’s a strikeout.) With players, we at least get to see what they do on the field and we get a good record of it. With general managers, most of what they do is not a matter of public record. Not only that, but the “replacement level” baseline for players is based on actual observations of what bench/fringe players do in actual games.
We get to see what the utility infielder can do against major-league pitching. We’ll never get to see what the 31st-best GM would have done with the Cubs (or anyone else) this year. And while it’s easy to segment a player’s contributions into individual seasons, it’s harder to do that with a GM. For example, the Cubs picked Kris Bryant in the 2012 draft. This year, he might just win the NL MVP. If we’re going to give the Cubs’ front office credit for that, should it be in the 2012 box or the 2016 box?
Still, we do have one easy metric of comparison: dollars. If a win is worth $7-8 million on the free agent market, then we are suggesting that Epstein is worth a little more than one win per year. If we could find a way to translate his work into single-season wins, we can see whether he is a better or worse deal than J.A. Happ. We are not going to walk out of this article with a solid answer on the matter or a ranked list. But I think that even trying to outline the contours of the case is instructive. Let’s see if we can at least make the case that a GM could be worth an eight-figure salary.
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Lead photo courtesy Charles LeClaire—USA Today Sports.