Yes.
Verdugo has taken a small step back or at least slightly underperformed. Verdugo is still a starting regular, but he's not a potential All Star going forward. Downs and Wong haven't shown much at all to this point.
And what happens when sample sizes are wrong or fraught with other sample differences (opposing lineups, health of players involved, pitchers either declining or improving as time goes on, etc.)?
Randomness!
However, there is a problem with this straight forward approach, as noted by Keith Woolner in his study published in Baseball Prospectus. The problem is sample size.
Agreed.
Is Vaz the same catcher he was in 2015? No, he's probably better. Comparing random years of Vaz's career to random years of Tek's just doesn't make much sense. Pitchers change over time. These aren't apples to apples comparisons.
Betts didn't get 20M in arbitration until after his 10 fWAR season.
I love Raffy, but he's a 5 fWAR guy and will probably get about 10M per year in arb the next 2 seasons.
The Sox may not want to do that. I would do it though.
Devers won't make more in arbitration. He only made 4.5M this year and only has two arb years left. They aren't bumping him up to 20M.
They had Reese in 2004. He could have just slid over if they wanted to.
They saw that Nomar was going to be out 50% of the time down the stretch in 2004. They needed to move on and found a more complete SS. I don't think it was solely due to defense. If Nomar wasn't injured, they would have stuck it out with him.