Excluding pre-arbitration players like Todd Frazier and Zack Cozart, the Cincinnati Reds have 18 players who are either signed to big league contracts or have been assigned a salary through arbitration.
As much as fans may like to, you can’t fault a player for signing a contract he’s offered. Professional athletes have a limited window to earn their money, and it’s to their benefit to get as much of as they possibly can.
While we can’t fault players for signing these contracts, that doesn’t mean we can’t analyze and power rank them in order from worst to best. In order to do this, we’ll look at the player’s age at the start of the contract, the length of the contract, the total value of the contract and also the adjusted annual value—abbreviated A.A.V.
Again, as I stated in the first sentence of this introduction, this list will not include pre-arbitration players. So, you won’t see players like Frazier, Cozart, Billy Hamilton or Tony Cingrani—among others.
Let’s get down to the rankings.
All stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com and Fangraphs.com unless otherwise noted. 2014 stat projections come from Fangraphs.
All contract information comes courtesy of Cot’s Baseball Contracts via Baseballprospectus.com.
All arbitration estimations come courtesy of MLBTraderumors.com‘s Tim Dierkes.