Why Won’t These Two Record-Breaking Starts Lead To A Payday?

As we surpass the first half of the MLB season, there are currently two separate cases of players on pace to make history, with one being much more discussed than the other.

The only issue for these players is that the records they are on pace to beat are not nearly as lucrative as something like Aaron Judge’s home run chase or Jacob deGrom looking to complete a sub-2 ERA.

But they are certainly valued from a franchise’s point of view, and these two players could heighten the value of players with a similar game if they are able to finish the season as strong as they started it.

Luis Arraez of the Miami Marlins and Esteury Ruiz of the Oakland Athletics are the two players off to a historic start, as Arraez finishes the first 81 games of Miami’s season with a .399 batting average in 75 games, while Ruiz has already surpassed 40 stolen bases in the same stretch.

Arraez has received more and more publicity as the season has gone alone, as what he has the potential of doing has not been seen since Wilard Brown in 1948, where batting average was the single ruling on if a player was good or not.

Ruiz on the other hand has not received enough appreciation for what he is trying to do, which would be surpassing 80 stolen bases. Vince Coleman was the last player to do so in 1988 with 81.

To take a deeper look into what these two players are doing, let’s compare them to an older generation where these categories were more common amongst MLB talent.

Arraez is obviously one of the few pure contact hitters in the game, and to compare him to other players to flirt with the .400 batting average for as long as Arraez has, the league averages at the time were much more favorable for this style of hitting as it is today.

For example, if we inflated his stats to the average of guys like Ichiro Suzuki, Paul Waner, Wade Boggs and Juan Pierre, singles were about 15% more common than they are today, so all together Arraez would be a .440 hitter through his first half if he played in an earlier timespan.

Ruiz on the other hand owes the MLB rule changes towards his success, as with the league average’s jump in stolen bases (inflating this season by about 40% compared to the past decade), as he has filled an everyday role after just 17 career games before this year.

But, with the league averages jumping so high in stolen bases, his stats would not change at all in a balanced era, as instead guys like Rickey Henderson, Lou Brock and Vince Coleman would all still be north of 100 in their best years.

While both of these are impressive in their own regards, they are also two statistical categories that have been pushed to the bottom of the analytical model of what’s important for winning baseball. And despite these two players’ producing in a way that few players still can at the MLB level, it’s unlikely they will be properly celebrated for their seasons.

While neither of these players are doing this ahead of a contract year, it’s not guaranteed that these performances the two are putting on would grant them a star’s contract on their own.

This just comes down to the basic supply and demands of the market in professional sports, where even though stats can quantify how impactful a player’s unique performance would be on a team it will not always result in the free agency sweepstakes.

But without it sweeping the league and multiple teams driving up the price of players like Arraez and Ruiz, it’s unlikely to see them paid like the stars that Ichiro, Henderson, or Boggs were, despite being a similar player, or arguably better depending on the era.