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The problem with this, of course, is that Bobby Bonilla turns 50 on Saturday and retired after the 2001 season. He hasn’t actually been on the Mets roster since 1999. The reason why his name keeps coming up is because of a highly-publicized contract buyout from 2000.

The Mets didn’t want Bonilla on their team for the 2000 season. With a $5,900,000 salary and a 37th birthday in February, he carried little trade value (never mind the fact that Bonilla had been worth -1.5 fWAR the previous 2 seasons, despite only appearing in a total of 160 games). The Wilpons wanted Bonilla off the roster, and wanted additional financial flexibility in the interim. So they came to an agreement on his buyout:

[S]tarting on July 1, 2011, Bobby Bonilla will remain on the franchise’s payroll for 25 years, collecting an annual salary of $1,193,248.20. Those are the terms the Mets agreed to Jan. 3, 2000, when they bought out the final year of Mr. Bonilla’s contract.

- There’s No Accounting for This, Wall Street Journal (July 1, 2010)

The $1.19M figure was agreed upon was based on two tenets:

(1) Bonilla’s $5.9M salary would be deferred until the 2011 fiscal year

The Wilpons would not owe Bobby Bonilla any compensation for 11 1/2 years, and would be free to spend the money as they wish until July 2011, at which point they’re required to pay the annual installments until 2035.

(2) In compensation for this, the money would collect interest.

According to the WSJ article I quoted above, the money would collect 8% interest in the meantime (the US Prime Rate in January 2000 was 8.5% – a nominal 5.8% interest on top of 2.7% inflation).

For the sake of discussion, I’m going to propose a third tenet:

(3) The original $5.9M sum is viewed as belonging to Bonilla, which he then invested into the Mets at the agreed upon terms.

March 28, 2012; Port St Lucie, FL, USA; New York Mets co owner Fred Wilpon in the stands during a spring training game against the Washington Nationals at Digital Domain Park. Mandatory Credit: Brad Barr-USA TODAY Sports

If you wish, you can argue that it was, in effect, the Wilpons borrowing the money from Bonilla, but either way it’s the same. What I’m establishing is that the $5.9M is, in effect, a sunk cost to Fred Wilpon; that money ends up in Bonilla’s pockets no matter the agreement. So what we’re going to do is treat the $5.9M as in a vacuum – as a deposit into an interest bearing account that collects 8% interest and begins paying out in the 11th fiscal year. At the end, Bonilla will have earned a total of $29,831,205 by the year 2035. Assuming the 2.7% inflation rate at the time he signed the agreement, the total value would be worth $16,464,019 in 2000. Not only has Bonilla effectively secured his future (and his family’s) with the annuity payments, he’s nearly tripled the year-2000 value of his contract!

This should all sound familiar, because this is how banks work. When you deposit money into a savings account, for example, you’re giving your bank the freedom to use your money for ventures they see fit (lend it to others, invest it, etc.) with the caveats that (A) your money is insured if what they do with it loses money and (B) they pay you in exchange. Those payments come in the form of interest.

The key question here is how the Wilpons invested the $5.9M (given the tumult of the Madoff scandal, among other things, discussing this could fill novels, let alone this blog post). Hypothetically, if the Wilpons were to invest the money at 8%, they would break even (they would actually profit 8.4 cents).

At this point, it becomes clear why the Wilpons would be willing to make such a deal. Were they to collect zero interest (above inflation) on the $5.9M, their liability would be the difference between the total of the payments and the initial sum – $27,565,453 – which works out to $1,102,618 per year for each of the 25 years in which Bonilla will collect. Were we to assume that value as a lump sum to be paid out in year 25 (2035), it reflects as a $10,849,247 sum in year 2000 dollars.

So that’s it. In the most foolish eyes, the Wilpons made a $10.8M gamble in January 2000 (a safer bet than Jason Bay, in retrospect). Clearly it isn’t likely that the Wilpons just let the money sit under their mattress, so let’s check the investment.

First, we know that the average (mean) inflation rate since January 2000 has been 2.5065%. We also know that the mean Prime rate (which includes inflation) since the agreement has been 5.3386%. At that rate, the Wilpons would be paying $24,497,467 out-of-pocket over the lifetime of the agreement, a year-2000 cost of $9,641,745.

However, the Prime Rate, of course, corresponds to the rate offered to the lowest-risk lendees, so it’s not necessarily accurate to assume that the Wilpons only used that rate. I don’t know enough about investment returns or the like to accurately guess what they were getting. Reports have indicated that they were collecting as much as 12% from their Madoff investments; at such a rate they would have begun to guarantee a profit by 2018. Even at a more modest 9%, their profit (in year-2000 dollars) would be north of $8.3M, and the 8.5% prime rate at the time of agreement would have netted the Wilpons a $3.7M profit in year-2000 dollars.

It’s ultimately unknown what their investment returns are, and/or how much of it was lost in the Madoff scandal. But when the worst case scenario ends up in spreading what would be, at the time, a less-than-$11M loss over 35 years, it doesn’t seem like the disaster some make it out to be.

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His plate discipline

Here’s a trivia question you can float around next time you’re at the bar: In 2012, which Met had the best unintentional walk rate? Hint: It wasn’t David Wright. In fact, he was third. Lucas Duda collected 51 bases on balls in 2012. None were intentional. That 11.1% rate was the best on the Mets (Ike Davis just edged out Wright for second, 9.98% to 9.93%). Going a step further, it was the 6th-best rate in the National League among players with at least 450 plate appearances (Davis and Wright were 14th and 15th, respectively). The significance of this? That it’s normal. In 2011 / 12, Lucas collected a walk in 10.4% of his plate major league plate appearances. As a minor leaguer, his walk rate was 12.0% below AA. In 664 plate appearances for AA Binghamton, that rate was 13.6%, and in 562 plate appearances at AAA Buffalo it was 11.4%. The fact that Duda was able to keep up his exceptional walk rate despite his struggles suggests that his strikeout issues were, perhaps, aberrant. In the upper minors (AA / AAA), Duda has an 18.2% strikeout rate. While not great, it’s fairly reasonable for someone who identifies as a ‘power hitter’. In 2011, the rate was only 16.4%, but it jumped to 26.1% in 2012. Conjecturally speaking (I am not a scout, after all), there’s a pretty decent explanation to this: Duda was trying too hard to hit home runs. The chart below breaks down Duda’s batted ball profile (all percentages relative to number of batted balls):

Oct. 3, 2012; Miami, FL, USA; New York Mets right fielder Lucas Duda (21) at bat against the Miami Marlins at Marlins Park. The Mets won 4-2. Mandatory Credit: Steve Mitchell-USA TODAY Sports

*BIP% – percentage of at bats ending with a ball in play

A few things stick out here: Duda’s batted ball profile remained remarkably similar in all but one area: his extra base hit rate. He experienced a slight uptick in ground balls (3.14%), but that isn’t of much note. The big change came in his extra base hits. His home run rate jumped 31.5% in 2012, which is by all counts a good thing for someone with his power potential (fun fact: Duda’s average home run in 2012 was hit only 5.5 feet shorter than Giancarlo Stanton‘s). What’s somewhat more concerning, though, is that he hit 45.2% fewer doubles and triples (relative to his batted ball numbers) which led to an overall 22.7% decrease in extra-base hits.

Given that everything else stayed so similarly (his line drive rate was virtually identical, changing by only 0.035%), it would seem that his doubles rate and his strikeout rate are linked. Which again, conjecturally speaking, logically follows the trying too hard for the home run argument. Looking at his pitch profile:

we see that he was getting a similar amount of pitches in the strike zone. Given that his walk rate was significantly higher in 2012 (11.1%) than in 2011 (9.5%), it lends that he wasn’t swinging as much at pitches outside the strike zone (which, incidentally, is true). Looking at his swinging profile, we see that Duda swung much less often overall in 2012:

This chart contains a nugget of good news, and one of bad news: The good news is that Duda swung at fewer pitches outside the zone (O-Swing% on the chart). The bad news is that he swung at fewer pitches inside the strike zone (Z-Swing%). Combine that with the fact that Duda saw fewer fastballs in 2012 (from 35.5% of pitches to 30.1%), it means that Duda’s selectivity (at times hesitance would be the better word) at the plate began to hurt him. When he wasn’t ahead of the count, he suffered (as shown in the chart below, comparing his OPS to his batting situation):

Though the numbers are lower across the board, it’s the bottom of that chart that spells Duda’s offensive issues in 2012. He swung at fewer pitches in the strike zone. When he was ahead, this led to more walks. When he was behind, this led to more strikeouts than in the past.

When a young player has a rough season, the ‘why’ becomes just as important as the ‘what’. When multiple factors in his performance regress, it can be foresight of future struggles. In Duda’s case, however, it seems that only one variable changed, which is an encouraging sign for the future. Hypothetically, if Duda had only struck out in 20% of his at bats (all else holding), he would’ve hit roughly .271/.357/.456. Were his extra base hit rate to bounce back, that .813 OPS would be even higher.

And that’s the rub. Duda needs to be slightly more aggressive in fastball counts and, to an extent, with pitches in the strike zone in general. Before spring training starts, hitting coach Dave Hudgens should work with Duda to understand that trying to find the home run seems to be to his detriment. He doesn’t need to hit 30 home runs to be successful, especially with a high walk rate and if he just worries about making solid contact with pitches in the strike zone (by being more aggressive in hitter’s counts, and earlier in at bats), and lets the power come naturally (as he ostensibly did in 2011), he could be a highly-productive middle-of-the-order hitter for the Mets in 2013. And if that happens, most of us wouldn’t worry about the defense.

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