I will be starting a series of club evaluations based on the team’s players’ performance value (PV) in millions since 2002 (values derived from the excellent fangraphs.com) as opposed by their salary (SV) in millions. The players included will be starting position players and DH’s, starting pitchers, and closers. If a salary was not included for the player’s first year, as sometimes happens on fangraphs, I inserted the average of the next two year’s pay, or most of the time a 0.3. If a salary was not included for 2009, I searched the player’s ESPN.com page to find out the salary. Once I recorded both the total performance value and total salary, I divided them, the total salary being the numerator and the performance value the denominator. Finally, I subtracted that quotient from 1, which gave me the percentage out of 100 that a player outperformed (OVRP) his salary for his career.

Starting this series will be, who else, the New York Yankees.

PLAYER                                OVRP                     PV  /  SV

Joba Chamberlain        .9526               25.3
- 1.2

Curtis Granderson       .9323               79.8
- 5.7

Melky Cabrera            .8324              17.3 – 2.9

Robinson Cano           .8172               55.8
- 10.2

Nick Swisher              .8099               54.7
- 10.4

Nick Johnson              .7136               61.8
- 17.7

CC Sabathia               .6648             154.8
- 51.89

Mark Teixeira             .5216             116.0 – 55.5

A.J. Burnett                .4553               99.5
- 54.2

Jorge Posada              .3286             126.9
- 85.2

Andy Pettite                .2485             118.3 – 88.9

Alex Rodriguez           .0460             206.9
- 197.4

Derek Jeter                 - .0563         145.6
- 153.8

Mariano Rivera           - .3144           70.3 – 92.4

With the Yankees, we find some interesting results. We all know that Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, Andy Pettite, and Jorge Posada have been some of the best players at their respective positions over the past decade. The difference, however, between those players and players like A.J. Burnett, CC Sabathia, and Mark Teixeira is that the latter group had been playing for other teams for the previous years before 2009, which is the key. They had not been playing for a team like the Yankees, who will spend absurd amounts of money to nab the best players on the market, or from within their own organization. This is, of course, disregarding the fact that they are also younger players who were not yet established enough to hit the free agent market and earn the big bucks.

The most surprising to me, however, are Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera being in negative figures. Derek Jeter, no matter his contract, is an outstanding player. His glove has been shaky at times, but there is no denying his true value on the field 150 times a year. Mariano Rivera is the same, yet I think his negative numbers are due to some oversight on the part of fangraphs.com, as I suspect they don’t have different criteria for assessing closers as opposed to starting pitchers.

Note also newcomers Curtis Granderson and Nick Johnson’s respective values as opposed to their contracts. A few years down the line, when the Yankees will hopefully re-up him with a new deal, his overperformance percentage (OVRP) will come down a ways. I also thought Nick Swisher’s value was interesting, seeing that he has been in the league for six or seven years now, but still has consistently outperformed his contract value significantly.

UP NEXT: The Boston Red Sox