With the free agent period now open, I’m going to make a habit of throwing up some free agent comparisons that might challenge the perceptions of the relative value of a few players. For various reasons, there are players who have performed pretty similarly, or project similarly going forward, but the general consensus has them as significantly different. I like pointing these cases out.

Let’s start with a pair of right fielders today. According to the Contract Crowdsourcing project, Nick Markakis is expected to sign for $33 million over three years, while Nori Aoki is expected to sign for $14 million over two years. According to Roch Kubotko, Markakis is going to do even better than the crowd thought, as the Orioles are reportedly talking with him about a four year deal; I think we can say with some certainty that Nori Aoki isn’t getting a four year deal this winter.

But now, let’s just look at some data. Here is Aoki and Markakis over the last three years.

Name PA BB% K% ISO BABIP AVG OBP SLG wRC+ Off Def WAR Nori Aoki 1811 8% 8% 0.101 0.304 0.287 0.353 0.387 106 10.0 -9.0 6.1 Nick Markakis 1881 9% 11% 0.117 0.299 0.279 0.342 0.396 104 6.0 -30.3 4.0

There’s an error in the code that caused Aoki to be rated as an abysmal baserunner in 2014 — he wasn’t — so the numbers above won’t match what’s on Aoki’s player page or the leaderboards until the new code gets updated, but I’ve eliminated that error here. And removing that error makes it hard to argue that Markakis has been better at much of anything over the last few years. They’re basically the same type of player, only Aoki has been the better version of it.

They’re both high-contact, low-power guys, though Aoki is even better at avoiding strikeouts, so his BA/OBP are a bit higher. The defensive metrics also like him a bit more, though neither one is a big time asset in the field. Even if you decide that you think they’re equals in the field, that just serves to pull Markakis back up to Aoki’s level.

Markakis is two years younger, so it’s probably fair to project him for a slightly slower decline going forward, but even including the age factor, Steamer still sees Aoki and Markakis as equals, and that’s with the incorrect baserunning number factored into the projection. Factor that out, and Aoki inches ahead a little bit in the battle of slap-hitting right fielders.

But the perception is that Markakis is a lot better than Aoki, and he’s probably going to get paid a lot more. I’m not sure it’s reality, though.