There has to be an economic law out there somewhere to show that if the goal of a team is to win, then unless you won, that $40 million "worth" of "value" Paxton brought us wasn't worth jack-squat in the end. Might as well have had Andrew Moore out there, the result wasn't much different, we lost.
In baseball we can determine the winners and the losers. It's like a lottery ticket. Until the ticket has been scratched, it's worth a buck. Once you scratch it, it's worthless (most of the time). Same should apply to contracts, in my opinion. Teams who made the playoffs, their players had contacts that paid off. All other were a sunk cost. We paid Felix and Paxton 100% too much for the end result.
Unless of course WAR value is actually calculated using ticket and jersey sales...