Archive for 2008

The Pittsburgh Pirates organization takes a lot of beatings from media, as well as from the online community of baseball bloggers. Many of the criticisms are justified, while others are not.

The Pirates organization added six players to the 40-man roster recently. Two of those moves – Neil Walker and Jose Tabata – were no-brainers. The other four, though, were questionable: pitchers Evan Meek, Jeff Sues, Ronald Uviedo, and catcher Steve Lerud. While Walker and Tabata are among the best prospects in the relatively weak system, the remaining four currently project as below-average Major League regulars.

Meek is a former Rule 5 pick who has bounced around the waiver wire more than once. He did make huge strides with his control in the minors in 2008, but his walk rate jumped back up to 8.31 BB/9 in (small sample size warning) 13 MLB innings in 2008. In 41.1 Triple-A innings in 2008, Meek allowed just 30 hits. He features a low-90s fastball, as well as a splitter and slider.

Sues was a fifth-round selection in the 2005 draft out of Vanderbilt University, where he split time between the bullpen and the starting rotation. He settled into the bullpen in 2008 after appearing in just eight pro games between 2005 and 2007. Sues has struggled with medical issues since his college days and his durability is a huge question mark. His fastball is in the low 90s (and can touch the mid-90s) and he has a plus slider. In 2008, he pitched a career-high 64.1 innings between High-A and Double-A. In 43 Double-A innings, he allowed 35 hits and posted rates of 4.19 BB/9 and 11.51 K/9. He is a flyball pitcher who induced ground balls at a rate of 36 percent. Sues, like Meeks, is another run-of-the-mill right-handed middle reliever who is a dime-a-dozen at the Double-A and Triple-A level.

Hey look, another right-handed middle reliever. Uviedo, a Venezuelan, at least has age on his side at 22. In just his second season stateside, the 6’0” reliever allowed 70 hits in 71.2 A-ball innings. He also posted rates of 1.88 BB/9 and 9.54 K/9. Uviedo earned a late-season promotion to High-A ball and allowed just five hits in 16 innings, but his rates dropped to 2.81 BB/9 and 6.75 K/9. He also had an atrocious groundball rate of 37 percent in A-ball. The fastball has some giddy-up, but his other pitches are still developing.

Lerud, 24, was definitely an interesting player to add to the 40-man roster – but not in a good way. He has a career line of .225/.308/.369 in 1,436 at-bats over five seasons. Lerud split 2008 between High-A and Double-A and managed to hit just .233/.300/.363 at the latter level in 146 at-bats so he is not going to begin 2009 in the Majors. Regardless of how good his defence might be, there are three catchers on the 40-man roster with more potential than Lerud: Ryan Doumit, Robinzon Diaz and Jason Jaramillo.

The Pirates organization added three fringe right-handed pitchers in 2007 – Ronald Belisario, Luis Munoz and Olivo Astacio – and none of them lasted the entire season on the 40-man roster. In fact, Astacio is the only member of the trio still in the organization. None of them spent even a game at the Major League level in 2008.

The thing to remember about adding fringe prospects to the 40-man roster is that if you remove them, they can be claimed by any one of the remaining 29 teams and can be optioned down to the minors (as long as option years remain). But if you leave them off the 40-man roster until you are sure that they are deserving, clubs have to spend a Rule 5 pick to acquire them and then keep them on their 40-man rosters for the entire season. The latter transaction is much harder to pull off, especially considering the player is already a fringe prospect to begin with so they are not likely to be Major-League ready.

Yesterday, we talked about center fielders and their relationship to infielders. Like with the 2B/3B conversation last week, the conclusion was mostly unsatisfying. We know how good outfielders are in relation to each other, just like we know how good infielders are in relation to each other, but trying to figure out the difference between infielders and outfielders is a much tougher task.

Some players, like Willie Harris, have skillsets that work a lot better in the outfield than in the infield, where speed is a much bigger factor. Other players, such as Scott Rolen, have the skills to be elite defensive infielders, but don’t profile as guys who would do nearly as well in the outfield. There simply isn’t a blanket statement we can make about the relative difficulties of playing infield and playing outfield that apply to everyone.

Right now, the best we can do is make generalizations that are true across large groups. In that way, perhaps the best way to think of position adjustments are similar to how we think of park factors. Safeco Field depresses offense, so when we look at park adjusted numbers, we give a bump to all hitters and downgrade all pitchers. However, Safeco doesn’t treat all hitters evenly, being brutal on RH bats and pretty friendly to LH bats. Despite this, we still have to conclude that the runs created by LH bats are more valuable, because of the depressed run environment, than they would be if the park was more hitter friendly to RH batters.

Likewise, we know that the pool of players that can play the infield is smaller than the pool that can play the outfield. Since the pool of potential outfielders is larger than the potential pool of infielders (especially 2B/3B/SS), we have to recognize the extra value that infielders provide by doing something that outfielders cannot do.

The position adjustments we have aren’t perfect – we know that. There are some players who could move between positions easier than the adjustments would suggest, and others who would be significantly worse than the adjustment level if moved to a tougher position. But, ignoring position adjustments because they aren’t perfect would be akin to ignoring park factors because they don’t treat all players the same, and I think we all agree that ignoring park factors would be a step back in the understanding of player valuation.

There’s a lot more research that can be done on the relationship between the 2B/3B/SS and CF/LF/RF groups of players. Now that FanGraphs has UZR data available, we’ll continue to explore these issues, and hopefully bring more light to the relative value of each defensive position.

Atlanta: Greg Norton (1/800k)

Gregory Blakemoor Norton possesses the best middle name in baseball, challenged only by Curt Montague Schilling. Norton started 2008 with Seattle, hitting .438/.500/.563 with 16 at-bats. Because Jose Vidro is awesome, the Mariners chose to deal him to Atlanta for a player to be named later. With the Braves, he would see an additional 171 at-bats, hitting .246/.361/.427 and convincing them into another contract. Offensively, his skillset lacks consistent homerun power, but does have excellent plate discipline. Since Norton is average at first base and poor elsewhere, this leaves the Braves with Norton as a pinch-hitter. Norton will be lucky to get 200 plate appearances, and even if he does, apathy is likely to reign supreme. Norton figures to teeter close to replacement level.

Detroit: Matt Treanor (1/750k)

Nichols Law of Catcher Defense states an inverse relationship between offensive performance and defensive reputation. Even as a catcher, Treanor’s not much of a hitter, which probably explains why he’s the “perfect back-up”. Observe this article, in which Todd Jones outlines Treanor’s strengths as: handles pitchers well, has cool wife, can really throw, dependable behind the dish. We don’t really know whether Treanor possesses inherent abilities in game calling that separate him from others, but even if you give him marginal credit for that, how much is that really worth? Even with five runs of defensive credit and a positional bonus Treanor’s not too valuable. His wife is an Olympic medalist, that’s neat. Treanor has thrown out about 25% of career attempted base thieves, so I guess he can throw. As for dependability, I suppose he doesn’t leave the plate until the final out of the half inning is recorded. That’s important.

Houston: Aaron Boone (1/750k)

Can you believe Aaron Boone will soon be 36? No? Well even less believable is that Boone and Geoff Blum appear to be your 2009 Houston Astros third base platoon. Yes, the Astros are going to a basic platoon based on the opposing pitchers hand. There’s not much to mess up here. You would expect Blum and Boone to show dominant statistics versus one of the hands, and with Boone being a right-handed hitter, he’s the one who beats up southpaws, right?

Boone:

Blum:

Oh, those splits just scream platoon partners.

The Astros are leaving third base up to a pair of 36-year-olds with bizarre splits that present a marginal upgrade over going with just one. Blum is a decent defender, and assuming he gets the lion share of plate appearances might keep this from falling to replacement level.

A week ago over on USS Mariner, Dave Cameron brought up the Seattle Mariners current glut of starting pitchers and, explored a little further in the comments, brought up the topic of what to do with Erik Bedard’s future might or might not be. It is a fascinating case study for what was perhaps the best pitcher in the American League in 2007.

For the purposes of brevity, I am going to assume that you are aware of Bedard’s general playing history to avoid doing any kind of detailed recap of the past. Where it stands now is that Bedard is coming off just 81 innings last season after now-departed GM Bill Bavasi traded an ark of talent to Baltimore for his services. With free agency looming after 2009 and a laundry list of past injuries dogging him, Bedard gives the Mariners little in the way of trade value. As a comparison, look at how well Rich Harden had to pitch in order to net the Cubs anything of value at the deadline, and Harden came with a year and a half of team control.

So it seems that the only hope along the trade front for the Mariners is that Bedard recreates 2007 this season and Seattle is able to flip him in July to a team hovering on the edge of a playoff run. Even then though, it seems like the best comparison would be the Angels’ trade for Teixeira this past summer but with a well-discounted return for Bedard being a pitcher and a fragile one at that. That’s hardly a return to write home about.

Another side effect of Bedard’s injured 2008 campaign is that in order to regain Type A free agent status at the end of 2009, he would have to mirror 2007. Bedard barely finished as a Type A after this past season and with 2007 coming off the books, he would have to replace it with a season of roughly equal value according to Elias.

So if Bedard does manage to replicate 2007, the Mariners might have some options; either to try and trade him or hold onto him and hope he garners Type A status at the end of the year and gain them some draft pick compensation that would take some of the sting out of taking in the shorts when they traded for him. But we have to be realistic and note the chance of that happening is minuscule.

More likely, Bedard performs at a level that will only net him Type B compensation and no team will offer much for his services at the deadline. So, what to do? Well, there is a third option and that’s approaching Bedard with the hope of signing him to an extension. Throwing out the unknowables, such as whether Bedard would even want to stay in Seattle where he was identified in part with the collapse from 2007, would it be a smart idea? There’s rarely a clear answer to a question like that, and mostly it lies in what kind of contract it would take.

SafeCo Field would be a terrific place for Bedard to pitch and the new Mariner outfield would help to further deflate his ERA and possibly raise his strikeouts. There are some performance-based reasons for Bedard to consider sticking around. The Mariners aren’t likely to contend in 2009 and they clear a lot of salary off the books after this year, so having a reduced-price Bedard on hand for the fruition of a re-tool in 2010 might be tempting. Normally, you’d expect a breakdown here of Bedard’s projected future value and some solid analysis on what kind of contract the Mariners should be willing to offer and Bedard be willing to accept, but I think the projections, already sketchy enough for pitchers, aren’t going to be useful, so I am just going to leave it up as an open question.

Would you try to extend Bedard and if so, for how long/much? Would you try to lock him up before the season starts when he might take less or wait to see how healthy he is? Take whatever you can get in June/July? Let him walk at the end of 2009?

Though most of the offseason attention has been spent discussing where top-tier pitchers like CC Sabathia, A.J. Burnett, and Derek Lowe will sign, several hurlers capable of filling out the middle to back of the rotation were available. Daniel Cabrera became the most recent of these pitcher to sign, when he inked a one year deal with the Nationals. Tim Redding is currently seeking a two-year deal, and may very well receive one from the New York Mets. Another pitcher along these lines, likely better than Cabrera and Redding, is Braden Looper.

Looper, 34, spent the last three seasons on the St. Louis Cardinals. In 2006, he appeared in 69 games out of the bullpen, putting together a solid season with a 3.46 FIP. Looper moved to the rotation the next season, where he logged 175 innings while posting a 4.82 FIP. He did not exactly take the league by storm but had value above replacement level and made just $4.5 mil.

This past season, Braden earned $5.5 mil while recording a 4.52 FIP in 199 innings. With a slight bonus for pitching about 200 innings, Looper was a +2 win pitcher in 2008.

In 2009, Marcel projects Looper to be a 4.53 FIP pitcher in 170 innings. I think it is more realistic he will log closer to 180 innings. Let’s call him a 180 inning pitcher with a 4.60 FIP, which would result in 92 runs allowed. A replacement level starter with a 5.50 FIP in 150 innings would allow 92 runs. The replacement reliever would amass the remaining 30 innings at a 4.50 FIP, allowing 15 runs in the process.

This places Looper at +15 runs above replacement, and we can add another two runs as a bonus for pitching 180 innings. With these numbers, Looper projects to be a +1.5 to +1.7 win pitcher next season. At the going rate of $5 mil/win, Looper’s fair market value would be set at $8.5 mil, $3 mil more than his salary last season.

It is somewhat surprising that Looper’s name has not surfaced in rumors or reports as often as the likes of Cabrera and Redding. Considering the fact that he has proven himself better and projects more optimistically than either of the aforementioned pitchers, that only one report features Braden’s potential new location—Milwaukee—seems odd. How does Redding have several reported suitors yet Looper only has one, and that has not even been confirmed?

Regardless, whichever team ends up inking him to a deal will be getting a pitcher who, last season, showed a big improvement in his O-Swing%, increasing from 20% to 25%. At the same time, his Z-Swing%, which measures pitches swung at in the strike zone, dropped by an almost equal amount. His percentage of first strikes rose from 55% to 62% and he sustained a 51% rate of pitches thrown in the strike zone. Put together, he was able to increase swings on bad pitches and decrease swings on good pitches, while avoiding throwing more pitches out of the zone and getting ahead more often.

Looper may be 34, and he might not have the power potential of a Cabrera, or the potential cheap fee like a Redding, but he can definitely strengthen the back end of a rotation.

This afternoon, we started to look at the relationship between center fielders and infielders. While CF, like 2B, is considered a premium, up-the-middle position, and there are some truly excellent defensive players who man center field, we don’t see a lot of in-season crossover between center fielders and infield positions. Besides a couple of utility players, there’s a pretty clear distinction between infielders and outfielders and how they’re used in MLB.

Last year, at an event we held for USSMariner.com readers in Everett, we talked to former Mariners’ scouting director Bob Fontaine about the distinction between infielders and outfielders. He pointed out that there’s a significant difference in how the two release the ball on their throws, and that it can be fairly easy for an infielder to adjust to the long throwing motion of an outfielder, but it is very difficult for an outfielder to change back to the quicker, shorter arm motion required of an infielder. He pointed to this as the main reason why we don’t see many players float between the two spots.

The fact that there aren’t very many players who move between the OF and the IF supports Fontaine’s claim. However, that doesn’t mean there aren’t players who have made the move, and since the topic is of interest to me, I thought I’d take a look at these guys and how they’ve performed at various positions over the years.

Bill Hall is perhaps one of the best examples we can point to when talking about the various difficulties of each position. He came up through the minor leagues as a shortstop, and made his major league debut in 2002, playing both SS and 2B and getting emergency time at 3B. From 2002 to 2004, he was almost exclusively a middle infielder, but in 2005, J.J. Hardy and Rickie Weeks showed up, so Hall was moved to third base. He bounced back to SS in 2006 when Hardy got hurt, then moved to CF for 2007 when Ryan Braun arrived, and went back to 3rd base for 2008 when Braun moved to the outfield and the Brewers imported Mike Cameron.

Overall, Hall has amassed 800 innings at second base, 1,500 innings at third base, 2,100 innings at shortstop, and 1,000 innings in center field. His performance at the different positions are pretty interesting.

At SS, he’s got a career UZR/150 of +6.4. That’s very good. At second base, he’s -2.4, which is not at all what we’d expect (considering that SS are better than 2B, if he was a +6 shortstop, he should have been even better at second), and is probably just small sample size noise. But, the data still counts, so if we treat those 3,000 innings at SS/2B as a whole, we’d conclude that he’s something like a +5 second baseman/+0 shortstop.

If we think he’s a slightly above average defensive MI, then his +7.1 UZR/150 at third base is almost exactly what we’d expect. That helps confirm the suggestion made above. So, we have a pretty decent amount of data that suggests that Hall is a league average shortstop and an above average 2B/3B. So, how did he handle the adjustment to center field?

Well, according to UZR, he was simply average, +0.3 per 150 games. If this represented an accurate rating of Hall’s abilities in CF (and it may not – 1,000 innings is still a small sample for defensive data), then this would suggest that CF is more like SS than it is like 2B/3B.

Hall’s only one guy, though. How about some others?

Willie Harris came up to the majors in 2002 as a second baseman, and has played the majority of his career at the keystone position. However, as a speedy second baseman, he also was given a tryout in CF, and split his time between the two spots in 2004 and 2005. The Braves ended up using him in LF in 2007 and the Nationals followed suit in 2008, and he hasn’t played much infield the last three years. How has he performed between 2B, LF, and CF?

2B: 1,400 innings, -0.1 UZR/150. League average.
LF: 1,200 innings, +22.5 UZR/150. Among the best in the league.
CF: 900 innings, +10.3 UZR/150. Among the best in the league.

Harris is a guy who we’d look at as average defensively at second base and who never really sniffed shortstop. Unlike Hall, we wouldn’t have called him an above average middle infielder. However, he’s moved to the outfield and thrived, consistently posting excellent defensive numbers. Perhaps his skillset is just more suited to long strides and chasing down balls in the gap, but regardless, Harris makes it a tough case to argue that SS and CF are similar defensive positions, considering how successful he’s been in the outfield after a mediocre showing as a middle infielder.

There’s also Chris Burke, who we talked about on the blog last week. He came up as a second baseman and has performed exceptionally well there, ranking as a +10 defender in 854 innings during his major league career. He’s also been tried in all three outfield spots with widely varying results. He’s been good in the corner OF spots (+10 in 1,100 innings) and terrible in CF (-10 runs in just 498 innings). It’s hard to imagine that Burke could really be a terrific defensive 2B/LF/RF and an awful defensive CF, and the samples are small, so we can’t draw too many conclusions from his career.

Then there’s Alfonso Soriano, who as we all know was a pretty brutal defensive second baseman and got moved to the outfield in order to maximize his athletic ability. A career -8.8 UZR/150 guy at second base, he’s been 10 runs better than that in LF, racking up a +2.0 UZR/150 since the move to the outfield. This is identical to what the position adjustments suggested would happen, as there is a 10 run gap between 2B/LF on the spectrum. That he’s never been given more than a cursory glance in CF suggests that the Cubs believe that whatever problems plagued him at second base should keep him out of center field as well.

Hall’s career suggests that above average second baseman make average center fielders. Burke’s career suggests that above average second baseman make average center fielders. Soriano’s career suggests that below average second baseman make average corner outfielders.
Harris’ career suggests that his skills are just not suited for the infield, but that fast guys can be really good in the outfield, even if they aren’t very good in the infield. B.J. Upton and Adam Jones would agree with that.

Really, the only conclusion we can draw from all of this is that the infield and outfield are very different, and take very different sets of skills. Just because a player failed or succeeded at in the infield does mean that he will necessarily fail or succeed in the outfield, and vice versa.

The 2B/3B/SS pool of players has some players who could also play center field, but how many, and how well, we don’t have the answer for that yet.

The San Francisco Giants recently added four young hurlers to the organization’s 40-man roster: right-handers Henry Sosa, Joe Martinez, Waldis Joaquin, as well as left-hander Jesse English.

Of the quartet, Sosa has the highest ceiling thanks to a fastball that tops out around 95 mph. He also features a curveball and change-up in his repertoire. Sosa missed the first two months of the 2008 season after undergoing off-season knee surgery. He then headed to High-A ball – where he also made 14 starts in 2007 – and posted a 3.59 FIP with 62 hits allowed in 56.1 innings. In total, in 120 High-A ball innings in the last two seasons, Sosa has allowed 128 hits, in part due to his developing command. The 23-year-old showed improvements in his control by dropping his walk ratio from 5.09 BB/9 in 2007 to 2.88 BB/9 in 2008. His strikeout rate, though, also took a hit from 11.03 K/9 to 9.27 K/9. Sosa will begin 2009 in Double-A, which will be a great test for him and will help to determine if his secondary pitches will show enough improvement for him to remain in the starting rotation.

Martinez was originally signed by the Giants after being selected in the 12th round of the 2005 amateur draft out of Boston College. Despite spending four years in college, Martinez has moved through the system one step at a time, despite solid numbers in the low minors. Those stats included a 15-5 record in A-ball in 2006 and ratios of 1.99 BB/9 and 8.35 K/9 in 2007 at High-A ball. Part of the reason for the slow ascent is that Martinez’ stuff does not match up with his results. Although he posted a 3.09 FIP in Double-A in 2008, his strikeout rate plummeted to just 6.81 K/9, while his walk rate rose slightly to 2.25. The right-hander relies on solid command of his 88-91 mph fastball, curveball and change-up. Martinez is likely a reliever in the long run, thanks to a three-year drop in K-BB ratio from 5.19 to 4.19 to 3.03.

Joaquin, like Sosa, can dial his fastball up into the mid-90s and backs that up with a plus slider. His change-up, though, is lacking as a third pitch and he spent more time in the bullpen in 2008 than in the past. Joaquin spent the majority of the season in A-ball where he allowed 49 hits in 52 innings and posted rates of 5.12 BB/9 and 10.71 K/9. He also made nine appearances, including four starts, in High-A ball and posted a 3.87 FIP with 20 hits allowed in 19.1 innings. Joaquin should return to High-A in 2009 and spend much of the season working on his command and control.

English is the lone southpaw in the bunch. After an injury-plagued 2007 season, the 24-year-old is looking to make up for lost time and he had a nice season in 2008. In High-A ball, English posted a 3.62 FIP and allowed 121 hits in 135.1 innings. He also posted rates of 3.39 BB/9 and 8.98 K/9. The left-hander gets by with craftiness and deception, as his fastball does not exceed 88 mph. He also has a plus change-up, as well as a developing breaking ball. English could stand to induce a few more ground balls, but he has the makings of a solid No. 4 or 5 starter if he can tighten up his control.

Last week, we spent a few days talking about position adjustments, and specifically how 2B and 3B relate to each other in terms of defensive value. While there certainly wasn’t anything regarding a consensus reached (except for maybe that I’m nuts, which was a popular opinion among some), it was a worthwhile discussion, and one that I’m glad we had.

Today, though, I want to shift to talking about how center field relates to the 2B/3B spots and it’s placement in the middle of the position adjustment chart. Where do center fielders come from, and how good are they defensively?

Unlike second baseman and third baseman, a lot of major league center fielders have spent almost their entire baseball career playing the position. It’s the spot where they belong, because while they are excellent athletes with more than enough athleticism to handle shortstop, they come with one basic defect – they throw left-handed. No would deny that guys like Carl Crawford, Grady Sizemore, Denard Span, Juan Pierre, Darin Erstad, or a younger Johnny Damon had the speed, reactions, and athletic ability that would compare favorably to most shortstops, and they all are (or were, in Damon’s case) premium defensive talents. However, by virtue of throwing left-handed, they’re automatically excluded from the pool of potential 2B/3B/SS. Their positions are limited, thanks to handedness, to 1B/OF.

Of the 1B/OF spots, CF is clearly the natural landing spot for these plus athletes, since it has the largest quantity of opportunities with which to add defensive value. Not surprisingly, guys like Erstad, Pierre, and Sizemore have proven to be some of the best defensive outfielders in the game. If they were born as right-handers, there is a good chance all three would have ended up playing shortstop. These guys actually give us a pretty good proxy for what we should expect if we took a SS and moved him to CF, because for all intents and purposes, they are shortstops playing center field. By virtue of throwing left-handed, they were excluded from the SS pool, but they’re still premium defenders.

So, what about the right-handed throwing center fielders? Are they as good defensively as their LH brethren, or are they a collection of guys who were kicked out of the infield, such as B.J. Upton?

Interestingly, very few center fielders have backgrounds in the infield. Adam Jones was a shortstop in high school and the minor leagues, and we mentioned Upton, but as far as regular center fielders go, that’s about it. Carlos Beltran, Mike Cameron, Curtis Granderson, and Torii Hunter were all drafted and developed as outfielders, and there’s never been any thought of trying them in the infield, even though they aren’t excluded by their handedness and are definitely premium defensive talents.

Interestingly, MLB has pretty clearly laid out that infielders simply don’t play center field in their spare time. Last week, we ran through a pretty big list of guys who moved from second to third base with frequency, but there are only four players in MLB who played at least 50 innings at both SS and CF last season – Alexei Ramirez, Jerry Hairston, Alfredo Amezaga, and Willie Bloomquist. That’s one rookie who the White Sox were trying to figure out where he fit (since he didn’t come up through their minor league system) and three utility players for teams that weren’t contenders.

However, that could be simply a result of roster construction – teams carry four or five outfielders on their roster in a given season, so there usually isn’t a need for an infielder to move to the outfield within a given season. Do teams move players between SS/2B/3B to the outfield between seasons, when they’re putting their rosters together, and what do the results of those moves (or non moves) tell us about center field’s relation to the infield spots in the defensive spectrum?

We’ll look at those issues this afternoon.

Adam Dunn raised some eyebrows last week when he declared the Chicago Cubs as his top choice. Dunn backed his preference by stating preferential financial details as “fair”. Could it be that Dunn is the rara avis of sluggers, the one willing to take less money than his counterparts to play for his top choice? During the season, Dunn’s former teammate Bronson Arroyo speculated Dunn would seek a nine-figure contract. Excuse Dunn’s cupidity, because those hopes were prior to the bottoming out of the market. What exactly would a fair deal for Dunn be?

The 29-year-old had a solid offensive season in 2008 and produced 29.7 wRAA. Not quite as good as 2007 (36.2), but it wasn’t because Dunn didn’t hit homeruns. In fact, Dunn has hit exactly 40 homeruns four straight seasons, and more than 40 five straight seasons. Instead, the drop in wOBA and slugging percentage seems to be tied with a .262 batting average on balls in play. Roughly 18% of batted balls were line drives, which suggests Dunn’s BABIP is a bit unlucky. Consider that if Dunn’s BABIP was simply .299 (using the somewhat tired .120 + LD% method of expected BABIP) he would’ve recorded 12 more hits with 318 non-homerun batted balls. Even if each of those were singles, Dunn’s slugging would have jumped more than 0.02 points.

Defensively Dunn is poor. Over the past three seasons Dunn has recorded UZRs of -11.1, -14.9, and -10.1 in left field. Dewan’s +/- has Dunn worth -58 plays since 2006, or -46.4 runs, an average of -15.5 runs per season. Somehow PMR put Dunn in the positive. Positioning? Fluke? Who knows. That still doesn’t save Dunn from a negative average. Call it -10.

Marcels doesn’t seem to like Dunn too much, a .383 wOBA and 20.5 wRAA. I can easily see Dunn outperforming that projection, and I’ll say 25 wRAA, which could be a wee pessimistic. Dunn seems like a safe bet to get around 650 plate appearances, and gives us the equation necessary for projecting Dunn’s WAR, between 2.6 and 2.8, depending on whether you use 22.5 or 20 runs.

I called it 2.7 WAR and figured Dunn will get around a four-year deal. Depending on how you feel about Dunn’s potential decline, I have Dunn worth roughly 45 million. Now, let’s see if 11.25 annually is “fair” to the Dunn camp.

One of the big stories down the stretch in 2008 involved the wide array of Dodgers outfielders and who would receive playing time. Having signed both Juan Pierre and Andruw Jones to very lucrative deals, Matt Kemp and Andre Ethier soon emerged as true talents. Add in the acquisition of Manny Ramirez and the team featured five outfielders, three of whom deserved playing time and two of which who realistically did not but were being paid as if they did.

Jones has already mentioned a desire to be traded to a team on which his playing time would increase, and it seems Pierre is singing the same tune. The Mets were initially reported as having some interest, but Omar Minaya shot that rumor down. For any team to take on Pierre, the Dodgers would need to pay a large chunk of his remaining salary.

From 2001-04, Pierre was a decent player. He proved to be extremely durable, playing over 150 games and stealing 45+ bases in each season. He recorded 200+ hits in three of the four seasons, producing OBPs above .360 in the corresponding campaigns. His wOBA in those seasons: .353, .312, .335, .343. These translated to the following wRAA totals: 14.8, -7.4, 4.6, 8.1.

His fielding in these seasons made him even more valuable. As a centerfielder, Pierre’s UZR data from 2002-2004 pegged him as +17 runs, +15 runs, and +5 runs.

In 2005, Pierre’s wOBA dropped to .309 and his offense was worth -10 runs below average. His defense declined to +3 as well. The following season, his offense remained in the same vicinity at -8 runs. Playing in Wrigley Field for the Cubs, his defense improved to +20 runs while captaining the outfield.

In 2007, Pierre inked a 5-yr deal with the Dodgers, which made little sense given the top-tiered prospects in the farm system. Though he played 162 games once again, and slapped his way to 196 hits, Pierre remained around -9 runs below average offensively, and saw his UZR drop to +7. While +7 in centerfield is still very solid, Pierre’s offense concerned many.

Last year, the Dodgers decided not to play Pierre as often as he had previously played, and Juan partook in just 119 games. Overall, he produced a +0.7 UZR in limited centerfield action and a +0.3 in 84 leftfield games. His offense remained -8 runs below average. Essentially, Pierre had gone from a no-hit, good fielding player to a no-hit, average fielding player in 2008. While he may not have been a replacement player, persay, he tended to fit the definition with his lack of hitting ability and average defense.

Next season, we can project Pierre as a -10 run hitter and +5 run fielder. If he finds himself on another team, with plenty of playing time, an optimistic projection would peg him as worth +15 runs with adjustments for both position and value over replacement level. This is optimistic, though, and with limited playing time, his value could drop to anything from +5 to +10 runs. Even at 1.5 wins, his fair market value would not be worth more than $7.5 mil. Suffice it to say, his current contract will reward him with more than that fee.

If Manny Ramirez does not return to the lineup, Pierre will likely stay put, but if not, the Dodgers may end up paying a good portion of his salary to leave town. Without paying a high percentage of his salary, he simply is not an attractive option for other teams. At 31 years old, his already declining offense will continue to decline, meaning his defense will need to pick up the slack to keep him worthwhile.

He may still be a plus defender, but not the +20 fielder from a few years ago. Juan Pierre still has value, but not enough to merit his current salary or even earn him playing time on the team currently employing him.