A Royal Dump
Man, I feel bad for Royals fans. Today, they announced a two year contract for Willie Bloomquist, worth a total of $3 million. That gives us this unholy quarter of transactions:
Kyle Farnsworth – 2 years, $9 million, 2006 to 2008: 0.1 wins above replacement
Mike Jacobs – 1 year, $3.5 million, 2006 to 2008: 0.7 wins above replacement
Horacio Ramirez – 1 year, $1.9 million, 2006 to 2008: 0.2 wins above replacement
Willie Bloomquist – 2 years, $3 million, 2006 to 2008: 0.3 wins above replacement
Those Win Value totals are not per year, but three year totals. Over the last three seasons, that foursome has been worth 1.3 wins combined. That’s 12 player-seasons to accumulate just over one marginal win. If you were trying to scrape up examples of major league players who represent replacement level performance, you couldn’t do much better than this group.
That those four will earn a collective $11.4 million in 2009 is pretty staggering. $11.4 million for four guys who, if everything goes right, will add something like one win to the Royals roster next year. $11.4 million for one win. I guess it’s better than the $12 million they spent to get 0.2 wins from Jose Guillen last winter, but that’s in the same way that getting stabbed is better than getting shot.
Dayton Moore came from Atlanta with a strong record of player development. He’s going to have be a Hall of Fame caliber GM at cultivating talent from within his own organization to overcome what can only be described as a devastatingly poor ability to evaluate major league players.
Really, in a market that could only be described as the best buyer’s market we’ve seen in a long time, Dayton Moore has still managed to squander money on unproductive players who do nothing to help his team win. That’s amazing.
Dave is the Managing Editor of FanGraphs.
A smart GM will call to see if they value the prospects this poorly as well. Or maybe to pawn off the expiring contracts or something…
Best post title. Ever.
Not only that but Moore called Bloomquist an “on base guy.” I found that particularly awesome.
well, when he DOES get on base, he’s sort of an on-base guy. In that he’s on the base, and sometimes runs to the next one.
Well Dave he did have a .377 OBP last year. Of course that was 55 points above his career average but hey, who remembers that far back anyway?
Welll…
He did have a career year at the plate, boosting his BB% about 7% from 5.5 to 13.2. It’s a pretty small sample size.
Unfortunately, that BB% jump was accompanied by seeing his slugging percentage fall from .329 to .285. That’s not a typo. His slugging percentage last year was the same as Melvin Mora’s batting average.
Perhaps by “on base guy” he just meant that you wouldn’t call him a power hitter?
The thing that just kills me is, it’s for two years.
What? Moore must think because he gave Meche that extra year he has to go +1 on every free agent he’s talking to.
This has just been a horrible winter.
but if you just let Willie play a full season he’ll really show you what he can do!
Man, I can’t even type that without nearly collapsing in fits of laughter. God speed, Willie, you magnificent scrub.
Funny you should post this because I just minutes ago finished skimming through that 128 response Mike Jacobs thread from October again for fun. God what a pathetic thread that was.
I’m hoping for a similar thread.
Great title or greatest title?
Greatest.
Not only are these guys good examples of replacement level, but you used Willie as an example of replacement level just in the last couple of weeks.
If you look at Willie’s entire career, almost all of his WAR comes from his 12 game call-up in 2002 where he sported a laughably unsustainable 35.5% LD rate.
Dave, you’ve made an significant error in analysis–you are assuming “free” talent is free.
It isn’t.
Every one of those player-years will cost you at least the major league minimum salary. So it isn’t “11.4 million” over the cost of replacement players for 2009–it’s actually under $10 million, $2.5 million per player. And that assumes you can fill those roster slots with the cheapest possible players, which is hardly likely.
Did he say replacement players were free? I think he just said, Moore has wasted a lot of money.
No, it is likely. Those players are in AAA. These are all 25th man types. Most teams go into Spring Training with a competition for the last roster spot or two. Those guys. They’re everywhere.
They’re not FREE, they’re FREELY AVAILABLE. Which in turn implies that they should be very cheap. <1MM cheap. Types of guys that you can pick up in the Rule 5 (which as I see it is pretty much the definition/golden standard of freely available talent), trade throw-ins (“You say if we throw in Horacio Ramirez it’ll seal the deal? Done”), 6-year minor league free agents, declining guys on spring training invites, non-tendered bench players and mopup guys trying to prolong their careers, etc.
Of course, even if you can justify one or two of those contracts (while 2 years is strange, 1.5/year is still a pretty small piece of change), you’re still looking at the opportunity cost of spending likely 4 roster spots on players who will contribute pretty much nothing to the team. That’s a tremendous waste of roster space even if they’re all on league minimum.
Frankly I’m speechless.
Yes. You reall did read that, just in case you’re wondering.
The one good thing about all these players being signed by the Royals; it may have taken up all the resources that would have been necessary for them to sign Neifi Perez. Just trying to stay positive.
Correct me if I’m incorrect, but they traded Jermaine Dye and Mark Ellis for Neifi Perez.
You’re being way to harsh on KC, all they traded was Jermaine Dye for Neifi Perez.
They traded Mark Ellis along with Johnny Damon for Roberto Hernandez, A.J. Hinch and Angel Berroa.
Looking back at those trades, not one of those players received by the Royals ever posted a positive WPA for any season they ever spent with the Royals. The combined total was a -16.82 WPA from all those players.
Berroa was a decent player in 2003
…and less than worthless since. I can think of a few pitchers I’d rather play at short.
For real? That’s……ridiculous.
To stick it to him? Yes.
I will never quite figure out Dayton Moore’s fetish for ex-Mariners.
Wait until Rob Neyer hears about this…
suicide now
As a Royals fan, I was so hoping that after two years and two offseasons, Moore would add some more positive data points in evaluating him as a GM this offseason. Instead, about 95% of the data points have been negative and they’ve ranged from mildly negative to horrendously negative. So far he drafts fairly well and can usually evaluate pitching talent pretty well (with some obvious exceptions). He’s good at finding diamonds in the rough pitching-wise, but won’t let himself rely on it, which leads to expensive mistakes. His entire front office is poor at evaluating position player talent. And he doesn’t understand appropriate dollar values and contract terms for players. He gives away too much money unnecessarily. Even if you really like Guillen last offseason and Farnsworth this offseason, you have to understand that they can be had for less than 3/36 and 2/9.25. And you also need to know that if they won’t come for a penny less than that, then just let them go.
Cameron is exactly right that it really looks like the Royals will only be able to contend with Moore as the GM when a great deal of home grown talent has made it to the majors. The Royals have a lot of good prospects, but they are mostly pitchers and mostly in the low minors. So maybe the Royals will be able to contend in 2012 or 2013 when Moustakas, Hosmer, Cortes, Duffy, Rosa and Wood are all in the majors. Maybe.
I blame Tom Tango. He’s the one responsible for all of the hype around this Bloomquist fellow.
😉