Free Jarrod Dyson!
If there is one thing we have learned from the American League teams this postseason, it’s that defense and baserunning really are very important. No one person has better exemplified this than Royals outfielder Jarrod Dyson. You’ve already read Jeff’s article on how Dyson stole perhaps the biggest base since Dave Roberts in 2004. Eventually though, this postseason run for the Royals is going to end. Whether that is in four games or 14 games is not yet certain, but when it does end, the Royals will need to make a decision as to what they are going to do with Dyson next season. They should let him play.
Over the past two seasons, there have only been 29 outfielders in baseball more valuable than Dyson. Of those 29, only one of them had as few plate appearances as did Dyson. Most of them have double the plate appearances, and some have 2.5 times Dyson’s 529 PAs. Dyson is particularly adept afield. Over the past two seasons, only three outfielders have been worth more defensively per our Def statistic, and only 15 position players in general.
And it’s not just UZR where Dyson ranks well. He also scores well via DRS as well as our Inside Edge fielding numbers. They all paint him as one of the very best defensive center fielders in the game. Even his Fans Scouting Report score, which has penalized him in the past for his less than stellar throwing strength, has risen for the second straight year, and now stands at an above average 61. He has put this defense on display when called into duty, and the diminutive center fielder has made the most out of his limited opportunities.
That is not something that can be said about Norichika Aoki, the man who has played instead of Dyson and who is set to enter free agency after the season ends. In fact, Aoki had done a great deal to squander his walk year, and has only redeemed himself in the last month-plus. At the end of August, Aoki’s slugging percentage was the same as his on-base percentage — .332. He then went bananas in September, to the tune of .379/.432/.494, and it still only brought him up to 1.1 WAR for the season.
Aoki essentially had the same season as he did in 2013, but with the demerit of horrible baserunning mixed into the equation. Once a bargain, Aoki has trended from 2.3 WAR, to 1.6 and 1.1 in his three major league seasons. Even if you consider the poor baserunning decisions, both in the stolen base department and otherwise, to be a one-year blip, he’s still unlikely to add much value in that department.
Dyson, on the other hand, excels at baserunning. We covered that up top. Let’s cover it some more. Over the past three seasons, Dyson ranks sixth in the majors in BsR. Here again this is where we bring up the lack of playing time. One fun stat that Baseball-Reference tracks is stolen base opportunities. Dyson managed to have 116 of these, which are defined as “plate appearances through which a runner was on first or second with the next base open,” and successfully stole a base during 31 percent of them. That’s a higher rate than Dee Gordon, who stole bases in 27.9% of his stolen base opportunities, but because Gordon had 229 SBOs, he wound up with 64 steals as opposed to Dyson’s 36. Double Dyson’s playing time, and something like that could be in the cards for Kansas City.
Of course, it’s tempting to keep Dyson in reserve so that he can jump in for anyone at any time, that need will be lessened next season thanks to the person of Terrance Gore, who stole five bases in 11 SBOs. And if the club declines Billy Butler’s club option or ships him off to a team desperate for his sweaty charms, then there won’t be as glaring of a need for a regular pinch runner anyway.
The reason to this point that Dyson hasn’t been further let off the chain is because his hitting tool is not necessarily up to snuff, particularly against left-handed pitching. To which I would say, so what? This season, the other four teams in the AL Central had a combined total of 25 pitchers start at least 10 games. Of them, six were left-handed — John Danks, Chris Sale, Jose Quintana, David Price, Drew Smyly and T.J. House.
One of these six (Smyly) won’t be around next season, one is terrible (Danks) and three of them — Price, Sale and Quintana — are so good that it doesn’t matter if you stack the deck against them with right-handed hitters anyway. Lefties or righties, a team faces long odds to get to four runs scored on the day against that trio. So, while you certainly don’t have to play Dyson in all 162 games, he isn’t in more danger of being victimized by left-handed starting pitchers than anyone else on his team is.
Finally, there is the matter of salary. Dyson is eligible for arbitration for the first time this offseason, but even if he scores a raise to $3 or 4 million, he’s going to be cheap compared to the value he’s providing. And given that the Royals are going to need to pinch every penny if they want to bring James Shields back, they could do a lot worse than letting Aoki and Willingham walk and installing Dyson every day.
In other sports, specialists generally go far more appreciated than they do in baseball. Specialist relievers are often derided or fit into a tiny box so small that they can never provide real value. Such is not the case with Jarrod Dyson. He might not be the next Willie Mays, but three-win outfielders don’t exactly grow on trees. That’s essentially what Dyson has been the past two seasons, in part-time duty. Even if he regresses to more average defense in a full-time role, he will be just as valuable as Norichika Aoki was this season. And if he manages to maintain that elite level of baserunning and defense for a whole campaign, then the Royals might just have a four-win player on their hands for a relative pittance. Free Jarrod Dyson.
Paul Swydan used to be the managing editor of The Hardball Times, a writer and editor for FanGraphs and a writer for Boston.com and The Boston Globe. Now, he owns The Silver Unicorn Bookstore, an independent bookstore in Acton, Mass. Follow him on Twitter @Swydan. Follow the store @SilUnicornActon.
Gotta agree with you Paul. It’s not like Dyson’s going to cost KC a ton in arbitration, given the skill set he has. They have him under team control through 2017, when he turns 33. So they can watch their wallets while having a guy who should be about as good as Billy Hamilton over the next 3 years.
The guy has accrued 7.9 WAR in 977 career plate appearances. That’s about 5 WAR over a full season. Steamer600 has him projected for 2.8 WAR. How can you not give him a full-time shot?
As you mentioned, one thing that’s great about him is that his skillset (defense and baserunning) doesn’t cost much in arbitration (or free agency, for that matter).
Even if you bench him vs LH starters, he still deserves more than the 250-300 PA’s he’s been getting for the last 3 years.
Because you can’t treat his PAs as a pro-rated season and extrapolate the totals to a full season. Dyson’s PAs have been distributed such that he’s playing a disproprortionate number of innings (and spending a disproportionate amount of time on the basepaths) relative to the number of PAs he accrues.
If he played full-time, his WAR/PA would take a very steep dip.
Which isn’t to say that it’s a bad idea to give him more playing time, just that it isn’t immediately obvious that using a good player tactically such that he maximizes the amount of time he spends doing the things he’s good at isn’t a poor move.
My point in citing the pro-rated 5 WAR thing is that — even if his production rate took a “very steep dip” — he’d still be an above average player. No one thinks he’d actually be a 5 WAR player. But he could be a 3 WAR player.
As a starter, he’s got 907 career PA’s. In those games, he’s had a .325 OBP and had 85 SB’s in 97 attempts (which would work out to about 60-for-70 over a full season). Combine that with above-average defense in CF, and you have an above-average starter right there. You don’t even need to look at his UBR or UZR numbers (inflated to some degree by defensive replacement and pinch-running) to conclude that.
Also, his crazy 20.8 UZR/150 isn’t affected by his lopsided time as a defensive replacement, because it’s a rate stat based on defensive opportunities.
I don’t think he’d be a bad starter–that’s not really the point. Here’s what I’m getting at:
Last year, Dyson had 290 PAs and played 691 innings in the field. In other words, for every PA during which KC had to suffer through Dyson’s 85 wRC+, they got roughly 2.4 innings of stellar defense.
Lorenzo Cain, who played full-time (and I’m intentionally using a good defensive outfielder who wouldn’t be pulled for a defense sub so as not to skew the numbers downward), had 502 PAs and played 1111 innings in the field, or 2.2 innings of defense per PA.
That’s fine–the Royals would probably take 2.2 innings of defense per PA from Dyson, even if we’re ignoring the fact that this would also similarly reduce the ratio of baserunning opportunities to PAs and remove his tactical value as a pinch-runner. But the important thing isn’t the value of ‘Jerrod Dyson, full-time outfielder’ in isolation. It’s a comparison between that value and the value the Royals could derive from giving the extra playing time to someone else. So we’re interested in the delta.
If you give Dyson extra playing time to get to Cain-levels (and achieve a normal, full-time player balance of PAs and innings), he’d be playing 2.0 innings in the field per PA in the extra playing time. That is to say, Dyson’s extra playing time would be allocated as if he were a late-career Manny Ramirez.
Dyson could absolutely provide value as a starter, and I think it’s potentially a strong option for the Royals to consider.
But we shouldn’t ignore that the player they’d be getting in the extra time isn’t going to have nearly the same per-game value as it would appear. Or, in other words, if he’s a 2.8 WAR guy as a role player, and a 3.0 WAR guy as a full-time player, my reaction isn’t ‘Well, 3 WAR is good.’ It’s ‘why don’t we see if another player can use that playing time to provide more than 0.2 additional WAR?’
Maybe the Royals’ roster won’t be constructed in that way–roster spots have value, after all. But this seems like a pretty classic example of how guys with specific skills can enable creative roster construction.
I’ll take him!
This makes sense, but I do think the Royals would have to have a decent RHB option to platoon with Dyson. We’re talking about a guy with a career 47 wRC+ against lefties, after all.
in 177 PA.
*202 PAs, 177 ABs. But yeah, your point is valid. It’s a small sample size, indeed.
His K% against lefties is 21% vs. 18% against righties, so not that big of a split, and he actually has gotten slightly more walks vs. lefties. The large difference in productivity is mostly due to BABIP and ISO, so it’s definitely possible that Dyson has just been unlucky in a small sample size vs. lefties.
What the Royals should do and will do are never the same thing. I agree they should use Dyson over Aoki. The reality is that they will non-tender Dyson, let Gore assume his role for a fraction of the cost and use that savings plus the salary saved by declining Butler’s option and make a run at either keeping Shields or replacing him.
I would be very, very, very surprised if Dyson was non-tendered.
I don’t think the Royals will even think about letting him go. Gore’s not nearly as good with the glove as Dyson, and GMDM made it very clear that Gore was coming up to be a pinch runner – nothing more, nothing less. Dyson was used fairly frequently as a defensive replacement (109 games this year), so there’s already a role that Gore can’t take.
If they do let him go, though, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Oakland take a flyer on him. With Crisp being extremely injury prone, and the A’s offense already being really solid, Dyson would be an excellent replacement.
Don’t think any “flyers” will be taken. About 15 teams would climb over themselves for a crack at Dyson. The Royals won’t non tender him, but if they did it’s not like he would just be sitting on the wire waiting for someone to take a flyer
I very highly doubt teams would “climb over themselves”. He’s a slightly better version of Peter Bourjos and Craig Gentry, and those two had almost no market outside the one team that traded for them. Sure there’d be some interest, but I don’t think he’d be quite the asset you think he would be – especially since speed and defense seems to be so undervalued, still.
On what basis, exactly, are we concluding that Bourjos and Gentry had no market outside the teams who acquired them?
One thing unmentioned is that ‘Zo Cain is brittle and needs breaks. Dyson is the OF safety net in that regard. He’ll be kept and Shields won’t be signed, the money used instead to extend youngsters.
While I agree with your general premise that Dyson should probably get a bit more playing time, I’m not so sure that the Royals are using him sub-optimally as is (and I also don’t know that we’ve ‘learned’ anything from the ALDS).
They’ve basically used him so as to maximize the time he spends on defense and running the bases while minimizing the time he spends with a bat in his hands, especially against lefties. If he became an everyday player, he’d have to spend a lot more time doing things he’s terrible at, relatively speaking. It also removes your best pinch-running option, unless you want to keep Gore on the roster all year. This seems like a classic case of letting a player do what he does well.
Also, I’m not sure why John Danks’ suckitude or Price/Sale/Quintana’s dominance mean we should ignore that they’re lefties. Do platoon splits only matter within a certain band of pitcher quality?
Came here to say pretty much the same thing. The Royals are maximizing his production by only using him in situations where he excels. Basically you are only really seeing the best of Jarrod Dyson. If you play him everyday he is going to find himself in a lot of situations where he doesnt excel (to put it kindly).
Having his defence/baserunning every game of the year would be nice and would give his value a bump but not nearly enough to offset his rather mediocre offence which would probably take an even worse beating playing everyday.
I’m in favour of giving him more playing time though and ditching Aoki.
Who needs pinch runners? I can steal bases too!
Not sure I would want to count on Dyson as a hitter for 500+ PAs a year no matter how good his defense is. Maybe though the Royals could complement him with a bigger right handed bat that he could come in early for as a defensive replacement and then if he actually hits enough make it more of a straight platoon? Something like the way the Giants have used Gregor Blanco in recent years? It would give him a lot more PT and would allow the Royals to take a chance on adding a power bat for cheap knowing they have Dyson as insurance.
He can’t hit lefties. At all. And these days, there are these pitchers called “relievers”, of which at least 1-2 are lefthanded, who opposing managers bring in during critical matchups to maximize their chances of winning.
Basically, you seem to be under the fallacious assumption that because a player who is really strong in some areas and really weak in others is worth, say, 2 WAR in limited action (limited to maximize his strengths and not expose his weaknesses), he’d be worth 4 WAR if he was put in to more situations where he would be really weak.
That logic doesn’t fly.
He’s been worth more than 2 wins.
Gore does not deserve a roster spot March-August. Pinch running is just not valuable enough in the regular season to justify keeping him on the 25-man. And the guy is hitting below the Mendoza line in single-A.
Also, the Royals will carry a fourth start-able outfielder because of Cain’s reputation as being injury prone. The most logical place for a fourth outfielder is a bat-first guy that can platoon with Dyson and possibly DH as well.
“Billy Butler’s Sweaty Charms” sounds like the worst breakfast cereal never made.
Sounds like a Country Breakfast to me.
LOL. Now I’ve got the classic Alec Baldwin “Schweddy Balls” skit from SNL going through my head.
He’s only got 200 PA against lefties in his ML career, and he’s got a .270 BABIP and batted ball numbers that are at least superficially similar to those against righties. It could be contact issues, but I wonder if his BABIP might regress a bit toward his rate against righties given his speed, which should play down quality of contact somewhat. His minor league splits weren’t horrible either, something like .634 OPS vs. L and .698 OPS vs. R, with okay plate discipline (which Fangraphs have splits for at the major league level?). He wouldn’t have to hit lefties all that well anyway to be a useful full time player.
/internet scouting
*does Fangraphs have splits for at the major league level
Terrance Gore is not going to be on the 25-man roster come April, so you may immediately eliminate any scenario in which he is included.
While I’m not objectionable to Dyson in everyday play, we need to keep in mind that he would be badly exposed at the plate. As a fourth outfielder, he has been used him in a way that plays to his strengths and allowed him to shine.
I think a situation where Dyson started against righties, and was pinch-hit for when lefty relievers came in would work out well. Dyson would still get 6-8 innings of value as a defender/base runner, and they’d be able to limit his biggest flaws.
For his career, he’s got a 92 wRC+ against righties, so he’d be a valuable asset in a platoon situation in which he was playing a majority of most games.
Agreed on Gore. No-brainer there.
Add in Cain’s injury history and the Royals are not going to start 2015 without adding a capable outfielder into the mix. This new player may overlap with potential DH vacancy so that Dyson can play in the outfield during favorable pitching matchups. And frankly if Royals thought that Dyson was an everyday outfielder, Aoki wouldn’t have played as much as he did throughout his “slump”
Infante had a sub-.300 OBP and sub-.350 SLG, and he was still their option. Tough to say what the Royals would do with a struggling player when most of their line-up struggled all season.
1) The club is committed to Infante long term and have more reason to stick with him. Aoki is a free agent in a couple weeks.
2) The club did not have a clear guy to replace Aoki. Valencia was horrible in his time at second base and (until late in the year) Colon looked like a bust. And for whatever reason they look right through Gio. It was Infante or nobody.
At least he’s not Chris Getz.
*Applause*
This would also allow Lorenzo Cain to play right every day (although I’m not completely opposed to bringing Aoki back for cheap). As for possibly “exposing” Dyson’s flaws by playing him every day, here’s my question: how do you know, since Dyson has not had the opportunity? (Point of the article, I know.)
freedom isnt free
Eh, what’s $1.05. Just throw it on Hosmer’s tab.
Live Long and Hosmer
Definitely agree with Dyson playing: I was saying back when Franceour was still on the team that it would be ideal to start Dyson vs. righties and Jeff vs. Lefties (Since Frenchy actually hit lefties okay during his career), they actually tried it near the end of…I think it was 2012? But then Cain got injured and that whole thing went down.
I think at least trying Dyson as a starter would be good, as you’d have an absurdly good OF (Gordon/Cain/Dyson would have to be the best defensively, wouldn’t it?), though you would need a good 4th OFer due to Cain’s injury history and Dyson potentially needing to be platooned. I actually wouldn’t mind if they got a leftie masher, who could either platoon with Dyson or simply give a boost by giving Dyson/Gordon off days vs. lefties and inserting him (Perhaps giving Dyson a bit more frequent rest than average), and then possibly adding in Aoki as well (As while Dyson should start over him, Aoki is a capable 4th OFer: If they did get a leftie masher it also allows them to do Aoki + Masher platoon if anyone goes down).
Will there be any decent pure leftie mashers on the market this FA season, perhaps coming cheap? Looking at it, there are a few options: Gomes would be a great option, with a very strong wRC/wOBA vs. lefties but a rather lacking vs. righties line, but he’d be the most expensive. Willingham doesn’t have as much of a pure split over the years, but given his advanced age and his good results vs. lefties (129 wRC+) he could be a good platoon option…but he plans to retire. Chris Young has the least offense of the three (119 wRC+) but after some very bad years he could come very cheap. Chris Denorfia has basically existed as a leftie hitter and would be a good, cheap platoon option.
But perhaps the best option, if they could afford him and believed he could play corner OF, would be Michael Cuddyer. He has strong offense in his career vs. lefties (132 wRC+, one point under Gomes), he has a decent line vs. righties in his career so he can start vs. righties in a pinch and he adds some minor potential positional flexibility, as he can start at 1B and give Hosmer off days vs. lefties when not platooning Dyson (Hosmer has been rather poor vs. lefties in his career). And even play vs. righties if you want to give Hosmer an off day vs. them as Dyson will be playing OF. In theory, he could even be emergency used at 3B or 2B (Presumably just because you pinched for Moose Tacos). However, I get the impression Cuddyer would come more expensive than he should next season and could even be back in Colorado.
Any thoughts on this, guys?
How the hell does Aoki have -10 BsR? I call bullshit. Must have put the decimal in the wrong spot. Via baseball reference, Aoki took the extra base at a 44% rate, had a 68% SB rate, and he made 4 outs on the bases. There is no way that equates to -10 BsR.
For reference, Carlos Lee had -9.8 BsR in 2009. He took the extra base at a 19% rate and he made 10 outs on the bases with only a 63 SB%. I tried to contact the site about this, but clearly no one answers, replies, or fixes the error.
Which site do you think has the error: fangraphs or baseball-reference?
It could also be that he didn’t attempt to take the extra base frequently.
He took the extra base at a 44% rate. That’s slightly above league average IIRC, or basically league average.
Definitely FanGraphs
68% SB rate is bad. Definitely a negative to make an out a third of the time you try to steal a base.
If Dyson can bunt (or threaten bunt) against left handers, he is going to give them something else to think about. If he can get those bunts down the 3rd base line, the only one with a real shot at throwing him out will be the 3B, if he does it correctly.
Huckleberry sum tui. Vide ne obliviscaris.
…was really counting on him playing more this year. Paulo Orlando got the start over him today in place of Gordon. Officially giving up on Dyson and picking up Gose. What a shame.