Giants Get a Steal with Nori Aoki
Back when Nick Markakis signed for $44 million over four years, a lot of us were left scratching our heads. After all, Nori Aoki is basically the same player, and it seemed like he was probably going to have to settle for a two or three year contract at a significantly lower valuation. I predicted he’d get 3/$24M, while the FG crowd had him at 2/$14M.
Turns out, we were way too high, as Aoki has signed today with the Giants for just $4.7 million in guaranteed money.
aoki gets $4.7M guarantee. $4M salary for 2015, plus 700K buyout on 2016 option. can make 12.5M max
— Jon Heyman (@JonHeymanCBS) January 16, 2015
With a $4 million base salary in 2015, it seems likely the second year option is probably around $7 million, and then some incentives could push it to the $12.5 million figure if he played really well. But even if he absolutely maxes out, that’s still less than what the crowd estimated, half of what I guessed, and only a fraction of it is guaranteed.
At this price, this is probably going to go down as one of the better free agent signings of the winter. Aoki isn’t any kind of star, but he’s a perfectly acceptable corner outfielder. He doesn’t have a platoon split issue, so he can play everyday. He’s a good enough defender to not need to be subbed out for a late game replacement. And yet the Giants are basically paying him like a bench player.
Heyman notes that Aoki took less money to play for the Giants, so perhaps there’s some World Series discount in here, but this is still a huge bargain. In a market where worse players are signing for $20 million and costing their teams a first round pick, Aoki for $5 million is kind of amazing.
Dave is the Managing Editor of FanGraphs.
Half the price of Alex Rios with a much higher floor.
I wouldn’t really call this a “steal”, he hit 1 HR with a .350 OBP and poor defense last year and is now in his mid-30s. $4M is probably about right. Markakis wins gold gloves for some reason, but he is definitely a better defender than Aoki, who even by eye-test is scary to watch out there. He is a better option than Juan Perez? Sure. But this is hardly a move that separates them from the pack, in fact its one that pretty much ensures another odd-year non-contention season from SF.
Players with .350 OBPs don’t exactly grow on trees these days.
1-tool players do though.
Except this is a player who contributed positively at the plate, on the basepaths, and in the field.
He is absolutely terrible at stealing bases. This is a 1.5 WAR player according to steamer, if you have an everyday OF at 1.5 then you aren’t a very good team, so to get those kinds of players at a “bargain” isn’t even worth noting.
The 2014 Royals say hi.
Isnt a 1.5 WAR player for $4 Mil a steal? Id say so.
And Aoki had a .487 OPS in 48 postseason plate appearances on a team that was led by its bullpen and not much else that was 6 outs from being eliminated by Oakland. Your point?
You cited postseason stats in 48 PA. Your point?
Run Forrest. Run.
Not when the one tool is the hit tool.
I see 1-toll here, too.
A .350 OBP with a .320 wOBA though.
Not criticizing the deal or anything just saying Aoki accumulates most of his OBP from standing on 1st. Which obviously leads to less runs. His .350 OBP and someone like Rendon’s .350 OBP are different.
I could be wrong (and I’m too lazy to sort the leaders on my phone) but I think Aoki had one of the lowest wRC+ of any player with at least a .350 OBP last year.
Sure, but why compare him to Rendon? The premise of the article is that Aoki is a bargain on this deal, not that other players contribute more with the same OBP.
Talking of players having a specific tool or not is a false dichotomy. That’s WHY we quantify a player’s value. Nobody is saying that Aoki is a better deal than Rendon – why would you feel the need to bring that up?
This thread is off track. The question is whether or not a 1.5-2.5 WAR FA OF is worth a 1 year, $4.5 million dollar deal. Framed that way is the best way to convey the context of the signing as it encompasses most of a player’s on-field value and compares it to his paycheck.
Comparing Aoki to a younger different skill set different position player who is about to enter arbitration… is disingenuous, at best.
Rendon was just a random guy with a similar OBP that I pulled off the list. No disingenuouty (is that a word) meant. He was just the first name i saw and used to make the point.,
And the point is that Aoki’s OBP is less valualable then someone else with the same OBP. So saying “.350 OBP’s dont grow on trees” (which is the statement I responded too) is not really a telling statement. Not all OBP’s are created equal.
Yeah….this 4M signing really guarantees they;ll be bad. That makes sense.
He’s not definitely a better defender then Aoki, he merely looks like he is. If eye-test was king I’m not sure Hunter Pence could continue to exist.
Hunter Pence is awesome at everything. He looks awkward but he actually does make all the plays. Aoki looks terrible and does not make the plays. Have fun with your barely .500 team next year, Giants fans.
oh trust me, we will
Except stats say different (for example, they say they’re roughly the same defender (if anything Aoki is better). But hey, my eyeballs right?
They could be sub .500 next year and I could care less. Coming off a 3rd World Series Win in 5 years does that to you. *shrugs*
Giants fans always have fun.
Hey if your just a hater, make your point and move on. You sound like a bookworm, who has actually never seen the sun…
So we should trust the eyeball test on Markakis but not on Pence, got it.
FWIW, I love your nickname. Rarely do I see such a perfect match.
Aoki sure dragged KC and MIL down when he was there, too
Still considered a steal. Most of us read Fangraphs on a daily basis. Last season, Aoki finished with 2.3 WAR. General consensus says that 1 WAR costs $~6-8 million. For $4.7 million, thats a bargain. Hell, steamer projects him as a 1.5 WAR player for 2015. Still cheaper than market value.
Markakis may be a better “eye test” defender, but I will take Aoki any day at over 50% discount. It doesn’t separate the Giants from the rest but it also provides them with more depth and a very reasonable contract. It allows them to spend more elsewhere.
Great move and Aoki is better than Morse and Pagan hands down.
Also, the length of contract is short so the Giants take on minimal risk as well.
Better than Pagan? No way, unless you’re expecting him to miss half the season with an injury.
But Pagan probably will be injured.
He hasn’t been able to stay healthy for too long at once since he came from NY.
@ryan in 2012 pagan made 660 PA and was worth 4.5 WAR. big part of the world series run that year. since then, not so much.
I remember when he hurt his hamstring in early 2013. He was legging out a game-winning inside-the-park HR. John Miller: “Never has the term walk-off home-run been less appropriate!” After that he didn’t play much the rest of the year.
He has a brilliant at getting on base as you’ve said. But, he was good on defense, too. Still a steal.
Lol $4mm for a 1.5 win player is not “probably about right”. It is, per the headline of this article, a steal.
He may look comical in the outfield, but he’s never actually been rated as below average in 3 years. It’s possible that he has the quickness to be an above average outfielder, but wastes it with bad outfield instincts, but either way the result is a decent fielder, and certainly no worse than Markakis.
“I may not be the smartest man Jenny, but… no, that’s it”
This is so, so, so, so much better than the deals for Markakis, Cruz, Rios, etc.
Props to the Giants.
The lack of interest all off season and now the low contract terms has had me thinking that maybe there is some unpublicized injury or something like that. I don’t know, it’s weird he is such a bargain.
Its weirder that you think he’s a fantastic player deserving a huge deal.
u mad bro?
Its weirdest that you seem to believe that Aoki is the worst play in the history of organized athletics.
good lord you’re a moron. shut up already.
Just curious as to what you consider a “huge deal”
You don’t have to be even close to a fantastic player to get 3/33, which I think is reasonable, and Aoki didn’t even get close to that.
~ “Its weirder that you think he’s a fantastic player deserving a huge deal.” ~
It’s weird that you drew that conclusion from his post.
Someone being a a bargain (as Aoki is) does not mean they are “a fantastic player deserving a huge deal.” It just means they were less than what was expected for that type of player or production.
At ~$7M per win, Aoki should cost about $10.5M, using the 1.5 Steamer projection you used in a previously idiotic post. The Giants paid $4M. If he is worth 3 wins over the life of the deal (1.5 each of the next two years, which seems reasonable), he should cost ~$21M. But at MOST, he will cost them $14M.
If the current market price for a 2015 Mustang is $30,000, and your buddy gets one for $20,000, he got a bargain. It doesn’t mean he thinks he got a Mercedes; it just means he got a good deal for the Mustang.
He has the exact profile I think is most underrated:
– Doesn’t play what is considered to be an important defensive position, but plays it well
– Little to no home-run power (even though he has decent 2B/3B power)
– Average on the bases
– Best offensive skill is OBP
– No carrying tool
– High BA but not above the magic .300 number
Even though the sum of all his skills is an average player, the way he gets there is by all the ways that people don’t typically point to when they want to argue for why a player is good. I don’t think that explains everything though, so I’m not surprised he had a higher offer somewhere else.
In a league where Dayan Viciedo gets $4.4 million in his first year of arbitration eligibility, $4.7 million for a player who does everything fairly well except hit for power is a steal.
I think that profile is the absolutely most underrated in baseball. Since power is the most overrated skill, it makes sense that players without power have the potential to be underrated. However, what is really underrated is the player who is ‘just ok’ or ‘just good’ at everything. The media and the fans love a player with a “carrying tool”, even if that tool is not extremely valuable.
A player who hits .320, or hits 40 homers, or steals 60 bases, or is an elite shortstop will always get a ton of attention, even if they do almost nothing else well. Even Markakis gets some of this by his elite error-avoidance ability, even though that skill isn’t that valuable. These players often get into the hall of fame if they are all-time greats at just one skill. However, people in the mainstream media don’t really know how to value a player who is .280 AVG, 20 homers, with decent fielding and baserunning.
I think this is going to be the main player that WAR will champion. Without linear weights, there isn’t an intuitive way to compare an elite defensive shortstop to a lead-footed left-fielder who mashes. They each have skills that are valuable, but people who don’t know about WAR don’t actually know how to compare them. All they can do is measure how well their individual skills match up against similar players. This means that players like Aoki and Headley get overlooked. There is no one area where you look at them and make them out to be elite, even though the whole package is a good-to-very-good player.
Even my underratedness is underrated. Sigh.
Ben Zobrist I think fits in my profile of the underrated player. He doesn’t primarily play a flashy position like SS, CF, or C, and defense at positions other than those three tend to get ignored (Alex Gordon and Jason Heyward being examples.) He doesn’t have an outstanding hit or power tool, and his best offensive skill is walk rate. He doesn’t steal enough bases to be considered a great baserunner.
Basically, he is elite at two skills most often ignored: plate discipline and defense at a position other than SS/CF/C. Aside from that, he is merely above average at basically everything else. He doesn’t do any of the things the media expects an elite players to do, but the result is an elite player.
Bip – There was an article in the Community section that broke player value into different skill sets, and I remember Zobrist and David Wright were the only two guys who graded above average in all of them (there were 5 or 6 I think.)
I’ll keep looking for it, because I think it does a great job of illustrating your point.
Perfect example of the inexact science that are defensive metrics. Take it from this Royals fan: Aoki is NOT a competent defender.
He is a fine batsman (so long as he ends the PA on his feet) and baserunner (though not at stealing bases) but he is not even average in the OF.
But your visual observations are an exact science?
no, but that’s irrelevant.
Defensive metrics aren’t an exact science, they don’t see everything. For defense I prefer eyeballs, although that new thing they tried out in the playoffs looks like it’s getting closer to eyeballs.
Aoki takes winding routes, he doesn’t move back well, and he has a mediocre arm. The Great Plains were too much for him to be good. Don’t care for Markakis either, over rated, but Baltimore and the AL East were the right place for him.
All you haters need to just stop.
A quick look at Aoki’s three seasons in MLB shows that he’s a very reliable, consistent player.
2012 BA: .288 (he also was 30/38 on steals)
2013 BA: .286 (he also was 20/32 on steals)
2014 BA: .285 (he also was 17/25 on steals)
So, he has a very consistent track record with batting avg.
He’s also quite good with stealing bases, despite what you suggest.
He’s not Billy Hamilton, but he’ll put pressure on you to prevent wild pitches/passed balls, etc.
He actually has a 70% success rate on steals, and it’s not a small sample size really.
30/38 for SB is good, but 20/32 and 17/25 are not good. break-even is about 75% for SB, so he was a negative the last 2 years.
A break-even of 75% was true when balls were flying out of the ballpark. The 20/32 (62.5%) he put in in 2013 is probably costing his team runs, but in the current suppressed run environment we’re in, I think his 17/25 (68%) is perfectly acceptable.
Cool. The Giants signed RF, Marco Scutaro.
Huh?
It blows my mind how much people hate on the Giants management. They don’t spend enough money, they don’t sign the right free agents, they should pay more or less money to certain players based off 1 good or bad season, blah blah…. They win championships, they have an awesome fan base with a beautiful ballpark and they always Try to put a good solid group of players together. There’s so much going on within the organization and the league that we as fans do not know about. Decisions are made taking into account the future not just to make you feel comfortable having a high priced power hitting LF. You don’t have to like it but either root them on like a true Giants fan and Take the positives from what decisions are made or put on a Dodgers hat and piss off.
Well said, although we should probably give the fair weather fans a few more months to leave…
And they’ll be back…
So we must either be Giants fans and root them on, liking every move they make, or we can be a Dodgers fan and pass off? Those are the only 2 options? I’m a Cardinals fan who couldn’t care less about your rivalry but thinks this was a pretty good deal. That’s not allowed?
You sound just like the 2 Dodgers fans who beat the Giants fan to death a couple years ago.
Brian Stow isn’t dead.
“they have an awesome fan base if I don’t mind saying so myself.”
Giants fans are disliked because of this kind of stuff — it comes off as a very snooty, very Frisco attitude.
The team hasn’t been the best baseball team over the course of a season in any of the 3 W.S. years. I think most people you see as criticizing the team are just pointing out that the Giants have had plenty of good fortune, more than might be expected in a monte carlo world.
Gotta love the “the giants are lucky” argument after 3 world series in 5 year. The giants arent perfect and there are annoying giants fans, but the giants have arguably the best big game pitche and the best manager in the game along with a electric ballpark in the playoffs. Throw in buster posey and a solid bullpen and you have a formula to win.
No doubt luck plays a part in any tournament, but give credit where its due.
A lot of other teams have a formula to win too. The Dodgers have the best pitcher in baseball, draw the most fans in baseball, throw in Adrian “RBI Machine” Gonzalez and you have a formula to win.
The Giants have been a good team, but it’s not like they cruised into 5 straight division titles, winning it all in 3 of them. In the last 6 seasons, they’ve won the WS three times and missed the playoffs three times. Should we give them “credit” for that and declare that this Giants team is not a playoff team, because three playoff misses in 6 years can’t be a coincidence?
No, we should realize that all in all they are just a good team, and that if you add up all their postseason games from their three titles, you end up with less than a third of one regular season, and then we can weigh those games appropriately in our evaluation.
yeah, you should like what the team does or get a new team right?
3 in 5 enough said
Markakis is the wrong comparison; Juan Perez is better. Or Michael Morse
As I posted in the Nick Markakis thread in early December, while there is a lot of legitimate debate about the usefulness and accuracy of defensive metrics, we can still look at some objective defensive data. With the acknowledgement that put-outs are affected by park dimensions and other players, it is worth noting that Aoki is slightly below average in put-outs per inning played among right fielders at 0.2217 (0.2230 last season). So he’s probably not as good as the defensive metrics suggest and not as bad as some fans think, which makes him a pretty good value at $4.7 million.
Aoki played “back” here, reasonable as he had problems with balls hit behind him but was good coming in, if not nearly as fast as Cain. What fans thought in KC was colored by his teammates in the OF. When eyeballs get used to Gordon, Cain, and Dyson few other OFs will look good. For SF fans comping him to Morse, Aoki will look like Willie Mays.
Winning championships means everything it is the goal for every team in all sports, you could win 100 games but if you don’t win the world series who cares.
The Giants have won 3 championships in 5 years no matter how you try to minimize, whine and cry or how “lucky” they were the fact is they have won 3 championships in 5 years, that ends all debates.
There is not one team that wouldn’t give their soul to accomplish what the Giants have the past 5 years.
I swear Brian Sabean couldn’t have done a better job of blowing his reputation among us seamheads with just 3 notorious moves:
– Trading Nathan, Liriano and Bonser for Pierzynski
– Signing Aaron Rowand to a big-money deal
– The Zito deal
Compared to these, having one of the best pitcher-development records of the modern era and being ahead of the curve on valuing defensive contributions are decidedly unsexy. So while ANY team winning 3 WS in 5 years needs some post-season luck (because of the multiple short series), the Giants success should not be considered a fluke. They’ve had one of the best organizations in baseball in recent years.
Yes he is a steal for $4.7 million for one year, also considering he wanted a 3 year contract just a couple weeks ago. I’m glad someone actually wanted to play for a team that has won 3 titles out of 5 years. Yes, maybe he doesn’t look great playing in RF, but we have Pence for that. Aoki will be playing a much easier position, and no doubt better than Morse. The 10 home runs he got when he played with the Brewers is gone since he has been out of that tiny park. But now his speed should shine and doubles and triples should shine with him playing in our park. The best part about this deal it is only for one year. Morse couldn’t even get to most hits because he played back so far, because the Giants were concerned about the balls getting past him. Aoki won’t make up the missed power of Morse, but should make up for it with better defense and being faster on the base paths
Kind of exactly what I predicted http://vulcanchange.blog.com/2014/12/10/a-real-time-bargain-norichika-aoki/
Nori Aoki is worth more than he is getting paid, so is a bargain for the Giants, who likely got him for less than he was offered elsewhere.
The reasons the Giants got him were that KC wouldn’t or couldn’t offer three things Aoki wanted; a Japanese community for his family, not being substituted for defensively by the much rangier Jarrod Dyson, and a smaller field than the K’s RF. SF took care of two of those factors at least, not real familiar with their LF, but LF is a better fit for Aoki’s arm.
Nori Aoki will be a bargain for the Giants; he gets on base, he can handle the bat, his glove will be a big upgrade over Morse in the field. He has some familiarity with the NL, which will help his numbers as his first half 2014 was affected by adjusting to the AL and the K. Second half he took off.
Nori Aoki is now in the 2015 ALL Stars Game.