Mets Add Asdrubal Cabrera to Crowded Infield
Earlier today, the Mets acquired second baseman Neil Walker from the Pirates for Jon Niese, seemingly filling out their infield. Apparently they weren’t done, though, as they’ve now signed middle infielder Asdrubal Cabrera to a two-year deal, as first reported by Chris Cotillo.
Cabrera will earn $18.5 million over two seasons with a club option for a third year, and our contract crowdsourcing project had him pegged for $27 million over three years — similar AAV, but an extra guaranteed year.
After two slightly below league average seasons at the plate in 2013 and 2014, Cabrera was again above league average last year, which is valuable for someone who can play shortstop. Thing is, it’s no guarantee Cabrera is any better at the plate than Wilmer Flores — Steamer’s 2016 projections actually prefer Flores — and it might be a stretch to consider Cabrera a shortstop anyway.
Over the last three seasons, Cabrera has been baseball’s worst defensive shortstop by DRS (-30), baseball’s worst defensive shortstop by UZR (-25), and second-worst defensive shortstop by FRAA (-18). Flores has never been trusted at short by scouts and the metrics have seen him as below-average in a still-small sample, and the newly-acquired Walker is average, at best, at second base. Lest we forget Ruben Tejada, who also graded out among the league’s worst defensive shortstops this year, despite a generally solid defensive reputation. The Mets infield defense was exposed as a liability on the national stage in the World Series, and yet it doesn’t look like they made it a priority to improve that area at all for the upcoming season.
The surplus of infield depth seems to indicate that the Mets aren’t optimistic about David Wright’s chances of playing a full season at third base. Flores will likely see time at both shortstop and second, Cabrera will see time at both middle infield positions, and Walker could even play third base in a pinch, though he last appeared at the hot corner in 2010.
It’s possible that the addition of Cabrera, alongside Walker, opens up the possibility of Flores being shopped as a trade chip. We all remember the infamous non-trade of Flores at the deadline this year. On the other hand, it’s possible the Mets are just stocking up on depth early as opposed to later, so they don’t have to trade for Kelly Johnson and Juan Uribe midseason again. Too much depth isn’t a bad thing, but the collection of infielders the Mets have assembled and their somewhat similar skillsets makes for a bit of an odd family.
August used to cover the Indians for MLB and ohio.com, but now he's here and thinks writing these in the third person is weird. So you can reach me on Twitter @AugustFG_ or e-mail at august.fagerstrom@fangraphs.com.
I hate this signing. The Mets already have an average bat, poor glove shortstop on the roster, and they aren’t paying Flores $9+ million. This is a sunk cost. If the Mets are going to spend their free agent dollars on 3rd tier options, they should at least have the sense to diversify the skillsets on their roster, rather than of duplicating them.
I’d like it just fine if he was the backup…but he’s the starter. Flores is projected better and he’s younger. He should start.
Lets be honest, Wright is a 100 game player at this point with his back issues (If not much, much less), Walker is bordering on platoon player territory, and it’s not like Cabrera is going to play everyday himself, Flores is a good bet to get into 100 games between the 3 positions himself.
It just screams a luxury when the Mets have CF and bullpen issues. Maybe they have room in the budget to do those later though? That’s about the only way it makes sense.
They definitely have the budget. They’ve barely added to payroll and they just went to the world series. They can add a bullpen arm or two and a role player in CF and not break the bank
I agree. I would have much, much rather taken a shot with Alexei Ramirez, who admittedly had a huge dropoff last year but otherwise has always been a very good defender.
He may have been injured. Maybe he’s just aging, but he’s not much older than the guy they signed.
OK, he’s 34. I should say not much older than Zobrist.
Ruben Tejada’s “generally solid defensive reputation” must be held by people who don’t watch him much. The guy’s a terrible shortstop.
Yeah Tejada’s a few less walks away from being a terrible, terrible player. I wouldn’t be surprised to see him in some sort of trade.
So he’s a “terrible, terrible player” entering his arbitration years, but he has trade value? Oh, oh, I understand. Dave Stewart. Nothing more needs to be said.
Someone’s getting traded. I just hope it’s not Dilson Herrera.
I hope whatever trade(s) they make include Duda so the Mets can upgrade at 1B. With the White Sox need for a SS, maybe the Mets can put together a big package for Abreu that doesn’t include any of the 5 SP.
Yes because the lets trade a bunch of our bad/mediocre players for your really, really good player trades happen all of the time. The Mets would absolutely have to include one of their cost controlled starters for any deal involving Abreau (He has a pretty reasonable contract to boot).
You’re probably right about the Mets having to include a SP.
Harvey, Flores, and Duda for Abreu and another player/prospect may be decent framework for a deal.
This must be a joke. First off, Duda actually outperformed Abreu last year. Secondly, seeing what Miller got, Harvey by himself is worth more than Abreu. Thanks for playing, though.
I agree that they need an upgrade at 1B.
They wasted all of their prospects last year. Most people thought it was worth it – let’s see if they still think so come September.
First base is not a problem for the Mets. Duda’s been a solid ~130-135 wRC+ player. Short of trading for Joey Votto, there really doesn’t seem to be an upgrade route for the Mets at first base. The Mets have question marks at SS and CF, and after this Cabrera signing, continue to have question marks at SS and CF.
You are correct. And relief pitching.
Man, this team needs to get better
[looks around for upgrades]
I know, let’s get rid of the cost-controlled 133 wRC+ guy who also gave us the second-highest WAR among our position players, that’s an obvious black hole
I guess the article already implies this, but maybe it’s worth saying explicitly — it seems to me that this signing almost definitely indicates the Mets value Cabrera’s defense at SS as better than the publicly available metrics do. If you don’t view him as a better-fielding shortstop option than the passel of terrible in-house options then (even considering Wright’s injury) there’s no strong reason to add this guy at this price just for depth.
He also hits righties a lot better than Flores, so there’s that.
Or, alternatively, they could think that Cabrera’s been unlucky hitting-wise at shortstop. wRC+ is a nice descriptive stat of how a player does offensively in a given season, but it doesn’t seem too outlandish to think that certain players might get unlucky with HR/FB rate or hitting balls right at defenders.
I’ve been playing around with some xHR/FB rates and it thinks that Cabrera has a lot more home run power since 2012 than his actual home run totals indicate.