Kennedy Shown the Door in Favor of …?

Adam Kennedy was released by the Cardinals today so that they can play someone else at second base instead while eating Kennedy’s $4M salary. Who that replacement will be seems pretty muddled at this point. Going by various depth charts, possible contenders include Brendan Ryan, Brian Barden, Joe Thurston, Tyler Greene (for symmetry purposes I guess) Jarrett Hoffpauir and Skip Schumaker.

Kennedy hasn’t been much with the bat lately, but he’s still slick with the glove, clocking in around five runs above average these days. His projected wOBA is about in the .300 to .305 range, makes him worth about 17 runs below average with the bat. Toss in the 2.5 runs for second base and the five for his glove and you end up with a player that looks like he’s worth around a win over replacement. That’s just about exactly what his $4 million salary demanded for fair value.

Either way, Adam Kennedy is now out of a job and doesn’t come with the Type A penalty that Orlando Hudson does. It will be interesting to see what kind of market develops for his services given that he’s already being paid for this season by the Cardinals assuming no trade is worked out and he gets fully released. At that point, Kennedy probably shops around for the best chance to receive playing time and/or win a championship depending on his personal priorities because it’s highly unlikely any team would offer him more than the $4 million he would need to benefit out of the process.

Going back to the opening paragraph, what I really do not get is the releasing of Kennedy when the Cardinals do not have a clear cut player who is better. What was the point of doing this now unless they know they can work out a trade within the next 10 days?





Matthew Carruth is a software engineer who has been fascinated with baseball statistics since age five. When not dissecting baseball, he is watching hockey or playing soccer.

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vivaelpujols
15 years ago

The Cardinals are going to Skip Schumaker try out for the position. He really has no place in there OF, especially with Rasmus coming up. I’m not sure how much there FO looks at sabermetrics, but if Skip can be anywhere near average at second then he could end up being a pretty valuable player.

He is projected to be anywhere b/t 0 and -5 runs offensively. So if Skip is anywhere from -10 to -5 runs on defense, than he could end up being as valuable as Kennedy projects to be. Now he hasn’t played second since college (I think), so there is no telling if he will even be able to be -10 runs defensively. However, I gotta think that the FO thinks that he can be at least adequate defensively from what they have seen, or they probably wouldn’t have released Kennedy.

Kincaid
15 years ago
Reply to  vivaelpujols

The Cardinals have a reputation of being fairly sabermetrically-minded, especially on defense, and they’ve consistently had good defensive teams for years. They actually employed Mitchel Lichtman, the guy who does UZR, as an analyst for a while, which is probably where a large part of that reputation comes from.

vivaelpujols
15 years ago
Reply to  Kincaid

Thanks. That is great to know. It also makes it even more confusing that they released Kennedy, who is value comes from his UZR.