Archive for billy butler

In the weeks when between Billy Butler’s contract was bought out and today, with Kendrys Morales brought to Kansas City on a two-year, $17 million deal, the Royals ranked dead-last in FanGraphs’ projected Designated Hitter Depth Charts. Not dead-last amongst American League teams: Dead. Last. Less projected WAR from their DH spot than 15 NL teams, none of which actually employ a designated hitter.

With Morales now in Kansas City, one can see that the Royals have now soared up the depth chart rankings…up to the #24 position, with an estimated 0.6 WAR now due to emit from this spot in the lineup. The Texas Rangers now have the dishonor at being the lowest-ranked AL team, headlined by the light-hitting combination of Mitch Moreland and Rougned Odor. The Royals are now only just ahead of the Miami Marlins (featuring a rotation of Justin Bour/Jeff Baker/Donovan Solano/Derek Dietrich) and the Philadelphia Philles (Darin Ruf/Grady Sizemore/Cesar Hernandez/Cameron Rupp/Maikel Franco).

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A few weeks ago, Eno tried to make sense of Oakland’s Billy Butler signing by wondering about the holistic impact that Butler will have in the A’s lineup. Eno mentions the designated hitter penalty before examining how Butler could very well help the A’s by adding variation to their ratios of ground balls and fly balls. Batted-ball types could very well be the A’s primary motivation in signing Butler.

But I want to stop at just the designated hitter penalty: what if the A’s signed Butler primarily because Billy Beane both believed in the existence of this penalty, and also very much wanted his team to avoid it?

I’m personally inclined to believe in the existence of the penalty because it feels, to me, like a really elegant combination of intelligence gleaned from both statistics and on-the-field gameplay. On one hand it makes intuitive sense that playing as a designated hitter would be a sweet gig: your full day’s work is just four or five plate appearances! Sweet! So much less risk of injury! So much more ability to maintain endurance over the brutally long season!

There does exist a common-sense argument, though, in the favor of the DH penalty. Baseball is a game of rhythms, we know — even the additional off days in the playoffs, which would theoretically help a team rest, can jolt a team’s daily rhythms of play. It’s not hard to imagine being pencilled in as DH being disruptive just like those unwanted October off-days. These players have been constantly playing games their whole lives, and have only ever known the rhythm of going on the field, off the field, on the field, off the field, inning by inning. If you played left field on Tuesday, it could be pretty weird to suddenly have hours of in-game free time on Wednesday. What do you do with that time? How to you stay fresh and ready? Is it simply too much time to get bogged down with thinking?

For the last few years, the A’s have gone with a DH by committee, so Bob Melvin has had the daily task of pulling a new player off the field. This season, the A’s leader in plate appearances as a DH was Alberto Callaspo, with only 151. Just about everybody in their lineup spent at least a combined week at DH, and there were plenty of other A’s DH’s I won’t get to because of small sample sizes. (Yoenis Cespedes had 69 PA’s as a DH before his trade to Boston; Stephen Vogt had 23; Jonny Gomes had 17; Kyle Blanks had 8; Nate Freiman had 3, and shoot there are probably some others too.)

We know that the A’s constantly switched DH’s because they constantly switched the rest of their lineup in an attempt to play platoon advantages. Only, looking back at the 2014 A’s, it’s easy to see how this lack of lineup continuity backfired. Oakland DH’s who had preseason projections at DH (compiled by Matt Klaassen here) seriously underperformed those projections in their DH-PA’s. And also: they seriously underperformed compared to their own performances on the days when they played defense.

Callaspo had a down year in just about every way you could imagine, and you can see how his offense took an even lower dip when he was called on as a DH (statistics via Baseball Reference’s Splits pages):

John Jaso was second on the team in DH-PA’s, presumably to save him from the injury-inducing dangers of playing catcher. The transition to DH really threw Jaso for a loop, as he dropped at least 100 points in every category the days he was off the field:

Transitioning to DH also rocked Coco Crisp, who struggled as a below-replacement hitter during his turns in the dugout:

Even the team’s All-Stars, Derek Norris and Josh Donaldson, looked profoundly mortal during the rare days when they hit as DH:

Just about the only player who didn’t struggle during his handful of DH-PA’s was Brandon Moss:

Moss as DH is hardly the answer, though. Between his defensive versatility between first base and the outfield, plus his offensive versatility at hitting pitchers of both hands, Moss is one of the most important cogs in Oakland’s platoon-dominating machine. Slotting Moss in at DH makes it extremely difficult to have advantageous handedness match-ups at both first base and corner outfield.

Whether epiphany struck Billy Beane mid-season, or whether the opportunity only presented itself at the end of August, we do know that Beane values a full-time DH: Beane traded for one. He traded for Adam Dunn, who was in the midst of a season playing better as a DH than he did as a fielder:

Dunn has hit considerably worse as a DH than as a fielder for the whole of his career. This, however, can be explained by Dunn entering the American League only in 2011, with his prime slugging years well behind him: he hit better when he was younger, which was when he played the field. What’s important is that Dunn’s AL production when a DH compares favorably to his AL production when a fielder. For the month of September, Beane and Melvin had a guy they could pencil in at DH every day — which they did — and actually know that they would get the player’s best offensive self.

More importantly, you can envision how Dunn’s constant presence in the lineup would serve as a rising tide that could lift all ships: now Jaso and Norris and Donaldson and Crisp and (I guess) Callaspo can all put forth their best offensive performances too, once they went back to the familiar rhythms of playing defense.

Both the A’s and Dunn knew that he was the shortest of short-term options, given his subsequent retirement. Seeing as a full-time DH was a priority for the A’s in September, it’s safe to assume that it was a priority for them going into the winter as well.

So, what were their options? Signing Nelson Cruz means the A’s would have had to top the Mariners’ 4-year/$57M offer, and also Cruz hit better as a fielder last year, the first of his career with extensive DH experience. Even if his 2014 weren’t so scary, Kendrys Morales has also comparatively struggled as a DH for the entirely of his career. Although he definitely seems like a late-career DH, Adam LaRoche has only had 22 DH-PA’s in his whole career, meaning his abilities at the DH-skill are still entirely unknown. Victor Martinez actually totally fits the bill of what the A’s are looking for, having hit well as a DH both last year and for his whole career. Oakland’s winning bid would also have to top Detroit’s 4-year/$68M offer, which would be ill-advised if not also financially implausible for the A’s.

Perhaps the A’s scouting and/or analytics staffs could have found reasons to start up reclamation projects in Paul Konerko, Raul Ibanez, or Jason Giambi. Otherwise, we’re pretty much already down to one dude on the free agent market with the established DH skill: Butler. It’s not like there are a lot of established DH-skill guys in the league, period, for possible trades. David Ortiz or Edwin Encarnacion would cost an unattainable fortune. Adam Lind and Chris Carter seem like intriguing possibilities, although Lind has made it to 100 games played in only one of the last three seasons, and the A’s traded Carter away when they had him.

So, Billy Butler. He had a very poor 2014, and also played worse when he was a DH compared to when he was in the field:

This is Butler at his very, very worst. And still he outperformed the 2014 DH production of talented offensive players like Jaso and Norris.

Steamer assumes that Butler’s below-replacement 2014 is the exception, rather than the new rule, putting him down for 1.3 WAR next year. Butler posted 1.5 WAR in 2013, meaning that the A’s can expect Butler’s 2015 to look a lot like that season, which the projections nailed almost exactly:

Heck, let’s go back to 2012, to the very first FanGraphs Positional Power Rankings:

So Butler performed very, very slightly better when on the field in 2012. Still: the drop when he played DH is barely perceptible, which was not the case for the A’s in 2014.

Even if Butler produces three straight one-WAR seasons for the A’s, he’ll also essentially be giving the team the gift of 600 or so PA’s for his teammates to play the field and, consequently, hit at their best. Whatever in-game routine Butler has in order to come to the plate fresh and focused, it’s still a rare skill across the game of baseball, and it’s a skill that has and will pay dividends for both Butler and his team.

The month of June marks the unofficial beginning of the trade season, and so we thought it would be helpful to run down a list of which players might be for sale at some point this summer. But, rather than just run down a list of potential trade targets, we thought that we would spend the week discussing the most interesting players at each position and have compiled a list of the best players available at each spot, along with their expected production going forward and notes about which teams might be possible fits as buyers. We hope you enjoy the series.

Kicking off our week of looking at trade targets are the players who will be acquired primarily for their work with the bat: first basemen and designated hitters. Note that there might be some overlap across the posts as some players can handle multiple positions.

Here are five realistic trade candidates at the position(s), based on projected WAR over the rest of the season, contract status, the state of their current employers and the needs of various potential contenders.

PLAYER: Billy Butler
TEAM: Royals
POSSIBLE DESTINATION(S): Angels, Rays
CONTRACT STATUS: Four-year, $30 million deal through 2014
PROJECTED WAR: 2.1

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Other than Zack Greinke’s historic season, the 2009 Royals had little go right. Billy Butler was one non-Greinke bright spot. After a disappointing 2008, Butler raked in 2009, hitting .301/.362/.492 (.369 wOBA). He even became the everyday first baseman despite questions about his defense, beating out celebrated glove-man Mike Jacobs.

The Royals’ other “Savior,” Alex Gordon, has not quite (ahem) lived up to expectations. Hailed as “the next George Brett” upon being drafted in 2005, Gordon started at the hot corner on Opening Day 2007 and received a standing ovation. Things went downhill from there, as Gordon ended 2007 with a .317 wOBA. In 2008, he posted a merely decent .344 wOBA. Gordon got seriously injured to start 2009 , struggled upon returning, got demoted, and finally limped to a .321 wOBA (although 189 PA tells us next to nothing). The current attitude of many is understandable: Butler is The Man, and Gordon is a question mark at best.

Butler is clearly superior to Gordon as a hitter, and his minor league performances always indicated a higher offensive upside. But it is curious that so many smart people following the Royals have so readily hailed Butler’s 2009 as an awesome breakthrough while saying “meh” to Gordon’s decent 2008. Why is this curious? Because despite the glaring offensive disparity, we live in the Age of WAR. Let’s compare each player’s best season so far: Butler’s 2009 vs. Gordon’s 2008.

Butler’s 2009 value was excellent offensively at 21 runs above average. It was less impressive defensively. Despite looking better than expected, Butler posted a -6.7 UZR at first base (with a -12.6 overall positional adjustment). Butler’s overall WAR for 2009: an above-average 2.4.

Gordon’s 2008 value was more evenly distributed. +7.7 runs hitting, but only -3.0 UZR. However, the latter was accumulated while playing the much-more-valuable 3B. Altogether Gordon had a 2.6 WAR in 2008. It is obvious why many were down on Gordon’s 2008 relative to the Butler’s awesome 2009. Wait, what? Gordon was actually slightly more valuable in 2008 than Butler was in 2009?

Not really. After all, FanGraph WAR doesn’t currently include baserunning (other than SB/CS, which are included in wOBA/wRAA). Looking at the non-SB elements of baserunning using Baseball Prospectus’s EqBRR, as Erik did, we find that Butler was one of the worst baserunners in baseball in 2009 at about five runs below average, putting his WAR at about 1.9. In 2008, Gordon was about +3, which puts his WAR at about 2.9. So Gordon’s 2008 wasn’t “slightly” more valuable than Butler’s 2009, it was significantly more valuable. In fact, once baserunning is fully taken into account, Butler’s 1.9 WAR 2009 isn’t even quite as good as Gordon’s 2.1 WAR from his “disastrous” 2007.

My point is not about the relative value of Butler and Gordon going forward. Batting generally improves the most in the early 20s (whereas fielding and baserunning are relatively static), and Butler is two years younger than Gordon. There are legitimate questions about Gordon’s future given his performance and health. My intent is neither to run down Butler nor celebrate Gordon. One might respond that “Gordon’s value was primarily due to defense, position and baserunning!” But that is exactly the point — those things matter. Despite living in the Age of WAR, informed observers sometimes still focus on only one aspect of a player’s performance. And that can lead to a gap between a perception of one value disparity and the reality of the opposite.