Archive for kenny williams

A few weeks ago, as I dialed in to the fourth of five hour-long conference calls scheduled that Tuesday at my place of regular employment, I began to wonder idly how major-league teams and executives conducted their own sorts of correspondence. These are important people, I reasoned. Surely, they live lives of glamour and fascination, removed from such mundane tasks. Surely, they don’t dial into five hour-long conference calls every Tuesday.

And it’s true: they don’t do that. Over the past few weeks, I’ve asked multiple senior MLB executives a series of questions about how, in the most basic and concrete sense, they talk with their colleagues around the game. It turns out that, generally speaking, they live lives very far removed from glamour and fascination, and the way they communicate is basically the same way you and I do. It turns out that they text. A lot.

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The 2010 season isn’t going the way the Chicago White Sox had hoped. They are currently 7.5 games behind the Twins, and 5.5 behind the surprising Tigers. It’s still early, but given the talent gap between the Twins and White Sox, and the unlikelihood of the AL Wild Card coming out of a division other than the East, the White Sox playoff chances are fading rapidly. Starts at DH by Juan Pierre, Zombie Mark Kotsay, and, above all, Zombie Omar Vizquel are a fitting summary of the troublesome season on South Side.

There have been bright spots. Paul Konerko and, in particular, Andruw Jones have been hitting better than they have in years. One hitter whose season is off to an excellent start while not getting much press (although I’m sure White Sox fans are aware) is Alex Rios. Rios, who came over in a waiver claim from Toronto last August, has been on fire offensively, hitting .308/.350/.564 (.401 wOBA) while stealing bases efficiently and playing good center field defense. This is probably a surprise to many given his terrible 2009, when the Blue Jays let him go for nothing in return other than someone willing to take on the remainder of the seven-year, $70 million dollar contract that extends through 2014 (with a 2015 club option). While many analysts criticized the original contract as well as the White Sox/Blue Jays decisions to pick him up/let him go, as Dave Cameron and Tom Tango showed last season, all three decisions were justifiable at the time they were made.

Rios didn’t get better upon arrival in Chicago, to say the least, and finished 2009 with a horrific .247/.296/.395 line (.306 wOBA), with his fielding nowhere near his usual standard. Some probably thought the Jays had pawned off an albatross. So far in 2010, however, there are no obvious “luck” indicators for Rios. His current average on balls in play (.312) is actually lower than his career average (.319), and he’s hitting plenty of line drives without it being unsustainable. His home run per fly ball rate is a bit up, but not excessively, and it may be that he is better suited to his new home park. Hit Tracker doesn’t see him as overly lucky, in any case. Rios walk rate is down a bit and his O-Swing% is up a little, so those are worth tracking.

I doubt anyone thinks that Rios’ true offensive talent is really .400 wOBA. ZiPS sees his current true talent (“rest of season”) as .350 wOBA. Given his performance so far, if he hits .350 with average defense (to add to his current +7 figure) for the rest of the season, he will be worth about five wins in 2010. That’s a great deal for the White Sox money this season (Rios is owed $9.7 million guaranteed).

What about going forward? From 2011 to 2014, Chicago owes Rios about $49 million dollars. Assuming a gentle salary inflation (7%) and 0.5 WAR a season decline, they’re paying for a player who will be worth somewhere between 3 and 3.5 wins in 2011. Assuming Rios is a .350 wOBA hitter, that makes him a +12 hitter over 700 PA. I currently estimate Rios to be about a +4 position neutral defender. +12 hitting + 4 defense +25 AL replacement level all times 85% playing time = a 3.5 WAR player. This is a decent deal for the Sox. Not great, it isn’t as though the contract would be easy to trade if they wanted to do so. But it hardly looks like an albatross at this point.

A more interesting facet of this whole thing has to do with sample size. Yes, I know, that gets mentioned here all the time. The ZiPS RoS projections incorporate the proper amounts of regression for the various components, so it isn’t as if the current .350 wOBA projection is getting “fooled” the hot start. The point about sample size I want to make isn’t about 2010, though. Rather, it is about the overreaction that many had to Rios’ 2009. Rios was bad in 2009. However, from 2006-2008 he was worth an average of 4.5 wins a season. That history did not disappear during or after 2009. So many times we get wrapped up in pointing out that the current season is a “small sample size” that we forget that even a whole season (Rios had 633 PA in 149 games in 2009) tells us surprisingly little about a player’s true talent. That isn’t to say that 2009 should get thrown out as an ‘outlier’. But once previous performance and regression to the mean are taken into account, even the significance of a full season can be exaggerated.

I’m not sure the White Sox front office was thinking in exactly these terms when the picked Rios up off of waivers — I’m sure they consulted their scouts heavily, as well they should have. However it came about, they rightly understood that there was more to Rios than his 2009 performance, and got a very good player at a reasonable price without giving up talent. 2009 counts, but it wasn’t the whole story — or the whole sample.

According to Wiktionary, the definition of “enigmatic” is

1. Pertaining to an enigma.
2. Mysterious.
3. Defying description.
4. (variant) Enigmatical.

Is “Enigmatical” really a word? Who cares? I think it fits as a nickname: The Enigmatical Kenny Williams.

I am not mocking Chicago White Sox General Manager Kenny Williams. I’m mocking myself. I have a terrible track record when it comes to thinking about Williams’ moves. When he makes a move I think is silly, it ends up working out. When he makes a move I like, it blows up. So it is with some trepidation that I am posting on Chicago’s designated hitter hole.

The White Sox are built to win now: trading for Jake Peavy, acquiring Alex Rios, and adding questionable stopgaps like Juan Pierre in left and Mark Teahen at third. It’s not an unrealistic hope. The Twins were the class of the AL Central even before adding Orlando Hudson. But with Peavy, Mark Buerhle, John Danks, and Gavin Floyd, the Sox probably have the best starting rotation in the division, and the bullpen is strong. The position players don’t stand out as much, but they aren’t dreadful — Carlos Quentin is a good hitter when healthy, Gordon Beckham is a budding star, and Rios, Alexei Ramirez, and Paul Konerko are solid performers. They’re probably the only other team in the Central with a shot, but it is a legitimate shot.

That makes the DH situation puzzling. The White Sox decided to pass on Jim Thome, who then signed a cheap contract with the Twins. While I’m not sure how much a bench DH really helps the Twins (unless Delmon Young is terrible yet again despite CHONE’s favorable projection), not having him around really is going to hurt Chicago. It’s not clear who Chicago plans on playing at DH, but (Omar Vizquel jokes aside) from what I gather it will be a mix of Andruw Jones, Mark Kotsay, and occasionally guys like Paul Konerko and Carlos Quentin. Perhaps power-hitting catching prospect Tyler Flowers will get some DH starts later in the season.

Seriously, a Jones/Kotsay platoon is the first option? Keep in mind that a league-average hitter is a replacement level DH. While Jones might still have his uses as a bench/platoon player, CHONE projects him as a below average hitter (.324 wOBA, -7/150 in context-neutral linear weights). If you think that’s bad, Kotsay projects at .297 wOBA, -16/150 context-neutral. That’s not useful at any of the positions Kotsay backs up at this point, much less DH. Even if efficiently platooned, that’s ugly. Heck, Mike Jacobs (-6) would be an upgrade, and would also keep the Chicago/Kansas City pipeline active.

They really didn’t have room for Thome? He probably adds just a few runs for the Twins, but he would be at least a one, maybe two win improvement over Jones/Kotsay. Of the remaining free agents, Russell Branyan seems like a great fit. He’s a +15/150 hitter. Even with doubts about his back, as a half-time player he probably adds a win. Carlos Delgado would be an improvement as a DH in a platoon situation, too. There are plenty of league-average hitters still out there who could meet the defensive “requirements” at DH.

The White Sox are in a situation where spending a bit on a DH who can hit better than Zombie Andruw Jones and Mark Kotsay is logical, yet so far they’ve passed. But one thing I’ve learned over the last few years is to never count The Enigmatical Kenny Williams out.