The O-Dawg Cometh
As the separation begins between contenders and pretenders, fans and organizations alike begin to look toward the upcoming off-season, planning for what the winter might bring and which free agents might be worth pursuing. This year, of course, the big names are C.C. Sabathia, Ben Sheets, and Mark Teixeira, and it’s almost certain that they’ll command the three biggest paychecks when they sign.
However, there’s one free agent-to-be that generally doesn’t get included in the discussion of impact talents, but depending on how the bidding goes, could be the bargain of the winter. That player is Orlando Hudson.
Playing in the same league as Chase Utley and Dan Uggla has forced Hudson into a pretty large shadow, but that shouldn’t keep us from recognizing how valuable a player he is. His offensive production has been remarkably consistent since joining the D’Backs, as he’s posted seasonal OPS marks of .809, .817, and .822. The skillset has remained essentially unchaged, and at age 30, he hasn’t shown any signs of decline. With Hudson, you get a known quantity.
If we frame the conversation in terms of win values, we can break Hudson down as follows.
Offense: +0 to +5 runs above average hitter
Defense: +5 to +15 runs above average second baseman
Position Adjustment: +5 runs for playing second base
Add it all up, and you a player who is anywhere from 10 to 25 runs above an average major league player, depending on how good you think he is with the glove. Using the 10 runs per win formula, that makes Hudson worth +1 to +2.5 wins above average. Replacement level is about two wins below average, so Hudson’s somewhere between +3.0 and +4.5 wins above replacement.
Major league teams are paying almost $5 million per win on the free market, so using this analysis, we’d expect Hudson to sign for something between $15 million and $22.5 million per season. Now, when you think of Orlando Hudson’s impending free agency, are you thinking he’s going to get anywhere close to that? I’m guessing no.
Since he’s flown somewhat under the radar in Toronto and Arizona, he doesn’t possess the skills that teams usually overpay for in free agency, and the main point of his value is the thing that teams are worst at valuing, I’d expect Hudson to get a contract more along the lines of $11 to $14 million per season – my guess would be 5 years, $60-$65 million.
For Gary Matthews Jr money, you could acquire a guy who is arguably every bit as valuable as Teixeira. He might not be an ace or a middle-of-the-lineup slugger, but when it comes to guys who can add wins to a contending team in a hurry, Hudson might just be the guy to get this off-season.
Dave is the Managing Editor of FanGraphs.
The Cardinals seem to have a 2b carousel going the last 5-7 years…and all of them have sucked. I would love for us to shell out some money for a reliable 2b like Hudson at season’s end. Anything besides an Adam Kennedy/Aaron Miles/Brendan Ryan platoon and I’ll be happy.
It should be noted that Hudson’s road OPSs are much worse: .722 this year, .738 in ’07, .734 in ’06.
Using road OPS is a poor substitute for just park adjusting his seasonal lines. Otherwise, you’re just cutting the sample size in half and omitting useful information for no real reason.
His park adjusted numbers show Hudson to be an average to slightly above average hitter. There’s no reason to believe that his road numbers are his true talent level instead.
Looking at his road #s as opposed to using park adjusted seasonal lines is just cutting the sample size to half a season, therefore rendering it nearly useless. But when looking at the home/road splits over a three year span, and there’s always a consistent dramatic difference does start to beg the question, ‘what’s his true hitting skill?’ Especially when his road #s seem to progress as you might expect from all the years he played before joining the D’backs.
Hudson’s always been an entertaining player to have around. He gives great interviews, and his defense broke PMR in 2006. Any team should be really happy to have him.
Why mention Hudson but not Mark Ellis who is clearly superior?
How do you figure. Sure he is the best fielding 2b in the game, but he is no Hudson with the bat. And Orlando isn’t exactly a slouch in the field.
Hudson has indeed been a slouch in the field this year. Perhaps it’s a sample size issue or perhaps his speed/range are quickly declining as he moves into his 30’s (his 50% decline in sb attempts might be indicative of this). According, Hardball Times’ RZR, Hudson is one of the worst fielding 2B in baseball. Ellis is the best. Ellis’ offensive skills are certainly comparable to Hudson’s. He has a much better batting eye, though his power is in the same range. The difference in surface stats is largely rooted in BABIP.
I should say, the difference in surface stats btw ODawg and Ellis ais largely rooted in BABIP, league, and ballpark. I’ll take El Pero (you like that?) going forward.
So it’s just a coincidence that Hudson plays in a hitters park and does better @ home than he does on the road? He’s been like that ever since he was in Toronto.
Maybe in a one year case you could make the argument it’s a sample size issue, or that you should use park adjusted #’s. But with the exception of 2004, Hudson has always been a better player at home (be it in Toronto or Arizona, both hitters parks) than he has been away from home.
To me, that makes it pretty damn clear he’s been a product of his home park. He rarely posts an away OPS of over 738. At this point he’s a below average 2B defensively too.
He’s not an impact player IMO.
We can quantify the ways in which parks impact a player’s performance. When a single player’s performance varies from that, you can’t just jump to the assumption that the difference is an unquantified park effect. Unless you’re willing to accept that statistical outliers can and do happen, you’ll draw incorrect conclusions.
Park adjusted numbers are just better predictors of future performance than straight road numbers. Sorry.
Pecota basically projects Hudson to be roughly the same offensive player over the next four years albeit with declining playing time with only a drop off in production coming in year five (age: 35; 2013). So offensively one might expect him to be roughly an average bat true-skill wise over a 5 year contract. However, it’s clear that the majority of his value (above the average baseline) is derived from his “plus” leather. At age 30 he is already past the peak age for defense and I think it’s reasonable to expect a fairly significant decline in his defensive skills over the course of such a contract.
So I guess my question would be given the poor shelf life for defense (an implicit question would be do you even agree with this assumption?), wouldn’t a 5 year/$60M commitment be a risky move for a 30+ middle infielder?
Also generally the same thing applies to Ellis but I think playing in Oakland has suppressed his counting stats which might make him a more undervalued player than Hudson. Also, while he’s a year older than Hudson, Pecota likes his bat better over the next 5 years too. Concerning defense, a survey of advanced defensive metrics like UZR and Dewan’s +/- system suggests Ellis is at least Hudson’s defensive equivalent.
I guess, I’d argue that neither guy represents an ideal situation as a FA signing (i.e. they fall into the “signing a guy entering his decline phase” category-mostly because a large part of their value is tied to their defense) but if I had to bite the bullet (say Cincy wants to sign one to push Phillips to short in an effort to win now by addressing their horrid defense or St Louis has decided check 2b off of their list for a few year), I’d target Ellis. His bat projects to age a little better and it’s possible he might require less money and maybe even a year less on the commitment.
Dave, what do you think the chances of the M’s signing Hudson are? I’m thinking low, what with Lopez’s “Offensive Rebirth.” But he would be a huge upgrade defensively, and a moderate one offensively. Safeco might hurt him a bit, but it’s not like you’re signing him for his home runs: his hit 10, 15, and 10 the last three years and is on pace for about 12.
Here’s hoping Lopez won’t be embarrassing himself out there next year!
I apologize in advance for the length of this post and will again at the end.
The funny/weird/anomalous thing about Hudson’s fielding, however, is that even though his RZR has fallen off precipitously since joining Arizona, he’s still been consistently in the top three or four in outs converted outside of his zone per inning. Yes, Arizona on the whole has been a groundball staff in this time, but they’ve also been a high strikeout staff, so their net raw groundball total in this span has been “only” about +130, give or take a small handful either way. Given that Hudson’s played 80% of Arizona’s innings at second since 2006, this figure is more or less negligible when you consider that he only converts balls outside of his zone into outs every 35-40 or so innings.
So, even though Hudson’s been about a dozen or so plays below average over a full season since 2006 according to RZR (rough estimate; I don’t feel like busting out a spreadsheet), he’s also been about a dozen plays *above* average per season according to a pro-rated per inning OOZ (an even rougher estimate). You say potato, I say potahto. Let’s call the whole thing off.
As for the difference between Ellis’s and Hudson’s surface numbers being largely rooted in BABIP, Hudson’s BABIP has been consistently better than Ellis’s for long enough that it should be chalked up to a controllable skill as opposed to luck or random fluctuations. Hudson’s superior BABIP is driven partly by a higher line drive percentage (21.2% career rate to Ellis’s 19.8%) but perhaps more significantly a large differential in groundball rates. Ellis consistently puts the ball in the air (0.87 career GB/FB ratio) while Hudson keeps it on the ground (1.60 ratio). Not only that, but Ellis’s career IFF/FB ratio is 40-50% worse than league average at 15.6% while Hudson’s sits at 6.8%, so Hudson gets a lot more out of the flyballs that stay in the field of play, as exemplified by his .155 career BABIP on flyballs opposed to Ellis’s meek .104 career mark. Oakland’s stadium (is it still called McAfee?) probably isn’t the best place to be hitting flyballs and especially not foul pop-ups, but I didn’t really mean for this to be about Ellis anyway. Hudson may be benifit(t)ing from league and park—I definitely concede that—but Hudson’s BABIP (and by extension, his surface numbers) are real in the context in which he plays. However…
Hudson’s home/road splits during his tenure in Toronto were pretty much dead even. In fact, he even did slightly better on the road (.731 OPS at home, .761 on the road). However, his D-Back splits paint a totally different picture to the tune of .901 at home and .733 on the road. Now certainly Chase Field doesn’t make a difference of .145 OPS points (I took twenty-ish off for home field advantage) and doesn’t add ~.015 to your BABIP (again, took six off for home field), and some of the difference in OBP can be attributed to a slight differential in home/road walk rates (11.3% home, 8.8% away). I also don’t know how Chase affects doubles and triples, but Orlando has seen a spike in 2B + 3B rate from 6.4% on the road to 8.8% at Chase. Of course, sample size might be an issue here. He’s had about 1160 balls in play as a Diamondback and I don’t know at what point this information becomes statistically significant.
Really, all that convoluted and poorly worded paragraph was meant to say is that it can be argued that he takes advantage of Chase to a larger extent than the typical Diamondback (the same way Matt Holliday does with Coors) such that any translations of his stats might be a little too favorable. In that regard, I’d estimate his current true talent level at a .740-.760 OPS as opposed to the .800-.820 most translations might peg him at (based solely on BP’s translations, admittedly), which would make a 10-12 run difference over a full season, or basically one offensive win, possibly coupled with a defensive estimate that’s another 10 or so runs too high. That’s a potential swing of two-plus wins in valuation that could prove crucial to a fringe contender.
That said, I’m interested to see what he commands on the open market. As a Mets fan, I’d almost certainly take a couple years of Hudson for $10-12 million a pop as opposed to three and a half more years of Luis Castillo (whose bat I don’t hate as long as it’s not in the two hole) at $6 mil a year.
I suppose that’s all. Again, my apologies for the length. Hope I didn’t turn anybody away because of it—I was never the best at concision. I considered cutting out a good number of sentences that weren’t exactly necessary to my point (although they provided context to my claims) but ultimately decided against it.
Cheers.
The other problem with just quoting road stats is that players tend to hit (and pitch) better at home. You wouldn’t use a basketball player’s road scoring average to judge him, right?
Mark Ellis — if the A’s are out of it by the end of July, are there any teams smart enough to make a deal for this guy? Mets? Cardinals? Cubs? Yanks if Cano continues to struggle? Rays at SS if Bartlett’s iffy?
Orlando has a career Road mark of 747 OPS, which I think is more in line with his real talent level, since hes hit in hitter’s parks his whole career.
I agree with others that Mark Ellis is probably even a bigger bargain this coming offseason.
Ellis looks somewhere between 2.5 and 3.5 wins above replacement…yet I just can see “anyone” handing him $10mil per year.
Its also interesting to note that Ellis has a .248 BABIP this year (.295 career) compared to Orlando’s .341 (.317 career).
Granted Orlando is a speedier, hits more GBs, and line drives than Ellis, but Ellis is almost certainly unlucky, and Orlando fortunate right now.
If Ellis continues to have an unlucky hitting season, he could end up being even a bigger bargain this offseason.
I do not believe this