Jonny Gomes???

Let me tell you a little secret: I actually kinda like Jonny Gomes as a baseball player. He’s the type of guy who can add real value in the right situation. From a strictly offensive perspective, I like the idea of Gomes platooning with Laynce Nix in left field for the Nats. The guy crushes lefties, to the tune of a .281/.377/.511 career line versus southpaws.

Alas, the National League requires players to play in the field, and let’s just say that’s not Jonny Gomes’ forte. He’s got a career UZR of -38 in the outfield, and anyone who watches him can see why. Maybe he’s not as bad a fielder as Adam Dunn, but he’s also not nearly as a good a hitter as Dunn (was). Gomes really ought to just be a DH, and even then, he should probably be platooning with someone who can hit right handed pitching (Gomes’ line against righties this year: .171/.305/.354 in 199 PAs. Ouch.). From what Mike Rizzo said in his press conference following the trade, it doesn’t sound like the Nats intend to use him in the field much, but more as a situational bench guy who comes in against lefties. And that sounds about right, but why would the Nats trade for a guy like that?

Now, it’s not as if they gave up a whole lot for Gomes. Bill Rhinehart has been a great story this year, tearing up Double-A with a .280/.375/.579 line, but at 26 years old, Rhinehart is only 2 months younger than Ryan Zimmerman, so he’s not exactly a prospect. Chris Manno is probably the highlight of the deal for the Reds, since he’s only 22, but he’s also a strictly relief pitcher who’s still in A ball. Again, not much of a prospect.

The Nats acquired a right handed bat off the bench for two (essentially) organizational guys, and to be honest, I can see myself liking the move, with one caveat: this is the type of move contenders make. The Nats saw a weakness on their roster (a dearth of right handed hitters off the bench) and made a move for a solid veteran to fill the void, and it makes the team marginally better right now. A solid move for a contending team. But the Nats aren’t contenders this year. And at age 30, Jonny Gomes is not going to get any better in the years to come. How exactly does this move help the Nats organization in the future?

Sure, Gomes projects as a type B free agent, which could yield a supplemental draft pick for the Nats, but that’s assuming Gomes rejects an arbitration offer. He’s already been non-tendered twice in his career, and there’s not a whole lot of teams on the lookout for a DH who cannot hit righties. What’s the incentive for Gomes to reject arbitration? Where else is he going to go? And if he accepts arbitration, are the Nats really comfortable paying a guy $1.75 mil (the value of his current contract and in the range of what Gomes is likely to get from arbitration) for a situational bench player who is likely to decline even further next year? Honestly, the only rationale I can see for the Nats to acquire Jonny Gomes is to then use him in a trade for some other player.

My initial thought (or perhaps the word is hope) was that the Nats had some other deal in place, much like the deal yesterday that sent Colby Rasmus to the Blue Jays. The Nats have a long standing interest in the Rays’ center fielder B.J. Upton, and I look at the Rays roster and see that they have the left handed hitting Johnny Damon as their DH. Against lefties this year, Damon’s running a .255/.306/.368 line, good for a measly .298 wOBA. The Rays also lack organizational depth at the catcher position. The more I look at a (purely hypothetical) trade where the Nats send one of their catchers (Norris, Ramos, or Flores) and Gomes to the Rays for Upton, the more I see a good fit for both sides. The Nats get their center fielder for the long term while the Rays not only get a guy who could help them contend this year if they feel they’re still in the hunt, but also a long term option at catcher. If the Nats plan to use Gomes as a throw in for that sort of trade, then I’ll be really happy and, frankly, impressed with Mike Rizzo’s cunning. If not, then I just don’t see the point of trading for Jonny Gomes. Time will tell.

Blyleven And His Contemporaries

Tomorrow, Bert Blyleven will be officially inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, after finally getting enough votes on his 14^th year on the ballot. Rich Lederer of Baseball Analysts did a great job of explaining why Blyleven is worthy of the honor and rallying support for him, and if you have not read any of his pieces I would suggest doing so. I thought I would compare Blyleven to two of his contemporaries, Nolan Ryan and Steve Carlton, and see how he compares.

Many writers initially left Blyleven off their ballots because he seemed more of a “good for a long period of time pitcher” as opposed to a “great pitcher.” I think part of this has to due to an initial unflattering comparison between him and Ryan and Carlton (although the fact that many of these writers voted for Jack Morris might mean I am giving them too much credit). Blyleven won a lot of games—287, but not as many as Ryan (324) or Carlton (329). Blyleven struck out a lot of batters—3701, but not as many as Ryan (5714) or Carlton (4136). Blyleven threw a lot of innings—4970, but again, not as many as Ryan (5386) or Carlton (5217.2). The same phenomenon occurred with ERA—Blyleven’s 3.31 career mark is higher than both Ryan’s 3.19 and Carlton’s 3.22. From these statistics, it would seem Blyleven was clearly an inferior pitcher compared to Ryan and Carlton (although still fantastic). But you could make the argument that Blyleven was just as good, if not better, than Ryan and Carlton.

While Blyleven has the highest ERA of the three, when you normalize it for park factors and run scoring environment (ERA+), he has the best ERA+ of 118 (compared to Ryan’s 112 ERA+ and Carlton’s 115+). This is because Blyleven’s home parks were usually more hitter-friendly, and that he missed the late 1960s run depressing environment that Ryan and Carlton were able to start their careers in. Also, Blyleven was significantly better at not walking batters. While everyone knows Ryan has the most strikeouts of all time, he also gave up the most walks of all time, giving 2795 batters a free pass to first base. Carlton “only” walked 1833 batters, while Blyleven gave free passes to 1322 batters. This led Blyleven to have the best WHIP (walks and hits/innings pitched) of the three (1.198 vs. 1.247 for both Ryan and Carlton) and best K/BB ratio (2.80 vs. Carlton’s 2.26 and Ryan’s 2.04).

Due to these factors, Blyleven ends up with more Wins Above Replacement (WAR) according to Baseball-Reference (90.1 vs. Ryan’s 84.8 and Carlton’s 84.4). Now, this does not definitively mean that Blyleven was better than Ryan and Carlton, but it does show that he is an equal to Ryan and Carlton. Which means he is a very deserving Hall of Famer.

Addendum to Peter's Jayson Werth Piece

Jayson Werth fWAR: 0.4
Jayson Werth contract: $126 million

Carl Crawford fWAR: 0.0
Carl Crawford contract: $142 million

Melky Cabrera fWAR: 3.3
Melky Cabrera contract: $1.25 million

Melky Cabrera has been worth 8.25 Jayson Werth's this season (although Cabrera's rWAR is only 1.9 compared to Werth's 0.4...and Crawford's -0.5!)

Sometimes you never know when it comes to baseball...

Zach Greinke's Enigmatic Season

Peter wrote earlier today about one of the biggest acquisitions this past offseason in Jayson Werth, but another, Zach Greinke, has had an equally bizarre season. After starting the season on the disabled list, Greinke has a K% (strikeouts/total batters faced) of 30.9% (the highest among any starter in the majors this season) with a low BB% (walks/total batters faced) of 5.2%. His ground ball/fly ball ratio of 1.29 is the highest of his career. These are the peripherals the Brewers expected when they traded for him to be the ace of their rotation who would lead them to the playoffs. But there is one problem: Greinke currently has a 5.04 ERA.

So what is going on? One problem for Greinke is his 15.3% home run to fly ball ratio (HR/FB), which is roughly twice the rate of last season. Furthermore, hitters have a BABIP (batting average on balls in play) of .343 against him and his left on base percentage (LOB%) of 55.9% is easily the lowest of his career and ninth worst this season by any major league starter. While a lot of this can probably be attributed to poor luck (pitchers often see their BABIP fluctuate wildly from season to season), one cannot automatically assume that Greinke’s numbers will improve due to regression to the mean to some of his uglier numbers. First, his unflattering statistics might not regress back to the mean this season, just as in his stellar 2008 season when his HR/FB ratio ended at 4.5%. Furthermore, even if his HR/FB, BABIP, and LOB% all improve, it is possible that his K% and BB% will also drop the rest of the season, negating some to all of the previous effects. It will also not help his cause that the Brewers are not a good defensive team. This can be seen by advanced defensive statistics (-1.9 UZR/150, -2 DRS) or by the eye test (watching Prince Fielder, Ryan Braun, Yuniesky Betancourt, and Casey McGehee field is not fun for fans of defense). There is also the possibility that he is having some sort of issue while in the stretch which makes it more difficult for him to escape jams, allowing for more runs to be scored against him than expected (although that is strictly conjecture and I have no proof to support this).

When weighing everything, it is still remarkable that Greinke’s ERA is 5.04 ERA. His FIP (fielding independent pitching) of 2.86, xFIP (expected fielding independent pitching) of 2.13 and SIERA (skill independent earned run average) of 2.17 all indicate that Greinke’s results are way out of line with what could be expected. Even his tERA, an ERA estimator that involves all batted ball types, comes out at 3.50, still a run and a half lower than his ERA. So how do you value Greinke’s season so far? Fangraphs, which bases its wins above replacement (WAR) statistic based on FIP, gives Greinke 1.9 WAR this season, tops on the Brewers staff (even though due to injury he has only thrown 80.1 innings) and 45^th among all MLB starters this season. Baseball-Reference’s WAR, however, involves sequencing of events, and therefore runs allowed. Greinke has been worth -.4 WAR this season according to Baseball Reference, meaning the Brewers would have had better results with a pitcher called up from the minors. Fangraphs and Baseball-Reference also disagreed on Greinke’s value last season, as his Fangraphs WAR was more than double of his Baseball-Reference WAR (5.2 vs. 2.3).

Whichever you think is more indicative, the Brewers need better results from Greinke. Among starters with at least 60 innings pitched, Greinke has the highest differential between his ERA and his FIP. Besides his magical 2009 season, he has never had a tERA lower than 3.50 (which it currently is at and was at last year), which is not exactly ace material. For the Brewers to cash in on their gamble to go all-in to make the playoffs this year in a competitive NL Central, Greinke will have to respond like CC Sabathia did for the Brewers three years ago and put up dominant numbers that resonate in the spreadsheets and on the scoreboards.

An Examination of the Jayson Werth Deal

image courtesy of UPI.com

Last season, Jayson Werth submitted a stellar .296/.388/.532 line with 27 homers to finish off a 3 year span of sustained excellence in which he averaged over 5 WAR per season. This past offseason, the Nats rewarded him with a contract that will pay him $126 million through his age 38 season. The Nats thought they were getting a cornerstone outfielder with some good pop who would, along with Ryan Zimmerman, lead the team into October within the next few years, once Bryce Harper, Stephen Strasburg et al were ready.

So far this year, Werth has been a vast disappointment, posting a below average .215/.319/.362 line with only 9 home runs and looking overmatched in right field to boot. In sum, Werth has “amassed” a paltry .4 WAR through 89 games played, putting him on pace for less than 1 win above replacement for the entire season. To put that number in perspective, Corey Patterson has .8 WAR for the season, and when Corey Patterson outperforms your $17 million right fielder, something has gone terribly wrong. All this ineptitude has elicited boos and chants of “Werth-less” from the crowds at Nationals Park, and did I mention that there’s still 6+ more years left on his contract? Is it even possible to defend such failure?

Well, maybe? First, we should start with the contract. According to Fangraphs, Werth was worth over $20 million each season from 2008 to 2010. The Nats are paying Werth $10 million this year, and that salary will gradually increase until 2015, when Werth will make $21 million per year through 2017, when the contract expires (thanks to Cot’s Baseball Contracts for the details). So by those figures, if Werth were able to somehow return to his 2010 production level and sustain that performance through the end of the contract, the Nats would actually be slightly underpaying Werth. Had he been, say, 26 at the time of the deal was made, this contract would be much easier to defend.

Alas, Jayson Werth is 32 years old and is only going to get older. No one in their right mind thought he would be able to sustain that performance for 7 more years when he signed that contract. The contract becomes even less defensible when we consider that the Nats will be paying Werth more money at the stage of his career when he will almost certainly be his least productive. At the time of the deal, Nats execs rationalized the back-loaded nature of the contract by saying that the team will be contending within the next couple years, which will lead to more attendance, and in turn, more revenue, which will make it easier for ownership to afford the contract in its twilight years. Now I must say that I admire the confidence of the Nationals front office, not to mention their ability to spin for the sake of PR, but you should pay players how much they ought to be paid, not how much you’re able to afford based on your “potential” (read: not yet existant) revenue. If the Nats fail to reach their potential (very possible) and the Jayson Werth contract leaves ownership hamstrung in 2015 or sooner, you can bet on a lot of upset (former?) Nats fans.

Another rationale behind the deal was the notion that the Nats “needed” to overpay to show potential free agents that they were “serious” about paying the money it takes to win. This logic sounds good, until your team ends up like the Chicago Cubs or Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, paying half decent players like Alfonso Soriano and Vernon Wells exorbitant amounts of money to lose baseball games. Well run organizations pay players what they deserve (or, in the case of the Tampa Bay Rays, less than that).

I think we can conclude that the Jayson Werth contract is a bad one, but that being said, it’s not my money. The Lerners have, by all accounts, pretty deep pockets. As long as the team continues to grow into a contender, a bad contract doesn’t really matter. And my primary concern is just that: how much will Jayson Werth contribute to a Nats contender? Looking at his line from this year, there is not a lot to love, but Werth’s peripheral numbers suggest he is the same player he has been for the past three years. For 2011, his BB% (12.3%) and K% (23%) are right in line with his career figures (12.3% and 24.5%, respectively), which suggests that his approach at the plate has not changed much, if at all. His .257 BABIP is, however, nearly 70 points below his career average, which accounts for his career-low batting average. He’s still making contact, and once those balls start falling in for hits, he’ll be back in the .260-.270 range that’s been his career norm, with an OBP of around .360.

The greater concern for Werth this season has been his lack of power. His .140 ISO so far this year is 60 points below his career average. His ground ball rate is a career high 45%, and the transition to Nationals Park has not been good, as his HR/FB has dropped to a career low 10%. Those figures become even more unsettling when you consider that at over 400 PAs for the season, Werth has now reached the point where batted ball percentages begin to stabilize, according to fangraphs. That being said, his career high 13.1% popup rate should come down, so there is still hope for improvement in terms of power. ZIPS projects a .244/.346/.424 line for Werth for the rest of the season, and that seems about right, maybe even a little conservative. Werth is a good player who has suffered from poor luck so far this season, but he should turn it around for the rest of this season. The problem is, with the Phillies and Braves in control of both the division and wild card races, the Nats are not contenders this year. More important than this year for the Nats is whether Jayson Werth will contribute to a potential contender in the years to come.

The short answer? It’s not looking good. According to Baseball Reference, the players who are most stastically similar to Jayson Werth through their age 31 seasons are Brad Hawpe and Jeffrey Hammonds. That’s not a good sign. Now, Werth is almost definitely a better player than either of those guys, but the track record for players like Werth after age 32 is just not great. Werth’s career batting line is .261/.361/.466. Through his age 31 season, Trot Nixon rocked a decidedly Werth-like .278/.366/.478 line, including a peak at ages 29 and 30 when he posted wOBAs of .412 and .379, respectively. Sounds a bit like Jayson Werth, no? After 32, Nixon batted .256/.356/.364. I bolded the slugging percentage because, well, ouch. And the Nats could very well be paying $126 million for that. Jayson Werth may buck the trend, and maintain some semblance of his former self through the rest of the contract, but the odds are not in his favor. This could get ugly.

What should the Nats offer in a trade for Colby Rasmus?

As Joe Strauss of the St. Louis Dispatch recently reported, the St. Louis Cardinals might soon put Colby Rasmus on the trade market. Formerly a highly touted prospect, the 24-year-old center fielder sports a career .259/.333/.442 triple-slash in two and a half years in the big leagues. In his report, Strauss cites difficulties between Rasmus and manager Tony La Russa as a possible motivation for GM John Mozeliak to make a move, and based on Rasmus’ minor league career, I imagine that the Cardinals front office expected better than the .329 wOBA they’ve gotten from him this year. That said, it will still take a pretty good haul to pry Rasmus away, and the Cardinals seem to want at least one starting pitcher, with Strauss mentioning the Tampa Bay Rays and their stable of arms as a possible trade partner.

Given the Nats well documented interest in B.J. Upton, they would presumably at least inquire on Rasmus as well, and are probably even more interested in Rasmus, since he is younger and under contract through 2014. Indeed, if Rasmus could continue to play even a passable CF, his bat would be a significant upgrade over Roger Bernadina, and acquiring him would add another solid young position player to the Nats core of Zimmerman, Espinosa, Ramos, and Desmond. So what exactly would it take to get him? The short answer is, obviously, we don’t really know. But as stated previously, the Cardinals probably want the deal to center around a starting pitcher.

In his most recent chat, Dave Cameron suggested that both the Rays and the Cardinals would at least have to think about a Rasmus for James Shields swap, if it came up in negotiations, and I would definitely have to agree from the Cardinals perspective. Shields has been ace-caliber this season and has a very team-friendly contract with club options starting next year through 2014. His performance this year might even improve if he were to get out of the AL East, and the Cardinals rotation would look pretty formidable for this year’s pennant race. He will be 30 by next season though, and is coming off a very rough year in 2010, so he’s unlikely to maintain this level of performance too much longer, and may in fact fall off dramatically.

Still, if a pitcher of that caliber is the price, then the only way the Nats could match it would be Jordan Zimmermann, who has been the Nats best pitcher this year and is under team control through 2015. JZ, with his 2.58 FIP and miniscule 1.64 BB/9, was my pick for the all-star team from the Nats; he looks fully recovered from Tommy John surgery from a year ago, and at 25, there’s still room for improvement. He’d be a tough player for the Nats to give up under any circumstances, but he does have a history of injuries, and unless he can increase his strikeout rate (6.42 K/9 this year, 7.62 career), his ceiling is as a #2 starter in a good rotation. The Nats just don’t have a ton of pitching depth, though, and JZ seems like the perfect guy to follow Stephen Strasburg in the rotation once Strasburg returns from his own ligament replacement surgery, so I just don’t see GM Mike Rizzo making that kind of move.

That being said, I’m not so sure it would take a guy like Zimmermann to get Rasmus. As Steve Slowinski points out, it will be pretty difficult for the Cardinals to get good value for Rasmus at this stage, since the Cardinals will want to base his value on potential, while other teams will want to buy based on his career thusfar. With that in mind, perhaps the Nats could try to package one of their veteran pitchers with a prospect to get Rasmus. Livan Hernandez is a fan favorite, sure, but his talents are wasted on this year’s Nats team; he’d make for a solid back of the rotation starter for the Cards to rest their bullpen during the dog days of August. Jason Marquis could fill a similar role, and maybe after reuniting Dave Duncan, Marquis could turn back the clock for a couple months to his 2004 season with the Cardinals, when he sported a 3.71 ERA.

Naturally, the more vital part of the equation from the Nats perspective is which prospect they would give up. The Cardinals would probably have interest in a guy like Derek Norris even though they have Yadier Molina, but I don’t imagine the Nats giving up their consensus #2 prospect for Rasmus. Beyond that though, the Nats farm system doesn’t feature too much in the way of bats, so the Cardinals would probably ask for someone like A.J. Cole or Sammy Solis, both of whom were on the Nats top 10 prospects lists of various publications. Brad Peacock has been dominating AA this year, sporting a ridiculous 5.61 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 98 innings so far this season. At 23, Peacock is probably closer to the majors than the other two, which may increase his value to the win-now Cardinals.

As you might have surmised by now, the question posed in the title of this post is a tough one. Colby Rasmus is a solid every day player who is still young enough to have potential for greatness, and the Nationals are interested in an every day center fielder to anchor their outfield for the next several years. But Rasmus has been merely a good player so far in his career, not a great one, and it’s tough for a team like the Nats to give up big time prospects in exchange for a player whose track record suggests only a decent player. I think if the Nats offered one of Peacock, Cole, or Solis plus either Livo or Marquis for Rasmus, it’d be a fine deal for the Nats. I doubt it'd be enough for John Mozeliak, but I don’t think the Nats ought to offer more.

Back on Track

Due to personal reasons, this blog has not been updated in some time. However, I am happy to announce that the blog is starting up again. Even better (especially for you readers), I will not be the only one writing at the site, as my good friend Peter Carlson will also be sharing his thoughts in the space. So hopefully this time it will work better than before, and if you have a good idea for renaming the blog, please let me know.