Some more free-agent analysis I cobbled together with my friend:
A.J. Burnett: Skilled and 28 years old, Burnett’s in the prime of his career. He misses bats, striking out batters at a rate higher than any Mariner save the boy king. Burnett did miss significant time with Tommy John surgery, which points to injury risks.
In another year, Burnett would be a good, solid B-plus, a talented pitcher with some questions, a notch below the slam-dunk talent available above him. This year he’s the flagship of the free agent class. That may well drive his price beyond reasonable.
Rating: Fat Tire beer. Of undeniable quality, Fat Tire is nonetheless one of the most overpriced items at the ballyard. There might not be a more delicious item available, but at this cost, even the manageable risk that some clown might kick over your brew and not offer to buy another seems disconcerting. A premium that you’ll probably have to pay dearly for.
Kevin Millwood: Millwood is older than Burnett and a step down. But though Millwood commanded $7 million this year, what he’ll get in the offseason is likely to be a bargain (in terms of dollars and years) than what the mighty Marlin will draw.
A career flyball pitcher (check out those ratios), Millwood also appears to be well-suited for Safeco Field and other pitching-friendly ballparks. Think of Ryan Franklin, with talent and without the drug suspension.
Jacque Jones: Okay, okay, I know, he hit .249/.321/.438 this year. Not exactly the big bat everyone was hoping for, is he? His plate discipline is legitimately terrible, and his .258 EqA places him as a league average hitter playing one of the easiest defensive positions in baseball. His offensive production the past two years is actually fairly similar to what Adrian Beltre put up for the M’s this season. And I don’t think I’m going to win anyone over by saying that acquiring another 2005 version of Adrian Beltre was going to save the Mariner offense.
Stay with me, though. I’m not insane. Really.
Take a look at these numbers over the past four seasons:
Vs Left: 608 AB, .229/.285/.365
Vs Right: 1510 AB, .277/.338/.472
Jacque Jones cannot hit lefties. At all. Since 2002, against southpaws, he’s drawn 37 walks and struck out 147 times. His line against left-handed pitchers makes him the rough offensive equivalent of someone like Jason Phillips or Neifi Perez. In other words, not anyone you want in your line-up.
But against right-handers, he’s pretty darn good. His line against righties the past four years puts him in the category of guys like Carlos Lee, Jose Guillen, and Shawn Green. When a right-handed pitcher is on the hill, Jones is a well above average offensive force, even when compared to other left fielders. You’d like to see a higher OBP, but the power is a legitimate offensive weapon that the team lacks. Jones has “left-handed sockâ€, if you will. But he only has it against 75 percent of the major league pitchers out there.
To be truly effective, Jones needs to be platooned. At 30 years old, he’s had plenty of time to make adjustments and show some improvement against lefties. He hasn’t. So he shouldn’t play against them. This puts a cap on his value, since he would begin 25 percent of the M’s games seated on the bench. However, that flaw in and of itself isn’t enough to disqualify him. Even if he only manages 450 at-bats next year while hitting .270/.330/.470, that’s worth approximately 25 runs on offense. 25 runs is a significant upgrade from what the M’s got from their left-fielders this season. Creating 25 runs with his bat would have made him the 4th best hitter on the Mariners this year.
However, 25 runs from a left fielder isn’t the kind of production you’re looking from in a left fielder, especially one who is going to command a multimillion dollar deal as a free agent. Thankfully, offense is only part of the Jacque Jones story.
We’ll be the first to admit that defensive statistics are flawed. When evaluating defense, we need to speak in generalities. We have a pretty good idea of who is good and who is bad, but we don’t have anything like the tools we do to evaluate offense production. The defensive metrics that have been developed based on proprietary play-by-play data hardly ever agree anyways.
But occassionally, they do. And in Jacque Jones case, they agree that the man is pretty freaking awesome defensively.
Kevin Brown:
I’m endorsing Kevin Brown, the broken down 40-year-old with an ERA of six and a half as a free agent target. And I’m not insane. Here’s some numbers for you.
2.1 walks per game. Among the 45 American League qualifiers, this would tie him for 11th best in the AL, well above average.
5.5 strikeouts per game. From the 45 qualifiers, that would put him 22nd, tied with Mark Buehrle. His strikeout rate, essentially, is league average for an AL starting pitcher.
0.55 home runs per game. Among the AL qualifiers, this ties him for best in the AL with Scott Kazmir. He’s allowed 80 flyballs and just 5 home runs. Even if you normalize to an 11 percent HR/FB ratio, he’s only giving up about 20 homers over a full season, making him one of the hardest pitchers in the AL to take out of the park.
1.73 G/F rate. If you put him in the AL qualifiers, he’d rank 3rd, behind Jake Westbrook and Daniel Cabrera. He’s still a dominant groundball pitcher.
Fielding Independant ERA: 3.66. Among those 45 qualifiers, Brown’s 3.66 FIP would rank fifth in the American League. Bartolo Colon, the likely league Cy Young winner, has a Fielding Independant ERA of 3.63. Remember, FIP is a far, far more reliable predictor of future pitching performance than actual ERA. And FIP thinks Brown pitched very well this year, right in line with what he’s been doing the past 10 years.
So, why on earth does Kevin Brown have a 6.51 ERA? Two main reasons:
The defense behind him has been absolutely abysmal. Just 61.5 percent of all his balls in play have been turned into outs, which is just absolutely awful. It’s not like he’s getting torched, either. His line drive percentage is basically league average. We’ve been over the DIPS theory many times, but for the new readers, basically, most pitchers are going to generally fall in the range of a .300 average against on balls in play. Hitters whacked Brown to a .385 average on balls in play, which is most likely a factor of the players behind him simply being unable to get to balls in the hole. The average on balls in play against Brown in 2004 was .290 while his other rate stats were basically the same as they were this year. That’s defense, not pitching.
The other huge factor has been his inability to strand baserunners once they get on. Brown has left just 60.3 percent of the baserunners he’s allowed on the bases when the inning ends. Jose Lima, probably the worst starting pitcher in baseball, stranded 61.4 percent. Stranding runners is not inherantly a skill. Good pitchers do it because they’re good pitchers, and bad pitchers don’t because they’re bad pitchers, but you won’t find many examples of pitchers who succeed in almost all aspects of pitching and then just can’t get anyone out when there’s a runner on base. In fact, Brown’s opposing batters lines with runners on and with the runners empty aren’t dramatically different. In other words, he just allowed an awful lot of clutch hits that happened to pick up baserunners, and he got outs when it didn’t matter as much. Unless you want to believe that after 15 years of dominance, Kevin Brown suddenly began to wilt under pressure, there’s little reason to expect his strand rate to stay so low.
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