So, $2 million for a guy who can play six positions with varying degrees of competency, and who, since leaving Washington, has hit .325/.409/.450 in 849 PAs. Okay, even if he's not quite as good as that makes him out to be, I'll still take it.

I'll be happy if he can approximate his 2008 performance with the Cardinals: .385/.426/.538.

I'll be happy if he can approximate his 2008 performance with the Cardinals: .385/.426/.538.

This is exactly why the Cardinals haven't won a Championship in four years, hope for mediocrity and that's all you'll get.

Hard to believe he couldn't do better than that. Not sure why other teams snapped up inferior guys earlier and left Lopez out to dry. I think I'd rather have Lopez than Polanco just due to the age difference.

Robothal says $1M base.

I would totally rather have Lopez than Polanco for the next couple years even money aside if I was the Phillies. Plug him in at 3B and have a respectable PH'er who can fake it at 3B like Dobbs and Lopez can be like an extra util IFer which makes sure there is only one Bruntlett type on the team.

Lopez dug his own hole when he let Boras hold him out for 3 yrs 24 mil and got left with the scraps. If he does it again he'll get paid next year I guess. If he gets to bat in front of Pujols like he did in 2008 when he hit .385 for 2 mos I think he can have a pretty nice season (though not .385) and get paid. If he gets sparse playing time and mopes about it I think he'll become another D'Angelo Jimenez and nobody will touch him.

Hard to believe he couldn't do better than that. Not sure why other teams snapped up inferior guys earlier and left Lopez out to dry. I think I'd rather have Lopez than Polanco just due to the age difference.

Because Lopez projects as being about as good overall value as Luis Castillo. Unlike us clever saber-types, teams aren't fooled by 850 PAs of sudden competence. :-)

The more interesting question (for me) is what this means for Schumaker and Freese.

Anyway, Lopez is a useful guy to have around and might be worth a little more than $2 M. And maybe he's discovered something in the last 1.5 years. But he's still a guy with 4300 PAs and a career OPS+ of 93 and has had only two seasons in his career where he outperformed that and he's turning 30. And his good year last year was mainly BABIP spike (358 vs 320 career) and his huge short stint in StL was totally BABIP spike (448!). So unless he's turned into Ty Cobb (or Howie Kendrick :-) on BABIP, don't expect him to maintain that offense.

The more interesting question (for me) is what this means for Schumaker and Freese.

Schumaker is pretty useless vs. LHP, so I imagine TLR will implement a pretty strict platoon at 2B. Lopez gives you an option at SS if Ryan's wrist isn't ready (although Lopez is nowhere near the defender Ryan is) and he's great insurance in case Freese bombs at third, although, again, defense is probably an issue.

All in all, $2M well spent for the flexibility and insurance it provides. In 2009 it was the outfielders who had to share the playing time, and in 2010 it might be the infielders.

I saw him quite a bit in the second half last season. Maybe he was on a hot streak when I saw him, but I was impressed with the way he battled during his at bats. Pitchers had trouble putting him away, and he would squeeze out a walk or a hit when you thought your team had the last out in their pocket. I have a feeling that his defense may be fairly good at 3d base. He would be moving a couple of spaces down the defensive spectrum from shortstop. So, this may be a good move by the Cardinals to provide a safety net in case Freese doesn't work out.

What does this do to Lugo's chances with the Cardinals?

I'd not be surprised if he made several dozen OF appearances this season.

How good can Lopez be when he can't even get Cora money? I love how the free agent market can be totally bewildering at times. Brandon Lyon got more guaranteed money than Lopez, Hudson, and Garland combined.

Aaron Miles averaged 443 PA/year with the cardinals, in exactly the same role that Lopez will play. I was very strongly against Lopez after 2008, since the BABIP spike was clearly unsustainable, but the .358 he had last year isn't that ridiculous and STL doesn't need him to have another career year to be very valuable.

Biggest concern, imho, is how well he'll keep his head in the game; in 2008 he seemed to make a lot of the kinds of mistakes that cost runs but don't show up in the box scores. But now that we're conditioned to it (after a year of seeing Joe Thurston do what he did), it might be less painful to see the occasional blunder.

Pitchers had trouble putting him away

No doubt. In Milwaukee, he had a 372 BABIP and a 407 OBP (and a somewhat lower K-rate).

I have a feeling that his defense may be fairly good at 3d base. He would be moving a couple of spaces down the defensive spectrum from shortstop.

But he was a terrible SS. He's been an average 2B. He's barely played any 3B (758 innings) and UZR has him at a bit above average there but ZiPS projects him to FR (probably because most of his 3B innings came in 2001 and 2004 ... he's barely played any, at least in the majors, the last 5 seasons). You shouldn't hope for anything better than average at 3B, probably with growing pains early on.

Don't get me wrong. This is a good signing. For utility infielder and insurance for two players you're still not that confident in (Freese, Schumaker), you're unlikely to find much better than Lopez and 1/$2 is a perfectly good price for him. My disagreement is with the notion that he probably should have gotten more and I can't see any rationale for preferring him to Polanco -- though I can see lots of rationale for not giving Polanco a 3-year contract.

Polanco had his worst hitting year last year in a good while. His bad year was only a smidgen worse than Lopez's projection and Polanco is still an excellent defender (by all of the measures I think).

For utility infielder and insurance for two players you're still not that confident in (Freese, Schumaker)

I'm pretty sure the Cardinals are confident in Schumaker, with the qualifier that he'll generally sit against LHP. Not only did they give Skip a two-year contract, La Russa described him as a member of the Core, a term that carries mystical meaning when it comes from TLR. That doesn't contradict your evaluation of the Lopez signing, but as ess eff stated in #10, there could be some odd consequences as TLR tries to get everybody the status-appropriate (and talent-appropriate -- La Russa's strange, but not an idiot) level of playing time.

What does this do to Lugo's chances with the Cardinals?

Nothing. La Russa can never have enough utility players.

I don't think Felipe Lopez is a .325 hitter any more than the next guy, but I'd be suprised if he doesn't outhit Polanco by a decent margin over the next three years. If you remove his time in Washington (where alot of hitters careers went to die while Lopez was there) Lopez actually looks like a decent hitting option with a bad 1/2 a season before Cin shipped him out. I don't know what they were doing in Washington to destroy so many hitters people expected something of like Kearns, Lopez, Milledge, among others but Lopez has been enough better since he left to say its a real talent level change and not luck. As such I prefer to de-emphasize his performance there projecting forward. I think Lopez will be something like .300/370/.420 with decent but not great 2B or 3B defense and mediocre to crappy SS defense. Thats more than I expect from Polanco who I'd guess over next 3 years will average .280/.330/.400 with about the same defense because of age-based declines.

Good thing Brian Sabean rushed out and gave Freddie Sanchez 2/$12M.

If the Don can get this guy to play hard all season it will be his greatest miracle yet. Lopez was obvioulsy playing for a contract in 2009 and nobody in baseball was fooled. He's lazy. Period. Legit ability. But at the end of the day he's a lollygagger at heart.

Don't let yourself be hoodwinked.

Schumaker is pretty useless vs. LHP

I was shocked how awful he was against lefties when I took at look at his splits. He's a .205 hitter against them but the thing that stands out is the .220 SLG. Out of the 52 hits he's had against southpaws only 4 went for extra bases and they were all doubles.

Skip: You guys. You lollygag the ball around the infield. You lollygag your way down to first. You lollygag in and out of the dugout. You know what that makes you? Larry!
Larry: Lollygaggers!
Skip: Lollygaggers.

I'd not be surprised if he made several dozen OF appearances this season.

I would. I'd not be surprised if Schumaker made several dozen OF appearances with Lopez getting in at 2B, though.

I dunno, I've progressively become less lazy as I got into my 30s...

Lopez was obvioulsy playing for a contract in 2009 and nobody in baseball was fooled.

Good thing the Cards signed him to a one-year deal, then. (With an incentive clause!)

Because Lopez projects as being about as good overall value as Luis Castillo. Unlike us clever saber-types, teams aren't fooled by 850 PAs of sudden competence.

Well 850 consecutive plate appearances of a .410 OBP a little bit more than just competence and is extremely unlikely to have occurred if the player did not have a shift in skill level from his previous time of incompetence.

Besides, CHONE projects 2.3 WAR next year.

I actually botched the calculations in post #1 somehow--his OBP since leaving Washington is .392. Still worth it.

Because Lopez projects as being about as good overall value as Luis Castillo. Unlike us clever saber-types, teams aren't fooled by 850 PAs of sudden competence.

Who the heck besides the Mets still think Luis Castillo is a starting 2nd baseman? If somebody else did, Castillo would have been traded already.

Hey Felipe, you want to get paid ? Run a little ####### harder. Newsflash, it's not your (former) agents fault you can't be bothered to run out a groundball. Your talent, and even your batting line and production indicate a player who should get paid a lot more than you did. But until you ####### RUN !!!! you aint gettin paid. Simple as that.

Why is this tagged as a Boston article instead of STL? East Coast! Bias!

DC:

That might help. Felipe has the ability to play really well. You have to wonder about those guys who can roll out of bed and be a quality ballplayer if they just focus for 3 hours a day. But cannot bring themselves to do that regularly.

I first noticed it when he was with the Reds. There were at bats where Lopez would just stand there and wave at pitches and then meander back to the dugout. And I would look at my grandson and he would just shake his head and I would think this isn't going to end well. And yet he is still in the majors because just when you think every GM is going to say "To h^ll with this punk" he spits out just enough to keep folks interested.

I have this image of Tony going all Bobby Knight and kicking Lopez in the *ss all the way out of the tunnel to the field screaming, "You get on that f*cking field and move your *ss or I will f*cking kill you myself!!"

Yes, Lopez has hit well in his last 850 PA ... on a BABIP of nearly 380.

Sorry, you can't blame this on the Nats. Before getting to the Nats, he had a 94 OPS+. His first half-season with the Nats, he had a 93 OPS+. He then absolutely stunk for 1.5 seasons, followed by hitting well for 1.5 seasons and his career OPS+ stands at 93. There's no good reason to think that's anything other than standard random fluctuation.

Lopez's BABIPs:

2004: 322
2005: 322
2006: 327
2007: 283
2008: 328
2009: 358

The 358 is no more likely to be "real" than the 283 (OK, it's slightly more likely to be real being more recent). Give him a 325 BABIP last year and, shazam!, his OPS+ drops to 93, spot on his career average.

And yes, it's true, Chone projects Lopez to 2.2 WAR and Castillo to just 1.4. The difference is all defense (and 15% playing time, an advantage Lopez would no longer seem to have) -- Chone projects Lopez to -2.5 batting runs and Castillo to +0.3 runs (yes, Castillo as better than league average hitter). In equal playing time, Chone would put the gap at about .5 wins. ZiPS projects Castillo to be a slightly more valuable hitter as well and rates Lopez as AV defensively and Castillo as FR, so roughly equal but Lopez maybe half a win ahead.

Who the heck besides the Mets still think Luis Castillo is a starting 2nd baseman?

Nobody ... which is why Lopez, a roughly equivalent player, has a bench job at 1/$2. This is my point.

[30] This really seems to <u>understate</u> the harmful effect that Castillo's poor fielding at second base had on Mets' pitching: missing ground balls, extending innings, knocking SPs out of games prematurely, stressing the bullpen, etc.

[30] This really seems to understate the harmful effect that Castillo's poor fielding at second base had on Mets' pitching: missing ground balls, extending innings, knocking SPs out of games prematurely, stressing the bullpen, etc.

Maybe but I see no reason to think it would over/understate this effect anymore than any other UZR (or whatever Chone uses) projection. If there's a major issue with Chone's (or ZiPS) defensive projection, it's in not putting sufficient weight in last year's performance (and an extra year of age) to make the defensive projection horrible -- i.e. having been OK the previous two years plus regression to the mean, Castillo projects as below-average defensively but not horrible. If you believe last year's performance was "true talent" and he's older, obviously the defense will sink him. That's a real risk ... just as it's a real risk that Lopez will put up a 75 OPS+ or start his own defensive decline.