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Transaction Oracle— A Timely Look at Transactions as They Happen
Monday, April 07, 2008
Diamondbacks - Signed Young
Arizona Diamondbacks - Signed CF Chris Young to a 5-year contract believed to be worth $30 million.
The free agent market continues to mature - whereas teams have really gotten the hang of non-tendering arbitration-eligible players that aren’t even worth the club’s number, they’re now generally getting more aggressive at locking up the players they want to keep while they still have the most leverage. I think it’s going to be awhile until we start seeing successfully turning their teams around in the free agent market, at least until the pendulum swings the other way and teams start overvaluing their young players and undervaluing free agents.
Young’s 2007 was a mild disappointment, but he was playing below his talent level that both stats and scouts agreed he had. With solid defense, Young’s a major star if he hits .280 and even hitting .230, he should bring enough power and defense to be a net positive for $5 million a year. Thumbs up. These types of deals, even when they go bad, are almost never crippling.
ZiPS Projection - Chris Young
————————————————————————————————————
AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO SB BA OBP SLG
————————————————————————————————————
Year-to-Date 23 7 5 2 0 3 4 7 9 2 .217 .400 .696
Rest-of-Yr? 548 81 134 32 3 30 96 52 123 23 .245 .317 .478
Proj. 2008 571 88 139 34 3 33 100 59 132 25 .243 .321 .487
————————————————————————————————————
2009? 566 86 135 31 2 35 105 53 149 26 .239 .308 .486
2010? 555 87 134 34 2 35 104 58 141 24 .241 .317 .499
2011? 555 88 134 32 2 36 105 59 149 25 .241 .318 .501
2012? 559 89 137 33 2 37 108 60 148 24 .245 .322 .510
2013? 547 86 134 32 1 36 105 57 145 22 .245 .320 .505
————————————————————————————————————
Top Offensive Comps: Andruw Jones, Preston Wilson
Dan Szymborski
Posted: April 07, 2008 at 10:27 PM | 77 comment(s)
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1. Drexl Spivey Posted: April 08, 2008 at 03:56 AM (#2734521)I imagine it will have to be a mature, and level-headed kind of player who the team could go to and say, "Look, we both know why your still in AAA. why don't we cut the crap. We'll bring you up right now if you'll sign a long-term deal and give us what we'd be saving by keeping you in AAA until June."
That'd be cool. Heck, it could work for Longoria right now.
I think we can guarantee that before long, a contract of this type would become the most embarrassing ever. More than Wayne Garland, Mike Hampton, whoever.
old BTF thread when he was sent down
(I do realize that the comparison might be based partially on race, but don't tell me that Murphy doesn't seem like a good comparison for Young).
It's just a joke. It wasn't meant to be pointed, really. Just an old saw.
Also, Dwayne Murphy had no power. At least if he's this dude.
I'm assuming this is another joke...?
I'm sorry. I'm new to this site, and I've read that the people over here are ruthless, overly-cynical, and pretentious, so I jumped to a conclusion that I shouldn't have.
Oh, that's sometimes true as well.
In which case, well-done for catching on to the joke so quickly. I'm sure you'll do well here.
If I recall, there were rumors that the Devil Rays were negotiating with BJ Upton for like a 10 year deal back when it was neck and neck between him and David Wright for who was the best prospect in the game.
Darrell Evans, Jack Clark, Rob Deer, Dave Kingman,
Mickey Tettleton all finished their careers with OPS+ >100 and Clark had the highest career BA at .267.
Of course, they are white so you cannot compare Chris Young to them.
Before looking at those players, I would have guessed they would have had to able to stay around .260 early in their careers, but not true. And while OPS+ is a bad stat to measure the value of guys whose value is tied up almost entirely in the SLG component, those four were able to stay productive with weak BAs.
Although it's a relatively rare combination, you can get away with this profile much better if you play a plus defensive position. It's hard to be hugely productive offensively with this profile unless you have prodigious power. But if you play CF or MI or C or even 3B, then this level of production is average or better. Some better comps for Young then might be Jose Valentin, Mark Bellhorn (the downside), Cameron (as already mentioned), Andruw Jones (as ZiPS notes), and maybe the upside is Jimmy Wynn. Bellhorn-Valentin-Cameron would be roughly slightly below to slightly above-average for a CF but would be clearly below-average at a corner. Jones' bat would make him an average corner, but a plus CF (and then great defense). Wynn's bat could have played anywhere (128 OPS+) but again was huge in CF in his prime.
So, as long as Young can play an average or better CF, he should be an average or better CF and there's no reason to think that won't be the case for the length of this contract. His chances of developing enough as a hitter to play elsewhere later in his career are probably pretty slim.
-- MWE
Yeah, if Young only ends up being Preston Wilson offensively, it'll be disappointing, but it won't hurt the Diamondbacks - 105-115 OPS+ a year with very good defense in center is worth a lot more than $6 million right now.
Contract Details:
28 Million guaranteed for 5 years through 2013, buying out 3 arb years and a year of free agency, with an option for a second year of free agency , 2014, which if exercised would make the deal worth 37.5 million
He is making 406,000 in 2008.
He will receive a 1 Mil signing bonus
2009- 1.75
2010- 3.25
2011- 5.00
2012- 7.00
2013- 8.50
2014-11.00 * Option or 1.5 Million buyout
So the deal looks even better than originally thought.
I'll take the over on the projected walks and OBP too.
0-6, with 10 LOB
On the day he signed the extension he was hitting .259/.429/.778 1.207 thru the first week of the season. He had 8 walks and 9 K's thru 35 PA's.
Ooops.
His season line currently stands at 418 PA's .228/.296/.401 .696 OPS 36 BB, 95 K's , 78 OPS+. He leads the NL in outs and has completely stopped running (5 sb, 2 cs)
He's been beyond bad.....when he's not striking out, he is second in the majors with nearly a 18% IF/F rate and a low line drive rate as well. Nothing flukey about his .269 BABIP, and very tough to imagine a large improvement over the second half of this year.
I think I have my answer to the talent evaluation methodologies used by the Dbacks front office to decide on extensions
$ = (5*K + 3.7*IFF + 1.34*SB)/(OBP^7 + RC27^2)
Explains the EByrnes and CYoung extensions...
By this logic, I suspect we'll be seeing a 4 year deal for CBurke shortly
Spanning Multiple Seasons or entire Careers, From 1973 to 2008, From Age 23 to 25, Bats RH, Played 50% of games at CF, (requiring PA>=900, HR>=20, OPSp>=80, OPSp<=90, and At least 900 plate appearances), sorted by greatest OPSp
I was intentionally limiting.....I didn't want to go back too far, to keep it in a modern context, so I picked DH era forward. I was trying to keep it in a range of Young's age, (he's 24) so I went 23-25. I wanted it to be RH Centerfielders, that got a similar amount of playing time as Young has during that age range.
Results
(And no...I wasn't trying to rig it so only African American players showed up)
Short list, not surprisingly. And guess who is on it?
Didn't Cano sign for $30M too?
-- MWE
Yes.
-- MWE
But the name Chris Young sounds white, so it's OK.
Or the fact that Cameron and Chris Young play above average CF with that hitting profile while those other dudes listed are defensively challenged mopes.
You guys are joke complaining, right?
If my team had a CF hit 32 jacks as a 23 year old, I would also hope for him to turn out better than Cameron, and grudgingly accept it if he "only" turns into Cameron.
Sheeeeeeeeyit. I'm just hoping Travis Buck can turn into Lee Mazzilli.
Seriously, a lot of rooks have hit a bunch of home runs early in their careers and then morphed into nobodies. If Chris Young has Mike Cameron's career, he doesn't need to apologize for anything and the D-Backs have nothing to complain about. Anything more than that is gravy.
OPS+ between 80 and 100, 100+ Ks, 40+ BBs, single seasons 22-25 at CF, AVG less than .270
The guys with more than 20 HR are:
Andruw Jones, 24
Chris Young, 23
Corey Patterson, 24
Ruben Rivera, 25
I hate you Fish, you are cruel and inhuman. How could you?
Yes...he was only kidding. Read from the top.
1st half 418 PA's .228/.296/.401 .696 OPS sOPS+ 87 36 BB's (8.6%) 95 K's (22.7%) .269 BABIP
2nd half 212 PA's .281/.336/.516 .852 OPS sOPS+ 120 17 BB's (8.0%) 56 K's (26.4%) .364 BABIP
Oh well.....I don't have line drive percentage splits. It feels like he is hitting more line drives and gappers, so the BABIP jump is not unexpected. But with no improvement in the walk rate, and actually a slightly worse K rate, I'm not so sure how sustainable this improvement is. Probably not very. :(
BBTF demotion thread.
I like when these old threads get bumped and it turns out I said something prescient.
Of course, that could still be Chris Young, but so far, the Young-for-Vazquez deal doesn't look too bad.
He could be the one.
Gio and Chris Carter are starting to look pretty good, actually. Which isn't to argue with your point. KW has proved to be very savvy about young talent and, more importantly, he has the courage of his convictions when it's time to deal.
That one meltdown against the Twins is skewing his stats. He's been excellent lately including starts against the Yankees and Red Sox on the road.
Like the salary flexibility to add someone like Peavy or Rios?
They had this thing about baseball behind the scenes on ESPN the other day and they featured Nick Swisher. In street clothes, Swish comes off like a complete douche. Seriously, you expect him to show up in line to audition for American Idol. I'd bet a few cokes KW just didn't like him. (The best part about the part of the show I saw was the forced conversation they made Bert Blyleven have with Swisher. "So.." "Yeah..." "Yeah...")
That does take the sting away somewhat. I suppose I shouldn't complain too much as a White Sox fan about dumb moves by the team's GM.
Swish comes off like a complete douche. Seriously, you expect him to show up in line to audition for American Idol. I'd bet a few cokes KW just didn't like him.
I'm pretty sure that he and Guillen sat down and decided that they needed to get rid of him, come hell or high water.
Complain all you want. Just be prepared to be pelted by rocks from those who support teams who would love to have a GM that "dumb."
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