Phillies - Signed Nunez
Philadelphia Phillies - Signed IF Abraham Nunez to a 2-year, $3.35 million contract.
My guess? Pat Gillick saw the SNL “More Cowbell!” sketch and it dawned upon him that the solution for the Phillies would be “More David Bell!” Either that, of the Phils wanted someone to help Bell with his band, “The David Bell Experience, Featuring Groundouts.”
It may just be me, but when I look at the Phillies’ roster and assess their offseason needs, “Third base isn’t quite incompetent enough or expensive enough” is well down the list of problems.
Thumbs down. I don’t know what’s saddest - that the Phillies saw this guy hit and wanted him, that his 2005 was a tremendously good season for Nunez, or that Nunez has far better secondary skills than a hitter that got serious consideration for Rookie of the Year.
2006 ZiPS Projection - Abraham O. Nunez
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AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO SB BA OBP SLG
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359 50 100 12 2 4 36 32 57 1 .279 .337 .357
Dan Szymborski
Posted: November 29, 2005 at 10:06 PM |
29 comment(s)
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1. s.zielinski Posted: November 29, 2005 at 11:19 PM (#1752087)Perhaps, Gillick wanted to make Lloyd McClendon look good!
While Nunez will clearly join the "EZ Out" brigade of Endy ChavEZ, Ramon HernandEZ, and Tomas PerEZ, the sad fact remains that O'Nunez had a .685 OPS against righties, which is a HUGE difference.
The true sadness is not that the Phillies would think Nunez is an improvement, but that he actually IS an improvement -- at least against righties. David Bell could only DREAM of attaining the towering heights of merely "Well Below Average" last year.
Nunez was good as a fill in for the cardinals. The phillies are looking for a backup IF, so it might not be that bad.
though a 2 yr deal??
This guy is awful; it's amazing he got this much money.
And to think that Mark Bellhorn is still available out there...
Nunez is just an expensive backup MI, a Tomas Perez replacement.
Last year was the first that Nunez was anything near useful. He really can't hit, although he's a decent glove anywhere in the infield, maybe a little stretched at SS. He's Tomas Perez -- just 2 years younger and without the touch of power Tomas had.
This is not particularly helpful, especially at two years and $3.35 million.
Although he was better than David Bell last year, it was an aberration; Bell at his worst, Nunez at his best. And Nunez's best was still below average
Abraham can pretty bunt well. For his career he's close to the magic 1 walk for every 10 AB's line, with a K;BB ratio below 2:1. He knows what he's doing at the plate and doesn't have terrible at bats. He's a decent base runner. Watching him so much I honestly think the .340 OBP in '05 is closer to his talent level than his earlier years. I don't see why he can't put up two 270/330/350 lines for the Phillies. His fellow players seem to like him.
Overall, that's not a bad player to have as an NRI who ends up as a utility guy and pinch runner and so forth. And no, he's not worth $3.35 million over two years.
No team should grossly overpay for well-below-average players like David Bell, but this is a great place for Nunez to go (just like the Cardinals were). His other options were to be signed as a starter by one of the sad pitiful teams, which would do nobody any good, or to be signed as an afterthought by the Yankees or Red Sox. This sort of deal lets the sad pitiful teams play their young up-and-comers, and takes a non-overrated player off the market so that the teams that grossly overpay people can continue to do their thing.
How? They could've had plenty of Nunez clones for the major league minimum. Seriously.
Matt Kata, whom they got for Worrell, is about as good of a roster spot use as Nunez.
A million here and a million there, and the Phils look bad again.
While I personally wouldn't extend this deal to Nunez, it certainly won't cripple the franchise. I really don't see how it's worth gloating over.
Maybe Tomas is the linchpin of some big trade?
If Tomas is a linchpin, you guys are getting Jose Lima in return.
And esp with the farm in tatters as the Phillies system is, you need all your draft picks!
Bingo! This signing continues a trend, whereby GMs overpay for unusually good RECENT performance. Next up: Watch the check Konerko cashes, thanks to a walk year roughly 50% better (by WARP) than anything he'd done before.
If there's one lesson sabermetricians should try to teach Baseball Men, it's the Small Sample Size Problem. Scouting, by definition, is making judgments based on small numbers of observations. With Nunez, clearly Gillick saw a few games on TV or the post-season, and said "hey, looks like Abraham finally put it together!" Fine--maybe he did. But maybe he just played out of his mind for a couple weeks or months. When a guy sucks 90% of his career, betting on the most recent 10% when he didn't (or didn't quite so much) is pretty foolish, IMO.
4) That after all the hype, this one turned out to be the GOOD Abraham Nunez?
Nunez was a Type C free agent, not a Type A or Type B. The Phils don't give up a draft pick because of where he was slotted, not because of any inside deal. Were he a Type A or Type B, it would be a different story.
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