Why Gonzo Being Gonezo is um…. Goodzo
In a couple of different threads about the big Nick Punto trade, I’ve argued, without a great deal of detail, that the Red Sox being rid of Adrian Gonzalez’s contract was a positive in its own right. With the snow falling outside and everyone in the house under the weather, now seemed like a good time to sneak away into a secluded corner and expand on this a bit (especially since no one asked).
Gonzalez is owed about $132M over the next six years. Looking solely at his WAR numbers, he seems like a decent bet to be worth that. Over the past three years, he’s put up bWARs of 4.1, 6.7, and 3.2, and fWARs of 5.1, 6.5, and 3.6. That guy seems like a good bet to put up something like 4.0 to 4.5 WAR in 2013 and then age normally.
But there is something in Gonzalez’s story that makes me not trust these numbers: the shoulder injury that he sustained in 2009. According to this Gordon Edes article, the injury was reaggravated in May 2010 (May 8, it would appear from the info in the article). After that, Gonzalez managed to hit 25 more HR, a 32-HR pace, off the pace of 38/season that he had established in 2008 and 2009.
But the pain (and the meds necessary to allow him to keep playing) got to be too much for Gonzalez and he opted for surgery in 2010. After that surgery, his power took an even bigger hit than the raw numbers show. Going from a guy who can hit 36 to 40 HR in Petco, to a guy who hits 31, to a guy who hits 27 in Fenway, is a pretty big drop. But in both 2010 and 2011, Gonzalez managed to compensate by swinging at more pitches and perhaps cheating a bit on those swings (remember the fun Ichiro swing? Not so fun in retrospect). His average went up and pretty much offset his drop in power. But by the end of 2011, Gonzalez acknowledged that his shoulder was bothering him again.
In 2012, American League pitchers seemed to have caught on to the fact that Gonzalez was not the same hitter anymore. They challenged him by throwing him more first-pitch strikes (over 60%) than he had seen since 2007. Gonzalez kept hacking away, keeping his average respectably high but seeing his walk rate plummet to its lowest level of his career. His power again dropped off and he managed only 18 HR.
That brings us to 2013. Gonzalez has had a HR under 20/season for a season and a half. As I said above, a straight projection would say that Gonzalez is just about worth his contract. But unless he finds a way to strengthen his shoulder—something that has eluded him for almost 3 years—he’s not going to be able to live up to those projections. The player he is right now looks like a solid contributor but not the All-Star worth more than $20M/season.
Darren
Posted: December 29, 2012 at 04:14 PM |
32 comment(s)
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1. jyjjy Posted: December 29, 2012 at 07:09 PM (#4334298)2. Sox are paying about 4 mill of each of Agons first three years so take that in consideration when one says things like 'No idea why anyone liked that trade for LA'. And frankly 'made it all the way through waivers for a reason' is a horrible piece of logic.
3. These arn't the GD Padres. In a vacuum, a team with this much revenue letting go Adrian Gonzalez so they can give up a draft choice for Adam Laroche is not remotely a good idea. Maybe after all is said and done a Mike Napoli might...sorta.. even things out though.
If the point of this article is to say, "I predict AGon will not...according to whatever metrics decide how much a player is worth...be worth his contract" then I think it's perfectly defensible, but it should really end there. After that we start to venture into crazyland as seen by #1's "Obviously worse than the Wells trade".
Just because a guy doesn't equal whatever WAR per year = 20mill doesn't make it a good idea to just let him go after one substandard year. And especially when you gave up Casey kelly, Anthony Rizzo (and Fuentes) to get him.
His power has completely vanished since the 2011 ASB. He hit 3 home runs in 36 games after the trade to the Dodgers (2 of which came in one September game off Homer Bailey). A first baseman who doesn't hit home runs isn't worth $20M+ per year.
This is after 10 homers in the second half of 2011. He went on to hit a mere 18 over the whole of 2012. 28 homers in his last 1000 PA after he used to hit 35-40 per season plying half of his games at freaking Petco Park.
I'd say they're more likely to sign Napoli than Laroche, as of right now. But whoever they sign, that's just the guy they are signing for the first 2-3 years at a fraction of Gonzo's cost. Some of his money (and no, the $4mil/year is not to pay for him, it's obviously to pay for Crawford) is going to help fill holes at SS or in the OF.
*This is kind of pedantic anyway. Only useful in arguing whether the Dodgers got a good deal.
Yeah... I think I'll consider the trade as a whole when evaluating it and that 12 mill as a drop in the bucket compared to the contracts of A-Gon/Crawford/Beckett as a whole. That done let me repeat, no idea why anyone liked the trade for LA.
Also no idea at all why you think a player making it through waivers to a team on top of the standings in THE OTHER LEAGUE doesn't say a whole bunch about how valuable they are vs their contract, at least in the minds of roughly 25 other GMs(unless you consider noting what actual baseball GMs think as worthless, which may be semi-defensible.) If he was valuable enough to take freaking Crawford's contract in order to get him then he should have been claimed by the first team that could grab him just to flip even if they had no use for him or couldn't afford him. Do explain how that is "a horrid piece of logic." That it wasn't a pure salary dump and you got some ok prospects on top of it all is pretty mindboggling IMO.
1) You made it sound like "Getting AGon was worse than getting Wells." You didn't say, "Getting Crawford/Beckett and AGon was worse than getting Wells." Which whenever LA parts ways with them and we formulate things will also probably be wrong since Wells has provided negative WAR for 42 million so far.
2) Your statement, "Made it all the way through waivers for a good reason" implies that it's a horrible deal, while the permutations allowing other possiblities arn't worth the 2500 word essay. I will say that 29 GMs let Manny Ramirez clear irrevocable waivers around 2005.
And finally, this is a general statement and not one directed at JY...is no one aware that AGon's second half OPS was .878? So for all the talk of doom and gloom, we are talking about 30% of his time in Boston. As I've said before, my opinion is his slump was more related to mental issues and bad luck.
Will he hold value over the entirity of his contract? Probably not. Will he be an epic bust? No. And that's what is really important. If Lackey and Crawford last year are just average they win some 96 games at least. Probably more because they don't go into a coal-to-diamond, ass-clenching death spiral.
Tl;dr: I disagree with the premise that AGon, in a vacuum with no relation to Crawford, Punto and Beckett, being gone is a good thing.
2) Yes, my point is very much that the trade was absolutely terrible. If you need to write 2,500 words to try to explain a way it theoretically might not be I think that says more than enough. That the only excerpt of this theoretical essay you choose to share is to point to the nadir of "Manny being Manny" era waiver shenanigans as a comp suggests that I at least would not find it very convincing. We are discussing this in context of the "prize" of the trade possibly not being worth his own contract when he was packaged with one of the most toxic assets in baseball in exchange for prospects worthy of the word. Your TL;DR is defensible, this trade for LA is not and I'm not sure why you think otherwise.
Also, rampant collusion/gentlemen's agreements.
"...wait, AGon is traded, and we didn't have to pay half his salary? He hasn't hit in a year!..."
"...they took Beckett, too?! Do people in Los Angeles have cable? Sportscenter? The Internet?"
"Holy ####...they took Crawford?!!!! He's been terrible. He just had Tommy John surgery two days ago! This is not possible..."
"Wait, we actually got two pitching prospects back? And we are only paying about $12 million in cash for all this? I literally do not understand. I do not comprehend this."
Maybe us Red Sox fans are waaay too subjective to be able to look at the other side of this argument. I don't care if AGon's OPS was .878, or .978, or whatever. Trust me - Crawford was so terrible; Beckett was such a cancer, and so inconsistent; AGon's game had changed sufficiently since the all-star break of 2011; Punto was not effective in the role he filled; the money was so paralyzing for Red Sox Nation; that this trade was obviously amazing.
Inability to afford him (Not sure if you *can* flip a waiver wire acquisition like JY suggested. I wouldn't think so. Players don't appreciate being moved like stocks. But I could certainly be wrong)...no place to play him...irrational fear of his contract...not knowing he had been placed on waivers...
Regardless, JY is not reading what I wrote. He made it sound like getting AGon was a worse trade than the Wells one. When he meant the entire 4 player acquisition. Frankly I don't think that's possible, but I was only interested in talking about AGon since he's the subject of the article.
These are your people? You're like the nicest guy at a Klan rally. But it's still a Klan rally.
He had an .893 OPS in the second half of 2011. That's ELITE. If he did that over the course of 2011, that puts him in 8th place. When those bozos were talking he had just come off a .928 OPS in July. hadn't hit in a year huh?
In July of 2003, the Marlins were in a seven team dogfight for the wild card spot, with a decent lineup and excellent starting pitching being dragged down by a horrible bullpen. They traded Gonzalez for Uggie Urbina, who went on to throw 40 excellent innings in relief over the rest of the year. The Marlins won the wild card, and went on to win the World Series. There may have been better ways to fix a bullpen than by trading a #1 pick, but we don't really know what other options were available. Plus, flags fly forever and all that jazz.
Trading someone like Gonzalez for half a year of a reliever is generally indefensible, but the 2003 Marlins' situation was, well, slightly less indefensible.
Uncalled for.
Oh please.
The analogy was dead on. "You seem like a nice, smart guy. Don't attach your flag with idiots like that."
And thank you Brian for the in-depth explanation. I forgot the significance of the year, which makes me the idiot.
I'm not as vehement about it but I'm still tilted towards Dale's side that the trade was a mistake. Having said that what's done is done. Just as last year I didn't really care what Reddick and Lowrie and others did when they left I'm not particularly bothered by whether or not Gonzalez and friends succeed or fail.
I think Darren lays out a pretty good case why trading Gonzalez may have been wise. I think what is important in this (or any) trade is not what the guys that get sent out do but how the guys brought in do. If the Sox have correctly evaluated DLR, Webster, and the FA market (leading to Napoli et al) then it's a good sign that Cherington and friends will get us back on top. If they whiffed on those evaluations then it's a bad sign. You have to trade value to get value.
And also I thought the point was to get below the Luxury Tax last year. Has that changed to *always* staying below? Because I find that repugnant in the current market and with a team that makes so much money.
how about this for a bold prediction: for the rest of their respective contracts, carl crawford will provide the dodgers with the most value.
If you didn't have a problem with Henry and Werner using the luxury tax threshold as a soft cap, I don't see why you'd have much of a problem with them using it as a hard cap.
I think the big mistake here, among all this, was the completely missing on his injury. Everything else flows from that. If they decide that he's too injured, they don't make the trade or they give up less and pay him less or they wait out 2011 and then think about signing him for 2012 or or or. This, of course, is a pattern with them and one they have hopefully finally been forced to recognize. We'll know whether they have when we see if they give Napoli a goofy clause and he ends up playing injured all year and if they let Pedroia play through a month of injuries this year.
Youkilis, I think was going to break down anyway. I don't see how standing at 3B, and actually being involved in far less plays, is more stressful than playing 1B. Just my 2 cents.
2013:
AGon: 4.0
Crawford and Beckett: At least 2 each.
I'd say 9 WAR all together. Which is (taking the 4 mill the Sox are ponying up into account)...8 mill under contract value? 1.5 more WAR from anywhere and they about even out.
I THINK. Someone feel free to correct my math.
Someday, I'd like to have a long discussion about whether it's wiser to play your financial game year (or two) to year or for the long haul. In other words, do you think Baseball (financially) should be played tacticlly or strategicly? And if it's both, how much weight either way.
I don't think you can simply assign a weight in all situations. A lot depends on what you have in place already. For example, while the Hamilton deal might be a bad one in years 4&5 the Angels are in clear "win now" mode so gambling on 2016-2017 makes sense for them.
One thing that 2012 did for me is highlight the fact that this idea that an 80 win season isn't worth shooting for is wrong. Obviously the goal should be 95 wins but as a fan a 69 win season is miserable and the reality is that it is very difficult to build a team starting from a 69 win season. I would bet that very few teams have developed a champion out of the core of a 69 win team. I'm not saying the Astros should have been hunting down Hamilton but I think there is something to be said for finding wins where you can get them.
I agree with this. I think 3B is more pro-active while 1B is reactive so I think there is more of both physical and mental exertion at 3rd base.
For the sox, getting rid of Beckett was the key.
Chances are, Beckett will fade fairly early. But he was good while we had him and this winter's struggles show we have great difficulty finding anything better. Sanchez may be better in next 5 years (obviously not better so far) -- but we weren't close to getting him.
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