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Friday, December 16, 2022
The White Sox are adding outfielder Andrew Benintendi on a five-year contract worth $75 million, per MLB Network insider Jon Heyman. ESPN’s Jesse Rogers was first with the report.
The club has not yet confirmed reports of the deal.
Benintendi hit double-digit home runs in each of his first three full Major League seasons while playing for the Red Sox, but he traded some of that power for more contact in 2022 and had one of the better years of his career. In his second season with the Royals, Benintendi batted .320/.387/.398 with three homers through his first 93 games, earning his first All-Star selection along the way. He ranked third in the AL in batting average, sixth in on-base percentage, second in hits (111) and first in multihit games (34) through July 27.
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1. reech Posted: December 16, 2022 at 05:10 PM (#6109788)Who ya got?
I think all those stats carry through the through his first 93 games qualifier. i.e. he had a good half-season.
Benintendi is certainly cheap, but he's just so average. I don't really see any upside. if you're a contender, you're always going to wish you had someone better. Can't see locking yourself into him for 5 years.
This seems like an overpay for Benintendi. Just sign Conforto to a 1-year deal if you need a guy right now and wait for better options over the next few years.
Throw Yoshida into the debate too:
5 years/$90 mil
Probably one of the young IFs. Whoever it is, he won't cost $24M (Benintendi's salary plus the luxury tax) and will probably be like 0.5 WAR worse.
But you'd think if it saps power, it would also affect ability to hit the ball hard, and that might make it more difficult to maintain a high BA.
I dunno. It's nice to save the money, but a healthy Benintendi is a very good all-around player who's capable of producing 4 or 5 WAR. I can't see any alternative with that sort of upside.
EDIT: In the abstract I'll take Nimmo. I'm highly confident he'll out-WAR Benintendi although he might not out-WAR/$ him (how do you like that verb English mavens?). But really he's the better hitter and the better defender. But if Robert is healthy (I just jinxed him) I can see the Sox don't need Nimmo's CF ability so Benintendi is a more obvious fit without putting $160 M on the line.
I was thinking Thomas's long buyout must have topped $75 M (but not this AAV) but man that was a long time ago. His last season was 15 years ago now. That was such a weird contract I don't know how it was valued.
When Thomas first agreed to his contract in 1997, the guaranteed amount of the first four years averaged $7,756,750, the 10th-highest average salary in baseball
Yes.
Meanwhile, the Red Sox were platooning Christian Arroyo and Jackie Bradley Jr to open the 2022 season, and Average Alex Verdugo was the team's best outfielder in 2022. And Schwarber is hitting 46 bombs for the Phillies because we thought he wasn't worth 4/$79m. Good times.
Nimmo. Benintendi is a year younger, and his contract is shorter, but Nimmo is the better hitter, consistently posting xwOBAs a good bit higher than Benintendi. 8 years is a long time, and Nimmo carries injury risk, but the ceiling is higher IMO.
Yes and no. The lower-end of the market is almost always "underpaid" by $/WAR. Too much supply maybe? They also aren't usually signed for 5 years. It's quite possible that Benintendi got an offer like 3/$54, 3/$57 but preferred the security of 5/$75. And finally -- hitters get paid, all-around WAR tends not to get paid as well, presumably because hitting ages fairly well/predictably.
Apparently ZiPS now guesstimates $ value as $5.3 for the first WAR and $8.3 for each WAR after that. Certainly the 1-WAR end of the market doesn't command $8-9 M very often so Dan seems closer to reality on this one. If Benintendi is a 2.5 WAR player that works out to about $17.7 ... which gets us back to questions like did he prefer the security of 5/$75 or maybe that he projects as 2.5 now but is expected to decline slightly as he ages. Anyway, using Dan's formula, the Sox are paying for about 11 WAR over 5 years -- sounds close enough to me.
(Note, those might be Dan's estimates for 2022 not 2023; or he might need to adjust them if 2023 has seen a big jump which it seems to have -- i.e. don't blame Dan yet if those are way off, blame me for not caring enough to dig out the detail.)
He seems average in arm and holding runners so if you buy into the -9 runs in range he's more like a 2 WAR player than a 3 WAR. And over 5 years I project 8 WAR using the conservative age-distribution method I suggested in the Correa thread.
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