Eric's Giants Blog

Money well-spent

I'm late to the table on the topic of the four-year, $48 million contract the Angels gave Garrett Anderson to play for them from 2005 through 2008. This topic isn't Giants-related and probably seems all but obvious to those who think in the terms that commonly populate this space.

We're told constantly and from many sides that "baseball is a business". We're told that by certain owners to justify spending eight times the amount other teams spend on their teams in order to produce wins, arguing (correctly, in the case of the New York Yankees) that investing more money in the team brings in more revenue, and is thus a smart business decision. We're told the exact same thing by cheapskate owners who *don't* want to invest money in their team, because they believe the team should turn a profit. We're told by players (and their union) when they are trying to justify ever-escalating salaries. Of course, in the most nominal sense of it, it's true - baseball is a business. Which is why I'm often surprised when a baseball owner makes a decision that seems fairly senseless from a business standpoint.

Garrett Anderson is a good player. He's not a five-tool player in the traditional sense. However he hits for average, hits for power and plays good defense. He doesn't run particularly fast or have a particularly strong arm. I would posit, as a sidelight, that we could rewrite the identity of these tools, and separate them into separate offensive and defense skillboxes, rather than toolboxes. I'm going to leave the defensive one alone for now, but clearly "fielding ability" isn't complex enough to really evaluate a player. I'd call the measurable tools the following:

1. Ability to get on base
2. Ability to hit the ball hard
3. Strike Zone judgment
4. Durability

These are a fairly obvious sabremetric reworking of the three offensive tools (hitting for average, hitting for power, foot speed) to correspond to OBP, SLG and GP rather than AVG, HR and SB. The ability to get on base includes the ability to hit for average, but doesn't ignore alternative methods for generating baserunners the way a focus on AVG does. The key statistic that measures this ability is OBP. The ability to hit the ball hard is different from the power tool only insofar as I prefer to shift the focus from home run power to extra-base power generally, specifically IsoP (SLG - AVG), which measures the portion of a hitter's total bases that are the result solely of extra-base hits. I've separated out strike zone judgment from the ability to get on base for the benefit of players with a low enough batting average that their OBP is still low, but who demonstrate an exceptional batting eye. The measurement here is OBP - AVG, or an Isolated Patience metric.

Finally, there's durability. A player who can stay healthy and play every game is valuable, and while there are some players who get unlucky with injuries, it's pretty clear that Cal Ripken Jr. wasn't just luckier than Rondell White. A guy like Miguel Tejada is valuable to begin with, but his value is at least partially derived from the fact that he can play every single day. Health is a skill, and should be viewed as such. Part of the problem with durability is that it needs to be valued for what it is, and not for what it isn't. Durability tends to be both undervalued and overvalued. It's undervalued in the sense that players who don't have it should be discounted and often aren't - a guy like Nick Johnson could be a great player for a decade, but he just can't stay on the field. It's overrated in the sense that it has secondary effects on a player's stats that should be attributed to durability, but usually aren't. Tejada is a good example of this. A player like Tejada has a big reputation as an "RBI man" or "run-producer" and it's true, he tends to collect a lot of RBI. But what gets lost in the shuffle is that part of why the guy has so many RBI relative to other players at his position is that he is in the lineup every single day. It's easier to hit 100+ RBI if you play 162 games than if you play 150. That seems obvious, yet it seems almost totally ignored. All of which is to say that durability is extremely valuable, but it should be understood that it doesn't actually make a player a better hitter on an AB by AB basis.

Which leads us back to Garrett Anderson. He has two of the four skills I mention above - he hits the ball hard and he plays every day. His critics cite his low OBP (typically hovers around .325) as a flaw in his game, and they're correct - it is a flaw in his game. I can't say for sure that Anderson doesn't have a good batting eye - watching him play, it seems like a conscious choice to trade OBP for more AVG. He swings at a lot of pitches trying to get that extra hit. He's a good hitter, doesn't strike out too much, and can sometimes make something happen when he gets a poor pitch to hit. Do I think he'd be better if he took those pitches and played a take-and-rake style? Yes, but he's pretty good the way he is now.

Which isn't to say his contract was a good idea. It wasn't. Anderson is a 31-year-old left fielder (playing center field because Mike Scoscia decided that Darin Erstad, who's basically the outfielder version of Neifi Perez, should now be playing first base - for the record if I ever see Neifi Perez playing first base for the Giants I believe my head will literally burst) who turns 32 on June 30, 2004. He'll turn 33 during the first year of this contract and 36 during the fourth year. Is it possible that he'll remain productive and durable through age 36 and justify $12M per year? Well, no, probably not - even during his best seasons he hasn't been worth $12M. But it's possible that he'll still be good at 36 (look at someone like Reggie Sanders for a 36-year-old who is still productive).

According to Baseball Prospectus, in Anderson's best season (2002) he was worth about 5 wins more than a league-average left fielder. That's a very good number. Figure that if a team of league-average players produces a .500 team you only need a couple of guys producing 5 wins over the average to create a 90-win team (this approach should sound familiar to Giants fans). Problem is, Anderson has only produced close to this kind of value in two seasons out of nine - 2002 and 2003. The Angels are banking on this spike in skills at age 29 and 30 being permanent, and it's pretty reasonable to assume that it isn't. BP thinks Anderson will be basically a league-average player by 2007, producing only 0.8 wins above a replacement-level fielder at that time. Essentially Anderson is an expensive but valuable luxury in 2004 and will be an absolute albatross by 2007.

The top comparable BP lists for Anderson is Tony Oliva, who played for the Twins from 1962 through 1976. He had some very Andersonesque seasons in there.

1969: .309 / .355 / .496
1970: .325 / .364 / .514
1971: .337 / .369 / .546

What happened to Oliva? He got hurt in 1972 at age 31 and was never the same player again. He retired at age 34.

Did I mention that Garrett Anderson is on the DL with back problems right now?

The Angels probably signed Anderson to this contract because he's liked by fans and because he's been in the organization so long. It was a reward for what he's done in the past. But I have to think he's not as much a fan favorite as David Eckstein, Troy Glaus or some of these new fellas like Vladimir Guerrero, and spending $12M a year for a guy who might just as well produce Garrett's 2001 season (.289 / .314 / .478) as his 2002 (.306 / .332 / .539) is going to seem really foolish down the road. Especially after Magglio Ordonez signs a contract that's not so different from this one. Isn't baseball supposed to be a business?

posted by Eric @ 7:33 AM