Eric's Giants Blog

More unjustified hope

Note: There is no evidentiary basis for any of what follows.
Note also: This is the year for ideas with no evidentiary basis.

So I'm reading a fantasy baseball column on Rotoworld.com (can you tell I miss baseball season) and the author, one Matthew Pouliot (who writes with greater intelligence and a more obvious connection to reality than most fantasy baseball columnists, the majority of whom would finish last in most of my leagues based on the harebrained advice they dish out) is running over his projected lineups for the American League. It's an interesting and fun exercise, and one which I may try myself at some point later in the offseason.

At any rate, as I'm reading and skimming over the teams in the AL, I notice a couple of oddities in the entry for the Chicago White Sox. For one thing, they still have Paul Konerko, even though my assumption was/is that he will be traded. And as I scan down their starting lineup I was surprised to see:

C: A.J. Pierzynksi

And then further below:

RHP: Jerome Williams

Needless to say I read a little more closely, curious to see how he arrived at these two 2004 Giants being on the White Sox roster. What I see is that he envisions a "mutually beneficial" trade between these two teams. The trade sends Jerome and AJ to Chicago for Carlos Lee and Damaso Marte. The logic runs as follows: The White Sox want to trade one of Konerko or Lee, presumably for financial reasons (it's not for performance reasons, given that he has Lee being replaced in the White Sox lineup by either Carl Everett or Brian Jordan. The theory continues that it will be Lee that gets traded rather than Konerko, the market for the latter being depressed because of the presence of superior free agent options in the market, named Carlos Delgado and Richie Sexson.

Let's examine the premises of this trade and see if it's either feasible or beneficial (to the Giants) or both.

First off, let's at least look at the assertion that Konerko will run distant third to Delgado and Sexson in the 2005 market.

2004 Stats:

Konerko: Age 28; 563 AB; .277 / .359 / .535 / 41 HR / 117 RBI / 107 K
Delgado: Age 32; 458 AB; .269 / .372 / .535 / 32 HR / 99 RBI / 115 K
Sexson: Age 29: 90 AB; .233 / .337 / .578 / 9 HR / 23 RBI / 21 K

3-year averages:

Konerko: 525 AB; .275 / .344 / .483 / 29 HR / 95 RBI / 75 K
Deldago: 511 AB; 284 / .403 / .561 / 35 HR / 114 RBI / 126 K
Sexson: 422 AB; .273 / .369 / .530 / 21 HR / 83 RBI / 103 K

Of course, all of these numbers arguably don't tell the whole story. Konerko had his best year in 2004 while Sexson only logged 90 ABs because of injuries. Delgado had an off-season. The 3-year numbers reflect that each of them has had one year that was either off because of performance (Konerko's 2003) or injuries (Delgado's and Sexson's 2004).

I think it's safe to say that Delgado is a better hitter than Konerko, but that doesn't mean he's a better investment. For one thing he's four years older. Let's look at a couple of examples:

Slugger X: Age 31 season: .314 / .435 / .598
Slugger X: Age 32 season: .250 / .412 / .527
Slugger X: Age 33 season: .208 / .342 / .379

Slugger Y: Age 31 season: .337 / .402 / .591
Slugger Y: Age 32 season: .281 / .358 / .508
Slugger Y: Age 33 season: .272 / .365 / .498

Of course there are plenty of counterexamples to Sluggers X and Y (Jason Giambi and Mo Vaughn) but both were big, slugging 1B/DH types just like Delgado and both began to decline and fall to injuries around Delgado's age, so to simply assume that Delgado will rebound from 2004 and go back to being the monster he was before is foolish.

As far as Sexson is concerned, he's always been a little overrated because he hits 40 homers and because when he does get ahold of one he hits it so damn far. But this is a guy who has never hit .300 over a season, never had an OBP of .380 and never slugged .600, despite playing in some pretty favorable ballparks. So he doesn't really deserve to be in the same discussion as Delgado, especially since he's coming off a shoulder injury that caused him to miss almost all of the 2004 season.

Which brings us to Konerko. At age 28, he just had his best season at the plate, following his worst season (a downright depressing .305 / .399) 2003. But if you view 2003 as a fluke, you're talking about a player who has a very defined level of performance:

1999: .863
2000: .844
2001: .856
2002: .857
2004: .894

My guess is that this represents Konerko's performance level, and that he'll probably have a career year some time in the next three years when his batting average, stable at around .285 for the most part, will spike up to .310 and he'll put up a Jeff Kent 2000 season, something like .310 / .395 / .580. Konerko is a solid slugging 1B but is not likely to ever have the kind of career peak that others mentioned in this post (Delgado, Giambi, Vaughn) have enjoyed.

Let's look at one other axis:

2004 Salaries

Konerko: $8M
Delgado: $19.7M
Sexson: $8.75M

In my view, Konerko probably represents the best investment of these three, given the injury concerns for both the other two and their higher price tags. But that's just me. Let's move on, since this was a long diversion (like something else I could name...)

Turning to the trade itself, let's examine the players:

Carlos Lee. I love this guy, with caveats.

He can hit a lot, but often only does so in the second half (2002 and 2003). He's a lot like Konerko has a hitter, actually - hits for a decent average, draws enough walks but not a ton, hits for good power (although he's yet to have the 40-homer season that Konerko just had). He's more useful than Konerko on the basepaths (29 steals over the last two years on 38 attempts) and doesn't strike out much (which you all know doesn't matter that much to me).

One thing I do like a lot about him is that he doesn't hit a lot of ground balls, relatively speaking. In 2004 his GB/FB ratio was 0.68. If we're auditioning the guy for the spot behind Bonds, this is crucial. We've learned the hard way with our various slow, groundball-hitting catchers that if you put a ground ball hitter behind a guy who's constantly on base, you wind up with a lot of double plays. This is why I used to want to see Rich Aurilia hitting behind Bonds (back when he was good), because he hit a lot of fly balls.

A problem - he plays left field. For some reason a lot of commentators looking at potential right fielders for the Giants are looking mostly at mashing left fielders like Lee and Alou. I'm not sure why - Lee isn't a particularly good left fielder despite his natural speed, so he'd have to be really terrific at the plate in order to be valuable given his likely defense in right.

The upside is this:

2nd half, 2002: .283 / .407 / .521
2nd half, 2003: .325 / .350 / .569
Season, 2004: .305 / .366 / .525
2nd half, 2004: .322 / .376 / .599

There are a lot of hitting skills here, and they're possessed by a 28-year-old outfielder with speed who manages to stay on the field (569 ABs average over the last 3 years). He hasn't hit better at Commiskey than away from it. He doesn't have big platoon splits (in fact has a slight reverse platoon split).

So really the evaluation on Lee comes down to defense and cost. He made $6.5M in 2004 and earned it. But he'll be more expensive in 2005. He'll make $8M in 2005. If he can manage to string two of those big halves together and hit .315 / .375 / .550 for a whole season, he'll be worth it. It will be left to people with a better sense of defense than me to decide if he is capable of manning right field at SBC Park.

Damaso Marte. Are we smart enough to trade for this guy? All he's done is strike out 269 batters in 258 major-league innings. 2004 was his worst year, mostly because he allowed 10 home runs after allowing only 3 the previous year. Other than that, his peripherals were pretty steady. He has a career 3.10 / 1.18 line over those 258 innings. He's left-handed and he absolutely devours lefties, who hit a pathetic .154 / .245 / .225 off him over the last three years. He's also effective against righties, who hit .238 / .320 / .368 off him over the same period.

He has closed a little for the White Sox (27 career saves) but has blown too many for them. Remember, this is the same team that gave up on Keith Foulke. Marte would be a fantastic addition to the Giants bullpen, and hasn't yet gotten too expensive (although he is arbitration-eligible this year).

So it's safe to say that the Giants get a lot of value in this deal, although there are caveats about whether or not Carlos Lee fits into a team that clearly does not have an opening in left field. Let's look at what the Giants would be giving up.

AJ Pierzynski - my views on him are well-known. He's not nearly good enough to justify either his cost ($3.5M in 2004 and only going up) or his personality. His stats in SF are not likely ever reach his 2003 career season in Minnesota. He's not particularly good defensively and is a clubhouse cancer. The White Sox can have him. I am a little curious that the Giants don't get Miguel Olivo in this deal, though.

Jerome Williams - this is who we're really giving up in this trade. People have hopes for Jerome ranging from solid #3 starter to staff ace. So far he's been more the first than the second, averaging 130 innings of .377 / 1.28 ball with a merely adequate strikeout rate. But he's 22 and there are a lot of possible futures for him. Truth be told, while I like him, I was never as high on him as a lot of others. I expected Foppert to be the one of 2003's "big three" prospects that turned into an ace. But if Kenny Williams (and his noted disdain for the "fantasy baseball" approach of, say, Theo Epstein) can be convinced that Jerome is 200 innings of 3.30 / 1.25 waiting to happen (which might actually be true) for several cheap years, and if he's unhappy with Marte for whatever reason (we know he's bad at reliever evaluations - he traded Foulke for Billy Koch), this is a deal that could actually get done.

So IF Carlos Lee can play right field for the Giants, I think this would make the team better. It could get done because it saves the White Sox money and gives them a starter they feel they need and gives the Giants both the slugger they need to back up Barry as well as a guy who will immediately become the best reliever in the bullpen (but does he have enough moxie... hrm...). If this deal is to get done, The White Sox will have to have given up on 26-year-old Miguel Olivo. Personally, I think that's a little crazy, and would be happy to see the Giants pick him up and make a project out of him. I think his strong first half in 2004 (.264 / .310 / .486) demonstrated some actual hitting skills. But that's a separate issue. I don't think the Giants are going to get even Kenny Williams to just throw Olivo into the deal. And I'd take it the way its been presented, given a favorable defensive evaluation.

posted by Eric @ 7:42 AM