6-4-2 — an Angels/Dodgers double play blog: Full Throttle

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Thursday, November 11, 2004

Full Throttle

One of the temptations writing a blog is to rip into somebody who's getting paid to do what I do for free -- that is, speculate -- when their musings become transparently ridiculous. Aaron Gleeman, discussing this particular tar pit, wrote that he generally steers clear of it because "it loses a little something when your audience is substantial enough to have your own work torn apart at times." I'm lucky in that I don't think many people show up here have actual paying gigs and the time/compulsion/whatever to point out just how asinine my analysis is. (Besides, there's plenty of non-paying customers willing to take on that assignment.) But what's even rarer is to find the opposite case, one where you not only agree with the writer, but even more than maybe he thought possible.

One such case arrived tonight in the form of Thomas Boswell's column at the Washington Post. Meditating upon the possibilities of the hot stove, he writes:

The free agency bell has barely rung and everybody is already chasing exactly the wrong players. No better example could exist than Beltran, the current object of obsession. If baseball is lucky, the Yankees will fixate on Beltran, sign him for between $150 and $200 million and find out, too late, that he is exactly the player they don't need -- a flashy five-tool switch-hitting centerfielder coming off a spectacular October hot streak who, in cold statistical reality, is as good an offensive player as Boston journeyman Kevin Millar.
That got your attention. Beltran has played six full seasons. They've been virtual duplicates. Five times he's had between 100 and 108 RBI, including 104 in '04. But Manny Ramirez once had 165. In the age of "Moneyball," head straight to composite offensive stats. Start with OPS (on-base-percentage-plus-slugging-percentage) as a decent approximation of offensive ability. Beltran's career OPS is .843. That would rank him eighth on the current Yankees roster. Yes, eighth.
Rodriguez, Sheffield and Jason Giambi are all between .927 and .955 -- a world away from .843, which is 14 points below Millar's career mark. Beltran hit .267 last year, seldom walks much and has only hit 30 homers once, aided by the Astros bandbox.

Indeed: and look, you might add, at his EqA (.308) and VORP (68.5, over both the Royals and Astros). He is certainly among the elite in the majors --

Player              Age  VORP   RAA2
====================================
Jim Edmonds         34   88.1   +12
Carlos Beltran      27   68.5*   +2
Aaron Rowand        27   53.4    +2
Johnny Damon        31   52.4    +8
Mark Kotsay         28   50.5   +16
Juan Pierre         27   44.1    -9
Jeromy Burnitz      35   43.5    -5

-- but his career average VORP is only 41.4, which puts him closer to Juan Pierre than Jim Edmonds. Even so, I get the impression the itch to overpay for Beltran will overcome at least one GM this offseason. It might not be Brian Cashman, who, as Jay Jaffe points out, is starting to act like he has a budget. I just hope it isn't Stoneman.

// posted by Rob @ 8:51 PM link // 0 comments